Page 54 of A Touch of Gold and Madness (Celestials of Arcadia #1)

Chapter 53

Gray

G olden had disappeared.

Chrome scanned the sprawling lawn for the Kinetic who’d escaped. “It wasn’t an Elemental blade, so he’ll heal.”

“For now.”

“I’ll fucking carve the skin from his body. Alive.” Chrome’s jaw was clenched, his fists tightening around his sword.

With a final look at one another, we pushed our way back into the mayhem. The numbers were lower, but the fight for the Hollow’s survival was far from over.

Combining the use of our magic and fighting skills, we blasted and sliced through bodies, deftly whirling around Kinetics with speed, side by side. We fought on an intuitive level together, instinctively knowing when one needed a weapon or assistance.

The antidote healed me while the Mushweed rejuvenated my energy, making me feel fresh for the second round of this fight. My magic on both sides surged. Wind acted as a sentient being on my behalf as I held back on my Kinetic powers. The electrical voltage fed off my anger, growing at an intensity so strong that it threatened to explode from my body. I needed a release.

Chrome, having sensed my increasing anxiety, met my eyes. “What do you need?”

“A release.”

“Not exactly the time or place for that, but I wouldn’t be opposed…” he said, slicing his blade clean through the neck of a Kinetic Warrior. Blood sprayed his face, and the rain washed down his neck.

Heat flooded my core at the fucked-up image that flashed in my head. I rolled my eyes, running my blade through the chest of a neon-haired man before jerking it back, spinning, and carving through the abdomen of a warrior behind me. “Fucking on a battlefield,” I said, throwing an elbow into the ribs of a woman. “That would be a first.” A punch to my jaw rocked my head to the side, sending a blinding pain through my skull.

In the next breath, the offender was blown to entrails. Frustration bubbled in my chest. “I had that!”

“I know,” Chrome said, stabbing the side of a man’s neck. “But he hurt you.” He whirled. “Pissed me off. Told you I’d kill anyone who ever dared to hurt you again.”

I answered with a blast of Kinetic magic from my palm into the face of an incoming man. But the magic didn’t want to relent. It wanted out, clawing at my chest, wanting to unleash its wrath on the battlefield. “You might want to move. Something is happening.”

The little hairs all over my body raised as static electricity built and built around my aura.

Chrome paused to look at me in confusion but still sent a pressurized blow to a Kinetic he dealt with. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t—don’t know,” I said, wincing from the effort it took to try to hold it back. “My Kinetic magic is—it feels unstable or something.”

“Fuck,” he said. “What’s your energetic source?”

“I don’t know,” I groaned. Chrome stepped in front of me to fight off the horde as I froze, unable to move.

“What the fuck do you mean you don’t know? How do you not know that? ”

“I just don’t! Mine always worked differently. I draw my energy from all types of wavelengths. Father would never tell me.”

“Fucking bastard. It looks like a form of electromagnetic energy. You’re gonna have to let it go.”

“Chrome, I’m scared.”

“I know, Rainbow. But you gotta do it. Trust me.”

I hesitated, feeling the electricity promise to fry my veins if I didn’t listen. “Okay.”

“Good girl,” he said. “Let it go. There’s no better time than now.”

So, I did.

Instead of blue energetic volts, pure white streaks of lightning exploded from my body and into the sky. The light from my magic blinded the battlefield. The release of pent-up energy was euphoric, sending electrified pulses down from my neck to the base of my spine.

Thunderous booms crashed around us as the volts cracked through the air to the ground.

Lost in the power, I didn’t think to even try and aim the strikes away from my allies. I froze. The lightning strikes slowed to a stop after several minutes. Turning my head, I came nose to nose with turbulent, quicksilver eyes. Energy poured from his aura, and he was alight with electricity. His currents raced violently in a way I’d never seen.

“What the fuck happened? Are you okay?” I asked, worried and glancing around the battlefield, seeing the fight rage on, although there was a wide diameter opened around us that wasn’t there before.

“I just absorbed the electromagnetic energy expelled from the lightning.” His shoulders shook from trying to hold it all in. That was an astronomical amount of power he’d just absorbed. Holy shit. “In doing so, I was able to control it for you.”

“Share it with me,” I said, holding out my hand for him to take. I wasn’t sure what we were doing, but something told me to do it. Perhaps the bond? There was no way he could release that amount of energy with his ability. Everything would be obliterated for miles .

He didn’t question it. Instead, his hand latched onto mine, and the implosive energy he held in flowed to me. Feeling my hair rise again, I held his eyes. “Ready, little savage?”

I nodded, unsure about what we were about to do, but I trusted him to not allow this unbridled power to kill those we swore to protect.

“Let go, Gray. I got you.”

With the power back, I let lightning treat me as its conduit. I had no way of knowing how to control it yet, but that was where Chrome came in by slipping in through the bond we shared and taking control of my Kinetic power. Just like he had that day with Orion. He directed it to strike down Kinetics, turning them into charred black bodies.

The Hollow became home to a wild, vicious lightning storm. Each time it struck, a body would drop. With every strike, it sounded like a bomb went off. It was deafening. Some Kinetics with auditory abilities tried to control it, but the lightning soon smited them all down.

Chrome remained still, squeezing my hands and darting his eyes around the battlefield to pinpoint targets. He directed the strikes as I let the energy flow from me. Multiple strikes would hit at once, leaving behind dropped Kinetics.

As my Kinetic magic waned, gravity seemed to pull against my body harder than usual as exhaustion took hold. Chrome looked at me. “Come on, Gray,” he said, grabbing the Mushweed from my pocket. “Take more. Not so much this time.”

My eyelids began to droop, and my legs grew weak and cold. I slumped forward, but strong arms caught me. “Take it, Gray. Open that pretty mouth of yours.”

I complied. His golden and chromatic beauty blurred in my vision. The bitter herb sat on my dry tongue, and I worked to swallow it down.

Chrome held me upright against his side while I waited for the Mushweed to work its way through my system to restore my reserves.

Once the lightness returned to my limbs and chest, I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“Better? ”

“Getting there,” I mumbled. “That was fucking intense.”

He nodded. “They’re gone. The Warrior Guild.”

I tensed, pulling away to take stock of the carnage. “Holy fuck…” I whispered as I scanned the front lawn of the Hollow, covered with hundreds of dead bodies. Sadly, there were more Elementals in the mix than I hoped to see.

Chrome clenched his jaw, his nostrils flaring. “I failed them.”

I whipped around to face him, taking his jaw in my hands. “No,” I demanded. “Stop it. You saved them.”

“Look at all the Elemental bodies, Gray! And Onyx…” His head drooped forward, the reflective hair drenched like his morale.

The rain had stopped, but the cold seeped deep in the marrow now that the fight was over. “Where is he? I couldn’t…I tried to get to him, but I—”

“It’s not your fault.” Chrome took a deep breath. “He’s with the healers. Hopefully, it’s not too late,” he said. “I need to get to him and figure out what happened.”

“Go. I’ll stay here and see what I can do.”

“I need to fix the wards. It’s a mix of my magic and Onyx’s. But mine can work for now until we can move locations.”

“Move locations?” I asked, my heart slamming to a stop.

“Forest knows where we are now. The wards will make it a bit difficult, but he knows where we are for the most part,” Chrome explained, moving to head into the lodge.

“Wait.” I grabbed his biceps, stopping him. “What the hell was that you pulled earlier with Onyx? The little—” I whirled my finger in a circle to indicate the black cloud of ash he turned into.

Chrome raised his brows with a breath. “I don’t know exactly. I saw Onyx go down, and I wanted more than anything to be right there to help him. And next thing I knew, I was fading away into the ether and reforming beside him.”

“Like teleporting?”

“So it seems.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead before taking my lips with his. I melted into him, so beyond relieved that he was alive.

I pondered the possibilities of this new ability, wondering if I’d ever be able to master it. “Go to Onyx.”

With another kiss, we parted ways, leaving me to check the dead as I prayed I wouldn’t stumble across someone I knew.

After a half hour of separating the Elemental bodies from the Kinetic with my air magic, I stood beside Kodiak and Aella. They both aided with air and earth, levitating the bodies to specific sides of the lawn by uprooting the ground to hold them in a temporary, shallow grave until the funeral proceedings.

Aella worked in stoic silence, her only sounds being the sniffling from the tears she shed.

Orion was with the surviving Elementals who helped in the cleanup effort if not wounded too badly. Those who were injured were in the healing ward of the lodge before any permanent damage could set in.

We took some hard losses.

My heart cracked down the middle at the sight of River, hunched over the body of a boy in his late teens, clutching him to her chest, hoarding him from the two adults on either side of her as if to protect her baby brother from their parents. She wailed into his chest, his dark head rolling limply to the side.

It brought back my own memory of the agony that wrecked me the day Forest told me of Slate’s death, robbing me of breath. I broke away from Kodiak and Aella, strolling in the direction of my distraught friend.

I didn’t say anything as I approached, kneeling beside River and pulling her into my chest with Blaize squeezed in her arms. Her parents knelt at Blaize’s head. It was clear they tried to force their emotions back, determined not to show them publicly, but this kind of grief didn’t allow for that. Their mother’s face twisted in anguish, tears streaming down her cheeks as she fought unsuccessfully to keep them at bay. The same could be said for their father. Even they couldn’t silence the wails.

My own throat constricted as a sob was wrenched from my chest. The fire elemental would never taunt me with his mischievous ways again. Those eyes that flicked with a playful flame were forever extinguished. He was too young.

“I should’ve been there,” River forced out through gritted teeth, her voice muffled as I cradled her head to my chest.

“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t do that.”

“It was my job to protect him.”

I glanced at her parents, remembering the story she’d shared with me about when they were children. Of how much pressure they put on her. “You did your best. It was chaos, River.”

“I wasn’t enough,” she whimpered.

I trekked back to the lodge, my body caked in blood and mud. It clashed against my blue currents and gilded skin.

After the solemn clean-up effort, we departed, taking a breath for the first time since the attack. Funeral pyres would be lit for the deceased Elementals. The numbers had been too great. There were too many losses that a cloud of agony hovered suspended above the property. It would be a long night, even with everyone exhausted and mourning.

It was customary to hold pyres for the deceased as soon as possible. As the fire element burned away the old life, the wind carried it away to settle into the earth, and then it was cleansed by the rain. The longer the body sat before the pyre, the deeper the karmic debt accrued in this lifetime. The debt would then burrow into the soul’s fabric, making their next life that much more difficult to grow from .

The mass ceremony was set to begin within the next hour, giving everyone time to eat, change, and get cleaned up before the send-off. The deceased Kinetics would be included.

Before reaching the front porch of the lodge, I sensed a Kinetic presence hiding several feet away near a cove of trees. I froze, allowing my magic to rise to the surface. The energy from their energetic magic zinged off my aura, sending tingles down my spine.

Blue electricity sizzled in my palms as I took slow steps toward the hidden Kinetic. I remembered Golden disappearing when Chrome showed up and braced for an attack. Creeping closer, I kept my senses open, the voices of the mourning and downtrodden becoming distant. My heart rate kicked up, anticipating another fight I wasn’t sure I had the energy for.

I hated the squishing noise my boots made in the mud, no matter how quiet I tried to be, while a chilling breeze made my bones ache.

Shadows crept over me through the bough of the trees. The Kinetic essence drew closer with each step, but I couldn’t place the interloper yet. I wafted a breeze in a circular direction in my near vicinity and brought it back to me. Sniffing the air for a scent, I caught the smell of citrus as the odor of sweat followed.

“Princess,” a gruff male voice spoke from behind a tree. A splash of bright ruby stepped into view.

“Cardinal?”

“Look, you gotta listen…”

A dagger appeared in my hand before he could finish. Cardinal looked down at the weapon with unease. Raising his hands up in defense, he said, “I’m not here to fight. I need your help.”

I reeled back. “ Help? You’re fucking kidding, right?” He couldn’t be serious. “You call all of that coming for help?” I waved a hand behind me to gesture to the massacre.

“That wasn’t me. You know your father, how he is. I had to come. I didn’t kill anyone.” He shook his head.

“How noble of you. ”

“I needed to know what to believe…” he started, brows furrowing. “But seeing Chrome alive kind of confirmed my fears.”

I tilted my head to the side, not trusting him for a second. “And?”

“And I talked to Scarlett.”

I tensed. “Is she okay? Is she…”

“She’s alive. For now.”

Air lodged in my throat. “For now ?”

Cardinal nodded. “Not for long. Which is why I’m here.” My best friend’s big brother ran a hand through his hair, just a shade of red brighter than Scarlett’s. “The king…he…” he stuttered.

“Spit it out.”

“After you fled, he conducted an inquisition. He put Cotton on it with his ability. Naturally, Scarlett and Hazel were at the top of the list of suspects. He tried to cover for them, but Grim caught on. They’re all in the prison, set for execution at sunrise for treason.”

No. No. No.

“I swear to the gods, Cardinal, if you’re just telling me this as a ploy to get me back in my father’s clutches…”

He clenched his jaw tight when he said, “I’m not. I swear. I just lost my brother. I can’t lose my baby sister, too.” Cardinal’s eyes shone from unshed tears.

My heart squeezed as I mulled over his words. I was unsure whether to believe him, but I could risk my friends’ lives by wasting time. “Prison, you said?”

He nodded. “Yes, I can sneak you onto a train and into the palace if we leave now.”

“I need to tell Chrome.”

Cardinal inhaled a breath, thinking it over before nodding. “Okay.”

Fear and adrenaline pulsed through my body once again. I imagined Scarlett sitting in the disgusting prison cells of the King’s Palace, disheveled. I saw Hazel curled in on herself, waiting in the darkness, with bruises on her face. And Cotton, unable to speak or cry out.

I couldn’t let it happen. They couldn’t die because of me. No .

As I hyper-focused on the dramatic images in my mind, my body began to feel lighter, as if the particles that constructed my life force and physical form were separating and floating away on the breeze. Except there was no breeze.

Black pieces of ash drifted in front of my face, just like when Chrome disappeared with Onyx. Starting with my feet, my body disintegrated into ash.

Cardinal’s eyes widened. “Gray! What’s happening?”

I couldn’t respond. By the time I opened my mouth to tell him to find Chrome, my throat and mouth were fading in the wind. Then the world went black as I drifted away into nothingness, being pulled through the ether to the unknown.