On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) Page 8

  “Oh, Cianna, how foolish of me not even to think of that. You haven’t had contact with Aunt Pharoh, and here I’m toting around her soul in a necklace. Of course!” Joya gripped Cianna’s hand, and all of Cianna’s worries melted from her. She smiled and averted her eyes. “It’s in my room,” Joya said. “I’ll take you there now.”

  It was somewhat premature to proclaim she would take her right to the medallion, since they had to climb down the rest of the Guardian’s tower and then up the other tower to their suite.

  They were nearly down the right wing when Joya spoke again.

  “Would you do me a favor?” she asked.

  “What is it?” Cianna asked, looking to her cousin. She remembered the dream she’d had of Joya, and how she’d felt in her cousin’s presence. Cianna couldn’t place the room they were in, but it felt like a tower room that belonged to Joya. Could it have been the Spire of Night? That didn’t make sense, though; they weren’t surrounded in darkness in the dream.

  “If the call for the tower gets too much, and we have to go, will you go with me?”

  “Wouldn’t you be going with Angelica and Jovian?” Cianna asked.

  “I’m going to hold off for as long as I can, to make sure things are wrapped up here and my people are safely home. Then I will go. They might leave before me.”

  “We’ll discuss it then,” Cianna said. “But I would gladly go with you if I can resist the call.”

  They crossed the entrance hall and started up the right tower toward Joya’s room, the dark elf and the cat-man a constant presence at their backs. The Shadow Guardian’s guards.

  “How long have they been having the dreams?” Cianna asked.

  “It sounds like a while now,” Joya shrugged. “But I can’t be sure.”

  “So it’s possible they could be called before us?” Cianna asked.

  “Yes,” Joya said, her voice labored with her heavy breathing. “How many times have you dreamed of it?”

  “Just the once,” Cianna said. It occurred to her that they were talking in near-whispers, as if they didn’t want anyone around them to hear what they were talking about, which was probably for the best.

  “Me too,” Joya said as they crested the second floor landing and made their way down the hall to the suite she shared with Jovian and Angelica.

  Joya opened the door, and Cianna walked into the room. Jovian and Angelica were already in their rooms, either preparing for something or winding down from the meeting. Their doors were open, though, and they were yelling back and forth to one another.

  “Gosh, it’s so much colder here than at home,” Angelica was saying.

  “What did you expect?” Jovian said, laughter in his voice. “We are in the north.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Angelica warned.

  Jovian’s laughter could be heard rippling out of his room.

  “I don’t know why they talk out loud,” Joya said, escorting Cianna to her room.

  “Joya,” Jovian said, ducking his messy-haired head out of his room. “Can you believe that it’s so cold up here? I mean, who would have thought?”

  “No, Jovian, I thought up in the mountains in the north that it would be nearly tropical,” Joya said.

  “Alright,” Angelica said, stepping out of her room, a towel wrapped around her. “I get it, very funny. I’m going to bathe, so you can find someone else to pick on. Maybe Cianna?”

  “No, we’ll just keep picking on you,” Jovian said. “It’s a job we never tire of.”

  “And you make it so easy!” Joya agreed with a coy smile.

  Angelica rolled her eyes and stepped back into her room, thumping the door shut dramatically.

  Joya led Cianna the rest of the way into her room.

  “Why wouldn’t they talk out loud?” Cianna wondered. Her mind still boggled at the interaction between the siblings.

  “Oh,” Joya said, shaking her head. “They have this weird connection. Well, I guess not so weird now, knowing that Mother is inside of them.”

  Cianna gave a little start, and Joya fell silent, partly like she didn’t believe it, partly because she was…jealous, maybe? Cianna wasn’t sure, but the way Joya started straightening things up, busying herself, taking her mind off the topic at hand, Cianna thought she might be a little hurt that Jovian and Angelica were so much different than she was. Or that they had a connection to the mother Joya had never had a chance to meet.

  “They told you?” Cianna said.

  “Yeah.” Joya straightened, pulled her travel pack on to the bed and opened it up. “Anyway,” she said, rifling around inside. “They can speak to one another mentally.”

  “Wow,” Cianna said.

  Joya nodded, digging deeper into her bag. She pulled out a long black cane that looked pliable enough to be a switch, clothes, a corset — at which she looked up at Cianna and blushed, tucking it under some other equipment as if embarrassed that she had it. Out came a variety of other things one might only use in a big city, or when they were entertaining: face paint, hair trinkets, shoes, dresses, an iron that could be placed in the fire to heat and then used to curl her hair. Finally she pulled out a box and handed it to Cianna.

  “Joya?” Cianna said, and then laughed. “Why in the realms did you bring all of these things on a cross-realm adventure?”

  Joya blushed, and then shrugged. Then she laughed. “Honestly, this cane I picked up in Meedesville,” Joya said, toying with it.

  Cianna took the box and sat down on the end of the bed. Shelara and Caldamron sat in chairs beside it. It was strange how neither of them were talking, yet they didn’t seem particularly interested in the exchange.

  “What is it?” Cianna said, reaching for it.

  “I think it has to do with the verax-acis, how they are controlled. We had seen a constable with it, and then she was murdered. This was in the field close to where her body was.” Joya let it fall out of her hands onto the pile of things she’d taken from her bags. “I took it, but didn’t have it on me when I needed it most.”

  “What’s this?” Cianna said, changing the subject and pointing to a strange green gem. It was slender and long.

  “That’s a stone I can use to commune with the Shadow Realm,” Joya said, picking the stone up and feeling its weight in her hand.

  “Like the Orb of Aldaras,” Cianna said, nodding. “Maybe all Realm Guardians have one.”

  “What does the orb do?” Joya wondered.

  “Lets the Guardian commune with the races of her realm, and the cities,” Cianna said, studying the flat oaken box in her hand.

  “Oh,” Joya said, embarrassed.

  “Do you mind if I take this with me?” Cianna asked. “I’d like some time alone with it.”

  “Of course,” Joya said. “I don’t think we really need it back, so if you would like to keep it you can.”

  “Are you sure?” Cianna asked. “It was entrusted to your mother.”

  “But it houses the soul of your mother. If it wasn’t for you, it would never have been created.”

  Cianna looked down at the box. She knew that she had been the one who had made the medallion what it was, but she had been just an infant; she couldn’t remember that.

  “Thank you,” she said, standing. “I’ll let you get to cleaning up.”

  Joya laughed, and then blushed again. She held up the iron. “Do you think I could use this to fight off the dwarves?”

  “Only if you’re going to dazzle them to death.” Cianna smiled. Joya laughed.

  The common room of the suite was empty when she came back out. Angelica’s door was shut tight, and Cianna could smell perfumed soap coming through the cracks. Jovian hummed in his room, going through his packs. When he saw Cianna he waved. Cianna waved back, but since Maeven was in there with him, she didn’t stop to talk, and rather left them to their business.

  As Sara’s room was in the upper reaches of the left tower, Cianna’s was in the upper reaches of the right tower. She had made the climb
enough through the years that her feet found their way without much thought as to where she was going.

  Her thoughts were on the box and what she might find there. She could feel her mother’s essence nestled in it, but it was like it was sleeping.

  Cianna reached the top of the tower and opened her bedroom door. Her bed sat in the center, unmade. Outside she could see a glimpse of the snow-covered mountains. She thought of Angelica and how she’d wanted a bath, and thought that sounded pretty good.

  Some kind-hearted servant had tended the fire, and the room was nice and warm. Cianna went behind the screen that divided her bathroom from the bedroom and opened the valves, allowing hot water to flow into the tub. Cianna drizzled some juniper oil in the tub, letting the fresh scent infuse the air. She reveled in the feel of the warm room and the summery smell, all the while gazing at the snow-covered passes of the mountains above.

  Cianna grabbed the wooden box off the bed and set it on the edge of the slate tub. She disrobed, then slid into the hot tub. She let her body relax into the heat before picking up the box from where she’d set it.

  As the smell of juniper infused her skin, sapping away the chill and easing her mind, Cianna slipped the box open and pulled the medallion out of its black confines.

  The moment it was in her hands, she felt the power of her necromancy, which held her mother inside the medallion. It was rudimentary, crude, not a full working as she was now able to do, but it had accomplished its job.

  Though Cianna said she couldn’t remember how she had trapped her mother’s soul in the medallion, memories of the night her mother had died flooded into her mind. But that had been over thirty years ago. How could she remember such a thing? Cianna wondered if she was making it up, but a familiar pulse of wyrd from the medallion told her she wasn’t.

  She saw the storm-lashed peak of the Ivory Tower. She saw her mother, raising a lapis shin-buto against Arael’s black one. The lightning cracked overhead, and a wash of rain sheeted down on the ivory parapets.

  She saw Arael drive the sword home and felt the quickening of her infant heart as her mother slipped from the living world. Her child mind had followed the feel of her mother’s spirit as it tread the path toward the Ever After. And then she had grabbed the weavings of Pharoh’s wyrd, and sought an item to store her mother’s soul in.

  “Your Aunt Sylvie’s medallion,” she heard a voice, and Cianna jumped.

  The medallion slipped beneath the surface of the perfumed water, but Cianna didn’t notice. She had her eyes rooted on an apparition that had just appeared beside the tub. Her mother. She knew it as certainly as she knew her own name.

  “Mom,” Cianna whispered.

  Pharoh knelt beside the tub and reached out a delicate hand toward her daughter.

  “One half of the twin flames,” Cianna breathed. “I know all of your lore, all of your names. I feel I know you in so many ways.”

  “Except the one that counts,” Pharoh said. “As a mother.” Pharoh’s hand brushed the air around Cianna’s face, not able to connect with her physically, despite being the most solid-looking spirit she’d ever seen.

  Cianna studied her mother’s face. She had her mother’s sharp nose, but not her eyes. Pharoh’s eyes were a radiant blue, Cianna’s were brown. She had the same color hair as her mother, but where Pharoh’s was wavy, hers was curly. She had her mother’s curvy build, but was much taller than her. Her mother was pale where Cianna was tanned.

  “I wish I’d been able to know you,” Cianna whispered, tears staining her cheeks.

  Pharoh nodded. “You do,” she said.

  “But not the way I want to,” Cianna said. Her nose began to run, and she cursed herself for crying.

  “It’s normal,” Pharoh said, and then smiled. “Crying is rarely pretty.”

  Cianna laughed. Pharoh laughed with her.

  “There’s little I can do for you,” Pharoh said. “I was trapped in the medallion with a purpose: to help the LaFaye sorcerers learn their powers, and to lead them against the darkness. There is no way for me to train you.”

  “I know,” Cianna said. Her voice caught against phlegm, and she cleared her throat and tried again. “I know, I’ve already learned my powers anyway.”

  Pharoh nodded. “But you should still carry me with you, if for no other reason than for the chance for me to be close to your heart.”

  Cianna nodded, and Pharoh pointed into the tub, where the medallion was glowing a soft silver. She reached for the chain the medallion hung on and slipped it around her neck, water sluicing off the necklace.

  Her mother was gone, only a memory, but against her breast she felt the warmth of the medallion, the thrum of power within it like a second heartbeat.

  “I don’t want you to go,” Maeven said, following Jovian into his small green room and closing the door behind them. Jovian knew this had been building up since the meeting the day before.

  “There’s several reasons I have to go, one of which is my angelic blood, which will eventually override my human desires.”

  “Resist it.”

  “It’s not that easy! I can’t just turn off that part of me,” Jovian said. “The human side isn’t as strong as the angel side.”

  “Then I’m going with you.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “You don’t have a say in this,” Maeven told him. “I’m going.”

  “You’ll get yourself killed!” Jovian said, turning to him.

  “And you won’t?” Maeven asked, stepping closer. “This was a close call, Jove!” he traced his fingers down the scar on Jovian’s face. “Next time you might not be so lucky.”

  “And what are you going to do if you’re there? Protect me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Against angels?” Jovian fired back.

  “And you’re what? Going to fight Arael? Goddess, Jove . . . Arael. That’s what you are going toward. He wanted to see your family dead, and you’re walking right into his hands!”

  “I don’t have a choice!” Jovian countered. “And you’re needed here. I won’t allow you to go with me.”

  “Then I won’t go with you, I’ll follow.”

  “I’ll find some way to keep you here.”

  Maeven ground his teeth, the muscles in his jaw tensing and releasing with the action.

  “What are you going to do against an army of angels? They’re more powerful than humans.” Jovian shrugged, trying to defuse the situation.

  Maeven sat on the edge of Jovian’s feather bed, the breath huffing out of him in defeat.

  “And you need to be here, to keep our friends safe, to do what you can to help,” Jovian told him, kneeling before him and clasping Maeven’s face in his hands.

  Maeven closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Jovian’s. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t,” Jovian whispered to him. Deep in his heart, however, he wasn’t sure if that was true or not.

  Maeven leaned toward him, closing the distance between their mouths. Jovian felt his heart hitch into his throat with the pounding of his blood. As their lips brushed together, the night outside their window was lit in a fury of red fire, and the keep rocked on its foundations.

  Jovian fell backwards, sliding across the floor, barely stopping before he tumbled into the burning coals of the fireplace.

  There was a moment of deathly silence, a ringing in his ears that he couldn’t shake. Jovian sat dazed, the warmth of the fire at his back and Maeven crouching before him, his hands on Jovian’s shoulders. He shook Jovian, and his mouth was moving like he was shouting, but Jovian couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears.

  Through the window to his right he saw a green glow coming from outside, a large brightness, like that of the twilight sun coming to roost in the courtyard of the keep. To his left, just out of the range of his sight, the shadow he now knew was Wyrders’ Bane slid over the wall and out the door.

  Devenstar turned away from the cold expanse of
the plains on the other side of the wall, and looked across the courtyard to the keep above. He’d only been stationed on the wall now for an hour, and despite the fire crackling in a brazier nearby, he longed for the warmth of his own room. He looked up high to the right tower, letting his mind wander. But as often happened when he let his mind wander, his thoughts turned to Cianna.

  He wondered which one of the illuminated windows in the right tower was her bedroom, and if she was in there right now. Devenstar hadn’t seen Cianna since they parted when they first arrived at the keep, and he didn’t like that. He had felt a growing bond with her through their travels, and he was sure she was just busy with other things. But he still didn’t like it. He would prefer she was busy with him, but that was dumb.

  After all, she has just met her cousins for the first time in . . . what? Ever? He frowned and looked to his left, where a group of archers were nestled against the wall of the parapet around a lamp, playing dice. He wished he could have joined them and forgot all the worries on his mind, but he couldn’t.

  He had been okay knowing that Cianna was an angel, even learning that she was the daughter of Pharoh. He had grown used to that, and thought of her as just another person, even if she wasn’t. Even if she was actually an angel. But meeting her cousins, hearing her pronounce two of them as Sylvie, and then having them pass out and be whisked away . . . that was a little more than he had been prepared for.

  And the Guardian of the Realm of Shadow. What in the realms! The Shadow Realm was little more than a realm he had heard about, but never really paid much attention to because no one in their right mind ever went there, and here was a group of people, three of them nephilim, who had traveled through the Shadow Realm. Not only traveled through it, but one of them, Joya, had actually been chosen by the realm as its leader. And she was from the Holy Realm, the supposed arch-enemy of the Shadow Realm.

  And as if that wasn’t enough, they had brought two from the Shadow Realm with them!

  Devenstar shook his head. The tightness of the ponytail he wore was giving him a headache. He wasn’t used to keeping his hair tied up, but it kept it out of his eyes, and he was able to watch the group of dwarves milling below on the other side of the wall, even if his mind was on other things.