Page 22 of Lies That Blemish (The Ember War #3)

Valor

Sorak was a nice city, but I couldn’t enjoy the sights while Elaine lay dying back home, and my sister was a prisoner of war. I paced the carpet in the large home that Tej and Arjun had brought Virtue and me to. Anika and Meera were here, my sister’s friends from boot camp. But I was too overwhelmed to really talk to anyone. I just wanted my family back together. One second, we’d been driving to Sky Reach, and then the next, a dragon landed on our car, tossing us off the road. I thought now that I had a creature, I’d be a badass fighter and be able to protect my sisters, but it turned out I was a healer who couldn’t heal under stress. My throat pinched as I thought of Elaine bleeding out in the woods while I was helpless to stop it.

‘You did the best you could. You are still learning,’ Zara told me from the backyard, where she patrolled with the other creatures.

‘I failed everyone,’ I corrected her.

“Hey,” Arjun entered the room with Anika. He was holding a plate of food. “You should eat something.”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” I told him, continuing my pacing. Maybe I should take Zara back to Amersea and help Aisling. I felt better now, less rattled. Maybe my healing gift would return.

“Valor, right?” Anika approached me with a kind smile. “I don’t think I’ve officially met you, but I’ve heard about you from Aisling.”

The moment I looked at her, I knew there was something broken about her. It was like with Tetra—I couldn’t focus on her face when her foot was calling to me. I hated to call someone broken ; it felt rude, but that’s what I saw. I saw people now as puzzles with pieces missing. Tetra’s missing piece was in her foot, and Anika was missing a piece in her head.

“Something’s wrong with your brain,” I blurted out.

Anika’s eyes flew wide, and I winced. “I’m sorry, I just meant…”

Crap . Subtlety was not something I had mastered yet.

“Did your sister tell you?” Anika asked me.

I frowned, unable to look away from her brain. It was like a picture in my mind getting clearer and clearer every second. Little noodles that were supposed to be connected were not in her case.

“Tell me what?” I asked dreamily, taking a step closer to her and cocking my head. I could see the noodle-like strands of energy that were broken, and where they were broken, there was no light. It was a dead zone.

I sounded crazy. I knew that. But that was what I saw.

Anika was watching me, and I pulled my gaze away from her head and met her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I have a new gift that I’m still learning how to?—”

“She’s a healer,” Virtue said from the doorway.

Anika’s mouth popped open, and she reached up and touched the hair at her temple. “Oh. Well, I’ve been to healers before. What I have I was born with and can’t be healed.”

I’d heard that before.

My hands began to heat up, and then I felt Zara at the window behind me.

‘No, I don’t want to do this right now,’ I told her. Golden arcs of light began to shoot off my palms, and Arjun gasped.

“Tej!” He called for his older brother.

‘I don’t think we control this gift,’ Zara told me, and that broke my heart. So I couldn’t save Elaine, who was like a mother to me, but my power wanted to save some stranger from Imbria?

It wasn’t fair.

Anika’s brain, her puzzle, her missing piece, the broken noodles, they surged unbidden in my mind.

“She fully healed Tetra’s foot,” my sister said, and the entire energy of the room changed.

The Imbrian girl walked towards me suddenly and then fell to her knees in front of me, eyes filling with tears. “Please,” she whimpered, and my heart shattered.

I might not be able to control the gift, but I wouldn’t deny it to anyone either. That was not within me.

I nodded, placing my glowing hands on her head. The energy that I saw as broken noodles flared to life when I touched her, and a splitting headache overcame me. I hadn’t felt anything before, standing near her like I had with Tetra, but now that I was touching her, it hurt.

I hissed, pulling the broken energy noodles together and mending them with the golden light.

“What the stars?” Tej said, but I ignored him.

The door opened, and I felt Zara at my back. She was like a piece of ember, charging me up when my golden magic ran low. We were both still learning how this worked.

I pieced the energy in Anika’s head together, threading noodles in to fill the black gaps, and my headache eased. When I was all done, the golden energy fell away from me, and I popped my eyes open.

We all just sat there, silent and unsure of what to say. This wasn’t like Tetra’s healing, where we could see the results.

“I felt that,” Anika said dreamily, standing. “Did you… am I healed?”

I looked at her. All the puzzle pieces were in order now. I nodded.

“Thank you.” She pulled me into a hug, and I patted her back awkwardly. I wasn’t used to this.

“I should fly back and see if I can help my sister,” I told everyone.

Zara nudged my leg. ‘Stay here. Kohen and Onyx are coming with Elaine.’

My head snapped to her. “What?” I asked my creature aloud.

‘Go outside,’ she told me.

I rushed out front of the house and into the street filled with mansions just like it. Peering up, I noticed Onyx, Kohen’s dragon, but she wasn’t alone. There were three people riding her. Kohen was one, the healer he had brought was the other, and?—

“Elaine!” Virtue yelled, running out into the cobblestone street.

Onyx landed, and Elaine, who was pale and weary-looking, slid off of him and pulled out a cane made of a broken tree branch.

Virtue and I both ran to her, embracing her lightly so as not to cause any more wounds.

“I’m sorry,” Elaine told us, her voice rough. “I’m sorry I allowed them to take Victory.”

I shook my head. “You fought as best you could. We all did. Are you okay?”

She let out a shuddering breath. “I need… to rest. But I will be.”

“I’ll take you inside.” Meera, the small and unassuming Imbrian girl, walked up and hooked arms with Elaine.

Where was Aisling?

Elaine reached out, caressing the side of my face and then Virtue’s, and nodded. “I’m so sorry.”

She’d lost Vespa. Victory. Our driver, Verik. I couldn’t imagine how she felt.

“It’s okay,” I told her.

“Valor Everhart.” Kohen’s voice was formal behind me.

I turned, wondering why he was acting like that. He was wearing a cold mask of steel as he handed me a letter.

“Your sister went after Victory. I gave her my solemn vow that I would not let you be harmed. Read this letter, then we need to evacuate your people. I will stay with you the entire time to make sure you are safe.”

My eyebrows nearly hit my hairline.

What did he just say?

Evacuate my people? Why?

Kohen walked away then, and Tej ran after him.

“What do we do?” he asked his brother.

Kohen straddled Onyx. “Prepare for hundreds of thousands of refugees. Tell the adjoining cities and villages. And don’t cross that border into Amersea. Promise me.”

“But—”

“Promise me!” Kohen snapped.

Tej promised, and I looked down at the letter. I was too much in shock to argue or say anything.

When I opened it and read it, my heart fell into my stomach.

Valor,

There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you girls safe. So please forgive me now for having to marry Maxim to keep Virtue safe.

I stopped reading for a moment. Marry Maxim!

You will be interim empress while I’m gone. I’m sorry you are having to take this on so young, but Luska has threatened to bomb Riverine. You need to order a mass evacuation. Trust Kohen and the Imbrians. Father lied about the Great Blackout. It wasn’t Imbria. It was him. Stay strong and take care of Virtue. I love you.

Aisling

.

It wasn’t Imbria. It was him.

It was him.

I staggered backward, handing Virtue the letter.

Father was the one who killed thousands of our people? No . He was mean, but he wasn’t evil. Right?

Virtue read the letter next to me, tears streaming down her cheeks and onto the paper. All these years, we’d blamed an innocent man for something he never did. Not just him—we’d blamed all of Imbria. I felt sick, but I had no time to process the fact that my father was a monster.

I’d just become empress at fourteen years old.

Stars help me .

Zara dropped to one knee beside me, and I mounted her, preparing to move my people from the home they’d always loved and known into a place they had always seen as enemy territory. Luksa had threatened Riverine? Then we had to evacuate our people, like Aisling said.

How was I going to do this without Aisling? Without Elaine? I wasn’t trained for this.

“I’ll be by your side every step of the way,” Kohen said. “I have a letter from your sister to the admirals in her Fleet. I’d like you to help me deliver it so that maybe they won’t shoot me down before I can hand it to them.” He smiled at the joke, and I chuckled, feeling a bit more lighthearted. I could see now how Aisling had seen something in him. If I put all the prejudices I had away, and rumors I’d heard of the Badshah family, Kohen had been so helpful it was hard to hang onto any lies I was raised with about him.

I had to trust what I could see from now on, not what I’d been told.

“Okay. Let’s go,” I said, and Virtue ran over to me, hugging my leg. “Be careful.” Her voice broke. “You’re all I have left.”

That statement hit me like a steam train. Victory was gone. Aisling was gone. Virtue and I were all that remained of the Everhart line.

With that, Zara ascended into the sky, and I took up my responsibilities, missing the days when my biggest worry was how my hair looked.