Page 9

Chapter

Eight

Liv

As a child, I feared the night when terrifying sounds of the unknown would come from outside our home.

As a young woman, I was afraid of what others saw—afraid of being an outcast and the punishment that came with it.

Now I know what I should really have feared.

Years of difficult lesson after difficult lesson led me to discover the biggest danger is myself—nothing has hurt me so much as my own mistakes.

I tipped my face to the sky, letting the mist hit my eyelashes, pretending—no wishing—I was alone.

I slumped on a wooden bench in a boat that didn’t look as if it should be floating. Maev sat close, maneuvering a rudder with her good arm, directing the dilapidated thing. A roof over the benches was enough to keep some of the rain off.

Ollo sat across from me, pretending he wasn’t staring when I looked away. But I caught the long, sweeping glances the beautiful blue man was giving me. Now that he knew I wasn’t possessed, Ollo didn’t sneer but instead studied.

I pulled my cloak tight. I wasn’t used to men looking at me that way. Not strangers. And none had dared look at me like that when he had been around.

Ollo crossed his ankles, trying to get comfortable. “Maev, I can’t take much more. The speed of this thing is aggravating. I should be in the skies, not some half-rotted boat.”

The racer had died much sooner than he had predicted with the three of us. Luckily, the two Aethar were resourceful and found an abandoned boat on a muddy shore hidden amidst tall grass. We were all cold, soaked, hungry and scared. But, as Maev had pointed out, the rain kept the bugs away.

The mental fog enveloping me was a temporary shelter from a storm ravaging my heart, blinders keeping me focused on moving forward. It was a dirty bandage that did nothing but pretend to heal.

“Get over yourself, Ollo.” Maev was losing patience, too, and taking it out on her brother. “I don’t feel sorry that you have to move at the same speed as us ground-loving folk.”

The way the two spoke was foreign. Not only the accent, but their vocabulary was thick with words I struggled to understand, words seldom used back home or with the Guards and not at all like the scarred Aethar.

It solidified my belief that they were not aligned with those who attacked me on the burning field.

“I’m going to throw you overboard if you don’t move this faster.” Ollo sat tall, poised and confident. Yet his presence didn’t indicate he was arrogant, which surprised me, given how he spoke.

Maev huffed. “I don’t have control of the speed. And forget the Aerial Elder being pissed for losing that ship—Dad will kill you for losing me.”

“How old are you two?” I cut in.

Two sets of blue, scathing looks turned my way, and I didn’t get an answer.

From the little I had discovered about the siblings, they were two sides of the same coin. Ollo was bold and quick to have an answer, arguing any point Maev made with an air of sophistication. Maev was expressive and empathetic.

While I waited for an answer, I ran my hand over the top of the water, watching little waves form. My glowing bracelet lit up the ripples my fingers made, and I wondered again how the crystals had filled with magic.

“Careful the eels don’t get your arm.”

I jerked back so hard that the boat shook. Ollo was eyeing my arm over the edge, a slow grin transforming his face.

“Eels?”

A single nod. “River eels. They come up at night to feed.”

I massaged my cold hand. “They’ll eat me?”

“Ollo,” Maev scolded. “Stop it. They may nibble at your hands, Olivia, mistaking you for something else. But I doubt they would eat you whole.”

Ollo gave a quick shrug. “Don’t fall in, or you’ll find out.”

I peeked over the edge of the boat, examining the water’s surface but finding nothing.

“So …” Ollo met my gaze for the first time, not looking away. “You’re powerful.”

I didn’t have an answer, so I only shrugged. His scrutiny unnerved me. I had labelled him as the beautiful blue man when I first saw him in Bellum. But Ollo was showing he may be much more than his looks. His attention pushed the fog from my mind long enough that my cheeks warmed.

“You’re doing this.” He pointed to the rain. “With control over the skies, I’d surmise you have control over quite an amount of power.”

“I don’t.”

His razor-sharp jaw tensed. “I can see you are not one for talking. Well, here’s the situation, Saviour —if you aren’t leading us on our journey home, I am.

Meaning if I say the word, you jump. We have a long way to go until we cross the borders.

Especially if our means of transportation is this forsaken pile of scraps. ”

I gazed at the darkening sky, not responding. My hands shook in my lap.

Saviour. Is that what they saw when they looked at me? After what had happened? I was the reason … I had caused the change in …

The wind shifted us back and forth as we crept along the river. I only prayed nothing found us. We couldn’t see far ahead, so every time the river made a turn, it took us by surprise.

The boat ran on crystals, and whoever owned it must not have expected someone to come upon it in the middle of nowhere—the boat started immediately when Maev fiddled with it.

Ollo said it was common when Maev got her hands on equipment that they would start working.

She was “a gifted mechanist”. I had to ask what that meant.

Apparently, a mechanist was a more experienced alchemist, someone who worked on more than harnessing magic from crystals.

Maev explained there were propellers in the back that moved us forward, and the rudder helped us turn.

“I’m pretty handy with AO tech,” she had told me.

Like the weapons and the airships. But I couldn’t recall the rest of her explanation.

Honestly, I couldn’t remember reaching the boat. Or where we had left the racer. Or how long we had been on the river.

I checked the sky for the tenth time in the past hour. It was dark, making us impossible to find. Or so I hoped. If someone were to look down, the boat would blend with the dark colours of the water.

The day was almost gone. Having been on the run for most of it, it had flown by. How many days has it been since I last saw him ?

I lay down across the bench and put my hands beneath my head.

“I found some food before we left shore. Would you like a bite?” Maev asked.

I shook my head and studied the moss-coated wood inside the ancient boat. Water was collecting in the boat, although I had already scooped it out several times and it gradually pooled beside my bench. Blades of grass floated in the water as the night sky reflected on its surface.

“Let me know when you’re hungry. It could be a while until we reach the city.”

The city of Danuli. We were still in the Median, in the river lands south of the burning field.

“We need supplies.” Then in a lower voice, Maev said, “We need to get her food and a change of clothes. And some more magycris before we make our way home.”

Home.

It wasn’t my home, and I didn’t want to follow these two if they continued talking about me like I wasn’t even there. But where else could I go?

In the Endless Forest, people tried to imprison me. Now, here, the Guards and every Guardian on the continent wanted to kill me. It was scary that I was getting used to being hated.

Following them was my best option—my only option. Yet I didn’t know the full scope of what they wanted from me.

The pool of water below my bench became deeper. I sat up to empty the boat when a black shadow passed over the surface. A jolt of fear went through me, my breath catching in my throat.

A dark form moved through the haze above us.

“How in Night’s skies has it found us?” Maev asked.

But the shadow continued across the sky overtop of us and passed.

The beast was getting bigger.

“Maybe it doesn’t know we are below it,” I said back.

“Do you think it senses us?” she asked, gripping the side of the boat.

I smacked my palm on my forehead.

“Olivia?”

“When I was with—” I stopped, unable to say his name. “When I was with the Guards and first met him ,” I pointed to the sky, “I felt this pull toward him.”

“Pull?”

I looked back to the growing puddle, ashamed to admit to myself and to Maev what I felt.

“I felt a pull and thought it meant something else. But it was the Aspis.” I thought he had been my soul-bonded partner—something I would never admit to anybody.

“I see,” she said, and I could hear the empathy in her tone. “So what do you think it means? Now that he’s … the Aspis.”

Ollo shifted but made no mention of the Guards or my feelings toward them. Maev had warned him to keep his comments to himself. It made him watchful, and the look he gave me almost reminded me of the villagers back home. I hated that look.

“I think the Aspis can still feel the pull,” I continued, ignoring the beautiful man. “It wasn’t an exact thing, but I could feel the direction I needed to go to find him. I think it senses us here, in this area.”

“Really? It worked like that?” she asked.

I nodded, searching the sky for its return. “Only the last time I followed the pull into the caves, Falizha found me first and took me to that burning field.” What would have happened had I found him first?

“So we are never going to outrun the beast.” Maev’s face scrunched.

“We keep going, Maev. You’ll get home,” I tried to assure her.

“Me? What about you?”

“If it comes to it,” I shrugged, “let the beast have me. I don’t want this thing that’s inside me.

” I lowered onto my side, ignoring the looks they gave me.

A hint of shame spread through me for admitting such a thing aloud.

I curled my arm around my waist to hold in all the pain.

If what was inside me was to be let loose, Maev would have more than a burnt arm.

Because I could feel the Aspis, too—once I realized the pull was still there, I felt it, the need to reach the beast. And though the rain poured, it was a burning fire I felt deep down.

The world didn’t know— couldn’t know—the most feared magic was eating me alive. It was feeding off all my mistakes, and the Ikhor’s magic liked the taste of regret the most.

Ollo’s cloak shifted to the side when he folded muscled arms across his chest. His grey tunic underneath was clean-cut and tight to his form.

I thought of thick, chorded muscles. Tattooed arms crossed over a broad chest clad in black. A wolfish smile. A scar I wanted to trace with my fingertip.

“I could fight off twenty Aethars at once, but you? Wanting to know the feel of your lips … fuck.”

I pulled my legs up toward my chest.

Breathe.

Hold.

Breathe.

I focused solely on the sound of my breathing, ignoring the nausea building in the back of my throat.

Make it through the night and try again tomorrow.