Veil of Shadows (18 page)

There was only the briefest pause; then Morne responded,
“Are you so certain of that? None of them are fools, and none of them are weak. I cannot think of three women more capable of handling any Warlord fool enough to confront them.”

“And what about five Warlords fool enough to confront them? Ten?”

“Do you think they wouldn’t have called for help if they needed it? Do you think Elina would have hesitated to have the earth swallow them whole? The energy’s in chaos, but she can still use her magic, Kalen. If it came down to their safety, she’d use it without blinking an eye
.
”

“Their safety was in danger
because
she used it,” Kalen growled.

What in the hell had she been thinking?

Snarling, Kalen grabbed a towel from a hook and the wall and used it to sop up the sweat from his face and neck. “You know damn well it isn’t what I want. I just want things to be safer before they do something that could put them in danger.”

“They aren’t crippled.” Kalen hurled the towel against the wall and turned, staring out one of the narrow windows into the night. He braced fisted hands on either side of the window and fought against the urge to start pounding on something again. The muscles in his arms jumped, jerked and twisted as he battled not to let the rage take over.

It was well past midnight. It had been hours since he’d seen Lee. Although they’d woken in each other’s arms, lately there had been a distance between them, one that left him sick at heart.

That distance had been between them for some time, and every day, it grew. Now it had become a chasm, one he didn’t know how to bridge.

“They
are
, Kalen. If you could no longer speak into the minds of your men, if you could no longer hear their thoughts with ease, wouldn’t that leave you crippled, Kalen? If I could no longer heal with a touch and Lee was grievously injured, wouldn’t you view me as such? Gifted people rely on those gifts, like the sighted rely on their sight, and the hearing rely on their hearing. Take those gifts away, and you leave them all but blinded, all but deafened.”

In the silence of the training room, Kalen’s sigh echoed. Leaning forward, he braced his arms on the wall and muttered, “Damn you, Morne.”

She dreamed.

In her dreams, Syn was home—that place she still thought of when she thought of
home
. Where her mother and father had raised her and her brother, where her mother had been taken from her.

It was that night, all over again.

But this time, she wasn’t a child to be tucked away into a hiding place, wrapped snug in her older brother’s arms. Back then, he’d covered her mouth with his hand and begged her, pleaded for her to be quiet.

But when their mother started to scream, both of them had sobbed.

The Sirvani had been too far away to hear them, or perhaps their mother’s screams had simply been too loud.

She stood in front of the hidden room their father had made while Mama tried to push her into the room. “You must hide, Laisyn, you must hide now and be quiet.”

“No, Mama. I won’t hide.” Syn shook her head, staring into her mother’s face as she tried not to weep. She didn’t hide anymore. She fought.

If she had fought then . . .

“Laisyn, you will obey me,” Crea Caar said, her voice low and firm. “You must hide, and hurry—I need to warn the Trell family, tell them to hide.”

Behind her, Syn heard her older brother Con say, “Mama, you can’t. They are too close.”

They. Not the Trells, the neighbors who had kids almost the same age as Syn and Con. But
them
—the monsters that hunted them—not just the demons, although they certainly
looked
like monsters. But the Warlords and their servants.

They were close, too close. If Mama went outside, they would lose her.

“Mama, you hide,” Syn said, reaching out, grabbing her mother’s wrist and hauling her into the hidden room. “I’ll warn the Trells.”

But Mama talked to Syn like she was a child, not a grown woman. Not a trained soldier. Not a witch. Just a silly, useless child. “You will hide
now
.”

Then they came through the door—that wasn’t how it happened, but Syn knew, even as she dreamed, how dreams took on lives of their own. The Sirvani came—they came for Mama, and they came for her.

Syn laughed at them, because they didn’t know.

They didn’t realize what she was. What she could do.

Perhaps they looked at her and saw a silly child, too, just like Mama.

But Syn wasn’t a child. She lifted her hand and whispered, called to the sleeping power in the earth. Called it, claimed it.

And when it came, it came in the form of fire, and the fire swallowed the Sirvani whole, burning them where they stood, leaving behind nothing but charred husks.

“You see, Mama? I didn’t need to . . .”

Syn turned. Horror froze her throat.

Her mother, her brother . . . dead. Burned to death, by her hand.

Deep inside the earth, the sleeping power started to laugh.

Backing away, she stared at the dead bodies. And then time flashed forward, and she was no longer home, but in the forest.

Even before she lifted her head to look around, she knew where she was. She knew when.

She’d relive this horror as well.

She was already reliving it—the fire was tearing through her, wild and unfettered, and try as she might, she couldn’t control it. Couldn’t focus it, and the fire was spreading, spreading—the demons were dead, but the fire still hungered, reached for more bodies . . . the bodies of her men. She screamed in rage and tried to wrest control back from the bowels of the earth, but it fought her.

The power, it was too big for her. It had always been too much for her to handle, but until this very moment, the power had welcomed her—had allowed her to use it, to shape it and form it.

Now it threatened to shape and form her into the image of a killer—a woman who lost control and let her own magic kill the men who followed her.

“No, no, no, no . . .” It was her voice echoing inside her ears, her voice, underscored by the screams of those trying to evade the power that sought to kill them.

The fire, so close . . .

Then—pain—

In his arms, she shuddered, shook and wept silent tears. Her mouth opened in a silent scream and Xan felt his heart twist inside his chest. Dipping his head, he nuzzled her neck and whispered, “Syn, come back to me.”

Where was she?

What dreams held her so thoroughly trapped?

And then she was awake, a harsh gasp slipping free. She struggled to break away from him, sucking in air as though starved for it. Xan let her go, watched as she sat up on the side of the narrow bunk, her head lowered, her naked spine bowed.

“You dreamed,” he said softly.

“Yes.”

Stroking a hand down her back, he asked, “Can you talk about it?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, her narrow face grim. “It’s over. Was just a dream.”

Xan sat up and settled himself behind her, drawing her still-trembling body into the curve of his own. He wrapped an arm around her, pressed his palm flat against her belly. He used his other hand to wipe away the tears on her face. “You cry. You fought. You wouldn’t wake up. It was more than just a dream, Syn.” Pressing his lips to her shoulder, he murmured, “Tell me. Let me help.”

She sighed and another shudder wracked her body. “It was about the night my mother was taken from me,” she murmured. Shaking her head, she added, “I don’t like thinking about it.”

“The night she was taken,” he echoed. “In a raid.”

“Yes. We had a hidden room . . . no surprise, I guess. Most homes, especially those near a Gate, have places to hide. Mama put me and my brother in there. We wanted her to come in, but she wouldn’t—we had neighbors. They were like family. She insisted on checking on them. But the Sirvani were too close. They caught her.” She leaned her head back against his shoulder and murmured, “We could hear her screaming. Through the walls. We heard her screaming.”

Xan stared down at her, his heart aching. Automatically, he moved his head so that his hair fell and hid most of the scarred half of his face. “You were in that little room—hidden—alone.”

She looked at him. “My brother was with me. He was thirteen. But yes. We were alone.”

“I’m sorry.” Sorry . . . half sick, furious. Sorry didn’t even cover what he felt.

Her mouth twisted in a grimace and she shrugged. “It’s not an unusual story. Most of us have lost people close to us, because of a raid. Haven’t you?”

“Yes.” He turned his head, staring out the narrow window set high along the wall. The full moon spilled silvery rays of light inside, easing the darkness. “My mother was captured in a raid, too.”

He barely remembered her. But he remembered that he’d loved her. He could remember her arms, soft and strong, holding him close, as she sang to him and told him she loved him so.

Syn sighed and turned around in his arms, snuggling close. She kissed his shoulder and whispered, “So we have that in common.”

“Do you dream about your mother much?”

She shrugged. “Some. It’s not usually this bad.” She glanced at him from under her lashes and said, “There was more, too.”

She shifted back and lifted her hands, staring at them as though she didn’t recognize them. She flexed her fingers wide, then balled them into a fist, over and over. “About two months ago, I almost killed half of my team, Xan. We were coming up on a cache of Jorniaks when another group of demons came at us from behind. Raviners. It was so strange, almost like they were working together. And we keep seeing it happen. But Jorniaks lack the higher brain function to work as a
team
. I don’t know . . . Maybe the Raviners have been trailing them and waiting until the Jorniaks attack, then slipping in during the aftermath. All I know is that they were slaughtering us, picking us off one by one.”

His heart started to pound in hard, slow beats, tension mounting inside him. There was horror in her eyes. Horror. Hatred. Self-disgust. “I reached for my magic—I’m not the strongest witch around, nowhere close. But I’ve got a knack for fire. If I can see something, I can make it burn. And that’s what I did. I burned the Raviners, the Jorniaks, and when I tried to cut the fire off, I couldn’t.”

She lifted her head, staring at him with haunted eyes. “The earth’s energy, Xan . . . it’s like it’s damaged. Whatever happened when the Gate collapsed affected the energy—reshaped it. It reached inside me and it came out through the fire, and it killed and it wanted to keep killing. I kill demons without blinking an eye, but this time, the fire wanted to kill everybody. It wanted to use me to do it. I couldn’t turn it off. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t shut the flow down.”

She reached up and brushed the back of her head. “Lothen was with me. He used his pulsar, hit me in the back of the head. He saw that something was wrong—figured it out on his own, because I couldn’t even speak to tell him. He knocked me out and that broke my connection. The fire stopped. But I almost burned my team to ashes.”

His heart ached for her. Cradling her face in his hand, he murmured, “That wasn’t your fault.”

“It doesn’t matter if it is my fault or not—I almost did it.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I know you don’t understand. But we have to find a way to fix things so we can still access that energy, still use our magic.”