Page 109 of Shadows and Flames
“Interesting company, indeed,” Cera whispered.
But my queen was right. We would—we would fix this. Unravel The Shadows from that tyrant’s clutches. I nodded at my queen, watched our combined power sparkle and wind around her, too. I sent it to cradle her freckled cheek, and both vines responded, moving at my innate command.
Meline sucked in a breath, not only feeling the combined cold and hot touch but the way… our power yielded to the other.
“I—there is something I need to tell you all,” she whispered, and the bubbling excitement, tangled in all the other emotions I was experiencing, popped. Meline shifted, still holding onto me but nibbling on her lip. “I made a vow…to a dying mother. Fourteen years ago. And it appears I’ve failed.”
My Fire quivered, knowing the damning truth of this tale. During our sail back to Eryva, while naked under covers, she’d told me this last secret.
Meline inhaled, long and bracing. “One of my contracts brought me close to Krisla. As close as I would dare, closer than I’d go if I didn’t need the coin. One of the slums outside of the city.” The rest of the room was quiet as we all listened to her admission. “And there was a Lylithan there. Staying in the room beside me. With her babe. I heard him crying and detected the scent of…a great amount of Lylithan blood.” Meline’s gaze unfocused, as if going to that day in her mind. “No one was helping her. And when I broke the lock on the door, I found she—she’d labored in the room next to me, in a disgusting inn with no help.
“The babe was already in her arms, as if she’d used the last of her strength to pull him from her womb. I knew she would not survive, with the way Death hung in the air around her. But she saw me. Maybe she thought me an apparition but…she begged me to take him.” Meline ground her jaw. “And keep him away from his father. I failed.”
My heart lurched, flaring my Flames brighter and releasing small, white sparks.
She did not need to say it, her meaning already clear to me, but Meline continued, “She died as soon as I vowed to do just that. I knew enough from my time working in Versillia of how to care for babes. At least, long enough to bring us both back to Nethras. Where I’d been living and where I knew just the person I would entrust an orphaned Lylithan newly born.”
“The lad,” Tomás breathed, and Meline nodded.
Tana spoke next, “And his father…” Meline nodded again. Her face tightened in anguish, and I felt the reflection of it in the connection between us. Unconsciously, I moved the vines of black and orange behind her ears, down the center of her spine. Consoling. Comforting.
“That can’t be true,” Tomás barked, voice thick.
I gritted my teeth as Meline stiffened and whirled around. Tears collected on her lash line, her fists balled at her sides. “You think I’d fucking joke about this? That boy was supposed to beprotected. He was safe with Whitley, Francie, and Lydia, and thenyouassured me he would be safe with The Shadows.” Though she hollered at my brother, I felt the barb as if it had been aimed at me.
Because we both had assured Marco’s caregivers that he would be safe as an acolyte. Itshouldhave been true. For as long as The Shadows stood, we belonged to no ruler. No kingdom.Our collaboration with the Lylithan Council had been borne out of interest in the continuation of our kind.
Or so I’d thought. Been raised to believe.
I ran through those days in my memory, when I’d been approached as the third Shadow to accompany my queen, her brother, and their uncle. Noruh was an Elder, likely chosen to go as a gesture of goodwill. When Jones and I were chosen, it appeared random, but…
What if it was not? Jones was not the most popular of our ranks, but he’d been a competent Shadow. He was a native of Krisla, where Vyrkos were seen as less than, who had become an acolyte some years after I had. When the prejudices of his upbringing were further engrained than they might have been for a child of younger years.
Was—was this acquisition a plot that had been brewing long ago? Was I chosen not because of my centuries of expertise but the belief my twin and father’s murders had radicalized me?
Is that what Noruh believed?
“Don’t you dare fucking start questioning our sister, Dragon.”Tom called to me from across the room, but how could I not? What if—we’d trusted her to provide additional care to Marco while we were gone. If she wasn’t part of this, was she in danger? My experience of the King of Krisla was brief, but even that was too much fucking time. He would use us to eradicate any who dared oppose him, under the guise of the betterment of our people. The kinship I’d sworn myself to with blood and soul would be used as an army to terrorize. This, despite all the questions pummeling my thoughts, I knew for certain.
The floor beneath us was still, but I felt as nauseated as I had during the month at sea.
“She would never go along with this. You know what The Shadows means to her. The boyandNoruh are in danger. We have to go. Now,”Tom continued to holler at me in Zonoran.
“Nâ,” I said. Much more firmly than how I felt. I turned to the rest of the room, within the embrace of Fire and Death though Meline and I no longer touched physically. “You cannot go, Tom.”
“Like hell—” his ranting was cut off by more hacking, and Cera shoved him onto his back. Tana sprang into action, holding his shoulders as the High Priestess began winding three tattooed fingers over his mouth.
I would have said more, arguing about what my brother should have known if he wasn’t letting pride and panic rule his better senses. He was in no shape to travel the distance to the Well, and he was in no condition to fight should an altercation arise. No.
But my mouth clamped shut as Tana began chanting, purple light spreading to encompass the upper part of Tom’s torso. Cera echoed Tana’s words, calling to Rhaea, The Mother, and the aether to assist.
Then the High Priestess pulled. At first, she grasped at nothing but air, her three fingers tightening, drawing back, releasing, then repeating the motion. Tom continued to cough, but the sound of it—it changed. From the base of his chest to the middle, then in his throat until the High Priestess indeed pulled something out of his mouth. Black, like my queen’s power, but… tacky. Sludgy with a rancid smell that released like noxious gas into the air. I stared in horror as the healers’ prayers increased in volume, and the trail of sickness ended, suspended aloft with Cera’s purple light surrounding it.
The priestess peered at it a moment, head tilted in fascination as the substance quivered. Until Tom gave a soft moan. Tana watched Cera with wide eyes while still touching and speaking over my brother.
“Fire Bringer, would you please?” I jolted at the title so seldomly directed my way. As a child, it’d been spouted by thosemarveling at or afraid of us. Since becoming the only one, I’d only heard two others call me such, and they were in this room.
I came forward and noticed the weariness behind my eyes. What the High Priestess was requesting was simple, what any adolescent Por’Noga could accomplish, but my arm trembled as I raised it to direct my Flames.
