The Onyx Vial (Shadows of The Nine Book 1) (42 page)

Chapter 41

The
bright red light of the portal book flashed behind him and the sound of the night rushed in, cutting off the creature's strange noise. Killian surveyed the still-frozen scene. Based on the Mustang's shift of the sound, he had only moments before the men—including his father—would recover their senses. The Mustang stood below him. He couldn't sense it the way he had in Hunter's consciousness, but he had to hope the beast understood he and its master were connected.

He quickly led Fenix toward the ground, thankful he'd been given immunity to the creature's cry. And that it had snuffed out his father's attack on him.

But he wasn't out of danger yet.

The men knew the plan. When the Strattons retreated with Hunter, they were to do the same, gathering at their specified checkpoints to await extraction. But with the halting of time, he couldn't be certain they'd understand a retreat had occurred.

He looked at his father, unmoving on the ground. Killian squeezed his mother's pendant, then lit the ground on fire. The flames lapped at his father's body like the tongue of a loyal dog. Killian drew his etâme away from the flames and into the air. He felt for the particles and pulled apart the oxygen in a bell shape around his father, trapping the flames, forcing them to eat their way inward. Ironic, Killian thought, as he turned back to the horses, that his father would wake to his own element—and his own son—having turned on him.

The men were waking in a wave spreading from the island outward. Shouts rang out in the night. As he leapt onto Fenix's back and threw a rope of air around the Mustang's neck, Killian called the retreat. One Shadow would hear it at least, and the word would spread. The moment he heard the call echoed in the voices of his men, he spurred the horses toward the back of the courtyard.

They crested the newly formed bridge as another bright red flash signaled the Strattons' return. Not wishing to waste time, but not wanting to give any Huntsmen an easy route to follow him, he held back from blazing a tunnel through the hedges to reach the checkpoint. He threw a ramp of solidified air in front of the Mustang as he and Fenix took to the sky. The Mustang caught on instantly, increasing the wind with its own magic and floating, weightless, over the tops of the hedge.

They touched down strides from where the Strattons stood, waiting.

Chapter 42

Ionian Winter, Day 7; Year 889: Helede

Ariana sat with her back against the window overlooking Bolengard, Tehya curled on the seat beside her. Ariana clenched her mother's letter in one hand and cradled the soundly sleeping puffy white bird in her other, fighting the urge to focus on any one of the many voices that filled Xalen's large office-lounge.  

Seated around her, Dilyn, Perry, Hunter, and Asrea buzzed with excitement for the impending return to Ionia. Across the room, Maiza, Xalen, George, Harold and Master VanDaren discussed the future
—
her future
—
with an ominous certainty. The resulting storm of conversation left her wavering between longing, guilt, excitement, and anxiety.

Killian's eyes met hers. She flinched in surprise.

She didn't realize she'd been staring at him.

Amidst the adults
—
who were all at the edges of their seats, leaning over a large, low table covered in papers
—
Killian sat tall and silent, looking more regal in the Shadow Elite's navy blue robes than he had in his battered Fyrennian Reds. His posture was prouder, stronger, yet less arrogant than before. But his eyes
—
until this moment
—
on his twin, suggested a similar swirl of emotions to her own, along with a wish to join the conversations of her friends and his brother, rather than the adults surrounding him.

He nodded slightly, giving her a grim, empathizing smile.
If only things were different for us
, it seemed to say.  

She looked away from him. She didn't want his sympathy. Their choices were made. Nothing was ever going to be simple for either of them. Not as Tierens. Not as children who'd proven to have inherited the gifts of their fathers. Not now that they'd defied the King. And especially not after Ariana's discovery.

She eyed the sleeping bird.

The Daeixs.

The immortal water-bird
—
the creature from Maiza's story
—
alive in her hand; its soft breath a minuscule breeze, its downy feathers a tickle on her skin, its tiny heartbeat a flutter against her palm.

It was unbelievable. And yet, it had taken only an evening for Maiza to piece it all together.

The Daeixs, in the snowy state of flux between death and rebirth, had been trapped inside the Onyx Vial, an otherwise unremarkable container imbued with the stone's natural power to inhibit the etâme it contained.

Maiza surmised that the Daeixs had tried to regenerate
—
perhaps succeeded, then quickly died for lack of space
—
and was simply too weakened by the stone to break itself free. So the bird had siphoned the nearest available source of etâmic energy in an attempt at freedom.

This explained why the Vial was so deadly. Ariana had recalled the draining sensation she'd felt when her skin contacted the surface of it. Non-Tierens couldn't match the power the Daeixs needed to free itself, so, un-satiated, it drained the life out of them. Tierens could sustain it, with their second reserve of magic, but without the exact elements it needed, they couldn't fulfill it. Ariana, however, was its elemental match. The Daeixs grew stronger the closer she came to it, which explained why the Orenate had broken down so rapidly after her arrival in Bolengard. 

"With you as my roommate, my leg could be cut
off
and no one would notice," Perry complained, pulling Ariana from her reverie. "No sympathy perks whatsoever."

She looked up to see him stretching his injured leg across the cushions of the couch he shared with Asrea, threading his foot under her bent knees as he flashed Hunter a goodnatured scowl.

Hunter, propped in a chaise one stride from the couch, shrugged the shoulder not covered in bandages and grimaced. "I'll trade," he said, fingering the would-be-fatal arrowhead that dangled from a boot-lace around his neck. 

He was alive by the slightest of angles
—
his heart pierced in the infinitesimal space of miracles, where the puncture was able to self-seal. It had ruptured, but not until they had made it to the healing ward in Bolengard. By then, he was already being injected with Aelgyn serum, and Master Crowe was able to save him before the loss of blood-pressure did any damage. He was the luckiest unlucky person she'd ever met. Not a threat, she'd finally determined. Certainly no mastermind of deceit. Simply a clueless boy, in over his head in a dangerous world, somehow managing to stay afloat with the help of a brother he'd only just met.

That had been fun to witness; Killian introducing himself to Hunter, who was still under the effects of the Aelgyn serum. It had taken him a humorously long time to be convinced he was not dreaming, or looking into a mirror. Killian, for what Ariana guessed was the first time in his life, was awkward. So awkward. Lost for words. A

All things considered, Hunter seemed to be handling the news of his parentage rather well. It helped, she thought, that his consolation for having the Nine's Worst Father was having a long-lost twin. Because of their dreams, the boys
—
who Asrea had playfully nicknamed Hunt and Kill
—
said they felt as if they'd known each other their whole lives, though Hunter hadn't had as many while in Kansas as Killian had. Their theory was that the lack of etâme on Earth had suppressed it, which explained why the dreams had become more lucid once he crossed over.

Dilyn snickered from his perch on the back of a nearby chair. "I doubt you'd want the perks Perry's hoping for."

"Oh, he would," Perry said, throwing a wink at Asrea, who chuckled as if to brush off the comment, but blushed and averted her eyes.

Asrea was taken by his good natured playfulness, and special attention. But Ariana had a feeling the girl would soon grow accustomed to it. Once Asrea began classes in Ruekridge, especially as the first cross-world transfer student in its history, she'd be like Tehya, loads of boys competing for her attention.

"It's not like I'll be in your way for long, Perry," Hunter said. "I'll be starting my apprenticeship next quarter."

"This is true," Perry went on. "But then again, even with you there, I have to remember: these looks," he shook his golden curls off his forehead, "and this
magnetizing
charm," he gave Asrea another wink, "how could they
not
notice me?"

It was safe to say Perry's ego hadn't been injured in the fight.

"Hunter could always take a spot in the Aeriel tower instead," Dilyn suggested, laughing, "if you need the attention
that
badly."

The Aeriel tower. Where
her
room would have been… if not for Harold.

She thumbed the already worn edge of her mother's letter, replaying the words in her head for the hundredth time.

Ariana,

I've been visited by a man named Harold Stratton. The stories he told me have left me speechless. The Onyx Vial? I knew you were your father's daughter. But I had no idea just how like him you really were. Escaping prison cells, garnering the favor of your captors, snooping, stealing. Risking your life for a boy you barely knew.

You cannot be contained, I'm afraid.

Which is why I've given my permission to reinstate you into Ruekridge
—
under the terms Harold has offered. It will be difficult. But this is what you wanted. So don't write me complaining.

Harold
had handed her the letter, and without ceremony, without letting her read it first, he told her: "You're enrolled in a Shadow Elite Training program. Headed by George and myself. Killian, Asrea, and a select few others will join you."

"What about Hunter?" She'd asked.

Harold deadpanned, staring at her.

George had stepped in. "He has other training," he said. "With Mustangs, I hear."

"You will take on two independent studies, outside of your regular courses and those sessions for Elite Training, in which you will work toward Mastery of portal books and their language, and you will partner with Madame Dae to test, study, and document the behavior, powers, life cycle, and so on, of your new
pet.
You will train to be Master of the creature, able to control it and yourself in the heat of battle. You will live in specially dedicated Elite quarters with the other trainees. You will get along." It was the most she had ever heard him speak.

Do this,
her mother wrote,
and you will have surpassed even what your father accomplished. He would be proud.

"They'll train nightly." George's voice caught her ear.

She looked over at him.

"With the right schedule and the progress we expect to see them make, they'll be ready for Ops in a few short seasons," VanDaren added.

"
Ops
?" Maiza was not pleased. "They're
children
, VanDaren."

George nodded. "Yes. Children who have grown up under the sword-tip of a brutal, relentless tyrant, and proven themselves in adversity"

Ariana glanced at Killian. He absentmindedly rubbed a fingertip across the Fyrennian symbol on his forearm.

Not as pretty a marking as the one on the back of her hand. The fluid white lines scrawled across her sun-kissed skin. Her race mark, brought out early by the magic of the Daeixs.

"They've proven themselves capable, Maiza."

"What kind of Ops can they possibly be used for? The boys, at least, are terribly recognizable."

A wordless answer passed between the group. Ariana frowned.

"Lockden?" Maiza asked in an incredulous half-whisper. "You cannot be serious."

George's face fell grim. "We placed that Vial in the care of children and sent them out there, defenseless. Ducklings to be hunted by
wolves
. It's our responsibility to right any wrongs we can."

Ariana's stomach dropped. They were talking about Finn.

It was one of only two subjects she, Dilyn, Perry, and Hunter had come to a silent agreement not to speak of. Right now, it was too much to bear. The sad truth was that Finn was, in one form or another, as lost to them as Tehya's mother
—her death confirmed now—
the other subject to which they said nothing, though it was hard not to think about.

Tehya had been little more than a shadow since they escaped the courtyard. She spent most of her days sleeping fitfully
—
or staring lifelessly out windows
—
and her nights disappearing into the streets of Bolengard, leaving and returning without a word.

Nothing Ariana said or did could rouse her from the grief of her father's betrayal and the news of her mother's death. She watched the grief eat at her Tehya hour by hour. It manifested itself in her haggard face, her slumped shoulders, her inability to unfurl herself from the window-seat just an arm's reach away. Even now, as Ariana scooted closer to comfort her, Tehya's body didn't react. Her best friend's hand on her shoulder could just as easily have been a tired firefly. She could do nothing to comfort her. But Hunter and Killian were a different matter. 

When Killian touched Tehya, she responded. When he talked, she listened. Ariana didn't know what he'd said to her, but she was as comforted by the sight of him as Ariana was by Asrea.

And then Hunter. Ariana wondered if perhaps Tehya had been meeting up with him during her nightly escapes into the city, though he hadn't mentioned anything to anyone. But she couldn't help her suspicions. The last time Tehya had made any effort at anything at all was the morning following the ambush, after the arrowhead was extracted from Hunter's chest. Tehya had fashioned him a necklace using her own bootlace and given it to him when he woke up, calling it his "badge of survival." Perry had joked that he should get one as well, eyeing her other boot, but the moment the necklace was out of her hand, the brightness left her eyes.                

"Those are
our
wrongs, not theirs," Maiza pressed on.

"They agreed to this," George said.

"It's not like they had a choice," she sighed. Then, under her breath, "It's a curse they have such powerful fathers."

Ariana and Killian looked at each other, but Ariana caught Maiza's glance at her daughter.

She was right on all three of the new Elite Trainees' accounts.

Asrea had learned too early how operations ran. She'd fought many times to defend the secret city, and she was no stranger to dealing death.

Ariana was the Wordmaster's daughter, whose talent promised to exceed her father's. It made her an asset too precious to squander.

And Killian. He was the son of a tyrant
—
clever, calculating, powerful
—
trained as a Watcher in the Fyrennian Guard.

If only she could trust him.

She wanted to. They had too many commonalities to ignore. After all, they were going to be spending a
lot
of time together at Ruekridge, and they needed to get along.