8. Eldrion

EIGHT

Eldrion

I have never seen Alana like this before. Yes, I saw her in my visions. But I have never been with her like this before.

I have known her only within the confines of the castle, and the one time we ventured outside of its walls it was not like this.

Here, surrounded by nature instead of concrete, she is radiant.

Even as we sit amongst the smouldering ruins of the Leafborne camp, her face smudged with smoke and tears, she glows.

Her auburn hair contrasts against the thick, velvety shades of green in the leaves and the grass and the foliage. Her skin seems smoother, paler, her freckles more vibrant.

Her eyes glisten as she turns to look at me.

She screws them closed and shakes her head. She presses a trembling palm to her chest. "I can feel it in the air," she whispers. "Their fear. It's..." She inhales sharply, her shoulders shaking.

I turn away. I can't look at her. A strange mixture of arousal and sympathy swells in my gut, and I don't know how to process it. So, I lock it down and focus on the scene in front of us.

When she starts to sob, loudly, however, I extend a wing and wrap it around her shoulders. For a moment, she remains stiff and brittle. Then she folds into me and rests her head on my shoulder.

As she lets the tears flow, and her entire body trembles against me, I try to modulate my thoughts and my breathing. All I want to do, all I can think about, is cradling her in my wings, taking her back to my bed, and coaxing her fears away by teasing her body until she sees stars.

Feeling those things as I stare at the charred remains of her kin feels both wrong and so incredibly right at the same time.

"I did this," she whispers. "I caused this. I trusted him. I had no idea. I never thought—" She lets out a small whimper that turns into a groan, and buries her head in her hands.

"Yes," Maura's voice drifts over from the shadows. When she emerges, her eyes are shining like sharp, deadly diamonds. On her frail, thin legs, she stalks over to us. Her wings flutter. She shakes her head, her silver hair long and loose over her shoulders.

Everything about her says elder. The Sunborne used to have them. My grandmother was one of them. But that was before we realised it was better to have one ruler instead of a group of well-meaning but often useless ones.

"You did cause this." She stands in front of Alana.

They are so incredibly different. The polar opposite of one another.

Alana is strength, and power, and curves, and youth, and beauty.

Maura is frail, and willowy. She looks as if she would be knocked over in the slightest of breeze, and there is nothing beautiful about her. She is hard, and sharp, and the lines of her face are not filled with kindness but with the bitterness that comes with knowing exactly what people are capable of in this world.

I hope I never see Alana's face become that knowing.

"You brought that fae into our midst. You trusted him. You bought his lies. You. The mighty empath who was supposed to save us all!" Maura scoffs, still towering above Alana.

Curling in on herself, Alana hangs her head and scrapes her fingers through her hair. I loosen my grip on her shoulder and stand, wings twitching with rage.

Maura holds up a dismissive palm and doesn't even bother to look in my direction. "This doesn't concern you," she says.

I step between her and Alana, physically nudging her back out of my way. "Oh, it does concern me, old woman. It definitely does."

"You think I'm afraid of you?" Maura spits. "You have nothing left." She nods at me in disgust. "The jester took your powers. You are a shell."

The weight of her words hits my chest like a block of concrete and I almost physically recoil from her.

He did.

Finn took my power.

"Look at you." She nods at my wings. I curl one towards me and my breath turns to burning ice in my lungs. The tip. It is fading. "Soon, you'll be no more use than Kayan was when she took his powers from him." Maura sidesteps me, grabs Alana, and hauls her to her feet.

I am still staring at my wings. I fold them slowly forward. Both tips are the same. Paler. Thinner.

I am fading.

Hands on Alana's shoulders, Maura stares at her as she says, "I know what you are. I've always known. The great Lady of Luminael created you because she thought you were going to save us. She gave you the power to save us and what did you do? You frittered it away. The empath who couldn't tell she was being used by a demon."

When I look up, Alana is no longer crying. Her tears are drying on her cheeks. Her eyes have changed. Their corners twitch, and her forehead creases.

Her jaw stiffens.

"How dare you accuse me of frittering away my power. All my life, I was made to believe my power was a curse!"

"And so it was," Maura spits.

Alana swallows forcefully, then moves her hand and places it on top of Maura's. She squeezes. Then grips harder, her knuckles whitening with the pressure as she forcefully prises Maura's fingers away from her shoulder.

"Don't ever touch me again," Alana says. She draws herself up taller. Her wings crackle. Purple electricity flickers on their tips, and a deep purple smoke begins to gather around her feet. "He might have lost his powers, but I have not."

Maura stands firm, but her gaze shifts to the floor and she watches the purple smoke curling towards her.

Alana reaches out with both hands and physically pushes the old woman away from her. Maura stumbles and falls to the ground. Now, she really does look afraid.

That feeling is back. The pride, the arousal, the desire to fight for her and protect her.

I should intervene.

But I want to see where this ends.

Alana's eyes flash with something so familiar I feel it strike me in my gut. Rage. Power.

She looms over Maura, who stares up at her as if she always expected this moment and is resigned to what's about to happen. The purple smoke thickens, swirling around Alana's feet and creeping towards the elder fae. Maura's eyes widen but she says nothing. She just stares, almost daring Alana to take it too far.

I want to see Alana reclaim what this evil old witch took from her.

But I also know what will happen if Alana loses control.

I've been there, and I can't let it happen.

I won't let Alana's rage consume her, no matter how justified it may be.

This isn't her.

It might be me, but it is not her.

I put a firm hand on her shoulder. She flinches at my touch, her gaze never leaving Maura. "Alana," I command, "if you let anger control you, it's a slippery slope."

For a moment, she remains rigid, her magic crackling along her wings and intensifying. Then, slowly, she turns to face me. I expect to see pain and confusion, and perhaps it's there somewhere, but mostly what I see is anger. "She?—"

"I know," I interrupt. "But this isn't the way, and it isn't safe here."

Alana's shoulders sag, and the purple smoke begins to dissipate. She nods, closing her eyes and taking a deep, shuddering breath. "You're right," she whispers, her voice barely audible over the crackling of the nearby flames. "I just..."

She walks past Maura towards the centre of the camp. Remnants of tents and the bodies of her kin scatter the ground.

I want to comfort her. In this moment, the desire to pull her into my arms, my wings wrapping around her in a protective embrace, is almost too much to bear.

But that is not what we are to each other.

She will not bury her face in my chest, her body shaking with silent sobs as I stroke her hair. That is not what we do.

She might forget occasionally, but she hates me and everything I have done. And I hate her for making me want to be something other than what I am.

"It's not your fault," is all I manage to say. "You couldn't have known."

I stand beside her, and feel my wings droop. They are tired. I am tired.

Behind us, Maura has risen to her feet and is now sitting on a tree trunk, leaning forward onto her knees, not speaking.

Alana seems lost in her own thoughts. I can almost see them flitting across her face. Until a faint sound catches her attention.

I hear it too.

It's coming from nearby, a moan that sounds like someone in pain.

Alana spins around, her brow furrowed in concern. "Did you hear that?"

I nod, and together we move towards the source of the noise. There, amidst the smouldering ruins, lies a Leafborne fae. Tree branches are covering their body, but they move beneath the debris and moan again.

Alana gasps, dropping to her knees beside them, and pulls aside the foliage. "Pen?" She sweeps a hand across his brow and leans down, holding her cheek over his mouth.

"He's breathing." She looks up at me. "We have to help him."

I turn to Maura, who is standing a few paces away now with her hands on her hips. She's watching us warily, her earlier animosity replaced by a grim determination.

"Take him back. Follow Briony. Alana and I will wait for more horses."

If Maura is grateful, she does not show it. She doesn't even nod in recognition of what I've said.

I whistle for my horse, who comes trotting over dutifully. Carefully, I lift Penn onto his back, securing him as best I can. Then I stand back as Maura positions herself behind him.

When they have gone, Alana and I search the rest of the camp. We examine every body, searching for anyone else who might have survived.

There is no one.

"Two," Alana breathes, steadying herself on the trunk of a nearby oak tree. "Only two survived."

I lace my fingers together behind my back and unfurl my wings. They ache in a strange way, as if they've been flat against my back for too long and need to be stretched.

I glance at them, notice their fading edges, and breathe in deeply. I can't allow myself to think about what it will mean if I don't take my powers back from Finn.

As if she can read my mind, Alana turns to me and says, "Do you think you can get them back? If we get close enough to him? Do you think I could take them and channel them back into you? Is there a spell?"

I shake my head. "Not that I know of. There might be something in the library where I found my mother's journal."

"Then we should go there."

"Maybe." I turn away from her and look out at the camp. Would she really help me reclaim my magic? Or would she want to see me disintegrate in front of her eyes? After everything that has happened, I wouldn't blame her if she did.

"Where are the others?" she asks. She's talking to me as if we are friends. The animosity in her tone temporarily displaced by the need for someone to trust.

"The Shadowkind were hiding with you?"

She nods. "They kept themselves separate from us, mostly. But yes, they were here."

"Finn spared his own kind," I mutter, my mind returning to the demons in my vision, more certain now than ever before that this is what Finn intends to do. I'm about to say more when I realise Alana is staring at her hands. They are covered in blood, and her face is stained with remnants of smoke.

Her hair, her skin, her entire body shows traces of what happened here. Of how she knelt over her kin and tried to revive them. And how she failed.

Suddenly realising she has the memory of her dead friends' lips on hers, from where she desperately tried to breathe life back into those with the least mutilated bodies, she wipes her mouth furiously with the back of her hand.

Panic ignites in her eyes. She tugs at the top of her tunic, her face flushing, her breath quickening.

"Alana . . ."

"I need it off me..." She looks down at her hands and her arms, shaking them as if she might free herself of the blood that is drying on her skin.

"The lake." I meet her eyes, and hold her gaze. But she is lost in panic now. She starts to pace up and down, taking deep, shuddering breaths that make her entire body quiver.

She is muttering something under her breath, but I can't hear what she's saying. At her feet, purple smoke starts to curl upwards and outwards.

I stride towards her, pushing my way through it and trying not to notice the shockwaves of pain that travel up through my body as the smoke makes contact with my legs.

I've seen Alana's powers. I've felt them. If she loses herself in panic, bad things could happen.

Grabbing her by her waist, I haul her over my shoulder. She starts to kick and scream and beat her fists against my chest.

I ignore the pummelling and stride away from the clearing towards the lake. The entire way, she shouts. The shouts turn to sobs, interspersed with words I can't interpret. I hear her say "Kayan" and my stomach clenches.

Then she descends into sobs again.

By the time we reach the water, she is still battling against my hold, and the purple smoke is up to my waist, squeezing me tightly. So, I wade in.

I keep going until the water is up to my chest, and then I drop her.

She falls beneath the surface and emerges spluttering.

Her eyes widen, and she inhales sharply as the cold makes contact with her.

"What are you doing?" she yells at me.

I say nothing, just watch as she fights to compose herself again.

Her tunic is plastered to her skin, her hair wet and hanging in thick tendrils on her shoulders. She moves her arms through the water, keeping herself afloat, and slowly – slowly – the panic fades.

"Why did you do that?" she asks, this time quieter, more like a whisper.

"You're covered in blood. You need a bath." I slip my hand beneath the water and take her arm. When I lift it up, water skims down it, dancing on the surface of her skin, making invisible rivers which flow over the blood that is already fading.

"Are you trying to be funny right now?" She quirks an eyebrow at me. Her strength is returning.

"I am not a funny man," I reply.

At that, she laughs. A burst of warmth that makes me, despite my better judgement, smile.

I'm still holding her arm.

I move closer to her. My wings are trailing in the water behind me.

With my eyes fixed on hers, I lift her arm to my mouth and kiss the spot below her wrist. I swirl my tongue over the blood, keeping her gaze while I clean it from her skin.

I will never understand how, in an instant, we can go from hating each other to wanting each other.

It happens so suddenly, every time, that I am neither prepared for it or able to stop it.

Alana watches me, not pulling away but not leaning into me either.

When I reach the inside of her elbow, and drag my tongue over the soft skin, she reaches out and pushes her fingers through my hair. Then, sighing, she tilts my face up towards her and kisses me.

Her lips are soft and searching. But then they become furious.

Her legs are around my waist. She's grabbing the back of my neck, her tongue is caressing mine.

I hold her still for a moment, then I reach up and rip open her tunic.