On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) Read online

  "You remember what I told you, right?" Mag asked.

  Astanel nodded. He unbuttoned his sky-blue jacket to make himself more comfortable, and sat at the Realm Guardian's head.

  "She looks so weak," he whispered, staring into her wasted face.

  "We’re going to make her stronger, okay?" Mag asked, staring into Astanel's eyes. He nodded his understanding. "Alright." She walked around to the other side of Sara and knelt. As she sunk to her knees, she drew her wyrd around her like a second robe, shielding herself for the work ahead, blocking out all negativity.

  She felt the shadow at the edge of her awareness again, and with its coming there was another pang in her stomach. Mag closed her eyes and breathed deeply until the cramp passed. When she opened them, Astanel was staring at her.

  "Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

  She waved away his concern. "I’ll be fine."

  Mag pulled herself back to the task at hand. The book said the line of wyrd connecting one to the well originated at the back of the skull. Mag imagined it would be around where the lemniscate was, so she surveyed that area with her mind.

  The first time her wyrded gaze passed over the area, she didn't see anything. The second time, she felt with her wyrd as well as looked. Mag felt a patch of rough wyrd overlaying Sara’s lemniscate. When she surveyed the area again, it looked almost like a wound that had been cauterized. Her channel to the well had been cut off so completely as to appear burned out.

  The book said to reroute this channel to the earth, to drain the corrupt wyrd into the soil to be transmuted. It was Mag's hope that once the channel had bled all the wyrd out, it would then re-establish with the Well of Wyrding automatically.

  Mag reached deep into the ground, several stories beneath them, and sifted through the flows of natural wyrd she felt there. Finally she felt a strong tendril of wyrd in the ground and grabbed hold of it. She pulled it back up to her, clutching it in mental hands. She affixed it to the lemniscate on Sara's neck. Mag felt the tendril suction on to the Guardian's neck, welcoming the contact with the Realm Guardian as a flower would welcome the touch of the sun.

  In her slumber, Sara sighed, and Mag thought she saw the ghost of a smile spread across her mouth. That was a good sign. It was the first stirring of life she had seen in Sara in a long time.

  But she wasn't done. Mag channeled her own wyrd, honing it into a blade of sorts. Reaching behind Sara's neck, she punctured the burned-out channel with the tip of her green wyrd.

  Thick black wyrd, like dirty oil, leaked from the wyrded wound to drip down the channel Mag had established with the earth. Mag pushed to her feet and rounded the bed. The room was warming up now, which would help Sara regain strength. She would have to have someone come up with broth later, double the amount today that they had been spooning into Sara's mouth.

  She placed a hand on Astanel's shoulder and he looked up to her, fear in his blue eyes. He had seen everything that had happened so far with his wyrded sight, as Mag had taught him.

  "Don't fear," Mag said, rubbing his shoulder. She smiled at him and tousled his hair. "You’ll be fine. Are you ready?"

  "Yes," he said with a nod. He wiped his hands dry on his brown trousers. He was being very brave, but that was to be expected. Anyone that could take advantage of a situation as Astanel had the day Angelica and Jovian had found him, besting his grigori captor, would have to be brave.

  Mag pinched her fingers together over the blurry lemniscate on the back of Astanel's neck, and pulled with her mind as much as with her hand. A tendril of magenta wyrd came along with her fingers. She stepped between the chair and the bed and leaned over Sara. Separating the folds of the Guardian's robe, Mag placed the end of the line of magenta wyrd over Sara's heart. Instantly she felt Astanel's wyrd latch on to Sara's wrinkled skin, like a leech to a wound. Mag kept her fingers pinched over the line of wyrd, so it wouldn't start draining the corrupt wyrd into Astanel.

  "Now, remember what we talked about? Do you see the line of wyrd connected to her?"

  Astanel nodded, his eyes rooted to the space above Sara's breast where his wyrd clung to her wasted flesh.

  "Good. Now give a slight push through that line. You will feel a moment of vertigo, I assume, as her body couples with your link to the Well of Wyrding."

  Astanel closed his eyes. Mag knew the moment he pushed with his wyrd, because she felt the line she held pinched in her fingers swell with the effort. She let go, and watched the magenta wyrd slip into Sara's body.

  "Perfect. There's no need to keep pushing." Mag looked back to see Astanel sway in his seat. She put a steadying hand on his shoulder. It took a moment, but in time he opened his eyes again. "Better?" she asked.

  Astanel nodded.

  Mag sat on the edge of the bed and watched the magenta wyrd flowing into Sara's body, mingling with the corrupt wyrd and pushing it down the channel she had established with the earth, rooting the corruption in the ground.

  "The corruption is deep," Mag said, tentatively touching Sara's hand. "This will take some time. I’ll check in on you every couple of hours. Feel free to move around, just don't leave this room. We don't want you severing the link."

  Days later, when Jovian came to, he was lying on a high-backed sofa in a golden room of what appeared to be a private suite. Grace sat on a coffee table between him and Angelica, who was on another sofa the same paisley green as his own. The wall he was facing was composed of several windows that looked out on the open air and the lazy snow that had just started falling. It made him cold despite the large fire crackling in the fireplace at his feet. Other doors led off from the main room; he imagined they were to bedrooms.

  Angelica stretched, and her jaw popped with a huge yawn. Her eyes opened sluggishly.

  “How long have we been out?” she asked Grace.

  “Four days,” the old lady replied. Grace pulled her pipe from the folds of her yellow robe and went to the fireplace. Lighting a stick, she placed it to the pipe and puffed several times until a thin wisp of tobacco smoke drifted to the rafters above.

  Jovian watched the smoke disperse among the wooden beams. For the first time in a long time he felt perfectly content and at peace. Despite having not yet found Amber, he knew they were now among friends, where they could regroup and form more ideas of where to look for their lost sister.

  “What happened?” Jovian asked.

  “Cianna has been silent on what she saw. She wants you both to be awake before she says anything. I assume she will tell you, and you can tell whomever you like.” Grace turned to look at them. The Grace Jovian remembered would have been hungry for whatever Cianna knew, but now she just looked tired and old. It ran contrary to their memories of her — and there were a lot of memories in Angelica and Jovian’s heads, some of which they couldn't ever have known because those memories of Grace were before their time.

  There were memories of Grace caring for Amber as a midwife knelt between milky legs coaxing a baby out from the caverns of…his body? Jovian shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. How could the dream be a memory of his? It was absurd for him to even think that the delivery was a memory of his own.

  The door eased open behind his resting place, and he sat up to see their dark-haired cousin push her way in. Unlike when they first saw her, Cianna was now in a gray wool dress with a collar high enough that it framed her face. Her hair was piled in silken curls upon her head, and with each step Jovian heard the click of heeled boots.

  “You're awake,” she said, and then smiled. “I never thought that would happen,” she apologized.

  “What did you mean?” Angelica asked.

  “Grace, would you mind giving us a moment?” Cianna asked Grace, and surprisingly Grace bowed her silvery head and made to leave.

  “No, she can stay,” Jovian said, holding up a hand to stop Grace from leaving. The old lady looked shocked at first, remembering the Jovian from before who would relish the idea of knowing something Grace didn't. The truth was
, Grace was now the only living person outside of his siblings that Jovian thought of as family, and he didn't want to see her go so soon.

  "As long as you’re fine with it," Cianna said. She sat in a chair directly across from the fireplace, at the head of the sofas. Jovian sat up and turned to her, gathering the blankets around himself. Angelica did the same.

  "What did you mean?" Jovian asked. There was no need to elaborate. They all knew what he referred to: the moment when she had looked into their eyes and addressed something inside of them as Sylvie. Then they’d fainted. Grace sat down beside him, puffing lazily on her pipe.

  "Don't you remember any of it?" Cianna asked, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "Memories that aren't your own? Feelings you've had that made no sense? Another consciousness there, right behind your thoughts, your actions, waiting to take over at a moment’s notice? I see it." She motioned to Jovian's face. "I see it all, right there behind your eyes. Both of your eyes. It's as clear to me as fish swimming just below the surface of water."

  "Like when we first saw you, how we knew you in a way that was impossible since we had never met you?" Angelica asked.

  "Or how we loved you as someone other than our cousin?" Jovian asked, feeling a little embarrassed.

  "Like a niece?" Angelica asked, her eyebrows knitting in confusion.

  "Or how in the Otherworld you are sharing thoughts?" Grace asked staring at them. "That's a new development."

  Cianna nodded.

  "When I was in the Necromancer's Mosque, I was given information about you," Cianna said. "Mama Brigitte told me something about the two of you, about your births."

  Jovian looked down to his hands. He didn't want to know what was coming. He felt the memory of the dream at the back of his mind, like a cloud muffling all other thoughts. The dream was too near, too soon.

  "Yes, we killed our mother on our way out of the womb," Angelica said. But that wasn't true, they both knew that now, from that other presence.

  "That's wrong," Cianna said. "You were stillborn, as Grace can attest. Your mother gave up her life for you so that you might be able to live. When she took her last breath, you took your first.

  "But you are anakim, and you are an anomaly. You aren't supposed to exist, because you aren't two people, you are one soul recycled at the moment of your birth. When your mother gave up her life for you, she split her soul in two and took up residency in your body. You may be two separate people, two different bodies, but deep down, you’re one person. You can see that now, how your thoughts and emotions are merging into one line of thought."

  Jovian's hands began shaking. He wanted to argue with her, but deep down, he knew it was true. He knew that he and Angelica weren't normal; they had struggled with that feeling most of their lives. Now at least they had a way to pinpoint how they weren't normal.

  "We're no ordinary family," Jovian said, looking down at his hands. "Porillon was right." But how could he be someone other than himself? Did Jovian Neferis even exist? If he was just a shell for his mother's soul, why did he have the thoughts he had, the personality he had? Was that why he had feelings for Maeven, because a feminine soul resided in his body? How much influence did she have on his decisions and desires?

  But then, she didn't always come to them. In fact, the one time she had truly come to them, it had been outside of their bodies, in the Shadow's Grove. She had sat with them then, and if she was the only spirit inside of their bodies, the only thing that animated them, how could they have talked to her when she was outside of them?

  Jovian's head hurt.

  "Jovian," Cianna leaned forward and placed a comforting hand on his blanketed knee. "Don't fret. We aren't to truly know the workings of the spirit realm."

  Angelica stood and went to the window, taking her down blanket with her like a cloak against the dark thoughts warring in her mind. She watched the snow falling outside for some time, lost in the same train of thought Jovian was.

  "But I feel like Angelica," Angelica said. "I don't feel like mother."

  Jovian nodded.

  "You have your own thoughts, your own feelings," Cianna agreed.

  "Children," Grace said. She stood and went to the fire to more easily draw their attention. Angelica turned and looked at their old teacher, but didn't bother to come back to the group. "Think of when a soul goes through their cycle of death and rebirth. This is no different."

  "But it is," Jovian said. "Mother didn't go through the cycle, did she?" He looked at Cianna.

  "No," she shook her head. "Because she didn't go through the cycle, the two of you are linked."

  "And that's why we’re able to share memories," Angelica said. "We are one soul."

  "In two bodies," Jovian tried the thought out on his lips. It didn't fit well on his tongue. He shook his head, disbelieving.

  "You know the truth of her words, even as I do," Angelica told Jovian, stepping closer to the sofa she had slept on.

  Jovian nodded. "It's just so fantastical."

  "It makes us feel like we aren't really people at all, but a grand scheme of someone else. Like at any moment Sylvie can take over, and I’ll cease to be Angelica, and he’ll cease to be Jovian." Tears stood out in Angelica's eyes, and Jovian understood her fear. They had felt it before: that other presence, their mother, had taken over when they fought Porillon, using their wyrd for her own ends, the wyrd she most likely created when she broke whatever laws there were to reincarnation and took over their dead bodies at birth.

  "I don't know if I should be angry or elated," Jovian said. "I feel cheated out of my life, and at the same time, she is what allowed me to have this life."

  "Cheated how?" Grace asked quietly.

  "Like, has anything I've ever done, ever thought, ever felt, been of my own will, or Sylvie's?" Jovian asked.

  "You can't think like that," Grace said. "You are Jovian, and you are Angelica. Your mother gave her life so you could live — she placed her soul in your bodies and allowed you to breath, and play, and love, and make your own decisions."

  "Somehow I think there's more to it," Angelica said, her eyes drawn to the west, not seeing the fireplace between herself and the distant point on the horizon.

  "No, stop this," Cianna said. "What she did wasn't out of spite, or a desire to continue living. She did what she did because she loves you." Cianna looked from Angelica to Jovian. "She gave you both the chance to live again." Cianna sighed and shook her head. "I'm not describing this well. I know that you are Angelica, and you are Jovian. You have your mother's memories, but she isn't you, just as much as you weren't her when she was inside of her own body. When a soul dies, they go through a process that cleanses them of their past. One soul isn't reincarnated into another life, but put back in the universal energy, and then another being is reborn from that. There is no limit to a soul. Your mother split her soul, but that doesn't mean that either of you have less of a soul, because there is no end to a soul. It's not like splitting this table in half, because a soul is limitless."

  Angelica and Jovian looked thoughtful.

  "But why did she do it?" Grace asked. "I understand that she loved them, but there just seems to be more behind this."

  Cianna sighed in exasperation and leaned back in the chair. "I don't know," she shrugged with her hands.

  "She's right," Jovian said.

  "We feel it too," Angelica confirmed with a nod of her head. "It wasn't just her love for us that made her act. She felt something was coming that she needed to be here for."

  "But what?" Grace asked.

  "I don't know," Jovian said. "There's just this feeling. It’s been there for a while, just a sense that there’s something else she has to finish, some reason she needed to stick around."

  "That doesn't make any sense," Grace said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

  "Strange things have been happening," Cianna said, sitting back up. She leveled a gaze at Grace, as if the old lady knew what she spoke of.

&
nbsp; "Sylvie wouldn't have kept her soul back just for a couple wayward attacks by washed-up alarists." Grace scowled.

  "So you agree with Azra?" Cianna asked.

  "About the growing darkness in the west?" Grace asked, sinking to the cushions beside Jovian. "No. About the attacks being alarist, yes. I think the Well of Wyrding brought them out of hiding, made them start thinking, and then they continued the attacks themselves."

  "Wait, what's this gathering darkness in the west?" Angelica asked. Jovian looked up at the thrum of curiosity he felt down their link.

  "Azra feels as though there is a darkness gathering in the west, some malignant force, but she can’t tell us more than that," Grace said, shrugging.

  "There has to be more than that," Angelica said.

  "There is," Cianna said, glowering at Grace. "Grace is being flippant about it. This darkness is gathering in the west, bringing the alarists out of hiding, and causing them to attack cities and towns, for reasons unknown."

  "To the west?" Jovian said, realizing what had gotten Angelica all excited.

  "Yes, why?" Cianna asked.

  "We've been having dreams of a building in the west," Angelica said.

  "The Turquoise Tower, and the Pale Horse with a dark-cloaked rider," Jovian finished.

  Grace stopped, her pipe halfway to her lips. "You've seen the Turquoise Tower?" Grace asked. "I thought it was only a myth."

  "But what is it?" Cianna asked.

  "It's a building, a monument of sorts, where people of angelic blood can go and be restored to their angelic selves," Angelica told her. "Apparently it burns away their humanity, leaving only their true angelic side behind."

  "This is . . . something, this is major," Cianna said, looking at Grace. "Has this ever happened before?"

  Grace set her pipe down on the mantel and ran her hands over her face. "No. There was talk in the past that Arael was trying to find the Turquoise Tower so he could restore himself to his former glory in the Ever After."

  "What would have happened if he had succeeded?" Jovian wondered.