Page 45 of Shadows and Flames (Twin Blades #2)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

TANA

“ U m, Leen?” I caught up to my cousin, trying my best to shake out my hands at my side.

Ever since I was a young child, I’d made friends with the natural magic of our world.

The beating, the singing of it. It was inevitable, had always been.

Many of us reasoned the aether was a gift from the Mother.

To bring us closer to her, to shape our world as we wished.

The absence of it left my stomach churning and sweat breaking out at my temples.

“Hm?” Meline was frowning and assessing our surroundings, no doubt cataloguing everything about this world, so much we were unfamiliar with. She and Elián walked stiffly, his scowl nearly matching hers. Could they feel it?

“I—” I lowered my voice to a whisper, sidling up to her ear “—there is no aether here. I don’t have my magic,” I admitted, and tears began to prickle behind my eyes. It was like a limb had been removed from my body.

She immediately stopped, and the rest of us did so as well. “You…” she swallowed, glancing at Elián. Blackwood had not yet noticed we weren’t right behind him, but no one made to speed up.

Beside her, Elián raised his palm and generated a flame that lapped at his fingers, licking toward the branches above.

He furrowed his brow, and the fire grew slightly.

I did not realize anything was amiss until he began to tremble.

I could hear his quickened heartbeat, as well as those around us, and he bared his teeth.

The fire began to wane, to die.

He hissed, dropping his arm to his side, and the fire extinguished.

“ Shit .” Meline watched Elián begin to pace. I’d not seen the reticent male display such naked emotion, save for when he held a dying Meline in his arms. His chest swelled and constricted quickly, and he was mumbling urgent words in what I assumed was Zonoran.

My cousin gripped his bare biceps, halting his pacing, and in his stillness, I choked on a gasp.

His irises were no longer glowing in the way I’d grown used to. Nor were they the vibrant shades of flames.

His eyes were a still brown, faintly amber, but that was it.

“What the fuck.” Tom noticed, too. “We need to go back. Fuck this.”

“I…I don’t think we can,” I whispered. Without my magic, I was cut off from any senses that could help me decipher how the portal worked. Unless the Folk allowed us, or we found another who had the power to open the door, we were stuck.

My cousin breathed with her Shadow, holding his gaze and wordlessly leading him to calm, but my morose statement caused his grimace to deepen. “It is finite.” He spoke it as if it pained him to utter the word.

Finite.

Meline bobbed her head in a shaky rhythm, smoothing her hands up and down her Shadow’s arms, but when she looked to me, I saw the fear. Her irises had returned to how they used to be, a deep brown, almost black, and I knew her goddess gift was stoppered, too.

“What does this mean?”

We all flinched. Fenix’s coverings made him a mass of fabric, but even his typical sardonic quips were tempered. His deep voice was quiet with uncertainty, unaware of the situation but feeling the gravity all the same.

“Hush, you,” Tomás growled then leaned closer to his brother. “Do you otherwise feel healthy?”

The Fire Bringer without his Fire twitched a nod to both Tomás and Meline. She mirrored the affirmation.

“Right. So, we get them to open up the tree again, and we leave Blackwood the choice to stay or come with us.”

My instinct was to agree with the Shadow. Though he had no association with the powers of the Godyxes or the gift of the aether, he’d deduced the turmoil. We were trained fighters, them more than Fenix and myself, but to be without the whole of our abilities was more than concerning.

Meline’s jaw tightened, and I was perfectly able to decipher her thoughts, the squaring of her shoulders while the corners of her mouth turned down.

I didn’t object.

“Tana and I are staying to retrieve Francie. You all can go. You were never bound to this contract to begin with.”

Elián growled, taking hold of Meline, and uttering a single word. “Na.”

“Oh for godyx’s sake,” Tomás lamented.

I glanced at Fenix, and though I couldn’t tell where he was looking, he faced me. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but you all still have to make some things up to me. I’m staying.”

It didn’t make sense, and I opened my mouth to tell him so, but footsteps and a harsh bark stopped me. “You! Do your job and hurry .” Blackwood glowered at us from the mouth of the bend, one of the Folk just beside him.

The leather pack on my back suddenly felt twenty times heavier, the weight of our new circumstances lead around my ankles.

And yet, I went forward. Meline and Elián separated but stayed beside each other as they moved with me. We were without our powers, cut at the knees, and with Tomás and Fenix with us, we went forward anyway.

Wonder and despair warred inside of me, creating a nauseating flutter in my lungs and stomach. My skin warmed and tingled with the foreign feel of life in its most naked form, but the sweet scent of it was almost sour in my nostrils.

Water rushed in the distance, becoming a roar the longer we walked, and the silence was almost as deafening.

No one spoke—not the Folk nor anyone from our party.

Blackwood’s mouth was nearly watering, either blinded by his pursuit of riches or mortal senses leaving him disconnected from how such a world felt.

Because with each step, my giddiness dimmed. With each step through this enclosed pathway between trees, my body screamed that I did not belong here.

My cousin and Tomás rested their hands on their weapons, Elián held his clasped behind his back, and Fenix’s were stiffly stuffed in his pockets. Blackwood was the only one jauntily swinging his arms as he walked.

The crashing of water, like fountains poured from the Godyxes themselves, became even louder, and the light ahead changed color. From sparkling yellow sprinkling between the branches to white tinged with blues and greens.

I blinked, adjusting my vision as we reached the end of the tunnel of branches. The trodden ground gradually became white stone, and the further we followed the Folk who guarded the entrance between our world and theirs, my heart dropped at the… the magnitude of it.

As if floating between mountains, a kingdom stood amongst waterfalls.

Or, I assumed it was a kingdom. Large structures with long, pointed roofs reached for the pale blue sky above, and smaller buildings dotted around them.

I tried to keep my breathing steady as we continued on the narrow wooden bridge that connected the forest and what I assumed was our destination.

I squinted, cataloguing the water falling and mist spraying, understanding suddenly.

Between the slate gray of mountain rock, this kingdom was built upon trees.

Instead of a mass of leaves, there was a civilization.

We kept walking, droplets of water clinging to my skin and hair, wind never letting me feel completely steady.

I hoped my face was blank, or one of concentration, but I’d not the energy to focus on it more than that.

Do not show fear , my cousin taught me within my first lessons, but how could the same unwavering confidence sustain when I was faced with this ?

“Where in the name of the Mother are we?” Fenix said under his breath. He’d stuck close to me, probably because the others hadn’t bothered to ask his name.

“The Mother is not here,” I whispered back.

Our crossing the bridge was not lengthy, but when we reached the end, I risked a glance over my shoulder. The sinking in my chest deepened as I took in the distance, where the forest was much further away than I’d originally thought. Hoped.

How were we to get home?

“These travelers from Vyrland would like to discuss trade,” one of the Folk said to another whose armor was the blue-gray of the mountain.

There were four of them, stationed at the end of the bridge with broadswords fastened between their shoulders.

Like the other guards, their skin was a variety of colors, but the markings and pointed ears were there.

One with a shock of red tresses jutted their nose in the air, sniffing before focusing on Elián. “You have brought mortal flesh for the Queen?”

Blackwood flinched, but now that they’d said it…

My nostrils flared before my face scrunched. It appeared any spells I had in place were void in this realm, including the simple preservation incantation I’d put over Von Herron’s head to delay the decaying process.

No one responded to the question, so Meline spoke with a shrug, “If that will help secure a trade deal, she can have it. Not much meat on him, though.”

I detected the seriousness mixed with jest in her words, but the Folk nodded in earnest. “She will be holding court in the morning.”

“Fantastic,” Tomás groused, and I silently agreed with a frown.

Another day in this place was not the best of scenarios.

But—I glanced around and upward at what I could see of the city before us.

Then, at the smaller areas below. They were also sustained by gigantic tree trunks, but the buildings seemed more… residential?

And, of course, there was the drop into white clouds between. Where birds cut through with ease, but I doubted a steady ground was just beyond the cover of fluffy white. How long would one fall until they splattered to the ground?

“And where are we to stay until then?” Blackwood asked gruffly, not as eager as he’d once been.

A guard with green hair strung in a collection of thin plaits jerked their head behind them. Their accent was thick, cutting the common tongue words stiffly. “We have a place for visitors of other realms. It is not used often, so you will be alone, save from staff.”