Wings of Lomay (25 page)

The barrier Lomay had blackened was once again transparent. Kiora’s breath hitched in her throat for a second, expecting to see a horrible, bloated creature float by, but there were none.

The lake shimmered with sunlight that filtered through the water. It had always been a beautiful sight, but now, with Lomay’s additional barrier, the view was overlaid with a golden mesh, intensifying the colors and adding the beauty of magic.

“When did the barrier change back?” Kiora asked.

“Alcander restored it before they left for Tave—” Malena was interrupted as the water above them lit up. A ball of flame and magic streaked down, slamming into the barrier with a
bang
that shook the walls and chandelier.

Kiora flinched, stepping back. But the crowd seemed unfazed.

“The attacks started after you left,” Malena said. “So far, they seem to have had no impact on the barrier.”

Kiora remembered now. In her vision, Enzo told Jasmine that they had started attacking the city with Dragon fire wrapped in magic. She had been confused as to why Jasmine hadn’t told him how useless that would be. She understood now. Jasmine didn’t care, as long as they all destroyed each other in the end.

“Kiora!” A Winged man pushed through the rebels in the city’s center, heading for the stairs. His face was vaguely familiar and she knew she had felt his thread before, but she didn’t recognize him.

Kiora glanced back over at Malena, who looked at him lovingly, a faint smile playing across her lips.

The man reached them. He swooped Kiora up and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her so tight that she had trouble breathing. Her arms were pinned at her sides and her feet dangled a few inches above the ground.

Alcander and Emane came up behind them. “Niall,” Alcander said dryly. “She can’t breathe.”

Niall set her down, his massive hands resting on her shoulders. He looked down at her with tears in his eyes.

“Niall?” Kiora said, exhaling.

He looked so different from the first time she had met him at the rebel camp on Lake Everleen. Then he had been filthy, downtrodden. Now he wore a crisp white shirt with slits in the back for his wings. His wings! They were no longer dull and dingy, but a brilliant white. And his hair that had once hung in long and tangled strands was now trimmed shorter than Emane’s.

“You look so different,” she marveled.

“I had been told I was crazy for so long,” he said, squeezing her shoulders. “You made me believe in myself again.”

Kiora put her hands over his. “If it weren’t for you telling me how you escaped the Shadow, we would all be dead.”

Niall looked so pleased that she thought the buttons were going to pop right off his shirtfront. Then, as if he couldn’t resist the urge for a moment longer, he picked her up again and squeezed until she felt her eyes bulge.

Malena fluttered closer, encouraged by Kiora’s mild look of panic. “Niall, I believe they are waiting for you.”

Niall neatly set her down, smoothing Kiora’s shirt around her shoulders. Kiora bit back a giggle.

He glanced toward one of the training room doors, where Einar stood staring at him—clearly irritated. Niall sheepishly shoved his hands in his pockets with a boyish grin. Kiora half expected him to shuffle away with his head bowed, as he had the first time she had seen him. Instead, he spread his wings—one of the largest and most magnificent set she had seen—and flew away with his feet just inches above the ground. He had found his wings again, and it was a beautiful sight.

***

KIORA TRUDGED UP TO her room, grateful for a comfortable bed in a place where she didn’t need to worry, for just a moment, about keeping everyone alive. She lay down, barely able to keep her eyes open long enough to pull her blanket up. The nightmares returned immediately.

She watched Alcander leaning against the wall in the tunnel—blood spread across his middle and his thread silenced. She stood by helplessly as Jasmine and her followers destroyed every rebel, laughing in delight at their pain.

These two scenes played over and over
.

When the nightmares finally moved on, they replayed reality, showing her all the losses that had already happened.
She witnessed the woman and children drowning again, her heart aching as she felt every thread vanish. She stood there, unable to stop Lomay from giving her his magic. It was helplessness that plagued her tonight. Then she was in the center of the city, standing in front of the Winged man who had been so angry upon learning his wife had been lost. She did nothing as the barrier overhead changed to red and swallowed him up.

Kiora sat up, gasping for air. She was covered in sweat, her hair matted to the side of her face. She huffed and dropped her head into her hands. No matter the level of exhaustion, there was never a reprieve from the nightmares, never an opportunity to wake with a smile.

She thought about lying back down, but was unwilling to risk it. She climbed out of bed and headed to the library to work on the problem at hand—getting them out of this city alive. Walking down the hall on the main floor, she could feel Emane’s thread outside the front door. She opened it and poked her head out. Emane was sitting on one of the front steps, leaning back on his palms and looking up.

“Why are you awake?” Kiora asked.

Emane glanced back at her and smiled. “Come here,” he said, patting the step next to him. “You have got to see this. Did the noise wake you?”

“What noise?” Kiora sat.

Two balls of flame impacted the barrier over the city with a
boom.
Kiora jumped. The balls of fire and magic rippled across the barrier and bathed the city in an orange-red glow. The colors undulated through the water like oil across the surface—it was stunning. Here and there, breaks in the fire opened up to the contrasting blue behind it.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

“It really is.”

Four more fireballs connected, rocking the city so severely that Kiora and Emane were knocked into each other.

“It’s like they actually think they are going to be able to get through,” Emane said with a shake of his head as he righted himself.

“They do.” Kiora looked at the intensified colors above them. “Jasmine didn’t tell them it wouldn’t work.” She stilled.

“What?”

“They think it’s going to work,” she said. “That’s it!” She grabbed him by the shoulders, nearly shaking him with excitement. “We are going to make them think it worked.”

Emane’s eyes searched her face. “Why?”

“To get them into the city.”

“To get them in the . . . Kiora!” he shouted after her as she sprinted up the steps and toward the library. “Kiora, stop!”

Making herself slow to a walk, she waited for Emane to catch up.

“
Why
are we letting them in?” he asked with forced calm.

“Because once the enemy is in here, the barrier will do the work for us. We could wipe out the whole army in a matter of moments.”

“Remove the barrier? How are you going to do that?”

“I’m not sure yet. When we were at Lomay’s, I was reading in the Book of Creators. On the last page, a paragraph starts that says, ‘to remove a barrier.’ The rest of the paragraph was on the page Belen tore out.” She glanced over at him. “I couldn’t figure out why someone would want to remove a barrier, but now I know!” She pushed open the doors to the library.

“Kiora, if we take down the barriers, we will be completely vulnerable,” Emane said. “There has to be another way.”

“I . . . I don’t know,” she said as she started pulling books from shelves and spreading them out on the table. “But this might work, and until we think of something else, I’m going to pursue it.”

“And then what?” Emane demanded. “After we leave the only safe place we know, where will we go?”

Kiora paused and looked up from her books. “I don’t know yet, Emane. I need some time, and I need to do some research. But I have to minimize the risks. I can’t keep watching people die.”

“Kiora,” Emane said gently. He put his hand over hers and looked into her eyes. The emotion behind his gaze was intense, and Kiora couldn’t look away. “It’s a war. People are going to die.”

Kiora wanted to shout at him,
No! People are not going to die. I won’t let them.
But it had proven to be out of her control. She pulled her hand from his and dropped into a chair, sighing. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do everything in my power to save as many as I can.”

***

FOR TWO DAYS, KIORA barely left the library. Her head was throbbing from lack of sleep and her eyes felt like she had rolled them in sand. She pulled over another book from the pile that covered the table. She had taken out every book on spell work she could find, hoping to find the one she needed. There were many variations on barriers, but not one book mentioned how to remove them once they had been placed.

Slamming one shut, she growled, “If Belen hadn’t decided to tear out the . . .” She trailed off, jolting up straight, her heart racing.

She had seen that page, hadn’t she—during a vision. Belen had been working on the talisman and Jasmine opened the book. Nervous excitement rolled through her. If she had seen it once, she could see it again. She leaned back in her chair, taking deep breaths, clearing her mind of everything except what she wanted to see.

Kiora stood in Belen’s shop. He was bent over the talisman, the Book of Creators on the back of the table, closed—just as it had been the first time. The door opened and Jasmine stepped in, pushing back the hood on her red silk cloak.

“Hello, Belen. Are you finished yet?”

“Almost, my lady. The magic is not yet finished.”

The vision continued to play out, just as it had the first time. Jasmine grabbed the talisman, then pulled the Book of Creators forward, flipping it open to the last page.

Kiora moved up and leaned over Jasmine’s shoulder. To her surprise, the page was darkened—she could see nothing but black. Confused, she looked at Jasmine’s eyes, which were moving back and forth across the page, reading words Kiora couldn’t see.

Kiora looked back to the page, using magic in an attempt to see what lay beneath the black. Although it lightened, allowing her to see letters, they swam across the page, and no amount of magic would make them settle into their proper positions. She couldn’t make out anything.

Kiora pulled herself out of the vision, scowling. Someone had laid spell work to conceal the page. Determined, she called the vision again and again, and each attempt ended the same way—a jumbled mess of letters rolling around the page.

She needed more power and could think of only one way to get it. The problem was, despite the Dragon Queen’s implications that she should be able to, Kiora still had no idea how to tap into nature.

She narrowed her eyes in determination and slammed both hands on the table, pushing herself up. She stalked around the table and lay on the floor. “Please,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I can’t see another way. I need this spell.”

She breathed in and out, focusing first on the sound of her breathing, letting everything else fall away. Cautiously she probed, searching for the magic she knew surrounded them, trying to feel it—become aware of it.

And in a moment, where there had been nothing, she felt a power oscillating around her. It felt hot, and strangely foreign. She hadn’t expected that. Her nerves threatened to rear up, and she returned to calming breaths. The power she was feeling surrounded her and she called the vision, giving into it in a way she hadn’t since Meros, in the cave of Arian. The room faded away and she was swallowed by the vision. She remembered now how much she hated the feeling of being lost in a vision. She ached for control.

Back in Belen’s workshop, she continued to feel the magic around her. She willed it to her, mentally pleading for its assistance. The magic leaped toward her, jolting through her like a red-hot poker.

Kiora jerked away from the pain, crying out. The magic stopped, retreated, and began to fade. She clenched her fists, trying to keep the pain and her frustration from interfering. Taking a deep breath, she shook her hands to relax them and closed her eyes. The jolt came faster this time and she didn’t pull away. The first tendril of magic entered near her heart, burning and stretching.

Once the magic was inside, Kiora could feel everything. Copious amounts of magic she had no idea were there surrounded her, opening up a world of power she never knew existed. The magic continued to jab at her—her stomach, knees, arms. And each time it entered, it felt like it was prying her apart, widening veins and stretching skin.

In the vision, Kiora made her way across Belen’s workshop, struggling not to scream. The magic painfully and slowly began a steady loop through her body, flowing up through her head and down to her toes. It both entered and exited through her heart, joining her with nature. The pain increased as more magic pushed in, widening the pathways further. She thought her skin would split.

She looked again over Jasmine’s shoulder, and using the magic provided, forced her way through Belen’s spell. The words on the page stopped swimming and settled into their proper positions. But using nature’s magic increased the speed of the loop flowing through her body. The pressure in her head was almost unbearable, and starbursts bloomed behind her eyes. Kiora read as fast as she could, memorizing the strange words to the incantation.

“Kiora.”

Alcander’s thoughts intruded on her vision and she jerked. The nature magic faded.

Kiora groaned and opened her eyes.

Alcander was leaning over her, his eyes wide and worried. “Kiora, are you all right?”

She pushed up. It felt like she had been fighting with a Dragon—and lost. Whatever change she had been through had clearly not prepared her body for the power the Dragon Queen was referring to. She felt something dripping down her face and rubbed her wrist under her nose. It came away smeared with blood. She frowned. “What are you doing?”