Chapter 36

This was sodifferent from when we removed Dathor from Jake's body.

Maybe because I'd never felt that kind of power at the time. Maybe because that was more personal, while this was just a job that needed doing. Maybe it was simply because of everything I had learned from Luci, and even from Rania last night.

Or maybe—probably— it was because, for the first time, me and my guys had worked together in perfect unison, as a single unit, against the same threat.

My own eyes were closed, but I saw through all of theirs. Ezra watched the shield, now returned to that translucent emerald. Graham swam through the ocean below, taking in little breaths from a bubble he carried with him, along with a merrow he refused to let die and one of the gems that made this all possible.

Warren's view was the most fascinating of all. His eyes were open, watching the island beyond the cage. With his physical body, he watched his own soul soar over the land, siphoning the bright lights of a thousand hues through his own aura and into the sky.

No matter how grotesque the reality of it was, I couldn't deny how beautiful this was to witness. Hundreds of thousands of lights shot from the Earth, out of the cage, and into the orange sky above. It was like watching stars burst from the mountaintops.

All the more beautiful because of who was doing it. It wasn't nature. It was a man I loved, a woman I considered a sister, a god I called family, and a mentor I would be forever grateful for.

But I was beginning to understand now.

Speaking the spell aloud, watching those bursts of energy swim into the atmosphere, feeling the power of Ezra's hand in mine, witnessing Graham fight with all his might for his people, for his land, saving a woman in the process, I felt it.

A sense of unity, tying me to the man at my side, the one in the ocean, and the one in the sky. With feet firmly planted on the Elvan ore deck, feeling the sway of the ocean beneath us, hearing the whistling wind, smelling the salty water, watching a grotesque battle in defense of people who needed it so desperately, I felt it.

It was like an invisible cord connected me to everyone on this boat, everyone on the land behind us, and the world itself. All of us worked as one to meet the same common goal. We may have had different reasons, different opinions about it all, but we were all one in this.

Tears streamed down my face. Not in pain, not grief, but in an all-encompassing sense of understanding. I thought that I'd felt true power before, but I had never understood. Not until this moment.

Not until so many of us banded together to fight the same wrong, the same atrocity that burdened so many. Not until I felt the Earth reach out to us all with an open palm, not until I heard it whisper, "We will save ourselves together."

It wasn't a true personification. It was just a sense, a knowing, that the Earth, or the universe, or nature itself, wanted this as badly as we did. That's not to say the Earth was not alive and working with us. It wasn't sentient in the way I understood that phrase, but it was a force all on its own, dropping into all of us like sunrays and lending its strength, its power, to join our fight for the better.

I didn't understand why. To my knowledge, the air an tagadh were causing no harm to the land. But when I say that the universe, or the Earth, or whatever the hell it was, lent itself to us, it was no exaggeration.

Gradually, those bursts of light rising into the sky slowed. Before long, there were only one or two every few seconds.

"Put the shield down," Jeremy said, audibly. "Warren, Ramona, and Luci, keep picking them off."

In my mind, Laila spoke to us all. Bring the injured merrows to the boat.

Finally, I opened my eyes and let my rhythmic chant soften to a quiet whisper. I kept whispering it, though, because I didn't want that feeling to leave me. That feeling of unity, power.

Still whispering, I watched the cage flicker. At my side, Ezra squeezed my hand. He hadn't stopped whispering, either. Tears rolled down his cheeks, blood streaming from his nose, but a smile tilted the corners of his lips.

In unison, we kept whispering.

To each other, making sure that no one else heard, I said to his mind, Do you feel it?

He thumbed a bit of blood I hadn't realized spilled from my nose. I don't know what to call it, but yes, I feel it.

I don't want to let it go.

Hopefully, we don't have to.

A splash sounded on my left.

I turned that way just in time to see a half-naked, shivering Jeremy doggy paddling through the water toward Graham. Clutching onto the side of the boat, he shut his eyes. The limp figure in Graham's arms stayed that way for a few heartbeats. Then she gasped to life. Together, Graham and Jeremy held her in place as they healed her. She squealed in agony, but they didn't stop. Not until there was no more blood rolling from her lips.

She dropped her head onto Graham's chest. Shutting his eyes, he squeezed her tight and planted a kiss on her forehead. She must have moved a bit, because he released her. She dipped down into the water, rainbow tail flapping helplessly against the surface.

"Only a few left now," Warren murmured, eyes shut.

I traced a hand up and down his back and pecked his cheek.

Beside me, Ezra ran to the edge of the boat. He hollered over the edge, "Do you need help down there?"

Smiling, half laugh escaping, Graham shook his head. "I'll help Luci and Jeremy with the last merrows. The lot of you, just breathe for a moment."

A chuckle of my own escaping, I wiped my tears away.

And I still felt it.

I had stopped casting moments ago.

The shield was down.

The battle was over.

But I still felt it. That sense of unity, of strength, that rippled between us all. It was all-encompassing, so fulfilling. Grasping the railing of the boat, I took in and let out the deep breaths, just as Graham said to. And even though I wasn't holding onto the power any longer, it still pulsed through me.

"I know that look." Rania's voice came from behind me, and her hand fell on my back just as I turned to look at her. For the first time that I'd seen, she was smiling. "You feel it."

Swatting another tear away, I nodded.

She was a few inches shorter than me, but she stepped forward, kissed each of my cheeks, and waited for me to tuck my head down. When I did, she kissed my forehead. Before she pulled away, she whispered, "Never let it go."

"As beautiful as that may be," Caeda said, wiping blood from her nose as she walked by, "make no mistake, children. We may not have started this war, but what we've just done will not be overlooked."

"No. It will not," Iliantha's voice came from behind me. I spun that way, just in time to see her strip off her drenched blue gown. "Someone, somewhere, will be under attack very soon. The air an tagadh will retaliate with far more brutality than we bestowed on them today."

"They will," Rania said. "It won't be long. But it won't be tonight. Tonight, we return to our queendoms, and we celebrate."

Over the next few hours,a search was done on the island. Five air an tagadh remained. Caeda and Rania took them as captives. I didn't know what they planned to do with them, and I didn't care to ask.

The remnants were exactly as we expected. Many, many bodies. Mostly air an tagadh, along with some mangled, half-cannibalized corpses.

We still didn't know what that meant. Hopefully, the captives would fill us in eventually.

But we were all exhausted beyond belief.

Bringing Jake back had been the hardest, most power-draining thing I'd ever done, but it didn't hold a candle to today. I couldn't explain it; all I had done was hold up a shield. But my gods, my body seemed to believe that we had lifted an eighteen-wheeler off the ground.

The others said that was normal. No matter how often I used large sums of power, I would be exhausted afterward. Apparently, it was a problem we all faced.

That said, Luci brought us all back to the cabin at the capital. He promised he would bring Jake home once we were settled. It was almost nightfall—not that it mattered—and we fell asleep immediately.

And no, we didn't stay in the beds we had claimed when we arrived. Even though the mission had gone exactly as planned, we hadn't lost a single life on our side, I guessed we all needed the embrace of our soul mates.

As Iliantha had predicted, we made it back just in time for the solstice festival. It started tomorrow and would span through the following day. As we retreated to our rooms, I asked Ramona if she'd join us.

She said, "I think I'll rest for a while. But I hope you all have fun," and carried on to her room in silence. As she'd been for most of this trip. I wanted to talk to her more, to get a feel for how she was doing, but I wasn't sure how.

We were all treating this differently. Ezra and I saw it as a learning experience. Graham, a bitter memory he wanted to escape from. Warren, an internal quest to understand his identity without the Chambers. And Ramona…

I didn't know. All I knew was that back home, on Earth, she was fun and silly. Here, she was hardly more than a wallflower.

Maybe before our next mission, I'd try to speak with her some more. If I couldn't, maybe Warren could. He was her brother, after all. They had to have some common ground in all of this.

Although I wanted to ponder more, to process the last week, to prepare myself for the solstice festival, to hear Graham ramble about it for hours, all I could manage was a smile when his tangent began, and a, "That's nice," before drifting to sleep.

It was a dreamless one, and I was grateful for that.

The next morning, I awoke to bright sun shining in the windows. The guys weren't far behind. It had been a few nights since we'd taken a shower, though. Well rested or not, I couldn't wait to get out of that stinky bed and into a nice hot bath.

Like the bath I had taken at Cadea's castle, I basked in it for far longer than necessary. When I came out of the room, a note was on my bed.

You were taking forever. We're going to Iliantha's. She has more tubs than this place. Come to the dining hall when you're ready.

Love you,

— Graham, Ezra, and Warren

Graham had been the one to write it. I knew his chicken scratch.

Honestly, though, I had been around all of them nonstop for days. I was not at all opposed to a few minutes alone.

But I didn't get that.

Because just after I finished applying some lotion to my incredibly dry skin from all the wind over the last week, a knock sounded at my bedroom door. I thought it would be one of the guys, so I said, "Come in."

"Checking that ye're decent first," Amara said.

I grabbed my robe off the back of the door, tossed it on, and tied it at my waist. Opening the door, I propped my hand on my hip. "Well, this is a surprise."

Rather than her typical armor, she wore a blue cloak that brought out the vibrancy of her eyes. Her wavy hair was spun into an elegant updo. She even wore a bit of red lipstick and shimmery gold atop her eyelids.

"Come on now," she said. "We don't hate each other that much."

"I don't hate you at all." Just didn't particularly like her. "Graham's not here. I guess he went to take a bath at the castle."

"I ken. I'm here to talk to ye." She gestured inside. "Can I come in?"

Holding the door open, I waved to the bed.

She took a few steps inside, but she didn't sit. Didn't look me in the eye either. Not even when she said, "Look, I'm a bitch. I know that. I run my mouth, and I say things under my breath, and I make snap judgments, and I'm working on it. Really, I am."

That really wasn't information she needed to share with me. "Yeah, I've noticed. The first part. The second part…"

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm trying to be nice."

"By saying that you're a bitch?"

"That was just the opener."

Since she didn't sit, I did. "Alright. I'm listening."

"I made a snap judgment against ye." She said those words as though they tasted like lemon on her tongue. Sour, acidic, and a bit painful. "That was wrong. I was wrong. Ye proved yerself yesterday. Ye proved yerself this whole trip, and I'm sorry." That last line came out quieter than the rest. "I'm sorry I was a bitch to ye. Ye didn't deserve that, and I'm sorry."

There was no stopping my smile. "Aw, is this the part where we hug?"

"Touch me, and I'll stab ye."

"Well, that's not the best way to make amends."

"Neither is teasing someone when they're trying to."

Fair enough.

Sighing, I leaned back and propped myself up on my hands. "In that case, I'm sorry too. Sorry for teasing you, anyway. But you clearly mean a lot to Graham. You guys have a history together that I never will, and I respect that. I know how much friendship matters to him, and since you guys are so close, it would be nice if we could maybe take it a step past cordial. Get to know each other. Become friends. At least for his benefit, you know?"

"I think we can be." Her arms were still tucked beneath her cloak, but something big moved beneath it as she shifted. "Obviously, ye mean everything to him. Ye make him happy, so I'm grateful to ye. He told me about how ye and yer family took him in when he moved to Earth, and I'm grateful for that too. He really was like my brother once."

"I'm sure in no time, he will be again." I paused. "Hey, since he's like your brother, and he's my partner, does that mean we're kind of like sisters?"

"Don't push it." Pulling her cloak aside, she dropped a pile of linen onto my lap. "Consider this a token of my appreciation."

It was a cream burlap material with buttons ascending from top to bottom. "What is it?"

"Everyone gets dressed up for the solstice festival," she said. "I've seen what ye wear. Ugly, bland human clothes. I think this'll look nice on ye. And I know what Graham likes on a woman, so it's a favor to him too. It was gifted to me by a neighbor a long time ago, but I'm too short for it. Also not a big fan of dresses. Better it stops collecting dust in my wardrobe."

Aww.

Tears gathered in my eyes. I hadn't even opened it yet, but it gave me hope. This was Amara's peace offering, and on a land like this, where so many things were scarce, this felt like an extravagant gift.

A bit choked up, I said, "That's so sweet of you. Thank you."

"Ye're doing me a favor getting rid of it," she said, tone sharp. "Just enjoy it. And tell Graham we're going to try to be friends, so he doesn't think that I hate ye."

"Ah, so that's what this is about. Kissing his ass after our fight."

"Aye. Precisely." She glared, but the smile at the edge of her lips told me that, even if she wouldn't admit it, this was an act of kindness. "So put the damn thing on, make yer face look good, and let's carry on to the festival."