A Kiss of Ashen Twilight (Ashen Twilight Series #1) (25 page)

“Lady Ariya.” Cidra’s voice invaded her mind just as she laid eyes on the tall woman across the way. Her voice captured the attention of the Aziza standing behind her amidst the armed female Amazon guards holding their spears high. Right away they all fell to their knees with a sea of murmurs and bowed their heads down to her.

Ariya remained frozen as she looked upon them. Cidra raced over to her with her sphere gripped at her side. “The plan. It worked! What happened in the other realm? Did the hunters see you? Oh, by the servants of Mawu-Lisa, I’m so glad you made it out safely.”

Ariya couldn’t muster the strength to move as she felt Cidra pull her close in a tight hug. Her gaze still remained on the bowing crowd before her.

“Cidra, what is this?”

The tall warrior woman followed Ariya’s gaze.

“Don’t you understand, Ariya? You passed the test. You lived to evade and fight this elemental being. Your mother and father were right about your birthright. You—are the rightful Queen of the Aziza.” Cidra swallowed deeply. Her eyes grew watery. “They would have been so proud and relieved to see you.”

Ariya nearly lost her breath as her gaze fell over the people of her town. Her people. There were many more cities out there; some much bigger than this one she had lived in her whole life. And they would all look up to her as their Queen. Her heart swelled with thoughts of her parents.

A woman stepped forward cradling a small newborn baby in her arms. She smiled widely, offering the girl to Ariya. “My Queen,” she bowed gracefully, “this child was borne to me days after the death of your mother. A baby girl.”

“And this baby boy was borne to me,” another woman stepped forward, holding her baby toward Ariya.

Ariya knew the customs of their people and what the gestures meant within the Aziza culture. Her father and mother didn’t make it but their spirits had returned and were reborn in the children before her.

Feeling her knees weakened, she reached out to hold onto Cidra at her side.

Cidra reached out to catch her before she fell. “Be careful, m’lady.”

Her dark heart-shaped face drained as she slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Ariya felt the tears welling up in her throat. She couldn’t break now. Not after all she had been through. Not when the very direction of her people was within her hands. Instead, she leaned over and placed a soft kiss on each of the baby’s foreheads. Gently they cooed and smiled as if recognizing her with their small, dark eyes. Ariya allowed Cidra to help her toward the broken palace.

“We left it for you,” Cidra said, her eyes on the crushed structure. “We didn’t want to move anything until we were sure you were coming back. The other structures have already been rebuilt months ago.”

“Months ago,” Ariya repeated as if in a trance. In the mortal realm, days had passed since she showed up near that alleyway. In the Aziza Fairy realm, months had zoomed by as it does. She would stay here and rebuild from across the Aziza lands.

“Cidra, I’d like to rebuild our home to stand in my family’s honor.”

“Shall I seek assistance for the task?”

She turned toward the crumbled entrance and began toward it. “Please do. And send word to the other provinces that I will personally see to the reconstruction of any other lands that were destroyed in the elemental’s path.”

“Right away, m’lady.” Cidra rushed off behind her as Ariya stopped near the front of the large debris in the midst of her people. Slowly she raised her hand, gesturing for them to stand.

In one swift movement the shuffle broke into the calm air as the crowd stood before her. Ariya looked at each of them, their proud mahogany faces reached across generations, young and old. People she had known since she was young and those she had watched as they were welcomed to the world by elders all looked to her for guidance now. A sense of pride and honor coursed through her body and she couldn’t help shedding a tear.

“All of you helped my mother and father when they were alive,” she said, extending her voice across the land. “When we were in danger, you were there to protect me from the vicious elemental creature. For that, I am forever in debt to you.”

Slowly she bowed her head and descended to her knees. Murmurs fell throughout the air followed by a sea of claps and cheers with her name on their lips. Immediately they surrounded her with hugs, warmth and promises to help rebuild the broken palace.

Once they broke to their respective duties, Ariya lifted her hand and opened her palm toward the heap of debris. Slowly she lifted the pile of broken shards from the ground. Just as she hoped, a large chasm stood a few feet away from her with stairs that lead down into the elegant library. Shards of glass and stone decorated the bottom floor and steps as she started downward. A rain of the debris descended upward around her to clear the way for her entrance. She walked down the spiral staircase and looked around the wide open space. Books still aligned the walls untouched in the past few months. One particular book stood out to her on the table at the opposite end of the room. Aged brown leather with a gold braided emblem drew her near. As she walked closer toward it, she remembered this was the same book her mother was reading one evening. Ariya scooped the thick leather bound text in her hands and ran her hands over the gold paper lined edges then turned it around in her hand. Out of her peripheral vision she saw a paper that had fallen onto the ground. It was textured in her hand, soft like rice paper. Setting the book down, she opened the paper and right away she recognized the small image of her family tree rendered in ink. She was at the bottom, the last remaining branch and the only one circled. Next to her name was a sentence; the last Aziza with the gift of magic.

Her body shuddered as she read the sentence over and over again in her mind.
The gift of magic.
She heard stories of how their ancestors used magic along the grounds to call upon the elements to move and do their bidding. Never had there been an elemental moving with its own will like the one she fought. Like her parents, she could already fly and held the gift of second sight. The mortals called the Aziza to assist with their hunts to calm their prey toward the afterlife. Also for the Aziza’s gift of practical and spiritual knowledge.
Everything happens for a reason,
her father had once said. What if this elemental had come for a reason?

Shya, Rhea and herself had played with this magic at times thinking it was a fluke of nature, but now all her parent’s teachings had come together. They brought her up to hone her craft and now was the perfect time to start working it. Still, there was something different about her. Although her parents never said it outright they hinted toward it and she could feel there was always something more to her powers than her sisters. Maybe they knew she would be the last Aziza with this gift. Perhaps they knew more than they ever told her.

Remembering the book she left on the table, Ariya picked it up. Right away she decoded the symbols in her mind from the ancient Aziza language she had been taught growing up.
The Book of Elder.
She flipped to the section where a red marker ribbon was folded down the page. “
Elementals of Nature
” read the title of the section. A relief of wind, fire, water and Earth was illustrated over the opening heading that described what an elemental was.

Ariya’s heart pounded in her chest as her eyes rapidly brushed across the page. Someone had indeed summoned the elemental which could integrate itself into anything it was ordered. Most important of all, it had the ability to absorb the energy, lifeforce and powers of those it consumed.

She looked up, keeping her place in the text where she left off reading. If this was true, who summoned the elemental? Who wanted her family and friends killed just to absorb their power?

* * * *

“It was like a ginormous rush of wind. Like a freakin’ tornado shot through town but it wasn’t even up and down, you know
what I’m sayin’? Like side to side and wavy. This thing had a mind of its own.”

“Would you call it a UFO, sir?”

“Nah, it was a wind, man.”

“And there you have it. Breaking news tonight of a violent windstorm—”

“No man! I said ‘wind’! Like whoosh Dorothy, Wizard of Oz. Crap like that.”

“Breaking news tonight of a wind last seen over the skies of
Phoenix
tonight near Tatum and the 101 Freeway according to residents in the area. No sign on satellite or local radars to confirm. We’ll keep a close eye on this news story for you. Back to you Reg.”

“And speaking of winds, clear skies tonight in the Valley—”

Jace flipped off the television, silencing the room except for Rich’s snorting. “What?”

Rich pushed off the conference table, unfolding his arms as he walked over to the large plasma flat screen television embedded in the wall. “A wind.”

“Well, if that’s all they can say about it, then I’m glad. Thankfully no one caught it on camera or else we’d have a lot more tracks to cover.”

Rich waved his hand. “Aw come on Jace, you and I both know cameras do nothing. So called paranormal phenomena has always been caught on tape from UFOs, to Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.”

“Hey don’t even joke about Loch Ness, man. That thing used to freak me out as a kid.”

“Oh, I forgot laddie,” Rich said in a perfectly flawless Scottish accent. “Ye were taint’d by the
Loch
as a wee bairn.”

“And I’ll never forget how that head popped out of the water and looked right at me.” Jace shuddered and shook his head.

“Yeah, right. Well, I stand by my point. Mortals have been claiming phenomena for ages. As long as the media and keeps everyone thinking these types are psychos then I’m a happy Lycan. Complete with disproving their blurred alleged pictorial evidences, of course.”

Jace crossed the room to light the fireplace. “An ignorant world is a happy world, I guess. I’m just glad to see that infection has died. They’re trying to say some bogus cure helped rid them of it. From what Julian noticed, it died with the elemental.”

“Don’t tell any of the mortal docs or the companies that or else their magic pills’ll stop selling like crazy. Hopefully the side effects are limited.”

Jace chuckled. “Any other word on the situation?” He flicked the knob on the side mantle and watched the fire roar to life.

Rich shook his head. “Just the usual. Uncle Michael noticed the news media is trying to keep it all quiet and make like the mortals got away and beat an almost incurable disease.”

“Just as well. Better than they know the truth anyway.”

Rich shook his head toward the piles of logs. “Man, I miss the forest.”

“You know vampires are actually getting popular again.”

Rich rolled his eyes and went back to the conference hall. “Ah, here we go again.”

“What?”

“The elegant angst of the immortal Nightwalkers and how they mix the pleasure of blood, death and sex.
Please
. Answering the call of the wild and being in touch with the beast within, now that’s what is always overlooked.”

Jace chuckled. “Well, you have to admit it’s better than being chased across the forest, tortured, castrated and ripped apart, I’ll tell you that.”

“Don’t remind me,” Rich said, shaking his head. He looked up at Jace who was leaning over the table in deep thought. He couldn’t help smiling. “You miss her, don’t you?”

Jace’s gaze shot up at Rich. “I’m sorry I must have missed the correlation between torture and—the Fairy.”

“Ah, the emotions and the feeling of missing someone is a torture within itself, my friend. ‘Fess up. I can tell for the past few days you’ve been trying harder than usual to go gung ho at your lifestyle.”

Jace stood up and stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. “I think about her, yes, but that was in the past.”