Through the Ashes- The Complete Series, page 47
part #1 of Through the Ashes Series
She turned to look at him, but her smile was poignant. There was a hole in her where her dragon once had been. She was no longer complete, and she felt his sense of loss as keenly as she did her own.
“I wish—”
“—that we could have ridden forever,” Jaekob finished her thought. “I don’t want to—”
“Neither do I.”
At the same time, they both said, “—but we have duties to meet.”
“Ew,” Bells said, “that’s gross. Stop that.” She smiled at the same time he did. How long would the lingering connection last, she wondered? Hopefully, forever.
“It’s not forever. Not this strongly, at least, but we will always be connected, even at a subconscious level. We’ll always be more complete than any other being in the world when we’re together, and missing part of our souls when we’re apart. But this feeling that I can’t function without touching you somehow… That will pass. Mostly.”
Abruptly, she felt an absence in her mind, and while she still caught many of his racing thoughts, they were once again the thoughts of someone outside herself, not as though they were her own.
She stifled a cry and lunged into his arms, wrapping hers around him and burying her face in his chest as she fought back tears. His warmth as he wrapped his thick arms around her was comforting.
She pulled away. Those thoughts they’d shared while they flew together, the intensity of love and the completeness it gave her soul… Were those really his, or merely her thoughts flowing through him? For that matter, did he love her at all? Or did he love her and she had only experienced it because of the bond?
She was so confused. Jaekob’s thoughts boiled too fast for her to “hear,” and they felt as disturbed as hers.
He followed her as she withdrew, embracing her again. “Not yet, don’t go. They aren’t only your thoughts, Bells. The feelings I experienced with you could only exist if we both already felt the same thing.”
“Are you certain?” she asked, though she already knew he was. It gave her tremendous comfort. Whether they could ever do anything about it was an entirely different matter. In the air, the difficulties they would face if they sought to handfast seemed insignificant in the face of what they shared. Standing on the cold, hard ground now, however, those hurdles once again seemed impossible to overcome.
“Thank you, Jaekob. I’ve never known what it was to belong somewhere, and you gave me that.”
He smiled at her, but his expression was worried. “Of course. No one forced me to do it, and a prince never ‘belongs’ anywhere but on the throne, standing alone even among a crowd. Everyone is alone, in the end, but a king more so. Thanks to you, I’ll never truly be alone, though. Thank you for riding me.”
Bells smirked as an image crossed her mind that was very different than what he’d meant by those words. He laughed out loud, too, catching her amusement. His added to her own and before long, they both fed on each other’s feelings and amusement to the point where they laughed hard enough for tears to stream down her cheeks, and she wasn’t the only one.
When the laughter died down, though, she grew somber. They decided at the same moment that it was time to return, and they both took a step with their left feet as they began the trek back to the car.
They didn’t stop talking excitedly together until they reached the Wards, and yet they had ridden in utter silence as far as any onlooker could have heard.
Bells sat bolt upright, her blankets sliding off her camisole, and shouted, “The docks!” She had a moment of confusion before realizing she was in her bedroom. The carnage at the docks had only been a dream.
Except it wasn’t, she realized as she shed her sleepy confusion. It was real, and it was coming—she felt it in her bones. She climbed out of bed and peeled off her sweaty camisole, and hastily put on street clothes before sliding her sword into the sheath attached to a belt around her waist. She had to go.
Go, go, go, the urgency screamed in her mind now that she was awake. With a flick of her wrist, she destroyed the locking glyph on her door rather than taking the time to undo it properly. She would create a new one when she got back, but there was no time right now. She opened the door far enough to slide out, closed it behind her as quietly as she could, then walked softly down the hallway with her boots in her hand, intending to put them on outside where she wouldn’t wake anyone up by clomping across the ornate wooden floors in Mikah’s manor.
She reached her window in the hallway along the east wall. Hawking had infused her personal glyph into the house’s defensive ones to allow her to enter and exit without tripping alarms. She slid the window open and took a quick look around, but didn’t see anyone inside or out. She sent out her senses far enough to make sure there was no one nearby. The residents were all in their rooms and the guards were in the foyer. Satisfied that the coast was clear, she slipped out of the house and headed north toward the docks district. It was dark, which made it easy to throw on her shadow abilities.
Her senses didn’t reveal anyone nearby, but fae sense projection carried farther when focused rather than scattered all around. She didn’t plan on keeping her senses extended the entire time. It would distract her and prevent her from staying alert and focusing on the problem ahead.
Bells crept to the end of the block. Most of the docks were inside the area her senses could detect, and it didn’t look good. She cut out the faint sounds of weapons clashing and screaming, and the louder sounds of occasional gunfire. Either there were humans there, too, or some of the Pures had stooped to using guns. It wasn’t unheard of, just frowned upon. She took a deep breath and—
A new shadow joined her own, bigger than her. She yelped and spun around, drawing her sword by reflex. Then, she froze. “Jaekob? What are you doing here?” At least one thing was going right. Memories of the day before came back.
His expression was grim. “I saw you sneak out of the mano and decided to follow you. Tell me, why are you heading toward the docks district? Why are you going back to where this all began?”
She was caught. She thought about lying but the truth was obvious, or at least it was clear where she was headed. Anyway, she wasn’t really sure she wanted to lie to him. Not anymore, not after what they’d shared together. His company would be more than nice, even with the Sword of Fire protecting her. “I woke as if from a bad dream, but I was convinced it was no dream. There’s something going on at the docks, something going wrong. I felt an overwhelming need to go help. But I didn’t want to wake anyone up in case it really had been just a dream.”
He looked at her askance. “Something wrong at the docks? I think we would’ve heard from the Guardians if that were true. Still, you were convinced enough to sneak out in the middle of the night, so maybe there’s something to it. I’m a little more open to unexplained things since I met you,” he said, and gave her a brief smile.
Relief flooded through her. He believed her, or at least that she believed it. She said, “I’ve been focusing my hearing as far ahead as I could get it. I’m just catching glimpses of the outside edge now, and there does seem to be something going on. I hear what definitely sounds like a fight. A big one.”
“So you’re headed there anyway? Instead of just going to get some Guardians to handle it? You risk yourself, going alone, even with the sword.”
For an instant, she furrowed her brow and felt a flash of frustration, but it passed quickly. He wasn’t wrong. “I’m going there, but I feel like I have to. It’s my duty now, and—”
“No, it’s not,” Jaekob said, interrupting. “You’re not responsible for everything that happens in the city, you know.”
She smiled up at him and felt a bit mischievous. “That’s right. It’s not my job, it’s yours. I guess that means you should come with me, right?” She rose up onto the balls of her feet, bouncing.
Jaekob paused for a moment and then let out a burst of breath. “Fine. You’re right.” He smiled wanly at her. “I guess you really can’t just go back to bed after something like that, especially when it turns out you were right. And you are also right about it being my responsibility, not yours. Somehow, though, I don’t think you’d agree to go back home and just let me handle it. Would you?”
Bells almost laughed at his expression and the half-pleading in his voice. He was worried about her, which was probably what she liked most about it. Still, she had the Sword of Fire, and she had a responsibility to use it to help others. “No, you were right the first time. I’m not going to go back home, and I’m not going to just let you handle it. Why don’t you come along with me? I could always use a good sidekick.”
Jaekob laughed and they headed toward the docks side-by-side. But from what her senses were telling her, she wouldn’t be laughing when she got there, and neither would Jaekob.
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Bells tried hard not to frown, irritated that it took ten minutes to get to the docks. As slow and cautious as she had been, Jaekob had been even worse. He insisted on stopping and looking around, listening. It was too bad he hadn’t listened to her when she told him she could see and hear the things around them better than he could, at least here on the ground.
In the end, she hadn’t snapped at him because his aura was screaming “concern,” and she actually liked the fact that the man she was in love with—when she admitted that to herself, at least—was at least as concerned about her as he was about his kingdom. It was flattering, especially since no one outside of her family had ever cared about her much. It was far more than any simple farm-girl fae had any right to expect.
She shook her head, clearing the thoughts and refocusing on the chaos that began across the street and continued well beyond her ability to project.
Jaekob said, “Something big is going on here, and I want to find out what.”
What a coincidence, she had just been thinking the same thing. “You’re right. It goes on for quite a ways, well past the docks themselves.”
Across the street, an elf sprinted west along the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure what he was running from until a were seemed to appear from nowhere on a balcony several stories overhead. It plummeted at least twenty feet and landed on the elf in spite of its efforts to escape. What happened next took only a couple seconds, and then the were bounded north back into the chaos. She could tell even from where she stood that there was no helping that poor elf.
Jaekob said, “Come on. We can’t help the dead but we can try to keep the living.”
She was already walking in the direction the werewolf had run. Jaekob easily caught up to her in just a couple steps. When she felt him beside her, she said, “I’m getting tired of all these attacks.”
“You have the sword, so why don’t you stop it?” Jaekob snarled.
Startled at his tone, Bells turned her head to stare at him, mouth open in a surprised O-shape. Her feet were moving her forward, but her thoughts were just spinning their tires—she was too surprised to know what to say. After a second, she just faced forward and sped up, more determined than ever to deal with the problem at hand. She knew other people asked the same question he had but she never expected it from him.
They got to the edge of the market district and the main plaza opened up before them. It was full of dead and wounded creatures strewn haphazardly across the pavement, while the uninjured living fought to stay that way. Dozens of Pures of all types had clustered together in the middle, pushed back by their attackers who seemed mostly to be werewolves.
It was clear the huddled Pures weren’t going to win the fight. Then, across the plaza, she saw a troll, and then another. And another.
Bells ducked as a werewolf lunged at her, but she had barely spotted it in time and the way she held the sword made it impossible to attack it as it went overhead. Then there was a yelp, and as she followed the werewolf’s path, she watched as it ended abruptly on the tip of Jaekob’s spear. The spearhead glowed bright blue even through the blood that now coated it.
Another werewolf approached, but this time, she was ready for it. It leaped at her and she stepped out of the way, her blade tearing down the length of its entire body. Against an ordinary weapon, it would have begun healing even before it hit the pavement, but against the Sword of Fire, the werewolf seemed to ignite from the inside out, burning to ash as if the pavement was smoldering embers.
Jaekob shouted, “You better do something quick, before those trolls get into the fight. A lot more people are about to die.”
She grunted in acknowledgment as she defended herself from another attacker. Behind her, a werewolf cried out in pain. Jaekob, protecting her back. She smiled grimly. This was not what she wanted to be doing, but at least she had him by her side.
He was right, though—time was running out for the Pures fighting for their lives in the middle of the plaza. She could hear other little battles going on all around, and her heightened senses caught whiffs of smoke when the wind shifted west, carried from the docks themselves.
Bells looked for more nearby threats, but she and Jaekob had already dealt with the werewolves nearest them. “Cover me,” she said to Jaekob and then closed her eyes. She allowed the tendrils in the back of her mind to reach out, seeking the Sword of Fire, but she felt no response, just a faint echo in her mind of where the sword had just been. Was it fleeing from her?
She focused all her will on the sword. Whatever it was up to, she would make it talk. Seconds ticked by, an eternity in the middle of a battle, and still no response. She caught a vague sense that it was busy, but she didn’t believe it. It was hard to believe a sword could lie.
Abruptly, the sword’s strange intelligence was suddenly there. Instantly, she understood what had happened. It was gathering energy, readying itself and her for when she needed to use its mightiest, most famed ability. How had it known she would do that? She always tried to avoid using it if she could.
A sensation of amusement swept through her. Of course it was gathering power for that. Of course it would have to. It had senses, too, and the need was obvious. Or so it told her, though she still had a lingering doubt. It had never behaved in that way before.
When the sword was ready, growing almost too hot to hold as she gripped the hilt with her bare hand, Bells opened her eyes. She found Jaekob standing between her and the general chaos throughout the plaza.
“I’m ready,” she said, and then strode toward the biggest cluster, the Pures in the plaza’s center. She didn’t need her enhanced senses to see the towering trolls heading toward the defenders.
When the sword told Bells she was close enough, she stopped and stood with her feet spread shoulder-width apart and gripped the sword with both hands, pointing its tip toward the fight. The power radiated out, but now, she could sense it. She felt where it flowed outward like a cloud, a purple fog she could only sense with her mind, not see. She willed the sword to gather that “fog” up and redirect it, forcing it to flow forward; it formed a cone as it streaked toward the battle.
Bells cried out, “End this fighting, I command you! Lay down your weapons and kneel before me.”
The crowd and the attackers stopped mid-swing and turned to face her. As one, they went down on one knee. The plaza became utterly silent, which was kind of creepy. She still heard the faint sounds of other, smaller fights going on in the district all around her. She would soon put those to an end, too. It was a grim thing, taking away people’s free will, but it was necessary.
The troll in the back sprung to his feet, grabbing a nearby elf by the neck and tossing him aside. The elf flew twenty feet, landing in the crowd, and the troll cackled.
Bells pointed her sword at the troll. What had happened? She pushed outward, directing the fog at the troll. It stopped mid-swing and turned to stare at her. She felt its mind go blank, awaiting orders, the sharp and angry thoughts turning off like a light switch.
A werewolf sprung from the cloud, a fae in its mouth, and ran away from her and Jaekob. Bells reached her open hand out toward it, then slowly formed a fist. The werewolf came to a halt, dropped the fae, and then sat on its haunches, motionless.
“Quit messing around,” Jaekob said. “You’re costing lives. Pay attention to what you’re doing.” He sounded irritated.
Bells couldn’t blame him, though, and he didn’t sound as angry as she felt. Two lives gone, simply because she couldn’t be bothered to pay enough attention to what she was doing.
Nearer to her, on her left side, an elf jumped to his feet, then leapt through the air with his sword in his hand. Bells watched helplessly as the elf came down, swinging his sword just before he landed. The body of the werewolf he attacked toppled over in one direction, its head rolling in another.
Jaekob stepped out from beside Bells and put himself between her and the crowd, his back against her. “Dammit, what are you doing? Stop letting them go free, Bells. You told me you couldn’t undo it. Talk to me.”
She shrunk back from his angry, accusing tone. “I can’t, I swear. This isn’t me letting them go.” Of course, if their roles were reversed, she probably wouldn’t have believed him either, and the thought made her angry, both at Jaekob and herself.
“You’d better figure out how to fix this, and soon. If you can’t, then we’ll have to run. We can come back with Guardians, then. Can you hold it together?”
She glared at the back of his head, but he was right. Again. She closed her eyes and focused on “seeing” the sword-fog. Right away, she could tell something was wrong. The haze, which normally gave her the impression of something almost solid, like cotton candy, now seemed like little more than a veil. As it thinned, the spots that had been the weakest had given away first, and her grasp was still getting weaker. Soon, there would be many more people freed from the sword’s grip. She’d always hated the idea of taking people’s freedom of choice, but at the moment, there was nothing in the world she wanted more. She focused that want, her will, into the sword.
