Page 61 of The Garnet Daughter (The Viridian Priestess #3)

Chapter

Forty-One

I nstead of folding back to the communication tower we previously occupied, I take myself farther, past the wall and into the middle of the battlefield below it.

The sand and dirt crumbles as I find my footing, veined deeply from drought.

The wall behind me is as high as a mountain, reaching up into the sky, seeming impossible to breach.

My wrist comm beeps as I make my first steps forward, toward the turrets and ward boundary ahead. The view past it where the enemy is gathered is black, too distant to see their numbers this far down on the ground.

“Can you hear me?” August’s weary voice comes in over my wrist comm before I push the transmission button.

“Yes. I’m sorry, August. We have to be quick. I will see you soon,” I whisper as if someone else will hear my words on the stale breeze.

The sound of his engine hums over the comm when he speaks again. “Not soon enough. Press the green button on the side and your channel will remain open to both me and 99.”

I close the distance to my destination. Every few paces, a large torch has been placed, made in the same ornate style as the Estate and not Viathan in nature like the beams closer to the turrets.

Distance markers for their archers atop the wall, but what are archers when First Son has a weapon not even Viathan can combat?

“Slow down.” 99’s voice suddenly in the darkness with me stutters my next few steps until I realize it is coming from my wrist, where I left the channel open for them to speak freely.

I pause and look back at the city’s wall and the distance I have covered. Soldiers move across the top, watching me below, among them 99.

“When you get to the turrets, they will lock on you. Do not panic,” he says.

“What do you mean lock on me?”

“They will track your movements,” August chimes in. “You will hear them humming.”

I slow my steps even more, now nervous I will be cut down by the enormous guns atop the Viathan platforms once I pass them, that they will mistake me for the enemy. My mind can’t even form a question as to how they know the difference.

“They won’t shoot me?” I ask plainly.

“You are safe. I promise,” August says firmly.

When I come to the first turret, it buzzes like there is a great honey hive within the structure, ready to spit angry bees instead of murderous light.

I sidestep past it, keeping my eyes on the barrel of the gun placed upon its peak.

And just as 99 said they would, my next step captures its attention and it adjusts its neck toward me as if I have called upon it, locking on.

“Keep moving slowly,” 99 instructs. “August is assisting the commander in the beacon tower while he’s in the air.”

I look up to the sky over the city, overcome with a wave of homesickness from knowing he is out there. Just as Omnesis said, every cell of my body vibrates with imbalance without him. There is nothing to ground me, nothing to keep me from folding away into the space between.

I approach the mass of corpses littered within the turrets’ reach and freeze.

“You are about to cross the ward,” 99 says.

“Stay within it.” August’s voice is stern but distracted by his other tasks.

“Is he coming forward?” I ask 99.

“No.”

I weave past the lifeless bodies of the ones who suffered eclipse delirium, trying not to look upon their faces, pale and with burned-out eyes.

Finally, I can make out the army in front of me, the pillar of light visible through the thick fog that has filled the valley.

“We are almost finished,” 99 updates.

I move a few more paces ahead, sensing the last bit of safety from the ward.

First Son watches me, walking slowly through his army to the very front of the lines. He knows I’m about to breach the ward. He can sense that I am closer and now so is he.

I pause, waiting for him as I will myself to stop trembling.

Any moment, they will let me know the beacon is disabled, that the weapon First Son is relying on will fail.

First Son strides forward, breaching his front lines like a moth to a flame, but then pauses, looking out to me from across the battlefield.

I want to fold back, deep into the comforting film of the Estate’s ward, but I can’t.

And when the beacon is disabled and I do fold to August’s ship, what is to stop him from leveling the city whether I’m here or not?

He’s not going to come within our range. His army is firmly planted where it is with no intention of coming closer to the walls. They don’t need to.

Omnesis said they have weapons beyond ours, so what if this is just the start? What if he commands his armies to do much worse when he doesn’t get what he has come for?

I can’t just fold away to safety, not when an entire city will be left to defend itself alone.

A dark shape in the sky captures my attention. Omnesis soars above a cliff and then perches upon it, watching the scene below.

A fleeting thought I had in the birthlands to defeat her comes to mind, of folding the distance to the space between, that if I could control it, I could let her go halfway, leaving her in that darkness. And now I can’t let that thought go.

I steal my breath and stare out into the countless figures on the horizon, First Son standing highest among them. I turn back to the city behind me, the thousands of lives who wait and watch from the wall, praying for a miracle while I stall this army and August helps disarm the beacon.

But I could end this now, be certain First Son does no more harm, take him to the space between and ensure his demise.

I exhale, looking up at Omnesis, who is leaning forward, watching intently like my deliberation has tilted a scale she finds interesting.

And with that, I choose this path, sealing it and whatever outcome it may bring within myself.

I hold my wrist comm up to my lips, trying to steady my trembling voice. “August.”

“We are so close, not long now,” he answers.

“August, listen to me.” I take in a sobbing gulp of air. “Go to Frith, meet me there. I will be waiting for you.”

Omnesis shoots upward into the sky, her great wings flapping in contented beats as she leaves the battlefield, heading away from us and into the birthlands.

I can make out August’s frantic voice as I pull off my wrist comm, letting it fall on the dry ground and walking toward the enemy.

I walk for so long, I lose track of my own thoughts, staying focused on my task and letting all instincts of survival my body shoots to my mind fade away. I wipe at my eyes, keeping away the blur the moisture creates, until I can see First Son soldiers more clearly.

And when First Son himself steps forward, closing the last bit of distance between us, I lose all ability to speak.

He gestures me forth, and I obey as if I am truly surrendering myself to him.

“Daughter,” he says in the language of the gods.

The tone almost blows me backward, the timbre shaking me down to my bone marrow and causing my heart to palpitate out of rhythm.

I advance, determined to seem brave even if I tremble like a prey animal.

He turns, expecting me to follow him, and I do, falling in line at his side and facing his army. His aura is so palpable, divine in nature. First Mother’s son, her first creation. The darkest parts of this world made flesh.

Every emotion I have ever experienced in my life comes forward, every memory, as if my body truly believes it is leaving this world.

With a shaky hand, I reach out and touch his arm, instantly fused by the electric current running through him.

I close my lids and picture Frith, the mountain, the grassy valley below.

I picture the darkness I felt crossing back from that world to this one, the void I traveled through to get here, now calling it forth, begging it to obey.

His spiked helmet turns to me, the eyes a black abyss of their own, his posture changing at the surprise of my touch, of my gift.

A seam in the very air between us opens like a portal to be crossed. Inside are stars like the night’s sky, alive and twinkling with life.

Wordlessly, I pull him toward me, his immoveable body captured by the edges of my manifested fold.

I retreat into it, pulling him with me, screaming and grunting for him to follow.

But he jerks back, grabbing my wrist and fighting me with a force my gift easily overtakes. I float into the space between, reaching upward as if it were a pool of water and his torso was laid across the surface.

I tug again, closing my eyes and picturing Frith, and with a sharp zip, his body is shot forward with mine, but I cannot hold it as we cross the space between.

What was once solid now dissipates into shadow, fading into the darkness of the stars that fly by.

He is gone but still remains, not here in the space between or back on Cosima’s battlefield, but he is still present. I can sense him in the darkness, calling out to me in his terrible voice from somewhere else, or perhaps as something else.

My lungs beg for air not available here, and with another thought of the place I have called home since my birth, I fall hard onto the grassy ground of Frith and gulp inward with a screaming breath.

I wait each day to hear August’s ship, looking out on the grassy plain he landed on when he first came to Frith. The sky is brighter now, the conjunction phasing its way out and a new rotation of all the worlds starting.

I have waited for him every day since my arrival, not able to communicate and know if my plan worked. He should be here by now, and yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep my worries at bay with passing time.

I close up my waterskin and brush off the debris from my clothes, resolving myself to walk back to the village before dark so I can feel the forest and distract my anxious mind.

But then my ears pop with a sudden change in the wind, a slow rumbling from the skies above. I gasp and search the clouds, squinting and praying it’s the familiar shape of August’s ship.

And there it is, speeding downward into the atmosphere of Frith.

The dark shape descends from the sky rapidly, trying to land in the valley over. I fold to the next rock formation, standing on top and waiting for the ship to settle in the high grass.

I jump up and down and flail my arms shamelessly, cheering as he comes down.

The moment the ramp cracks open, August appears, climbing down it before it has even touched Frithian soil and sprinting across the field.

I scream his name on a sob, one matched by him, and fold the rest of the distance. I crash into his solid form, my body fully letting go as I weep in his arms.

He swings me around, his voice cracking with emotion mixed with laughter. “By the three worlds, Callia, don’t ever do that to me again!”

I never intend to let him go. It took me far too long to bring down my walls.

I thought they protected me, but they only kept the ones I love further away.

I had not realized that in the process, I had also built a wall around myself, keeping out my inner knowing.

I heard a dark voice calling out to me in the forest of Frith, loud and seductive.

I had forgotten that longer ago, the sacred mountain had instilled in me that the only voice that matters is my own.

The one deep within me who knows exactly who I am and has since the beginning.