Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (28 page)

“Your clothes?” His voice ticked up, making his statement a question.

“Yeah. Things
have
changed.” I repeated his words. “I’m not the girl I was when I left you, Dayne. I’m not anywhere close.” My eyes burned into his, clear and strong, showing him how little fear I had for his world. His expression never changed. His arms still draped impatiently over his chest.

It was then that I turned my attention to a burning sconce hanging on a nearby wall, one of four decorative metal torches that lit his room. With a superior gleam lighting my eyes and a wicked half smile, I looked back to be sure I had his full attention. His eyes followed mine to the torch, to me, and back to the torch again.

I took a step away from him, clearing my mind with a deep breath and closing my eyes as the hand nearest the torch rose straight out to my side. The flame instantly sizzled against its metal prison, waiting for my command to set it free. My breath picked up, short and hollow, chest heaving, remembering the delicious feeling of the flames from Anyi’s pyre licking down my throat.

With my palm spread flat, I called to the fire, welcomed it into my hand. With my eyes still closed, I could hear it sizzle and pop along the wall, speaking to me as it grew larger, brighter, hotter. The roaring fire glowed hot over my closed lids and cheeks, telling me it was time.

I opened my eyes, focusing on the fire that raged against the stone wall. Dayne shrunk away from the flame, his arm raised protectively in front of him. The flame was at least ten feet away from where I stood. Never had I tried to move a flame before. I’d only held it without getting burned. But a small voice deep inside told me the fire would do whatever I asked of it at that moment.

Inhaling so deeply my chest seemed to double in size, I sucked the flame toward me. The flames didn’t hesitate for a second, obeying my command immediately.

Leaping from the poor metal torch that was helpless to hold its power, a flaming orange ball sailed through the air and landed squarely in my flattened palm. An involuntary moan escaped my throat when the fire met my flesh. Ecstasy washed through my body in hot lapping waves—calming me, soothing me, strengthening me.

Being sure the fire was far enough away that it wouldn’t hurt him, I turned my gaze triumphantly to Dayne. His jaw was all but hanging on the ground as he witnessed the power I held in my hand.

Suddenly frantic, he backed away from me, stumbling over his desk as he tried to get away.

“No.” I held out my other hand to stop him. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Quickly, I tossed the flame back towards its torch like I was throwing a basketball and followed his retreat. “My magic’s woken up, Dayne. It’s strong...
really
strong.” I looked down at the floor, rubbing my hands together and shaking my head as I realized I had magic strong enough to make Dayne fear me. “Too strong for LisTirna’s magic to affect me, and strong enough to get us both out of here...if you still want to come with me.” My eyes fluttered from the ground, along the length of his deerskin breeches, over his flowing white shirt and up to emerald eyes that were somehow softened by my latest trick.

For what seemed like an endless moment we stared at each other. Neither speaking, his face just as unreadable as it had been in my earlier vision.

Finally he spoke.

“I wish it were that simple, Faye. I wish I was still who you fell in love with.” His hands unfurled from his chest and rose to his hair, dragging them through the rich mahogany waves and down his neck in the way he always did when he was pained by a decision. I knew I didn’t want to hear what was coming next.

“We’ve all got a purpose, Faye. I’ve been fighting mine for an eternity.” He walked to the other side of the desk, leaning on it as he stared out the floor to ceiling window at the waterfall. “Maybe longer,” he added with a confused frown, obviously losing track of time in a life as long as his. “I’m tired of trying to be something I’m not. I’m tired of running from the responsibilities I was born to. My life is not my own. It belongs to the people of LisTirna.” Dayne’s voice was so heavy with duty it no longer sounded like his. He sounded like an old man, harping about the kind of obligations and commitments that consumed a life until there was nothing left.

“But what about…” My whispered plea was cut off.

“Us?” He asked tilting his head toward me with a wistful look that showed me the tiniest glimpse of
my
Dayne.

“Look at you, Faye.” His brow curled down in a bittersweet smile and my heart leapt in my chest at this first sign of tenderness, tears pooling on my lashes. “You’ve gone from a fearful little church mouse to a feisty lioness who charged in here ready to take on the Sidhe singlehandedly.” He rose from the desk, walking back to where I stood, cupping my chin in his hand and pulling my face up to him. “I would’ve only stood in your way, Faye. Trust me when I tell you you’re much better off without me.”

The happy longing that had kept his frown from being gut wrenchingly sad wavered, falling away for a few brief seconds to reveal the true despair behind his goodbye. His jade eyes moistened the tiniest bit, but he quickly blinked the tears back. I wasn’t having such luck. The tears that had pooled on my lashes burst over my cheeks like a raging river, and I sniveled with the effort of keeping my sobs restrained.

Dayne sighed softly against my cheek, planted a whisper of a kiss on my forehead and then quickly turned away. A gaping hole ripped right through my chest the moment his hands left me because I feared they would never touch me again.

“But, Dayne, I need you. He’s coming for me. He knows what I am and he will kill me if he finds me.” I babbled, trying desperately to dam the tears and quiet my sobs.

“Whose coming for you?” He whirled back around, his eyes blazing hot.

“Chassan,” I whispered, almost afraid to say his name out loud.

“Chassan?” Dayne spit his name between clenched teeth, unmistakably enraged by the thought of the angel of death that hunted me. “How did you get mixed up with the likes of
him
?” Dayne asked, his eyes narrowing as he said
him
.

“He’s the one that taught me how to use my powers. It was the only shot I had. I didn’t know…” I stopped and bit my lip, thinking. What didn’t I know? That Chassan was dangerous? No, I’d been warned. That he was an angel of death? No, I knew that, too. That if anyone ever knew of the dangerous magic I wielded they would kill me? Yep, I knew the danger full well when I had sought Chassan out. But it hadn’t stopped me.

“How could you be so stupid, Faye?” Dayne roared and pulled at his face.

“Stupid?” I yelled, enraged by his accusation. “Because I was left all alone in the world with my magic waking up and no one to turn to?” I threw my arms in the air and then punched them in angry fists at my sides. “I had no choice. I risked my life to find such dangerous magic because he was the only option I had.” I gritted my teeth and put my face right in his. “Had you come back for me, I never would have sought him out. Don’t you dare blame me for this!” I screamed back, shaking with rage and leaning into him with a ferocity that matched his own.

Dayne was still as a statue, the only evidence of his rage the endless thrumming of his pulse at his temple and his jaw muscles working overtime to calm him. I stood still too, bringing my hand to my forehead, rubbing at my temples to try to calm the wild thoughts rushing through me like wildfire.

This was not going how I had envisioned our
happy
reunion. When I came to LisTirna, I thought Dayne would either walk out with me and defend me in my world, or beg his mother to let me stay in his world.

But those two options had been blown to smithereens by the stranger Dayne had become. Blindly, I stumbled for a seat against the far wall, needing to sit down since the world had suddenly started spinning.

I fell into a thick fur covered chair, continuing to wearily rub at my head.

“Mother will never let you stay here.” Dayne said from somewhere in the distance, sounding so far way I didn’t even bother to look at him. “But if you revealed what you are to Chassan and he didn’t kill you on the spot that probably means he knows it won’t be an easy fight.” I wasn’t sure if Dayne was thinking out loud or trying to convince me of all this as he babbled.

When I finally raised my head, I slumped forward, propping my elbows on my knees and resting my chin in my hands—feeling utterly defeated.

I hadn’t noticed it when I entered Dayne’s room before, too distracted by seeing him for the first time in too long. There was a second chamber to his room, sectioned off by the large wall covered with the carved Celtic cross. Another room so large it made the one we were in look like a closet. I leaned way over in the chair to peer around the carved stone. There was movement hiding in the shadows, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

Closing my eyes and breathing deeply to refocus, I peered into the darkness with my eyes glowing, dispelling the shadows that lingered.

That’s when I saw her.

They say everyone has a twin.

Dayne must have searched the world high and low to find mine. Staring into eyes that held some sort of semblance to my own, but clouded by the cold, dead spell of LisTirna, my insides turned to vapors and I wanted to vanish on the spot.

Instead, I burst from the chair, launching my body across the room so quickly I was nothing but a blur of arms and legs. As I approached her, she rose from where she sat on the stone floor atop a massive pile of silk pillows.

I instantly hated her, jealousy coursing through my veins hot as lava ready to erupt.

Had it been last summer, I would’ve sworn I was looking into a mirror. Her hair curled in profuse honeyed waves to her waist, tied out of the way with thick blue ribbons. She wore a loose, gauzy gown of blindingly white fabric and the same trancelike smile Christine had worn in this world. Circling her wrists were two milky, stone bracelets, so tight they cut into her skin.

She started towards me, smiling, as if she were welcoming me into whatever this new room was. Glowing torches covered the walls and they flamed against their confines the moment my anger ignited low and hot in my belly. Again, my breath came fast and hard, like I had just run a marathon, gasping for air that did little to calm my growing rage.

“Faye!” Dayne rushed into the room, hot on my heels. “It’s not what you think.” He threw himself between us, protecting the interloper from the danger of my wrath. It only made me hate them both. Her for being there. Him for acting as if she belonged and I was the one who didn’t.

I stalked away to keep from tearing the flesh from his face in an uncontrolled fit of rage, hands balled into fists, eyes so narrowed I could barely see.

“Oh, I don’ t think...I
know
exactly what she is,” I spit the words from my mouth with so much hate-filled vehemence he shrunk away from me, his eyes darting wildly to the flaming sconces roaring against the wall.

“Faye, I’m not…” he raised his hands defensively in front of him as he spoke. My twin looked from me to him and back again with a mildly concerned look on her unsettlingly familiar face.

“Save your lies for someone else!” I raised my own hand to silence him, cutting off whatever lame excuse he was about to try to sell me with his tricky half-truths. “I’ll tell you what you are. You’re no different from the rest of them. Your overbearing mother. Your bored father. Your vengeful sister. You’re just like all of them.” I walked towards him now, but my rage was so dangerously close to bursting loose he back pedaled away from me. “I’m just sorry I didn’t see through you a long time ago, because I never would have given a guy like you the chance to break my heart!” I screamed, hoping my tears would stay behind my eyes long enough for me to get out of there—away from him and whoever my evil twin was.

Before I knew what I was doing my feet were moving, arms flailing at my sides as I ran from his room. Back down the spiraling staircase, through the entryway, past a bench where more robot-human servants sat waiting for an order. Over the rough cobble-stoned courtyard and through the giant yawning mouth of the castle’s gate.

I didn’t stop, though I didn’t really know where I was going. Dayne was behind me, running to try to catch me. His pleas fell on deaf ears, but I sensed the vibrations of his body moving behind mine, his breath coming fast as he pursued me into the woods. I was too fast for him, and before long he was well out of range for me to sense him. Left in the shadows as I ran faster than he could ever possibly keep up with.

Stopping in the middle of a clearing to get my bearings once I was certain he couldn’t catch me, I interlaced my fingers and rested them behind my head, looking all around as I thought.

I stood in a large clearing, a low point in the forest completely enchanted with LisTirna’s magic. The incessantly plucked string music was replaced with bird chatter and a rainbowed swarm of butterflies filled the air, making it appear like the dream I remembered instead of the nightmare I was living.

Woods surrounded the valley on three sides. The forth side was nothing but purply-pink air; a rocky cliff dropping straight down into some new, unknown depth of the Sidhe’s strange world.

Blue green grass swayed in the breeze, tickling my thighs, swishing as I took a few steps, desperately searching for anything that would show me the way out. From the vast chasm of nothing in front of me to the furthest distant horizon, I saw nothing that I remembered from my brief time in LisTirna months before. Everything was so strange, unsettlingly unfamiliar, and the reality of how alone I was crashed over me in frigid waves.

Every heartbroken piece of me wanted to turn around, wanted to run back to him, but that was no longer an option. He didn’t want to fight for me, and what was maybe worse—he didn’t want me to fight for him, either.

Maybe he was right. Maybe we didn’t belong together in the end and my vision was nothing but a fleeting wish of what I wanted our lives to be. Maybe I was just as alone in his world as I was in my own, wherever that might be—if it existed at all.

I didn’t have time to think about it. All I wanted was out of this damned ethereal dream world. Away from the guy I loved, and quite possibly straight toward the one who wanted me dead. But that dangerous reality was merely a fleeting thought. I had to find my way out. I had to escape while the Sidhe were still away. As much as I hated to admit it, Dayne was such a stranger to me now I wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t hand me over to his mother himself.

“Faye…” My name carried on the wind again, soft as a sigh, but ticking up in the middle in an eerie way. I released a cold breath that turned to a cloud before me.

“Faye…” Again my name reached my ears in a voice I knew to fear.

The vibrations of their movement rumbled under my feet before I saw them. A familiar sensation took hold of my senses, rippling down the length of me like an angry dog’s hair standing on end. My muscles swelled against skin that suddenly felt too human to hold them. The tingling sensation of my magic radiated up my spine, and when I exhaled, smoke curled from my throat.

Each footfall they made radiated through my body, tingling from my toes, along the back of my legs, up my spine and breaking cold over my scalp. From the echoing sound of their whispered approach, I could tell there were a lot of them. How many, I wasn’t sure.

My eyes burned with the molten intensity of red-flecked fire, and the tiniest tree on the furthest horizon in my line of vision came into focus with microscopic detail.

I spun around to face them with all the unconfined rage of a charging bull, muscles tensed to the point of pain, stance spread wide, and an evil smirk on my face that all but begged them to try me.

“Faye.”

Garyn led the mob’s approach, huge and menacing like a black storm cloud ready to unleash a tornado. His lips opened and moved with the sound of my name. The realization of who had called me into LisTirna crashed against my brain. Behind him, Daoine and Finvanna rose proud and erect from the waves of swaying grass, her face tinted with a smirk every bit as evil as my own. They sat astride dazzling white horses, as strong and magical as LeSheen had once been.

An army of Sidhe swelled behind them, all with death in their stoney eyes, and staring with ravenous hunger at me. An iridescent army of gauzy, white moths ghosted silently through hip-high grass. Some were mounted on horses, flags flying in the breeze. Others strode forward with the confident gate of foot soldiers trained for hand to hand combat.

I swallowed a guttural scream of pure terror that welled up inside me, refusing to let my fear take over. Instead, I took a step forward, tossing my hair behind my shoulders and punching my chin into the air. I hadn’t come here for a fight, but looking at them, I realized I wasn’t leaving without one. They wanted me, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what they would do to me if they got me. I couldn’t let that happen.

If they wanted a fight, they would get a fight. At that moment, I had enough anger in me to decimate a hundred Sidhe armies. It was only a matter of how much Daoine was willing to lose.

I tucked a finger into my back pocket reaching for the coal I had tucked there, needing to feel its reassuring fire. My chest hollowed into an empty chasm when my fingertips brushed against a hard surface that was cold as ice, no longer bearing the fire that woke my magic. Yet, I kept my face composed in contempt, refusing to show any weakness in the face of such great danger.

Daoine rode forward, her long flowing robes falling away from the boney fingers she steepled at her chest. Deep in thought as she approached, her placid brow was cool as an arctic pool. Her white horse tossed its head excitedly, as if responding to its master’s mood. Garyn placed a hand on the horse’s neck to stop it and offered his queen his other hand. Daoine slid easily from its back, arranging her robes in neat order before turning to me.

“I had a feeling we would meet again. Come for my son?” Her voice dripped with the conceited lilt of victory, the tone gnawing at my stomach like a flea infested rat.

I refused to answer her question, refused to give her the satisfaction my failure obviously would. Instead, I punched my chin defiantly in the air and narrowed my eyes like a king cobra readying to strike.

“Well...where is he?” Daoine made a grand production of looking all around, peering through the grass and shielding her eyes to stare off to the far horizon as if she were searching high and low for him.

“You know exactly where he is!” I spit the words at her, and she immediately straightened, stopping her imaginary search. “You’ve managed to brainwash him into accepting a world we both know he hates!” I screamed, because the burn in my throat gave a physical outlet for the emotional torment raging in my depths. Something about that felt really good, and I was able to breathe deeper after freeing some of my rage.

Daoine caught a small laugh in her boney fingers as she continued toward me, her body swaying as elegantly as the slender blades of grass as she moved.

“You know, Faye, you’ve made this too easy for me.” She tilted her head, eyes roving over every inch of me. As she passed Garyn’s taught body she rested a reassuring hand on his cement block of a shoulder, calling off her attack dog. His body loosened the moment her fingers made contact as if she had broken some spell. “I was sort of looking forward to the challenge of destroying a fire goddess. But you’ve walked right into my hands,” she continued, stopping when she was only a few feet from me.

I was so distracted with the change in Garyn’s demeanor—from bristling hound to playful pup at her heels—that I almost missed what she said.

But at the mention of fire, my mind snapped to attention. I gasped inwardly, watching her face curl up in satisfaction as she sensed the fear I was forcing to stay inside me. Daoine was the deadliest kind of hunter. One who could smell fear on the wind as a shark can smell blood in the water.

“How do you know about that?” I gritted my teeth and narrowed my eyes, feeling the hot, molten flames claim my eyes.

Daoine tapped a boney finger to her temple, playfully smiling at me and shaking her head as if it were obvious.

“We share the gift of visions, Faye, remember? I’ve seen what your powers will do to the world, and I can’t sit by and let that happen. Chassan may have failed to destroy you, but I will not.” Daoine pushed her long, flowing red hair over the folds of her robe, sending the strands of lava washing over her shoulders and back.

I laughed out loud, right in her face, not even caring that she had an entire army at her back and I had no one. With my earlier fear suddenly feeling a million miles away, I braved a step in her direction.

“You honestly think your diluted power is in any way capable of destroying me?” Now it was my turn to laugh and I didn’t bother to hide my devious smile behind my hand as she had.

“You may have unrivaled powers beyond these walls, but you’re in my world now. And in LisTirna, my powers rule.” Daoine matched my step, coming to rest inches from me, our faces so close I could hear the sound of her teeth grinding in frustration as she stared at me with utter contempt.

“Yeah, right!” I scoffed, placing my hands on my hips and delighting in the way my brazen behavior made her temper flare. “Your powers didn’t even
rule
enough to change my clothes into those stupid, costume ball get-ups you wear! Do you really think it’s strong enough to kill me?”

Daoine’s brow creased as she studied my clothes for the first time. Carefully looking at the blue jeans and striped top I still wore, my scuffed brown boots marring her beautiful grass. But her doubt was only momentary.

“In LisTirna, my will is the law!” Daoine raised her voice for the first time ever, strong and clear, not wavering a bit. Only from the shallowness of her gaze, I could tell a crack was forming in her steely confidence.

“Your will may rule LisTirna, but it does not rule me. Not anymore. So, tell me. Who’s going to stop me from burning this realm to ashes before your eyes?” Something deep in my chest began to ache like I had a hole ripped right through me, and I brought my palm up to soothe the burn.