Page 21 of A Song of Air (Fae Elementals #4)
I ona had learned not to jump to conclusions when it came to the Elementals. As far as she knew it, they all came from different parts of life, had lived different things, and suffered different hardships. But if there was an intrinsic truth about the Elementals, it was that they were fucking fierce.
Bryson Varik was no exception.
Their magic had collided like an explosion of sensation and feelings and scents. Iona could feel her immediately just like she could feel the other Elementals. Bryson permeated her senses entirely. Together they only grew stronger, and even her own magic burst beneath her skin like it wanted to come forth and clash against the others’ to create something beautiful or deadly, she wasn’t sure.
She wasn’t sure yet how this new Elemental would fit into their fold or if she even wanted to be a part of them. Bryson’s group of friends didn’t give Iona confidence. In fact, they seemed dead-set on hating the Resistance. Their glares and anger felt personal, though Iona couldn’t be sure what it was the Resistance had done to them to warrant it.
She immediately mistrusted them, particularly Arlo Blackwood. The man was half-Fae, with cutting bright eyes and long hair that he wore in a tight ponytail behind his head. He was tall with wide wrists and hands that he kept crossed against his chest. There was something that seemed sacrilegious in his movements, and she was sure if she asked Shula, the fire dancer would say that the moves he made and the things he said mimicked the Priests of the Brotherhood.
Even so, they followed the group into their camp. Everyone stared to the point of making her uncomfortable. Her fingers itched to reach for her blade, but one look from Valerio stayed her hand.
The camp seemed to harbor an abundance of different types of creatures. Iona’s eyes darted over every single one of them. There were human and Fae alike; there were half-Fae with a clashing mix of human and Seelie, and even Unseelie creatures skittering across the ground. From goblins to brownies to other things with brightly colored skin, wings, horns, and strange features.
Magic fizzled through the air, creating a dust of colors that drifted from the sky like recently fallen snow. There was something ethereal about this tiny corner on their part of the map. A dozen scents assaulted her at once. She pushed her way through their group to get a closer look.
And Bryson called out to someone, waving her hand over her head. “Malika!”
The name gave Iona pause.
It made her heart beat faster and climb its way up her throat. Her entire body tensed. She felt like it had been forever since she last heard that name or even spoken it herself. Her fingers began cramping, and it was then that she realized they were tapping a familiar pattern against the side of her thigh. Her mind and body drifted, and it seemed like the camp began to disappear before her eyes, taking her back to a sunny day. To a beach. To smog pushing away the blue skies and shrouding it in darkness.
Claw marks against the sand. Blood and bodies. Her name being called over and over, desperate for help. The humans dragging her sister away, and Iona slowly descending into darkness with a single name on her lips.
“Malika.”
She snapped out of her memory and back into the present. For a second it felt like the past and future had collided and that she was staring at a memory, at a ghost from her past given corporeal form.
The face was like she remembered, though thinner. Gone were her long dark braids and the smooth curve of innocence around her features. Her dark eyes looked haunted in a way that felt like a mirror to Iona’s own pain. Gone was the sweet, innocent Fae that used to pray to Mana by their bedside late at night, until Iona would toss a pillow and demand that she be quiet. In its place was a roughness. In its place were scars.
And in its place was someone different.
And yet Iona would recognize her anywhere.
“Malika.”
She stepped forward and her voice came out in a strangled cry. She drew her sister’s attention towards her, and it was like the heavens parted and shone down a single ray of light upon them both.
The moment their gazes collided was the moment everything shifted.
They fell to their knees in tandem only a few feet apart from each other. Emotion swelled up inside Iona and the words that had glared on a page that she found within an iron camp months ago echoed through her mind.
Malika Wylde.
Sentenced to death.
She’d mourned her sister in the tradition of their people. She’d taken a dagger to her hair—hair was sacred in their court—and shorn it down to her scalp as a sign of respect and sadness. She thought she’d never see her again and yet there she was. Alive. Whole. Scarred.
Alive .
The foundations of her belief in Mana had been tested time and time again, to the point where she had feared Mana had left her. Her prayers had been unanswered for the longest time, and yet this... this was integral . It was like Mana was giving her a gift and reminding her to keep the faith.
“My sister.” She wasn’t sure who said those words first, but they tore out like a tragedy and a prayer. They echoed across the camp like a song of mourning and happiness put together. Iona and Malika crawled towards one another, and every step was heavy. Her palms scraped against the dirt until they met in the middle.
They didn’t touch. Iona feared that maybe this was just an illusion. That once she touched Malika, the vision would shatter. That this was just the result of the past coming into her waking thoughts. That her troubled mind had finally caved into the memories, the trauma of all she’d suffered.
Yet when their fingers tentatively met, Malika didn’t disappear. Their eyes held. As if they were both wondering if the other would shatter first. When neither did, their sobbing rose in tandem, and Iona’s voice cracked when she spoke. “Malika, is it really you?” She hated asking the question, but felt it was necessary, lest this all be a dream she couldn’t wake up from.
But it wasn’t a dream.
Malika reached for her, grasping her cheeks within her cupped hands. They were callused, like Iona remembered, with brand new scars. She remembered the texture of her sister, and marveled at how she was the same. The same, but different.
Her dark hair was no longer held back by a maze of braids, but loose with tangled curls that went down to her shoulders. It wasn’t as long as it had been all those years ago, and Iona wondered if she’d mourned their family like Iona had mourned Malika. If she’d taken scissors to her scalp and let time pass until it grew back again.
There was a sadness shrouding her as well, and where her sister had once been a quiet, gentle creature, Iona saw a hardened edge about her. A part of her despaired, for she knew that the sister she’d known had long died. And someone new was standing in her place.
“I thought I’d lost you.” Tears streamed down Iona’s cheeks, only to freeze in flakes of snow.
Malika chuckled, using her thumbs to swipe away the cold. “I thought you’d died. Where have you been all this time?”
“I fought in the war to find you.” For years, she’d brutalized her body, became stronger, all to fight the humans with the hope that her sister was still alive. Because Malika’s death was one she’d refused to accept until months ago. “When we failed, I—” Water, crushing her ribcage, invading her lungs. Landing on the cold, black shores of Porir. “I was in Porir for a while.”
“So close,” Malika whispered. “And so far.”
Iona’s heart cracked. If only she’d known how many miles away her sister really had been... Things would have been different.
Her eyes must have given away her thoughts because her sister pulled her close finally and wrapped her arms around her. “It seems,” she whispered in Iona’s ear, “you have a story to tell. So do I.” She pulled away, kissing either cheek. “We will tell them, and we will know each other again.”
And for a second, those words had sounded an awful lot like a prayer. Like the kind she used to whisper in the darkness of their room, over and over again to Mana.
Hoping they would come true.