Page 42 of Shadows of Air and Earth
“No!” I screamed, thrashing against the bonds of air they held against me. Tears my mother could no longer form, numb from the days spent spilling them, was not an acute affliction I suffered from, and their hot wetness cascaded freely down my face. My heart beat wildly in my chest, despair and rage filled me. Betrayal became a bitter taste in my mouth from the restraint of air digging into my flesh. The same way they had from my uncle.
My father’s sad hazel eyes turned back to me. “I am sorry, my son. I cannot live without her and she cannot go on in this world. She deserves mercy and so do you. This ghost of a life is not what you deserve, Riley.”
My chest rose and fell heavily as I stilled my fighting. “What you call mercy I call cowardice. There is still time to heal, there is still time to live!”
“Please, Rilen,” my mother begged my soul-crushed father, her gaze ignoring me completely. Turning back towards her, my father’s face broke, his own sorrow wetting his cheeks at the way her sword shook violently from being unable to turn it on herself. Something I had seen her attempt many times in the past week. A knife, a fork, the gardening rake, a shard of glass that split her hand wide open. It never worked. A fae could not take their own life and each time she failed, she became more and more of a ghost.
“Vow to me son. Vow aloud that you’ll never use this evil power that has cursed our family. Vow you will not use the possession on any other living creature. No matter the circumstances. Vow it, Riley Feng Dragoon. Vow it, on your mother’s eternal life.”
I sagged in the restraints, now just as broken as the two fae in front of me. There was no swaying them. No stopping this nightmare. “I vow it,” I whispered.
“I love you son, your mother loves you too. Now look away, Riley. Look away, my son.”
I nodded, swallowing hard, turning my head, and squeezing my eyes shut. My mother’s soft whispered, ‘please’ escaped her lips as the final sickening thrust of steel penetrated through them both. The air that held me released and I fell. My face buried in the grassy earth as I roared my devastation and anguish out into the universe.
“Dragoon!” Remnant’s warning scream pulled me back from the past and I blinked to refocus, hearing before seeing swords clashing, the glints of silver, the darkness of shadow, and the rush of air whipping around my uncle and my friend, the general.
The shadows billowed out from Rory’s violent gusts before they eagerly returned, snapping back into existence to attackhim again as he struggled to parry the steadfast blade of Remnant Dark.
She was a dance of darkness. Sliding and twirling along the grasses, flirting with the edge of the canyon's cliff before changing course to begin anew. My uncle grunted with each countered blow, his features straining with both strength and lack of stamina, focusing most of his power on the air he needed to keep her shadows away.
A power he was drawing fully from the shifter female, who lay gasping up at the black sky, tears falling from her eyes, wetting the already greasy strands of her strawberry blonde hair—hair the same color as my mother's.
Feeling my presence above her, I shielded us from the errant winds with the little energy I had left over from Xi’s fight.
Light brown eyes beseeched me again. “Please,” she said brokenly, “please do it.”
My hands gripped the hilts of my dual scimitars. A pair. The right owned by my father, the left by my mother, their essence stained with unseen ghosts upon the shining steel. Raising the right, I brushed her hair back away from her face with my element. A caress of peace and mercy. “To the life given and the life taken too soon, the goddess take you with her golden light to live freely within our hearts where the devoted and young never die.”
When I brought my sword down to deliver a quick and pain free death, I did not look away this time. Watching as the golden collar disappeared like the light in her eyes. I had freed her of the torment and torture she had suffered at the hands of my own blood and now I would carry her pain with another mark on my soul.
A slew of curses and damnations descended upon me, my uncle's forceful winds dying and the storm of his clouds began to recede. His voice roared with rage, “Once I am done with thisshadow filth nephew, you’re next. Now that I don’t have that bitch it seems I am free to pick my next prize, and by the goddess that is going to be you Riley Dragoon!”
“I’d pay more attention to keeping your own life,Commander,” Remnant spat, her emerald gaze burning with the same mixture of fury, remorse, and resolve that was in mine.
Giving me a barely perceptible nod, she attacked Rory at full speed. A rush of steel and darkness blurred together in an array that was pure artistry. She wasfast—and skilled. Much too skilled for my uncle to have lasted as long as he had. I choked with disbelief, she had been fucking toying with him all along.
Waiting.
Waiting on me to be ready for what must be done. What should have been done a long time ago.
Smiling sinisterly, her sword sliced downward followed quickly by the shadows, powering a blow that ripped a shrill scream from my uncle. His sword fell to the earth with a thud, his arm hanging limp at an unnatural angle, completely fractured. Whimpering and scrambling back, the last of the gusting winds died around us.
His retreat was quickly thwarted by the shadows latching onto him, spinning his body to face me, and when his hazel eyes so much like mine, so much like my father’s landed on my face they lit with so much contempt and hatred that it was clear he was just as much of a monster on the outside as he was on the inside.
“Uncle,” I drawled, twirling my blades slowly in each hand, approaching him.
“Nephew,” he spat, “You don’t have it in you, Riley. You couldn’t do it in the past when you had the chance and you won’t be able to do it now, I am the only family you have left.”
I chuckled darkly, stopping the spinning left blade before me. My mother’s blade. “I know this confuses you sometimes,uncle,” I cooed. Walking steadily up to him, I pointed the tip of the lethally curved blade against his body, watching as his eyes widened and he began to struggle within the shadows’ restraints. His air sprung forth, the last feeble effort to defend himself easily thwarted. Sinking my blade slowly inch by inch into his stomach, I chose the most painful way for him to die, relishing in the squelching sound. And when my scimitar finally did puncture through his back, warm blood seeping onto my hand and dripping down to the earth, I leaned in, “But this is the sharp pointed end.”
Chapter 29
My birth bitch motherlaughed coldly, her beauty and finery matching the empty cynical sound. “After all those years you have held us in contempt forenslavingyou…” she said sardonically, “it seems you could not go without a master after all. Poor child, did I not tell you that your mother knew what wasbest for you? You could have stayed with us my little earthling, instead of serving under a man that will never understand your element.”
My father sneered at her side. “Instead you bind yourself to that…polluted and foul cloud air sniffingrake! You are a disgrace to the Chin name, Xi Lanora.”
I snorted. I rather liked Riley the Rake, it had a nice ring to it, and my air elemental would enjoy such slander upon his name. Feeling the earth tremble, I began the simple dance I knew was as old as time, weaving fluidly through the whistling stoney arrows sent to impale me from the ground below.
