Chapter Fourteen

I have wings. Or at least my magic does.

Sadly, I haven’t seen them since.

Cursing softly under my breath, I roll my neck muscles and reach inside for the deep well of magic. It’s there, but it’s almost as if it has a mind of its own. Sometimes it responds, and other times it’s as silent as a grave. Mostly, the only thing I can do is illuminate my runes, and then the simurgh is content to lie there and do nothing.

Stubborn to a fault . . . like someone I know well.

We’ve been in Nyriell for over a week. Roshan and I have kept our heads down, working in the forge during the day, learning the ropes, and earning our keep. I’ve met with Aran twice more, and each time he tasked me with more reading. I’ve stared at runes until I’m cross-eyed, but my inroads to harnessing my power have been frustratingly small. He insists that I just need to give it time, but time is the one thing we don’t have, hiding as we are.

There’s been no news from Roshan’s man in Coban, which I’m choosing to believe is a good thing. Nor was there any news about Javed or his kingsguard leaving Kaldari. All I can do is hope that my family remains safe.

Roshan enters our shared quarters, and my gaze immediately falls on him. Stars, could a person get more handsome by the day? I groan to myself. The tension between us is real . . . but for reasons only known to him, Roshan has been keeping himself at a distance.

Honestly, I don’t blame him. This magic of mine is unpredictable and . . . volatile.

He sinks down next to me on the chaise. “How are things going with Aran?”

“They’re not,”

I say grouchily. “I study all day long. I can tell you every written rune in existence, I can read you every line in every old text, but in practice? I’m nowhere.”

“That can’t be true,”

Roshan says with a slight frown. “Aran says you’re making progress. That your knowledge of runes is uncanny.”

“Theoretical knowledge is not empirical.”

I thrust a hand at him and wiggle my fingers in a juvenile burst of aggravation. “Want to see my party trick? I can glow!”

I scowl and yank at the opalescent tendril dangling over my brow. “Even my hair is glowing.”

“That’s new,”

he says, eyes widening with surprise.

Biting my lip, I nod. Self-consciously, I’d kept the pale iridescent strands hidden at first, braided into the rest of my hair, but they’ve become difficult to cover. “Aran says it’s related to the flow of akasha in my veins, like the sigils on my arms. Another mark of the Starkeeper, I suppose.”

I sniff. “If all else fails, I can blind our enemies into oblivion.”

His mouth twitches at my peeved expression. “What about your visions? Have you seen anything else?”

I shake my head, thankful that the old crone hasn’t made another appearance murmuring her ridiculously cryptic nothings about my starborn powers and the fate of all Endara.

Roshan turns to face me and takes my hands in his. His thumbs stroke over the centers of my palms, and tendrils of molten heat—completely unrelated to said powers—twine up my forearms. “Can you try to summon your firebird now?”

“It doesn’t work like that,”

I say, fighting back goose bumps at the soft caress. “I’ve tried so many times, but it only seems to awaken defensively, when I’m threatened or in mortal danger.”

He leans forward, and my heart skips a beat, but he just tucks a loose strand of hair over my ear. “Then let’s force it to appear.”

“Now? In here?”

“Why not?”

He stands and beckons me forward. “You asked me to teach you how I box last week. Turnabout is fair play. Show me what you’ve got.”

Dread sluices through me. “I’m not doing this, Roshan. You’re being ridiculous.”

His stalwart expression doesn’t change. “You need to understand how your power works, and this is the only way I can think of to make you upset or frightened enough to release it.”

I glower at him, rubbing my palms nervously together. “What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t.”

This is madness. “How do you know?”

“I trust you.”

That’s stupid is my only thought before Roshan lunges forward, shoving me right off the edge of the seat. My knees take the brunt of the fall. Hard.

“What the fuck, Roshan?”

I bite out.

“Now fight me.”

Taken aback, I collect myself for a moment before a serpentlike strike to my torso has me tumbling onto my ass, the breath blasting out of me. Pain blooms. He’s not playing around, because unlike the last time we sparred, this flaming hurts.

“Fight back,”

he taunts as I stagger to my feet, before he delivers another vicious punch-kick combination.

Within seconds, heat kindles in the pit of my belly and shoots down the length of my arms as defensive magic sparks across my fingertips in infinitesimal silvery-white arcs. The runes on my forearms ignite and spread like a wave crashing over a shore.

“Beautiful,”

Roshan whispers in awe, staring at the gilded sigils on my skin, but I can’t even feel pleasure about the murmured compliment. As he attacks again, I manage to pivot out of the way and come up with a double-fisted jab to his jaw that he dodges. “You were holding out on me before,”

he says, an approving glint in his eye.

“Some,” I pant.

I don’t admit that my father taught me to fight with fists and weapons from about the time that I learned to walk. That I’d only asked Roshan to teach me to get him out of his own head and maybe as a way to spend more time with him . . .

Frowning, I wonder if my father had prepared me because he’d guessed something like this could happen—that I’d have to defend myself. The thought of my parents keeping such a vital secret from me is gutting. But then I remember that my father never told me about living in Kaldari. Or about my mother’s protective power! How many secrets have they withheld over the years? How much more prepared would I have been for this moment if I hadn’t been kept so uselessly in the dark? Bitterness chokes me.

“Where did you go just then?”

Roshan asks. “You were distracted.”

“They all lied to me,”

I say dully. “My parents, my aunt.”

Empathy flashes in his eyes. “They wanted to protect you.”

“I hate lies.”

Roshan doesn’t move for a moment, a muscle tensing in his jaw, but then his stare shutters slightly as he moves back into fighting position. “Sometimes lies are a necessary evil.”

I wonder if he’s talking about his brother and the queen.

Ducking to avoid Roshan’s fist, I reorient myself, but he comes fast at me again. This time, I kick out, catching him in the gut, and he grunts at the contact. A vicious series of punches and rapid kicks has him on retreat with wide eyes. But a sly answering sweep from his leg has me flat on my back once more, my skull colliding with the floor. White spots fill my vision and lightning roars through me.

Think of it as a web, Aran had said. An extension of you.

From my supine position, I inhale and press out, attempting to release the magic toward him to freeze him in place. I even sketch the rune for ice for good measure, but nothing happens. The magic coalesces at my center, but it doesn’t do much more than that, as if it intuitively senses that Roshan is not a threat.

Or that I don’t see him as a threat.

“This isn’t going to work,”

I snarl, and push to my knees, facing away from him.

But before I can right myself, fabric envelopes my head, shrouding me in darkness and cutting off my airflow. Sounds assault me from all corners of the room: a door slamming closed, a thump, the dull tenor of someone grunting as though in pain, a crash of something, the clap of thudding footsteps.

“Roshan?”

I shout, straining against the cloth. What in Droon is happening?

There’s no reply, only a groan and the sensation of the sack drawing tighter against my face, making me choke on rough, dust-filled fibers. Powerful, ruthless arms drag me along the floor—it feels like at least two people. A cloying patchouli musk fills my nostrils. I know Roshan’s scent and this isn’t it. I start to struggle in earnest, my fists punching and clawing, my legs kicking and flailing.

“Roshan, please, if you’re there, say something.”

My voice is muffled, even to my own ears.

But there’s nothing but silence and the inexorable, suffocating pressure of the bag against my face. Smothering me. An unrelenting forearm squeezes against my neck. I start to hyperventilate as I gasp for air, and the burning sensation in the pit of my belly intensifies. My blood boils, fire liquefying in my veins. Oh, sands. I feel it the second my magic ignites.

Don’t kill anyone. Don’t kill anyone. Don’t kill anyone.

My control is thin at best, but the magical energy howling to life inside me like a thunderstorm doesn’t fragment. I don’t want to kill, but I’m not above maiming my enemy . . . if my gift cooperates, that is. I focus on the arm so brutally cutting off my air supply with each passing second.

Easy, Suraya.

The marks on my skin ignite as heat bursts from me, and I hear a ragged yelp as the compression on my throat abruptly recedes. Ripping the sack from my head, I whirl to face my attackers . . . but there’s only Roshan cradling a blistered arm and warding me off with the other. The smoldering sack in my hand bursts into flame, and I stomp it out with my feet in horror. “What the fuck, Roshan!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You were right—your magic wouldn’t have manifested unless you really believed you were in danger,”

he pants. “But at least it worked.”

“What was that smell? The perfume?”

I ask, still confused, my eyes darting around the room as if some other attacker is hiding nearby. My brain is playing catch-up, disoriented from the unexpected bait and switch.

“Cologne from one of the drawers.”

I look down, blinking against the glow streaming from me and surrounding my entire body, and then glance at Roshan’s red, suppurated skin. “I told you I could hurt you!”

“It’s nothing. I’ll put some healing salve on it and the skin will be good as new. Or I’ll get Aran to heal me.”

A proud gaze sweeps me. “You controlled it, Suraya.”

Did the burns also scorch his brain? “Barely.”

He approaches, and I flinch, feeling light and heat rear like twin demons inside of me.

“Don’t come any closer,”

I warn him. “I don’t know what it’ll do.”

“It’s fine. Just try to keep it at bay. Tell me, what does it feel like, in this moment?”

I take a breath and focus on the power sizzling like a roaring beast in the center of my chest. It’s hard to categorize the sensation, the sheer force coursing through my veins; it’s even harder to put it into words, but I try anyway.

“It’s hot,”

I say at first. “Not like the heat outside. An unnatural heat, like fire and lightning bound together. Every nerve inside of me feels tight with a force that’s desperate to escape, as if I’m at the center of . . . of a . . .”

I trail off, but Roshan finishes my sentence. “Star.”

Yes. That’s exactly what it feels like—as if I am a hot, pulsing ball of volatile energy, burning at impossible temperatures and held together only by the envisioned simurgh in my center. Unpredictable and powerful. Deadly.

Roshan moves over to the table and places a round melon at its center. “Can you direct the magic to that?”

I pant against the heat. I want to quit, want to let the power subside, but I know I can’t. “I can try.”

Centering myself, I concentrate on the melon and push my palms out, imagining the energy from my body lancing outward. For an eternal moment, nothing happens, but then the fruit brightens, an eerie glow saturating it. My runes light up as bands of heat race up and down my spine. Then without warning, the melon explodes, splattering yellow flesh and seeds everywhere. The table beneath it is the next thing to go, igniting white and then incinerating into a pile of red-hot embers. Panicked, I try to pull the magic back, to restrain it, but it’s burning too wild, too fast.

“Roshan, get out of here,”

I shriek, shuddering and clenching my fists together.

His voice is faint, nearly inaudible above the deafening roar in my ears. “Control, Suraya. Your magic answers to you, not the other way around.”

“It’s too strong—”

“Trust yourself.”

Suddenly, the door swings open. The figure standing on the threshold is indistinct, but I sense dangerous power—threat, threat, threat—and I’m numb to everything but pure self-preservation.

Dimly, I hear Roshan’s voice bellowing a warning to the new arrival—Aran—as if from a million miles away, but it’s too late. The magic surges toward its new target, and there’s nothing I can do but watch in horror as the pungent stench of burning hair fills the room.

No, no, no. Please, no, please, no.

I’m stuck, suspended in the thrall of this execrable power, unable to control it or stop it, and forced to watch as I commit the unforgivable.

Aran is chanting, his fingers casting invisible runes like a barrier, but nothing can stop the lethal torrent of my magic devouring his. And then something large and heavy crashes into me. A voice howls with pain at the impact, but it’s enough to jar me out of my deadly trance. Lips murmur at my ear as tears pour from my streaming eyes, and I curl into a ball on my side, weeping helplessly as the frenzy recedes and, with it, my ravenous, deadly magic.

With horrified eyes, I watch as Aran sinks to his knees with a shudder. Clenching my palms into fists, I pull them toward me and pin them against my belly.

“Holy mother of Droon,”

Roshan whispers.

“Did I hurt him?”

I burst out with a strangled sob. “Is he dead?”

The odor of seared flesh is heavy in my nostrils, and I look at Roshan, who had stopped me with no care for his own safety. Both of his arms are blistered now, as well as the skin of his chin that had pressed against mine. The fabric of his shirt hangs in tatters and his chest is bright red. He shakes his head. “No. He managed to cast healing runes in time to deflect the worst of it.”

“I could have killed him,”

I whisper. “Killed you.”

“You didn’t, though. And next time we’ll—”

I shake my head furiously, fighting another bout of tears. “No. There won’t be a next time. I won’t do it. Don’t you see, I can’t. I nearly murdered you both!”

He reaches for me, but his hand just hovers in midair as I recoil from any touch and then falls to his side.

Aran clears his throat, his voice hoarse but steady. “I’m safe, Suraya. You can’t just give up. You have to let it flow through you,”

he insists. “Stifling it isn’t going to do any good.”

“At least I won’t burn anyone to bits,” I sob.

“Think of yourself as its instrument,”

Roshan says.

I want to scream at him. I wasn’t its instrument—I’m its underling. Servant of the star, the crone had called me. Nothing could be more accurate. And given my ineptitude, it will take outside of forever before I master any part of it.

In what has to be the worst timing ever, my vision starts to tunnel.

No, no, no.

A strange clarity fills me, along with an accompanying rush of raw power. And then the old crone appears as if my uncharitable thoughts had summoned her. The singed smell vanishes, and everything takes on a hazy gleam when she shimmers into place, exactly where Roshan was standing across from me.

Unlike the last time she’d come, this time, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I’m aware that she’s not really here.

“Setareh sar lokkar.”

“Who are you, really?”

I study her wizened face, her mane of silver hair and mesmerizing eyes bursting with cosmic light. “A friend?”

I’m not expecting the smile. “Yes.”

“A Starkeeper?”

“No.”

I remember Roshan’s story. “Are you a guardian, one of the Royal Stars?”

“Yes.”

Her smile widens with approval.

This is no old crone—she is a relic from a past time . . . a deity and hand of the old gods. My breath falters then, as I look closer, past the age lines on her face, only to see that they aren’t lines at all. They are shooting stars and whirling constellations. Looking at her is like staring at a map of the starlit skies.

My eyes aches from keeping them locked on her—I don’t want her to disappear, not now when answers might be close. “What’s your name?”

“Vena.”

Of course. A derivative of Venant, also known as Regulus, guardian of the northern skies, the heart of the lion, and the guiding light of leaders and rulers, of kings and queens. The House of Regulus had become nothing like its ancient, bright namesake.

“Why did you say I was the bitter, beautiful end?” I ask.

She waves a hand, leaving a glowing trail of iridescence in its wake. “You will be the simurgh rising from the stardust of this world. You are its destruction and its reawakening. Its doom and its undying hope. You are the epicenter of its beating heart.”

I shake my head, my irritation blooming full force. “Can’t you ever speak normally? What does that mean? You want me to destroy Endara?”

“If that is your path, then the star must burn.”

My irritation dries up. “Why is that my choice?”

“The stars map your fate.”

“I don’t want it, this magic, this curse.”

My fingers curl into fists, my breaths growing shorter. “I won’t hurt the people I . . . care about.”

Her hands reach for mine, a cool warmth settling upon them and flowing up through my arms. Connected, I can see infinite realms through her eyes, and suddenly, my narrow viewpoint seems puny in comparison. Worlds upon worlds spin in dizzying circles, countless lives in their cosmic orbit.

“The stars have spoken, Starkeeper. A war to end all wars is upon you. Those who summon the old gods invoke Fero’s power in blood sacrifice. He will be reborn from the void and wreak his vengeance.”

A hint of a smile graces her lips. “Is that plain enough for you, my willful child?”

I resent that, resent her. Her body shimmers as if it is about to dissipate. I grasp the weightless hands that had been resting upon mine, but they have already begun to vanish. “No, wait. How is Fero going to be reborn?”

But within seconds, she is gone, and only Roshan remains in her place, wearing a quizzical expression, his face inches from mine and worried. Aran is seated on the couch, his face just as concerned.

“Where were you?”

Roshan asks urgently, though he keeps his hands at his sides. “You were in some kind of trance. Did you have a vision again?”

“Yes.”

I swallow, my throat painfully dry. A chill scuttles over my skin, my emotions roiling as I try to make sense of Vena’s words. It isn’t like the last time at all, not when a ruthless god is prophesied to be reborn and that a war worse than anything is coming.

“Was it the crone?”

“Please, I don’t want to talk about it,”

I reply, a sob clogging in my throat.

He doesn’t press the matter, but the curiosity is more than obvious in his eyes. Curiosity tempered by understanding and edged by a healthy amount of wariness. To be fair, it’s not unfounded, but I still hate the way he looks at me as if I am some feral creature to be leery of, like Javed’s captive azdaha.

Aran is looking at me, too, though his expression borders on morbid fascination. There’s understanding in their eyes, but there’s something else as well. Something that Roshan hides away quickly beneath a forced smile once he catches my teary gaze.

Something that looks a lot like fear.