Page 48 of A Song of Air
Ghost of the Past
Iona had learned notto jump to conclusions when it came to the Elementals. As far as she knew it, they all came from different parts of life, had lived different things, and suffered different hardships. But if there was an intrinsic truth about the Elementals, it was that they were fucking fierce.
Bryson Varik was no exception.
Their magic had collided like an explosion of sensation and feelings and scents. Iona could feel her immediately just like she could feel the other Elementals. Bryson permeated her senses entirely. Together they only grew stronger, and even her own magic burst beneath her skin like it wanted to come forth and clash against the others’ to create something beautiful or deadly, she wasn’t sure.
She wasn’t sure yet how this new Elemental would fit into their fold or if she even wanted to be a part of them. Bryson’s group of friends didn’t give Iona confidence. In fact, they seemed dead-set on hating the Resistance. Their glares and anger felt personal, though Iona couldn’t be sure what it was the Resistance had done to them to warrant it.
She immediately mistrusted them, particularly Arlo Blackwood. The man was half-Fae, with cutting bright eyes and long hair that he wore in a tight ponytail behind his head. He was tall with wide wrists and hands that he kept crossed against his chest. There was something that seemed sacrilegious in his movements, and she was sure if she asked Shula, the fire dancer would say that the moves he made and the things he said mimicked the Priests of the Brotherhood.
Even so, they followed the group into their camp. Everyone stared to the point of making her uncomfortable. Her fingers itched to reach for her blade, but one look from Valerio stayed her hand.
The camp seemed to harbor an abundance of different types of creatures. Iona’s eyes darted over every single one of them. There were human and Fae alike; there were half-Fae with a clashing mix of human and Seelie, and even Unseelie creatures skittering across the ground. From goblins to brownies to other things with brightly colored skin, wings, horns, and strange features.
Magic fizzled through the air, creating a dust of colors that drifted from the sky like recently fallen snow. There was something ethereal about this tiny corner on their part of the map. A dozen scents assaulted her at once. She pushed her way through their group to get a closer look.
And Bryson called out to someone, waving her hand over her head. “Malika!”
The name gave Iona pause.
It made her heart beat faster and climb its way up her throat. Her entire body tensed. She felt like it had been forever since she last heard that name or even spoken it herself. Her fingers began cramping, and it was then that she realized they were tapping a familiar pattern against the side of her thigh. Her mind and body drifted, and it seemed like the camp began to disappear before her eyes, taking her back to a sunny day. To a beach. To smog pushing away the blue skies and shrouding it in darkness.
Claw marks against the sand. Blood and bodies. Her name being called over and over, desperate for help. The humans dragging her sister away, and Iona slowly descending into darkness with a single name on her lips.
“Malika.”
She snapped out of her memory and back into the present. For a second it felt like the past and future had collided and that she was staring at a memory, at a ghost from her past given corporeal form.
The face was like she remembered, though thinner. Gone were her long dark braids and the smooth curve of innocence around her features. Her dark eyes looked haunted in a way that felt like a mirror to Iona’s own pain. Gone was the sweet, innocent Fae that used to pray to Mana by their bedside late at night, until Iona would toss a pillow and demand that she be quiet. In its place was a roughness. In its place were scars.
And in its place was someone different.
And yet Iona would recognize her anywhere.
“Malika.”
She stepped forward and her voice came out in a strangled cry. She drew her sister’s attention towards her, and it was like the heavens parted and shone down a single ray of light upon them both.
The moment their gazes collided was the moment everything shifted.
They fell to their knees in tandem only a few feet apart from each other. Emotion swelled up inside Iona and the words that had glared on a page that she found within an iron camp months ago echoed through her mind.
Malika Wylde.
Sentenced to death.
She’d mourned her sister in the tradition of their people. She’d taken a dagger to her hair—hair was sacred in their court—and shorn it down to her scalp as a sign of respect and sadness. She thought she’d never see her again and yet there she was. Alive. Whole. Scarred.
Alive.
