Page 78 of A Touch of Stars and Stones (Kirrian #1)

forty-five

. . .

Ever

S omething feels…

My mind is groggy, my limbs heavy and tired even without moving. A haze of fog clouds my sleep, and my eyes struggle to see through the dark. The candle burned to the quick before I found my restless slumber.

As I wake further, something feels off—that hum under my skin, familiar for the last month, gone.

My heart aches as memories of excitement and joy bloom in my mind: the waterfall, our first real kiss with no repercussions. I hold on to the memory, now, reliant on the simple recall, having no additional power or magic to relive or revisit.

If this feeling means it’s a new moon, it’s been over a week since I’ve been in here, and nobody’s come.

I miss my friends. I miss my home. And above all, I miss being able to speak with Ten.

I miss Kyra and Micah. Not even Orion or Kamari have returned.

Only the officers and their measly deliveries, my sole interruption, the only highlight to break up the monotonous boredom of being alone.

Alone is a dangerous place for my mind. There were times back home when food was a little short, but nothing like this, where my every mouthful or sip is now measured and controlled.

They were clever, not sending anyone with significant power for me to pull from—no strength or other magic that would help me find a way out.

Right on cue, the usual morning footsteps sound, and I can’t even muster the energy to turn and watch the guard slide the food under the bottom bar.

“Hey! Ever!” a familiar voice whispers, jolting me from my lethargy.

“Micah? Micah! Oh, thank you, Aslendrix. I was starting to think I’d be here forever.”

“Oh, don’t worry. It was just a matter of time.” He smiles, I think. It’s quite dark, with only the lights on the wall.

“Is Ten okay? Kyra? The others?” I ask, rattling off questions as I stand and approach him.

“Kyra’s fine. But it depends on your definition of the others.”

“Micah?” Ice chills my veins and settles in the pit of my stomach. “What’s going on?”

“I’m getting you out of here.” His voice rises as he opens the door and steps inside the cell.

I rush forward and throw my arms around him. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you.” Relief washes over me, and hope sparks to life and fills the gap inside my chest.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he murmurs, pulling my arms from his neck.

“Okay, let’s go. That’s the plan, right?” I step forward, eager to leave.

“Not just yet.”

“Micah?” I look at the cell door—to freedom—and then back to Micah.

“We had to wait until your little tricks wouldn’t work. You feel it, that drain on you. All gone.”

“The new moon.” I frown.

“Well done.” He starts a slow, mocking clap. “You can be taught.” His words cut deep with no armour in place against him. This isn’t the Micah I know. “Now, what else have you learned?”

“Micah, you’re scaring me. Let’s just go, okay.” I step to the side, but he mirrors my movement, blocking me.

“Well, here’s the problem with that. We aren’t going anywhere. You, though, will be.”

“Cut the crap, Micah.” My magic might not flare, but my anger still can.

“There, there, not getting your own way, Ever?” He paces back past the cell door as if guarding it. “You know, you almost had me feeling bad for what I’ve done until your lover-boy needed help, and then, well, it didn’t matter who was in your way. You’d roll over anyone to get what you needed.”

“What are you talking about?” My stomach swarms with a paralysing mix of fear and rage. He isn’t making any sense.

“Power, Ever,” he shouts at me, “I’m talking about power.” I still.

“I didn’t ask for my power, Micah. You know this. You’ve seen that from the start. I’d give it back if I could,” I defend, my lips trembling as the realisation that he’s not here to help dawns, an unwelcome light in the darkness.

“Because it’s all about you. You, you, you, and you don’t even realise why!

” he screams, backing me up until I’ve retreated against the stone wall.

“You are the very thing that the likes of me hate. Despises ,” he sneers, looking me over with a lift to his lip as if he’s disgusted.

No trace of the friend who helped me from the first time I met him.

“What, why?”

“You think it’s fair that Kyra is treated as little more than a slave because her power is small? She can’t create forcefields, teleport, or conjure storms, so she is relegated to menial tasks. The same will happen to me. Probably Ravi, too. While you, well…”

“I don’t?—”

“Shut up! It’s my turn now.”

“Micah, please. This isn’t you.” My mind races, trying to make sense of all of this. Is he jealous? He’s been helping me. Pulling books, giving me information... “You’ve helped me. You’re my friend,” I repeat, hoping he’ll remember and checking on my own memory.

“Helping you?” he scoffs. “You don’t see it, even now. I was never helping you, Ever. I only wanted you in a position where I could control you. With all that power, you were still too weak, too stupid to see.”

What? I am not weak.

His words slowly clear, and as if sharpening with the fury now pulsing down my fingertips, I clench my fingers into a fist, and I explode, swinging hard and fast, making sure I check off all the points Calix taught me.

My knuckles break across Micah’s cheek, and he falters, stumbling back and giving me a foot of room to dash for the door. But unlike in training, he gets the better of me and slams into my side, sending me crashing into the bars.

“No. Not happening. I’ve waited too long for this. And today, you won’t better me.”

He hauls me from the bars, throws me to the ground, and my hands catch me on the cold floor, stained with blood.

I reach for any sense of power to counter, but there’s nothing. Nobody is helping me except myself.

But Ten made sure I wasn’t defenceless. Calix trained me. He fought me, and he beat me so that I would be able to fight back.

I push up off the floor and force my mind to calm, just like Kyra taught me. Kyra? No. I can’t doubt her now. I won’t. And reach for the calmness at my core to be able to get myself out of this. It’s only Micah. I can beat him and ask questions later.

I jump up and give myself room as I circle my opponent—my friend.

He tilts his head before jabbing forward and swinging for a punch. It lands, but it’s nothing like Calix’s, and I bring my left and right arms in for a counter one, two, then I drop and swing my leg, knocking Micah to the ground.

Scrambling, I lurch towards the door, but fierce fingers grab my ankle and yank me back, sending me nose-diving to the ground again. Pushing up with trembling arms, I crawl and clamber to standing, but Micah beats me, blocking the way out.

“Why, Micah?” The question tears from my throat with all the hurt now pumping around my body. When I thought I had nobody, he was there, offering me a guiding hand. A laugh. Why bother if he hated me from the start?

“Because your parents killed mine!” he yells in my face, and I stop, dropping my arm as my whole body goes rigid.

My pause gives him another opening. Pain flares in my knee as his foot stomps against it, and I crumple to the ground, where he follows up with a kick to my stomach.

But I can’t think of that pain as my head swims with thoughts of my parents. His parents. “Kyra?” I ask, my stomach heaving, my heart breaking, as I have to ask if she knew about this, too. If our friendship was a lie, too.

“Isn’t my sister. Her parents took me in when I was a baby. Probably around the same time you were smuggled out of Kirrasia.”

What? Although that clicks into place in my mind. The first thing he’s said that makes some sense. “Revenge?” My heart breaks as I turn my head and look up at him standing over me. “You’re doing this for revenge?”

“Betrayal. I want you to feel it. Like they did.” His voice reeks of bitterness, unrecognisable from the chatty boy who seemed so happy to help and make a friend.

“Do you know what happened to them?” My voice cracks as I ask, hate burning my throat as I’m forced to ask him for the information he knows I so desperately sought.

“Yes. You’ll find out when it’s time.”

“Micah, please,” I plead, raising my hands in defence, but he doesn’t kick me again. “Are you going to kill me? Because I’m not sure if you have the stomach for that.”

“Don’t worry. That was never the intention, despite how the others might have acted. You’re useful to us alive. As much as I’d like to see you pay for what your parents did, they were right. They were on the side we’re fighting for. They started all of this.”

More questions, more confusion. What sides? Did he arrange my attack?

“Why, Micah? I don’t understand.”

“Power, Ever. I’ve told you. Kirrians have it.

And others don’t. Yet we’re forced to stay hidden, keep the peace that the Orders decide to measure, and be sent off to do their bidding.

If we lived in a world where our gifts were known, none of us would be serving anyone.

We would be the ones in control. The ones everyone else would look up to. ”

“If you’re angry at the Orders, why come for me?”

“You, Ever, keep forgetting you are a Fifth. And as much as I despise the fact that you have all this strength, it will be needed against the Orders. There’s a whole army of us out there. Just waiting to tear down the corrupt system and bring change to all Kirrasia.”

“Micah, stop. You’re my friend. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What army? Tell me about my parents. What do they have to do with this?”

“That would be my army.” A voice echoes just outside the cell, and we both watch as a shadow walks along the outer edge.

“And don’t worry about the details. We’ll have plenty of time for all of that.

I’ll tell you all about our parents. Now—” He smiles, and Micah nods towards him, that funny bow, before turning back to me with a cocky grin on his face.

The same grin that he used when we broke into the library. So many times, I’ve seen it on him, and yet I don’t know him at all.

But then it’s gone. I hear the thrust as his body jolts, and the strangled sigh before a trickle of red seeps from the corner of his mouth that falls slack. His body tenses as he wheezes through his breath.

“No!” My scream rings around the cell, cracking my heart open in its wake. Micah slumps towards me before collapsing to the ground as the stranger pulls the blade from his back.

The sweet, kind boy who offered me the first glimmer of hope, of friendship, who talked far too much, is now dead, adding to the already blood-stained floor of my cell.

My vision blurs with tears, and I look up at who did this, who’s behind everything that’s happened.

The stranger only grins before narrowing his green eyes at me.

“Hello, sister.”

To be continued in….

Book 2, coming in 2026!

The Fight of Gods and Order