22. Chapter 22
A heavy mist hung low on the ground, parting as Yareli walked through the thin trees.
Her breath unfurled in a white cloud. The forest was unlike any she had ever seen, with bare, white trees and the reddest dirt.
She rubbed her arms as she made the slow ascent.
Toward what, she hadn’t the faintest clue, but the pull in her gut was clear—go up.
By the time she reached the top, her thighs and lungs burned.
The mist grew heavier, making it difficult to see more than a foot in front of her.
She hesitated, the blank wall intimidating her.
Her gut twisted, telling her to go forth, and she took a small step.
The mist dissipated like it had been waiting for her, and it revealed a small clearing before a cliff.
A lone figure, facing away from Yareli, sat on a log.
There was space next to them, and she sat.
It was a woman, Fae, her pointed ears peaking through her long blonde hair.
Yareli waited, but when it became clear that the Fae had no intention of speaking first, she asked, “Who are you?”
She received no answer, and she bit her lip. Fae, she thought, enjoyed being cryptic.
The Fae woman spoke. “In a few days, you must travel to the capital.”
“Why?”
“What you seek is there.”
Yareli frowned. The only thing she sought was a vial of Tuom’s blood. Or did she mean her memories?
“What’s there?”
“You’ll know once you arrive,” she replied.
“But—”
She hushed her. “It’s almost here.”
Unease finally made an appearance, and Yareli surveyed their surroundings. It was cold and empty with dawn’s early rays peeking over the summit.
“What is?”
“A new sunrise.”
She looked at Yareli then, her eyes a striking violet.
“Go to the capital.”
A gust buffeted Yareli and threw her off the cliff, her scream swallowed by the rush of air in her ears. Somehow, she knew she would live, and her scream died in her throat.
So this was how it felt to fall.
Except, Yareli had a feeling that she had already fallen into an unknown pit filled with snares that refused to let her go. A cramp flared in her abdomen, the searing pain startling her awake.
Yareli opened her eyes to a stone ceiling she didn’t recognize. A small lantern on a simple nightstand cast long shadows in the room. She rubbed the crust off her eyes.
Where was she?
When she sat up, her abdomen burned, and she doubled over until it passed.
She lifted the sheets, inspecting the bandages on her stomach. She felt Erick’s fading magical signature on them, and she sighed in relief. They must have made it out safely.
The door swung open, revealing a gaunt August. Dark circles hung under his eyes, days-old stubble clung to him, and his shoulders drooped.
He looked up from the platter he was carrying, and it was as if a switch flipped.
He was at her side in an instant, asking her how she was, if it hurt, and if she needed water.
Yareli, still groggy from her intense dream, shook her head. “I’m fine. Where are we?”
He scrutinized her. “We’re still in the Lhuth Mountains, but in an underground base. How’s your wound?”
“It hurts,” she admitted.
“We couldn’t heal it all at once. Your body couldn’t handle the strain from coaxing the wound to close.” He placed the platter down on a small table Yareli hadn’t noticed earlier. “Can I take a look?”
She nodded, lying back down. August brought the sheets down to her waist. Besides a flimsy crop top, Yareli wasn’t wearing a bra, and it was embarrassing, so she filled the silence with chatter.
“Are you also a medic like Erick?”
“I am trained, but no,” August said.
He sliced the bandages with a flick of his finger and carefully peeled them off. Her wound was still open, but it was smaller—about the width of her pinkie finger. She couldn’t believe a dagger had been there.
She remembered then that August had been the one to find her.
“How did you find me?”
His fingers stilled. “Tuom paid me a brief visit. Opened the rift for me to use.” His answer was short, choppy, like he was upset.
Yareli snorted. “Of course he did. He didn’t want me to die, only to suffer for my impudence.”
August said nothing, but his jaw muscle twitched. His hands glowed, covered by a blue aura that extended toward her wound, and her shoulders relaxed. She sighed. It was the bliss of normalcy—no pain, no soreness, nothing.
She thanked him when he finished, and she sat up. The wound had been fully closed, but a vertical scar remained. She ran her finger down its bumps.
“It will fade with time and subsequent treatments,” August said.
The scar was ugly. It was the width of her thumb, and the new, knitted skin was an inflamed, red mess. Tears stirred behind her eyes. Not only had Tuom scarred her life force—the essence that made her—but now, he had marked her body permanently as well.
“We can cover it with cosmetic magic.” August’s voice was soft, like he was afraid of hurting her, as if he knew of her tenuous hold on her emotions.
He was right to be afraid; she wanted to scream her throat raw, throw the shit around her, break it apart, and collapse on the ground.
She had taken down a nox creature or two and gotten cocky.
Tuom’s appearance had been a rude awakening call—she was still powerless to kill him.
It wasn’t fair how weak she was compared to him, but crying about it would solve nothing. She balled up her fists.
“No. We’ll leave it as is,” she said.
Let it be a reminder of a mistake she refused to make again. She was going to get stronger, and Tuom would die.
He nodded; the action knocked his hair into his face, making him seem really young. She wondered if he was as young as her in Fae years—they had met in college after all—and if they both had been dealt a hand of shit cards and forced to play.
“I know you just woke up, and I hate to ask you this now, but we don’t have a lot of time. Do you remember what happened?” He handed her a white T-shirt.
Yareli took the shirt, and he turned around while she changed into it. She feared that if she answered, he would disappear, and she had questions.
“What do you mean we don’t have a lot of time?”
He ran his hand through his hair, drawing attention to his gaunt face again. He set the platter on her lap, uncovering the bowl of soup. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t eat quite yet.
“I’m leaving in two days.” He gave the spoon in her hand a pleading look. “Endrim has called for a Council of Review after another nox attack on the Earth Court’s border.”
She begrudgingly took a bite. “Isn’t the nox threat across all of Izmari? Why is he calling a council for an attack on his border?”
“The number of attacks has increased exponentially recently. The mounting pressure to do something is getting harder to ignore. However, the queen remains steadfast in her decision—defend against but do not provoke the nox creatures.”
Yareli thought back to the assault on the Keepers’ Village. The destruction had been devastating. “Why wouldn’t you attack?”
He was quiet for a moment, pensive.
“The nox are unknown entities that only made their appearance less than a century ago. We don’t know their origin, their purpose, or who is behind their attacks. I suspect the queen is being conservative to prevent escalation that we may not be equipped to handle.”
Between the nox and the potential civil war, Izmari was a mess.
“That’s fair,” she conceded. “But why are you required to go? Aren’t you the general, not the lord, of the Water Court?”
To this, August had a quick—too quick—answer. “I am to go in my elder brother’s stead, and report to him the situation.”
“And why can’t he go?”
“He is in the midst of successor training and is unable to attend.”
Yareli didn’t point out that attending a council with all the courts seemed to be an important learning opportunity for the future lord. She settled with a thoughtful hum instead. She had an inkling that she would not like his elder brother, or father, for that matter.
She finished her soup while August waited for her to recount her harrowing experience with Tuom.
She folded her hands neatly in her lap. “I’ll tell you about what happened if you answer one more question for me.”
A corner of his mouth twitched upwards, but he covered it with a fist. He cleared his throat. “Alright.”
Yareli hid her smile. She arguably had little bargaining power, but she appreciated that he had played along.
It meant he had fallen for her trap. A twinge of guilt pricked at her.
August had answered every single one of her questions before, so playing a trick like this seemed dirty.
She clamped down on her guilt; she told herself it was an extra precaution, because she couldn’t afford it to be the one question he didn’t answer.
To alleviate her guilt a bit, she explained her confrontation with Tuom first.
“There wasn’t much to it,” she said at the end of her summary.
“He was the same bigoted asshole as always, threatening to come ‘collect’ me in the future.” Well, that wasn’t true.
“Actually, there was something. His magic was different, like it was twisted, poisoned by another magic. It’s hard to explain, but I felt it on him. ”
August’s expression was contemplative. “Did it feel like this?”
He drew the gold-and-white pommeled dagger out from midair and floated it toward her, where it rotated in place. Almost immediately, she was assaulted by the dagger’s vile magic. She slapped her hand across her mouth, vomit rising fast, and nodded.
“It is likely you felt the residue of this dagger’s magic on Tuom. It’s quite potent.” August stored the dagger away, and once it disappeared, the nausea vanished.
“What is it?”