Page 67 of Of Stars and Lightning (Sun and Shadows #1)

Fifty

Choices for the dead

DESPITE HOW MUCH she begged, the healers refused to clear her. Sol had stormed after Cas, a flare of something foreign bubbling in her stomach when she saw he went with Sawyer instead, not sparing her a single look.

Look at me, she wanted to yell. I’m sorry.

Nina stayed with her in her healer pod for hours until sundown, promising her a whole week of marvelous rest and pampering starting tomorrow before they took her to Emberdon’s temple for her Awakening.

It had to be done by a blood relative, and since Sawyer was the only one, it had to be done on her turf.

The fact Sawyer was her only living blood relative burrowed in her mind long after Nina left, leaving her with a strange feeling until she finally drifted to sleep.

When Sol awoke, she was alone. The healer's quarters was silent, smelling softly of the ginger and lime tonic by her bedside.

The firelights along the walls were extinguished, save for a lonely one atop the healer's main work area in a far corner.

Candlewax dripped beside a mess of papers there, landing with a sizzle.

Careful not to disrupt the strange, swollen silence, Sol sat up.

Her body ached in places she didn't know could, and her temples squeezed with a plea to lie back down. But she couldn't. Not as her birthmark pulsed in warning, sending waves of heat to the edges like steel brands.

She grimaced at the pain, but it was nothing compared to the panic that gripped her by the throat as she glanced to the door.

It was ajar—the hallway beyond completely dark.

Please let this be a nightmare. Please.

She sent a silent prayer to Warren, hoping she was already in his good graces as she stood from her cot and faced the open door.

Nina had said guards would be posted outside, along with one of them. Surely, if there was trouble, they would have woken her.

Unless they couldn't.

Swallowing the acidic anxiety, Sol looked around, hoping to find something to use as a weapon.

A whimper beyond the door paused her search.

"H—Hello?" Her voice was hoarse and brittle. She inched forward, barefoot, without a weapon, and with the sinking feeling that the peace following the two weeks she'd lived had been too much to ask for.

There was no response.

Carefully, Sol pulled the door back fully to peer into the hallway. A useless risk since it was wholly dark. “Hello?”

As she stepped beyond the door, a skittering across the tile raked its noise across her skin. She turned toward it.

The temperature plummeted, her birthmark screaming insults at her as she met the gaze of two flashing, bulging orbs.

When the Jinn smiled, its teeth shining in the darkness, she only sighed. “Are you one of the ones for me or against me?”

The smell of rotting flesh inched closer. “Guess.”

She ran the opposite way.

Darkness engulfed her at first until she burst through the glass doors of the healer’s wing and into the castle’s main halls, quickly turning to the staircase.

She begged her legs to push forward, the splintering pain that wrapped around them leaving her gasping as she came to the foot of the staircase.

The silver moonlight shone through the high windows behind her, illuminating the way to the floor her Court resided.

But where others were too.

“Fuck.” Sol pulled at her hair as she doubled over for breath.

She couldn’t allow it to follow her up. She had to lead it out.

“Your mother had such a wonderful smell, Yarrow.” The Jinn’s voice wrapped around her temples like a thorny crown, the clacking of talons inching closer. “But you smell so much better.”

Sol propelled forward, throwing herself against a random, massive set of wooden doors, fumbling with the hollow, circular brass handles to pull them open.

Where was her Court? Where was Cas?

Tears fell in streams as a whimper escaped her trembling lips. She was no match for a Jinn. Maybe she could handle a Lower, but Sol had no idea what she was up against. And she wasn’t looking to find out.

The door finally gave to her pleas, shifting open enough to let her through. Sol could melt at the momentary repose as the fresh, late-spring air greeted her into its embrace.

The relief didn’t last long.

“Noble to choose coming out here alone instead of seeking help, Yarrow.”

Sol shook with horror at the voice, worse than any of the Mind Slayers she had encountered until that point.

She kept her gaze at the ground, shuddering when she saw the arm’s-length talons, dipped in black, and connecting directly to webbed, yellow feet.

Thick, rancid goo dripped across from nail to nail.

Unable to move, Sol only started, with tears in her eyes as the creature bent in half, the contortion making its head hang upside down by its feet.

Its black eyes flashed white, saliva pooling at its mouth. “It was that same stupid little heart that killed Irene.”

Sol let out a breathless gasp as the creature’s claws plunged through her chest.

CAS

CAS INSTANTLY FELT her. Even if his Shadows failed to alert him of the Jinn’s insidious arrival, he felt her fear like molten metal on his skin.

He was making his way down the staircase, the castle cloaked in night, when the feeling made him stop dead in his tracks.

He ran down the rest of it and thrusted his Shadows out, frantic to locate her.

It was his turn to be posted outside her door, a turn he was late too after taking more time than anticipated beneath the castle’s main floor within Warren’s Temple.

He willed his Shadows to search there first, panic itching at his neck when it was empty.

Jumping into the foyer, he stopped. He reeled his Shadows back. The castle was completely dark, as if someone had blown out the firelights, and extinguished the life within.

Cas inhaled, closing his eyes.

Sol.

He narrowed his senses, searching for her voice. For her sweet scent of lavender.

Sol.

Her name pulsed through him like a prayer, encompassing his every thought until she was all he saw.

Sol Yarrow.

When her scream shredded through the foyer, vibrating the ground itself, Cas tore his eyes open. With the sort of calmness before a tempest, he strode to the front doors, letting the full force of his Wards engulf him in violet flames.

NINA

NINA HAD HER sword angled at the Lower Jinn, her nightgown tattered from tearing through her bedroom door. The Jinn thought a copper chain would hold her.

The Jinn was wrong.

The place where the chain had snagged on her legs as she had stepped over it burned, but not as hotly as the fury in her chest. Looking directly at the thing’s flapping, waxy wings, Nina said “Move.”

It croaked a laugh. “No.”

To her left, Sawyer’s door rattled, also secured by copper chains.

“Move, before Sawyer gets out here.” Nina’s magic flared at her fingertips, aiding the Fire Wielder with the wooden door. But she didn’t need it. The wall beside it shook, rumbling with warning before it ignited in a wall of flame.

Nina smiled as Sawyer walked straight through them, armed with her twin swords and an expression that portrayed just why she was the Royal General.

Sawyer’s eyes flared like embers as she turned to the Jinn. “You chose the wrong fucking day to bother us.”