Page 30

Chapter 29

Two Messengers

“You’re not Nier.” It was obvious to me now, but I felt like it needed to be said. He looked identical to Nier, but his mannerisms were all wrong. His hair was shorter too, and subtly darker, as if he didn’t spend as much time in the sun as Nier.

I didn’t need to look at the person holding me to know it was Nier. My body knew it. My light knew it.

Not Nier ignored me. “You let them see you?” he asked. The tone was cool and calm, but his body relaxed at the sight of Nier. If I hadn’t been looking so closely, trying to find a difference beyond the mannerisms and hair, I may have missed it. “You never let anyone see you.”

“Only her,” Nier replied.

His gaze dropped to the arms Nier had banded around me, and a cool eyebrow raised in surprise.

“Interesting,” not Nier repeated. He seemed to know Nier well.

It finally clicked as I looked over my shoulder at Nier. “You didn’t tell me your brother was your twin.”

We only had a few twins within Lumière, and none of them were identical. I couldn’t help looking between the two, fascinated.

“It never came up.” His response was dry, but his attention was laser-focused on the room beyond his brother, assessing the threats. “I wasn’t hiding it. I would have told you at some point—when I wasn’t so busy trying to keep you alive.”

“Fallen identical twins?” my mother asked, looking around from behind Fionn. “Many of the old tales say identical twins are auspicious, favored by the gods.”

“I don’t care who you are or who favors you, you’re going to let my sister go.” Kiran had shifted Mara farther behind him while I was busy working out the twin thing, backing her up against the wall. Danger still laced his tone like a finely honed arrow, and he clenched his fists tightly as he planted his feet.

He was looking directly at my Nier but keeping the other one in his field of vision. My father had backed my mother up against the wall behind him too. This cottage was far too small to accommodate angry males.

“It’s fine, Kiran. You can relax,” I said.

“It’s definitely not fine, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt less relaxed, Alula.”

Uh-oh. He’d used my real name. This was bad. A sense of danger swirled throughout the room like thick honey, too many males on edge causing Nier to tighten his grip on me.

“There’s something about you. Your energy is subtly different.” Not Nier was still looking at Nier with his head cocked, ignoring everyone else as if they were inconsequential to him, before a shocked look crossed his face. “What in the darkness ? She shared her light with you ?”

“What?!” Kiran lunged before the word was even out of his mouth, swinging his sword up and out as he came.

Shadows whipped past me. I blinked, and Kiran’s sword clattered to the floor on the far side of the cottage in a swirl of shadow, while Nier had him up against the other wall, well away from Mara, with a dark knife to his throat. Kiran was bigger than Nier, but Nier had no problem holding him in place.

“Kiran,” Fionn called out fearfully, as Mara gave out a startled yelp.

“Don’t you ever draw a sword in Alula’s direction again, or I will end you, brother or not,” Nier all but growled. As I watched, shadows edged along the knife, licking at the skin of Kiran’s throat.

Kiran didn’t respond. He was hardly even breathing, but his eyes flashed darkly. He was pissed.

“Well, that’s new,” not Nier said with complete calm as he stepped up alongside me and leaned casually against the wall. A shadow appeared in his hand, and he flicked it toward a table in the corner, where an apple disappeared and reappeared in his hand. “I’m Raed, by the way.”

He seemed unconcerned about the altercation happening only a few meters away from us—one he had set in motion with his ill-timed words. Either he was utterly confident his twin could take my brother, or their relationship wasn’t amicable. I sensed it was the former.

I’d never seen males fight up close before, only from a distance when the guardians sparred in the air during training. I’d thought it would terrify me to be amidst it, but Raed’s odd calm seemed to rub off on me. Eyeing Kiran and Nier, I tried to figure out how to defuse the situation without either of them getting hurt.

Stepping forward, and with Raed making no move to stop me, I moved alongside Nier and raised a knife to his throat—the same wickedly sharp black knife he’d given me to make me feel safe, that I’d slid into the pocket of my robe this morning when I’d heard the shouting.

“You gave her a stygian blade?” Raed shifted from casual arrogance to a warrior stance in an instant. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him slide his own sword free. It was as dark as my blade and wreathed in shadows.

“Stand down, Raed,” Nier demanded, keeping his eyes on Kiran even now. He appeared to know exactly what his brother was doing behind him without needing to look.

“Alula, what are you doing?” Fionn hissed.

I held up my other hand to silence him, all my attention on Nier and the blade I held to him. I had no time for a newly existing father in the mix.

There was no way I could best Nier, I knew that, but it wasn’t the point. I kept the blade loose against his skin, having no knowledge of how much damage a blade this sharp could render. I didn’t want to hurt him, only stop him from hurting my brother.

A tense silence filled the room at our standoff.

“Nier,” I said, keeping my voice calm and friendly, as if we were back chatting in the library. “Let Kiran go. He would never hurt me. He was trying to protect me.”

“You don’t need protecting from me,” he muttered, his eyes never leaving my angry brother.

“Kiran doesn’t know that, and he’s never going to trust you if you don’t let him go.” I glared at him now, even though I knew he couldn’t see me.

He shifted his own knife back fractionally, and my brother took a deep gulp of air. “If I let you go, will you calm down and let your sister explain?” he asked Kiran.

Kiran nodded but kept the narrow-eyed glare. As soon as Nier stepped back, Kiran pushed off the wall, looking pale and a little shaky. In a swirl of shadow, Nier was behind me, his hands went to my hips, and we were back near the door. My stomach lurched at the suddenness of the shadow walk, and I shoved the knife back into its sheath in my pocket, more than a little unnerved that we’d slipped through shadows with it in my hand.

“She’s feisty. I like her,” Raed said, leaning back against the wall and shifting back to casual arrogance as soon as his sword was sheathed.

I’d never been called feisty before, and it had me oddly pleased, though Nier stiffened at his brother’s words, so I ignored them. Dealing with one Fallen was enough for me right now.

“Are we okay?” I asked quietly, looking over my shoulder at Nier.

“More than okay, Alula. You did good.” There was a note of pride in his voice that confused the hell out of me considering I’d just held a knife to him.

As I turned back, I caught Mara’s eye. She had slid down the wall in an attempt to stay out of the way. Now, she was staring at me in awe, and it made me uncomfortable.

“Did you share your light with him willingly, Alula?” Kiran asked as he leaned down and helped Mara to her feet.

My wince couldn’t be helped, even as I tried to school my features. I didn’t want to get into this now, especially considering the father I had never met was in the room. I had no idea how much my mother had shared with him about me. Plus, I hadn’t even discussed what had happened with Nier. I’d been too overcome with exhaustion last night.

“You know the way I wield light is different. Since Mother unblocked it, it has been…difficult to keep it from spilling out. If I shared it, I did so unintentionally, but I don’t regret it.” I needed to talk to Nier about that later, if we had a later. I knew I’d spilled light into the room, but it hadn’t occurred to me some may have transferred to him through our body contact. He hadn’t said a word.

“Do you have anything to say about this, Mother?” Kiran didn’t look at her, keeping his eyes firmly on us, as did everyone in the room.

My mother finally found her voice. “Alula’s light is hers to do with as she wishes.”

If Kiran’s grunt was anything to go by, he was unimpressed with her answer. Mara’s eyes were enormous, as she stared at my mother. That wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting either.

“The feather belongs to him?” Mara asked, turning her focus back on me.

“Yes, and he’s been helping me find the answers we need.” I raised my chin and kept my gaze firmly on my brother.

“What feather?” my mother asked before Kiran could ask another question. As she stepped out from behind my father, she straightened her ruffled gown and glanced at the way Nier still had a loose hold on my waist. A small smile hovered at her lips at the sight. She didn’t comment on it though, and I didn’t know her well enough to interpret it.

“I found a stray feather Nier had left in the orchard the last night I slept in the acolyte dorms. He appeared when I plucked it from the bark it had snagged on.”

“And you didn’t tell me? That was days ago, Alula.” My mother’s voice went high as her smile was wiped away, and she planted her hands on her hips. “I saw you the next morning. You could have saved us from taking a considerable risk seeking out a Fallen ourselves if you’d just been honest.”

“It doesn’t feel great to be on the other side of secrets, does it, Mother?” Kiran asked.

I didn’t blame him. A request for honesty coming from my mother seemed hypocritical. It had me riled too.

“You hadn’t been a reliable or trustworthy person in my life up until that point. Even after you first revealed yourself in the pool, I had doubts. Can you blame me?”

My mother went quiet, and Nier smoothed his thumb over my waist, soothing me. Now that he was out of the shadows, it appeared he had no hesitation about touching me. Reaching up, I twined my fingers through his, drawing comfort from him, as every eye in the room tracked the movement. A heavy, awkward silence ensued, one nobody appeared willing to break first.

“Is nobody else going to point out that he’s a Fallen?” Kiran asked, gesturing at Nier with a jabbing motion. “Whatever is going on here, it’s not going to end well for Alula. Despite the lies told about them, they are forbidden within Lumière. Our world will never accept it, and I doubt his will either.”

“That is true,” Raed said, with a cool nonchalance.

“You’re not helping, brother,” Nier admonished.

“I’m not here to help,” was his seemingly indifferent reply.

Fionn stepped forward, clearing his throat nervously, disrupting the brotherly bickering and dragging all the attention to him. “Uh, hello. Welcome to my home, both of you.”

He deserved credit for at least attempting to cut through that awkwardness, but it didn’t work. Everyone just stared at him.

Taking an opportunity the silence presented, I fired a question at my brother, because I wasn’t the only sibling with secrets. “When did you meet the God of Darkness, Kiran? Nier said you carry his mark.”

Kiran shot a loaded gaze at Nier before answering. “A male stepped out of shadows and saved my friends and I from being caught doing something we shouldn’t have been when we were young. We didn’t know who he was, only that he helped us and kept our secret. He wasn’t very talkative, but he opened our eyes to the lies within our world. We’ve never seen a moving shadow again until this last week. We tried to track it, wanting to make contact again—hoping whoever it was could help you. He wasn’t winged, but we had no idea the male was a god, if that’s what he was, or anything about a mark.”

“Okay. So, how do you know Fionn?” I couldn’t call him our father out loud. It didn’t feel right.

“He’s known as the Hawk. He runs an underground black-market trade that feeds food and other goods to the thralls. My flight helps him when we can. We have for a long time. Any more questions, Lulu?”

I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but it hadn’t been that. Nier had mentioned once that he’d heard of a black-market trader in town called the Hawk, but couldn’t find him. If he had, it was possible we may have eventually met anyway. I could almost hear the fates laughing.

Fionn cleared his throat. “My motives weren’t entirely altruistic. I developed a network of thralls who are loyal to me so it would be in place when the day came that you needed to disappear. I know the true history of the Fallen, and what the elders have done, even if most don’t. I wasn’t as convinced as your mother that nobody else would offer for you.”

“That may have been helpful to know earlier,” Kiran grumbled.

“When you approached me offering to help in your early teens, I selfishly accepted because it meant I got to know you. At the point I could have told you more, you were rapidly rising in rank, and knowing too much could have put you at risk. I was trying to protect you both.”

“Now that I may have found helpful to know earlier,” my mother grumbled, seemingly in the dark about the working relationship between father and son. There were too many secrets within my family, and I wasn’t confident they’d all been spilled.

From the sounds of it, though, Kiran and Fionn had been working together for a long time. “You taught Kiran the hand signals?” I asked.

Fionn’s face lit up as I spoke to him directly for the first time. “Yes. He needed to know them to communicate with the thralls.”

“Why the thralls?” I asked, my curiosity piqued. Not that I believed them undeserving of help; I just wasn’t sure why he’d picked the thralls to help me.

“They are the silent denizens of Lumière’s underbelly. They are everywhere and nowhere, unseen by most Neven. The elders have foolishly never considered they might one day rise against them. They believe humans to be weak, and that they have broken them. They couldn’t be more wrong.”

His words struck a chord with me and also shamed me. I’d never viewed the thralls the way he described, had never thought about them before I met the one working with my mother. The way he put it, their treatment at the hands of the elders was too similar to that of the acolytes, although on a more monstrous scale.

It was another guilt layered on top of the many I already carried. For years, I had thought my trials as an acolyte had been almost too much to bear. Yet I’d been fed, clothed, and kept in basic comfort. The thralls had not. They were denied the basics for survival, including daylight, and it appeared food also. They had been living beneath me the entire time.

Nier shifted behind me, and I looked up in time to see a look and a nod pass between him and his brother.

Mara gasped, startling everyone. Up until this point she’d been quiet and unobtrusive as we’d spilled all our family secrets. “You were in the tunnels. You followed us here.”

It appeared that astute mind of hers was slowly coming back online after the shock of the Fallen suddenly appearing in her world.

“Yes. He’s the other option I mentioned.”

Kiran stomped forward. He’d recovered some of his color but was still glaring at Nier, his wing-commander facade firmly back in place. He stepped around the low table someone had placed teacups and snacks upon. I was surprised it hadn’t been knocked over earlier.

“All this chitchat is lovely, but I’m going to need answers.” He pointed a finger at Nier over my head. “I figure why your brother is here—he came looking for you—but why were you here to start with? And why wouldn’t you have sought me out instead of my sister if you knew I’d met Darkness?” He gave Nier no time to answer before turning to point his finger at his mother and father. “And why in the blazes wouldn’t you tell me your plan involved contacting the Fallen? I’m tiring of finding things out long after I should know them. That’s going to change, or I’ll take Alula myself, somewhere nobody will ever find her.”

Nier’s vibrating anger ran along the length of my body when Kiran mentioned taking me away, but I squeezed his fingers, and he remained silent. My brother wasn’t angry at Nier for being a Fallen, given that he’d admitted trying to seek Nier out himself. Merely that Nier had put me at risk by involving me.

My mother sighed, something she seemed to do a lot around my brother. It was Fionn that spoke, though. “Your mother didn’t tell you because it wasn’t our original plan. She hoped limiting her power, ruining Alula’s reputation, and moving her into the town would be enough. She finally understood at the presentation that the elders would never let her leave the citadel, and the town was not going to be far enough.”

It was Raed who responded, cutting my brother off from responding with a casual arrogance, even as he cordially addressed him. “It seems we may all have some common goals, so let’s try this again, with proper introductions. Hello, I am Raed Draken. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Your mother was telling us about your enchanting sister and seeking our aid to get her out of the citadel. I intercepted a young runner of your father’s, and he brought me here today not long after I arrived. My brother has been scoping out the city and trying to find allies. He’s been here a week, even though he was supposed to return after two days, and it appears allies aren’t that hard to find.”

Raed held out his hand to shake, all cool politeness, his gaze firm and steady on my brother, who he had mostly ignored up until this point. It was a much more formal introduction than I’d gotten. Nier didn’t react to the taunt aimed at him.

“This is me helping calm the angry big brother, by the way,” Raed said over his shoulder to his twin. “You can thank me later.”

Kiran’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the outstretched hand in front of him before shaking it jerkily.

Only, Raed wasn’t finished.

“Now that’s done, we will leave you to your family drama. Nier and I need to leave.” Raed turned abruptly away from the rest of the room now that he’d deemed the pleasantries to be over. He gave his twin a pointed stare.

Nier’s hands tightened on my waist. “I’m not leaving yet.”

“That’s not an option,” Raed countered. “You’re needed at home.”

My stomach sank. I’d known our time was limited, but the thought of him leaving had my body heating as a deep-seated need hooked deep within me.

“Why?” I asked when Nier hesitated, a protective instinct flaring alongside my other emotions.

Raed looked at me in surprise, cocking his head again to examine me closer before raising his eyes to his brother. I couldn’t tell what he saw on his brother’s face, but he sighed heavily.

“Fine. We’ve wasted too much time already, so we’ll do this here. Last night, a bright light shone from below the citadel that lit up the clouds and was visible across the whole Atheran plateau below us, maybe even from the Eyrie mountains. Any wraith that had scattered after their fall started moving back toward the crater. Even after the light abruptly disappeared, they have continued moving back into the area. Many of the entrances to our home are now at risk. We’re going to need every guardian we have. Our people need us both.”

A bright light they could see from the ground? What in the blazes?

“Alula, what is below the vessel pool?” Nier asked, sounding strained. “We have no knowledge of what is underneath the citadel. It’s usually shrouded in clouds.”

“Nothing. Apparently the pool has no bottom. It sits directly on the halo.” I looked to my mother, who nodded, before they both looked back at me in confusion. “Why?” I stilled as the realization hit me. “It must have been me, when I released my light into the pool.”

“How much light did you release, Alula?” my mother asked. I looked past Raed to see she had stepped closer.

“All of it. It had been building all day. The entire pool lit up.”

My mother paled.

“There was a golden shimmer that rippled through the wielding last night,” Kiran said. “It drew everyone out to look at the sky. Did you not see it? It was why I was late getting back to the suite.”

“No. We were deep in the bowels of the citadel,” Nier replied for me, not mentioning Adrita and our excursion with her.

Before I could say another word, Nier held up his hand as he and his brother spun in unison toward the front door, on high alert. “Everybody quiet. We have company.”

A frantic knock on the door broke the stillness only a few seconds later. It was the same secret code Kiran had used, only tapped so rapidly it was scarcely recognizable. It was immediately repeated at an even faster pace, with a garbled plea pressed to the door.

Trouble had found us.