Page 4

Chapter

Four

Liv

Rebeka left me to rot. Now the Guards have too. How do I feel about that? Thankful. Patterns are predictable. Lesson learned—no more friends.

—After writing that, I feel guilty. The Guards are not the same as Rebeka.

“ D on’t tell me to calm myself!” I yelled. “You understand nothing about me.” I studied the dirt underneath me so she couldn’t see the burning in my eyes.

My wet clothes stuck to my skin, making me itch, and I concentrated on that. Anything to stop the images of Nuo’s face appearing or seeing the pieces of him fade away as the Aspis tore free from his body.

“I know. I know. I sometimes speak without thinking.” She worried her hands in her lap. “And I want to get to know you, but right now, I’m pretty sure you’re making the sky fall around us. We can’t stay. We are in danger every second we stay in Guardian lands, so we need the rain to stop.”

“You think I am doing this?” I thrust a hand toward the sky.

Maev flinched at the movement, afraid, and I jerked back, too. But not from her—from the sheet of rain.

A shadow passed outside. My hand that was pointing to the sky slapped over my mouth.

“What w-was that?” I leaned back, pressing my damp cloak against the root behind me.

Maev gave me a skeptical look. “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you see that shadow? Something is out there.”

Maev jumped, scrambling back, and we watched, but nothing more passed by.

“Could the Aspis have found us?” My voice cracked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s out there. Just the rain.” She wasn’t convincing when her attention continued to dart outside.

I closed my eyes, realizing how hard my chest was pounding as sweat clung to my back and my limbs ached. I shuddered as I told myself I wasn’t losing my mind. I had just fought the legendary Aspis, and I was scared. Maev was right. I needed to calm down.

“Anyways,” Maev said, keeping her voice low. “This rain, I think it’s the gods’ magic. They controlled the elements of the earth. All of the elements. If you are telling the truth and are still self-aware, at the very least, you have the Ikhor’s magic and don’t know how to control it.”

The outside world mirrored the torrent of pain laying waste to my chest. Could she be right? I had made fire and ice. Was rain so hard to believe?

I eyed the grey outside. No more shadows passed the opening. “How did you figure that out? And so fast?”

She gave a shy smile. “It’s my profession to figure things out. Anyways. Why don’t we try again? Tell me where you are from. Concentrate on something easy.”

A laugh escaped me. “Thinking about my home will make this storm worse.” Lightning lit up the rain, the flash of light making Maev scream, and I bit down on my retort, watching again for anything lingering outside our hideaway.

“You said you weren’t from this continent, but you definitely aren’t from my side. You don’t even know what my continent is called. So where are you from?”

She thought I was lying. Her expression said as much.

Nuo had warned me to keep my secrets to myself—where I was from would scare people. But she had crossed into enemy lands to capture the Ikhor, so maybe …

“I am from the Lost Lands.” Why did I care what people knew anymore? “A place my people called the Endless Forest.”

Maev blew out a breath. “Look, I want to ask you a question without making it rain harder.”

“No promises.”

How long would we be stuck here? If the rain was my doing, maybe forever.

“Well, I wonder if you hit your head or something when you transformed?”

I animated my face like the Aethar, tilting my head toward her, hoping to annoy her as she did me.

It was unnatural and uncomfortable, showing how I felt.

“I am not making this up. The Lost Lands are real. I also didn’t know there was a world beyond our borders before I came here.

The magic took me and brought me to the Guardian Lands. It was the Guards who first found me.”

“Really?” Her face lit up. “My friend back home believes the Lost Lands are real. He has texts on the legends, but I always thought it was silly to believe in. What’s it like there?”

“A nightmare. I was trying to escape before I was brought to Veydes.”

“How were you brought here?”

“The Light found me, spoke of waking the Aspis and then the next thing I knew, I was lying in a damp cave thinking I was dead.”

She blinked. “Interesting.” Maev crossed her legs, resting an elbow on a knee.

“If that’s true, the magic must have some sentience to it.

” She reached into her cloak and pulled out a rectangular object.

It was the same one she held on the field when she approached Falizha and me.

She pressed on the front of it. “Perhaps over time, possessing multiple hosts, it has developed intention and thought.”

“What are you doing?”

“Taking notes,” she mumbled, ignoring me.

“What is that?” I said, nodding my head toward the object. It was made from metal, not the ore the strange objects in this world were usually made of.

“Oh, this is my little invention.” She wiggled it in the air. “It’s how I tracked you.”

“How did that thing track me? Is it magic?”

“No,” she chuckled. “ This is science.”

Maev was vibrant when she smiled. There was no question about it—she and I were nothing alike. She looked so youthful. Unburdened.

“What’s science?” I had seen the word in forbidden books in a forbidden cottage long ago.

She stopped playing with her device. “Wow. I do believe you are from the Lost Lands now. Science is the study of, well, everything. How things work, how to make things work, and how to make things from nothing.”

“I don’t think I follow. That sounds like magic.”

“Yes, magic, as we refer to it, is the earth’s energy.

Science is the study of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and test—oh, never mind.

The earth’s magic is natural, while what I am holding is an invention.

A human creation,” she said before her face fell, seeing my confusion.

“So what does that thing do?”

Maev had a way of saying a lot while saying nothing at all. I had no clue what she was talking about. My attention kept wandering outside, and I was anxious to get as far away from the Aspis as I could.

“I technically borrowed the idea from my professor,” she tried again.

“I study the tech of the ancient world—ancient ore technologies—like airships and crystal-powered weapons. I also create new tech by taking apart AO tech and redesigning it. This device is a tracker. My professor’s idea to track crystals. ”

“That thing can track crystals?”

My first instinct was to tell Nuo. The reminder that he was no longer at my side shot through my heart and undid the control I was gaining.

Thunder crashed.

You better run as fast as you can, Olivia, because I will follow the beast, and I will be there when it kills you.

“Our deposits are running low and creating a risk to our way of life,” Maev continued. “His invention will help us find more and restore our numbers.”

“You say our …” I prompted, hoping she would keep talking. It was a good distraction.

“My people. Anyways, this device I created myself—the first of its kind. I tweaked it to search for elemental magic like that of the gods. Then I followed the biggest signal it could pick up.” Maev gave me a tight smile, realizing she was rambling.

“My device led me to Bellum, where I first saw you.”

“You found me back then?”

“I saw you in the market with your Guard. The one who …”

She was talking about him . She saw us together in the markets of Bellum, where he had bought me my swords.

My bracelet brightened again, and the rain tore across the sky. I wanted to be sick.

“I’m so sorry. I was caught up in my story and talking about my tracker. I didn’t think about what I was saying.”

I followed the steady drop of rain from a small root before me. Drip, drip, drip. Anything not to think of him.

“I can tell you cared deeply?—”

“Stop,” I demanded. “Please, stop.”

“Sorry.” She bit her lip, flinching when lightning lit the outside world.

“You hate the Guards. You’re probably happy he’s dead.” I put my face in my hands so she wouldn’t see how much it hurt.

One. Two. Three. My breathing was so ragged there was no hiding my grief.

“I didn’t know him,” she said softly. “I only hated what they represented. But you cared for them …”

I bit down on my next comment, wishing I could make her stop.

She went to lay a hand on my arm, but I pulled away. I was not used to someone’s touch and wouldn’t get accustomed to an Aethar’s.

“So what else does your tracker do?” My voice was hard.

Maev sat up and put the device away while she spoke. “I programmed it to take notes. I lose my train of thought quite easily with all that’s going on up there.” A blue finger tapped against her dotted temple. Her voice remained soft. Soothing.

She was quick to believe I was from the Endless Forest—could I trust she was not one of the scarred Aethar who had attacked so many times? Was she less of a threat?

“Why are you helping me? I get I’m the Ikhor, but why you, and what use do you have of me?”

Wincing as she moved her arm, Maev considered her answer. “I have reasons to help, but it’s less about you and more about fixing things back home. Mostly, I came along because I have this tracker. And I am the only one who knows how to use it.”

“What do you mean? You want to help me destroy the beast, right?” Her answer surprised me. I had expected a tale of ending the Aspis. “When the two rise, the battle will decide the fate of the people for the next era.”

“Every historiography era, you mean. Not the Alchemical Era, which properly denotes a million years. The Guardians are far more negligent when calculating time frames …” Maev blinked.

“Never mind. Clearly the Guardians have been giving you history lessons. And no. I don’t want to help you destroy it. ”

“No? So you’re going to let it kill me?”

“Let me explain first.” Her eyes narrowed. “My brother was asked to locate you and bring you home—my only purpose was to track you. I am not even supposed to be here in Veydes. Events turned real fast on that field, though, and I had no choice but to get you out alone.”

I rubbed my neck—it was going stiff.

“We were trying to get to you before the Guards did. Obviously, that failed. I have been tracking you for a while. We worried the Council would try to gain control over the magic and use it to further their war against us. This is kind of a secret mission.”

“Secret from who?”

“Everyone,” she shrugged.

So she was hoping to keep the magic for herself. She and her brother wanted to use the Ikhor. “And why do you want the magic? My guess is you two had different reasons apart from your mission.”

She seemed surprised I had guessed as much. “Well, the reasons are piled high. But the biggest one, in the end, is you are our saviour, and the people need you.” Maev spoke to the sky as she lied to me.

Everyone wanted to stop the Ikhor except the Aethar, who worshipped it. But why would only two Aethar, seemingly not warriors, come alone into enemy lands to capture me? The answers mattered, but for now, I had to follow her because I needed to get out of Veydes.

“Does that mean you don’t believe I am evil?” I was relieved she wasn’t saying she wanted to stop me from killing. That meant she didn’t think I was a monster.

“No.” She smiled. “The Ikhor is worshipped in my lands. It stops the beast from coming and eating the children while they sleep. It burns fires to keep the people warm. The first child to take it from the gods wanted those born without magic to have a fighting chance.”

“That’s what your people are taught?” It was nothing like the stories I had heard.

“You’ll come to find, Olivia, that many things told in Veydes are wrong.”