Lux, p.2
Lux, page 2
With each beat of their wooden swords, everything Jess fought for seemed to sharpen. Adrenaline shot through her as she joined the dance with determination. They would show the courts, clans, and covens that the enmity that existed between each was unnatural, that it had been seeded by the Fomors’ invasion.
They were weaving their way in a series of thrusts and blocks when the scent of evergreen distracted Jess. Her gaze swung away from Astra as if sweeping the area for a new opponent. Jess’s eyes landed on a pair of shifters in their human forms. Matteo whirled a wooden fae spear against a female shifter. A dark braid whipped through the air as the female shifter blocked his attack. Piera. Jess’s sister.
A lump rose in her throat as the presence of the two shifters threatened to steal her focus. Over the last two weeks, she hadn’t seen much of them. Part of that was her fault. It wasn’t as if she’d tried to tell Matteo the truth about her shadow self dying. Anticipation stole through her as she wondered what he’d make of her when he knew. But the memory of how he’d looked at her when she’d told everyone at Skiron’s house that she was Silva tempered that feeling. That look had spoken volumes. That she was something different. Something he couldn’t understand. Someone he couldn’t be close to anymore. It was that look that had had her avoiding him as much as possible. She hardened herself, reminding herself that even with her shadow self gone, Matteo couldn’t deal with who and what she was now.
Jess sidestepped Astra’s blow, swinging her own blade toward the fae’s open flank. Astra deflected the stroke effortlessly. Jess’s frustration had her going in for another strike. Astra ducked as Jess’s sword whipped past her head. Next moment, the fae shot forward, taking advantage of Jess’s overreaching. She stumbled clumsily out of the way but righted herself just in time to meet Astra’s next attack.
The aroma of fir and pine continued to needle its way into Jess’s awareness. Things between her and Piera weren’t any better. But this time it was Piera who avoided her. Jess had tried to approach her to explain that they would save their father, but she’d refused to speak to her. She yearned to explain that their father was a matter closest to her heart but that she must follow Rune’s guidance. He was the sole Umbran god now. Anxiety threatened Jess as she wondered whether the truth would only make Piera hate her more.
Astra rushed her, landing a powerful blow on her flank which sent her sprawling into the dust. Jess’s breath left her as pain blossomed down her back. With the wind knocked out of her, she blinked up at the pale sky.
Piera’s barbed tone from the other side of the courtyard rang out. “You’re right, this is making me feel better.”
For a moment, Jess didn’t have it in her to get up. She just lay there, feeling hollowed out. She had thought she’d known what she was doing. She’d been so sure that the path she was on was right. She’d thought she’d go to the Silvan Mountains and return with her strength magnified. With a goddess’s strength. After all, that was who… what… she’d once been. A being invested with all the strength and power of the winds that swept through those peaks. But she wasn’t that anymore.
And the hurt swelling through her chest wasn’t because Piera thought her hard-hearted. A cruel goddess. It was because she wasn’t that. In fact, she didn’t much know what or who she was. But she feared that the family she’d always dreamed of having would be lost to her when Piera found that out.
2
WHEN YOU’RE NOT HERE
The river wended its way through the valley, a silvery ribbon beneath the moonlight, forty-foot shy of the outer walls of the Grian Turris—the Sun Keep. Rune’s awareness of the water was as tangible as if the river caressed his skin. The current of Umbra’s waters was as much a part of him as the flow of his own blood. A buttery light played on the river—the bright reflection of the Sun Keep.
In Rune’s most distant memories, he saw it comprised alone of the simple circular court in which King Imber had received him and Jess. Rune’s ancient memories worked something like the tide along the shoreline. Sometimes, its expanse was so clear that he walked its vivid path as if it had only happened yesterday. At other times, the seashore was submerged entirely. And he steered those tides because he was them.
In his day-to-day interactions, he allowed his distant memories to sink into Umbra’s waters and shadows. It was easier that way. But at night, when he had the luxury of solitude and time, he sifted through them, exploring their depths. In fact, he’d found being within their tide as rejuvenating as resting. It was his way of resting instead of sleeping as a mortal would. In a way, the memories were very like the process of dreaming. He could guide a memory, but it was a deep subconscious part of him that conjured it.
The current took him to a recent memory: the day of their arrival. Two weeks ago when a hundred or so Seelie had gathered in the tiers surrounding Imber’s throne. The lapping waters seemed like the awed whispers that had risen within the lofty chamber after Rune and Jess had shared their tale with the court.
Both the king and his subjects had been captivated. They’d gawped at Rune’s shadow wings, watching them shift as if an invisible breeze played with them. Their wide-eyed looks and awed chatter had set the court alive, belief and hope stirring.
But it was the flap of other wings that had sanctified Rune and Jess’s claim. Umbra’s animals had breached the court. Within minutes, elen—golden-hued birds, ordinarily elusive creatures who kept to the thickest of forests—had flocked in the gleaming rafters. Meanwhile, fuathan, the Depth dogs had clustered in the courtyard, circling Rune and Jess. The animals of the Heights and Depths had blessed them. Happiness and faith had beat through Rune—he’d felt as if they were a potent oasis to which Umbra’s wildlife was drawn. They would restore union to Umbra. They would purge the Shadowlands of the Fomors’ dark magic. Belief had flooded the king and court too, the animals acknowledging the return of Umbra’s gods.
But emptiness moved through Rune as he remembered what had happened then. King Imber had bequeathed Lord Alba and Lady Silva a chamber in the Sun Keep. When he and Jess had been left alone, she had joked about the animals—that he’d been like Snow White in the way they’d surrounded him. Rune had been struck by how she’d understood the significance of the animals but hadn’t felt them in the same way he had. The sacredness and purity of having the animals bless their rule. Because, just as the fuathan had sensed the return of the gods when they’d been drawn to Cuill and the lingering Sidhe, the animals had been drawn to Rune. Not Jess.
For I am Umbra’s only god.
Once again, Rune stood alone, picturing Jess in the candlelit bedchamber, alone too. The bower-like room had seemed to mock them with all they’d lost that first night. It wasn’t merely that they would both have recently dreamed of sharing such a romantic space. It was that she wasn’t the Silva who filled most of Rune’s memories. An echo of what Jess had said in Norway skipped through him. “I hate the idea of you … yearning for anyone but me.” He remembered how Jess’s look and admission had warmed him then. But now, everything they’d been to each other so recently felt pale in comparison to what they’d once been. And oh, how he did yearn for Silva.
Those shorelines that he’d kept submerged over the day rose like jagged rocks, tearing through him. A memory of Silva struck him—ebony skin, her midnight hair, her white gown trailing behind her. How many times had they strolled these banks together? It felt as if she would come to find him at any moment. For they were as constant as the moon holding the tide and the tide following the moon. The push and pull never changing. But that never-changing relationship had changed.
Rune remembered Jess’s stray comment as she’d looked at the dress that King Imber had sent her. “I’ve worn enough white to last me a lifetime.” She associated it with the Rem Clan. She didn’t know that it was Silva’s color, the white symbolizing how she reflected Alba. Jess’s comment should have hurt Rune. But it hadn’t. Because, in so many ways, Jess wasn’t Rune’s true love anymore.
Jess’s associations with Alba were those of Earth’s. Where Alba had been muddied with links to the drowned god, with Enodian legends of the god leaching Remus’s coat when he’d brought him back from the dead. All true. But Alba, the white, had older associations. In his first form, Rune had fair skin and hair. Much more similar to the Rems. His coloring symbolized his most vital element—the frothing waves, the nutrients of the waters, bringing new life in his wake.
And it had always pleased Silva to wear Alba’s colors. In turn, he had donned the ebony hue of her skin and hair. The soft black tunic he wore now was to honor her—the lady of the night sky. Long before she, too, had been bastardized by the Enodians and all their twisted portrayals of Lady Night.
The glimmer of the Sun Keep on his waters swallowed Rune’s focus. He thought of when Silva had been called “Swelsel— the roots of the mountain.” When her rock had merged with the seed magic, and she’d created the ignes rock. The very rock that the Sun Keep had been built from. It seemed as if everything was imbued with some memory of her that caused him to ache with grief.
The riptides of these memories felt like they were changing Rune. He was being reshaped by loss—by loneliness. Before they were fractured, he and Silva had had what Jess had spoken of only figuratively—lifetimes. Together. Their immortality and love—infinite. Now, the knowledge that he was the sole Umbran god seemed to slam into him as the waves of the Alban Sea now drummed upon Umbra’s southern cliffs.
Rune wrenched himself from the ocean of memory. It was ironic that there was nowhere deeper than the corners of his mind, and yet he felt as if any one of these shallow eddies might drown him.
Alba’s consciousness was vast. The tributaries that had flowed within the vamps upon Earth had returned to him, too. Rune had sensed it happen that first dawn after he’d claimed his shadow self. The tiny wisps of stray consciousness that had given those vamps their immortal blood had flowed back at Eventide. And with it, Rune had been complete. All the vamps on Earth had—like Sunny—become human again.
That first day, Sunny had been a comfort. Rune’s ex-blood brother may not retain any of Alba’s consciousness, but he’d experienced it and knew something of its overwhelming abundance. They had talked much. But too soon, Sunny had gone back to Earth to spy for him and Jess.
By the Depths, I am spending too much time alone if I actually miss Sunny.
Clasping his hands behind him, Rune trod along the bank, grounding himself with reflections about tomorrow. At midday, the Seelie were due to gather on the Aedis Peak, to hear Alba and Silva. There had only been one hiccup earlier when King Imber had come to Rune, detailing the Triodian High Witch, Fern’s displeasure—she was suspicious of Imber’s recalling his troops from Earth at dawn. Imber had assured her that his soldiers would be back at dusk. It wouldn’t be long before Fern’s suspicion drove her to seek answers herself. Rune only cared that Fern kept Earth’s paras’ attention away from Umbra as long as possible. He wanted to attain the faith and backing of all Seelie before the politics of Earth’s paras became involved.
Since the blood-sworn vamps, who had previously maintained the glamour upon Triodia’s branches, had returned to humanity’s ranks, the Seelie had been helping. Imber had deployed Seelie delegations to the Triodia institutes to glamour them invisible. The Seelie had also glamoured the ex-vamps previously in the Triodia’s service to forget about the para world. Yet, because fae power only worked at Eventide, the units had to be there at dawn and dusk to maintain the glamour. It wasn’t a long-term solution, not when all Seelie would soon be needed to defend their own lands. For Mara would return, likely with reinforcements from the kingdom of the Fomors.
The Enodians were, too, without glamour. Unlike the Triodians, they had no far-reaching alliance with the Unseelie. Some Enodians worked with Unseelie and vice versa, but it wasn’t standard practice. The coven likely didn’t have enough Unseelie allies to glamour all their strongholds invisible. Rune wondered how the Enodians were managing the breakdown of their system. It was likely the reason that the invasions upon the Triodias had ceased.
Surely, Theo must suspect that the vamps becoming human had something to do with the successful restoration of Umbra’s gods. Oh, how Rune would love to pummel that worthless mage with all the power of the Heights and Depths should he portal here. Not as much as Jess. Rune knew she was impatient to confront Theo, who held her father captive.
Yet, Rune knew that force couldn’t be the means of truly defeating Theo and Queen Mara. Because the enemy responsible for bringing about their power, the Fomors, thrived off destruction. As evidenced even in this peaceful valley. Through the web of water, an undertone of iron lurked, brought from the forges that daily churned out iron weapons.
For too long, the Seelie had fought the Unseelie, barely managing to keep them at bay the last few centuries. But the Unseelie and their queen were a pale enemy in comparison to the Fomors, who were nourished by that very destruction. A flicker of the portal under the Iron Keep, through which the destructive energy from Umbra flowed into the Fomor kingdom, rippled through his head. He did not doubt that Mara would return with Fomor reinforcements, eager to feed off the nourishment of war. Rune didn’t know how they were to defeat that enemy yet, but he would start with trusting in the gentler, nurturing ways of his people, in the same way they’d trusted in the signs and portents of the animals.
And it starts with the Storm-born.
He would show the Seelie that true power lay in restoring, not destroying. He would give his people another ally in the form of the Storm-born.
Rune’s chest twinged as he knew what he had to do. The Aedis Peak this early in the year still bore much snow, and it was necessary to clear it to allow for the gathering of all the Seelie—over three thousand. So, he summoned that part of Silva’s magic that now dwelled within him. Unlike the power he wielded so happily over the Depths, his power over the Heights felt… uncomfortable—an admission that Silva was gone.
But unclasping his hands, he relaxed his body, reaching out to the winds. He called down the Zephyr, the warm southern wind wafting up from the Alban Sea. Its current sang of blossoms, carrying seeds to scatter on the grass plains. Rune dissolved into its playful stream, encouraging its heat, relishing in sprinkling the kernels upon the lands beneath. He could feel the vigor of the storm flowing through his veins. This was the start of new life for his people.
Even if… it was an end for him.
3
A LOST CAUSE
Matteo landed on the Temple Peak on all four paws, feeling like a cat that had fallen off a ledge.
Without the nine lives. Seriously, no self-respecting shifter has any business falling through Heights portals.
His fur bristled down his back in discomfort. He’d thought traveling through the Depths portals when Dearbhla had brought him to Umbra was bad enough. But traveling through the Heights was worse. He still felt as if he were falling, even though he knew he was hundreds of feet farther up, on the Temple Peak of the Silvan Mountains. His body betrayed how unsettled he was, his claws refusing to let up their death grip on the rock.
Yet, knowing the next travelers would be coming through behind him, he forced himself to pad forwards. Being kicked in the backside was an indignity he could do without.
Around him, rested masses of wind-blasted rocks as smooth as pebbles rounded by the sea. Fae had claimed many of these as seats, while others stood along the mountain ridge as far as the eye could see. In the distance, he caught swathes of white fur, along with pale complexions and hair: shifters. He made his way towards the congregation of Rems, changing into his human form.
A fae nearby whispered, “Lady Silva carried away the snow in the early morning and wore down the rocks.”
Matteo scowled as he pictured Jess—or didn’t picture her as it were, a disembodied entity—and it felt as if the breeze playing across his skin was responsible for stealing her away from him. This conversation was a repeat of the sort that had swarmed around the Seelie Court for the last two weeks. “Lady Silva this… Lady Silva that…” The only thing more grating than being continually reminded about Jess’s goddess status was the consistency with which her name was paired with Lord Alba’s.
Matteo’s expression eased as he saw Dearbhla amidst the other Rems. Although she sat with the clan, there was room on either side of her. He wasn’t sure if it was her, well, difference from the rest of the pack—being half fae—or her position as second that disinclined the other Rems to socialize with her. To be honest, it could simply be her taciturn manner, but he had grown to like her company since they’d gotten to Umbra. After all, she had saved him and his Alpha from the Triodia. And by choice, Dearbhla continued to serve Jess steadfastly. Jess’s second was generally quiet and kept herself to herself, but Matteo had spent plenty of dinners sitting in companionable silence with her and was comfortable with her aloof manner.
“I’ve never seen so many fae,” Matteo commented as he sat down. The entirety of the ridge was occupied by Seelie. Matteo had portaled here from the Sun Keep. While a few hundred of these Seelie had likewise come from the Sun Keep, hundreds more had journeyed from farther afield.
“I’d say,” Dearbhla answered. “There hasn’t been a gathering like this since the fae wars.”
