The Sleeper and the Silverblood

Gently pulling the knife from his shaking fingers, Kitara stood. The manacles clattered to the floor, and Storm crumpled at her feet.

Itzal’s eyes glittered like malicious obsidian. “Your tenacity is admirable, but pointless. And I do not tolerate defiance.” He tapped the remote again.

Kitara didn’t move, staring down the General as she tightened her grip on his blade.

Itzal steepled his fingers and leaned forward with something like scientific interest.

A beat passed.

Then another.

Still she stood between him and Storm—unbowed, unbroken.

Uncertainty flickered in Itzal’s expression, and with an almost indiscernible movement, he pressed the button again.

“You think you control all the variables,” Kitara said, her voice calm and sure. “But you forgot one.”

«Holy shit,» Baylen and Declan both silently swore, realizing.

“Which is?” the General hissed, gripping the arms of his chair and leaning forward.

“I may be my father’s daughter…” Her emerald-green eyes met his blackened ones. “But I am also my mother’s.”

Snarling, Declan exploded. The demons scattered, collapsing with shouts of pain, stunned.

Itzal raised a hand in Storm’s direction, and a surge of invisible power erupted across the room.

Kitara threw up her arm; darkness writhed around her clenched fingers.

She opened her fist and let go.

An explosion, a roiling tempest as hot and violent as the sun. Torturous, agonizing sound sent shock waves ripping through the room. Kitara’s face twisted against the pain of the noise. Fresh blood trickled down her neck from her ear.

Storm remained untouched. Unconscious, but alive.

Itzal snarled in confusion, a slash of teeth in a beautiful face, and then advanced.

“Kitara!”

With a fleeting glance, Kitara caught the blade Declan threw, concealed by her trigger sheaths he wore beneath his black body armor.

Demons fell at Declan’s hand before he retrieved his gun to end them permanently.

Something shifted in Kitara’s awareness—every molecule vibrated at once, and she felt the energy coursing through everything in the room, tangible and insubstantial alike.

Like she could rip it all apart with a thought.

A white shock of hair appeared in her periphery, just out of Itzal’s sight. The room shifted, warping and melting, dissolving into a disorienting lack of cohesion.

The room became a ballet of violence, an interweaving of precise and chaotic movements—a dance of survival. Amidst the confusion, Storm stirred and his silver eyes flickered open, stupefied.

Never once did Kitara divert her attention from the Fallen Ninthëvel.

Storm’s torture, Cornelius’s sobs, Kenric’s injuries…

She owed him for that and so much more.

Seized by icy fury, darkness surged over Kitara’s skin, lashing out. Itzal stumbled back, sparing a shocked glance at his hands. Ugly red blisters rose over his skin, and his fingers blackened as smoky power twisted around his arms.

In Kitara’s peripheral, Declan locked in step with Scarlet as she snarled, straining to sink her teeth into him. While she’d love to end the vampiress herself, she didn’t mind sharing.

Itzal roared—a cacophony of pain, fear, and rage—and drew his scimitar. He surged forward, enraged at her strike of unfamiliar power, the promise of her death in his eyes.

Kitara stretched out a hand.

Power, wild and untamed, exploded from her fingers. It blew Itzal off his feet, his body contorting in pain as tendrils of darkness wrapped around him.

He screeched, the sound inhuman enough to strike fear in the most unshakable of immortals. His skin burned away, blackening and blistering as the full impact of her attack took effect.

Unused to wielding it, the unadulterated potency of her power drove Kitara to her knees. Her head spun; nausea threatened to overwhelm her. Itzal staggered to his feet, roaring in rage and charging again, even as one arm twisted and blackened, shriveling to nothing.

He overtook her, scimitar raised in his remaining hand.

Kitara reacted without thinking, jerking up her mismatched blades to parry the blow. The might of it shattered the General’s stolen knife, colliding with her AIDO-issued blade with a force that sent pain lancing through her injured arm. Itzal’s momentum propelled him forward and she had no choice but to roll or be crushed beneath his weight. They hit the ground hard. Kitara gasped for air as he landed atop her, pinning her beneath him.

The General brought his scimitar around in a sweeping arc aimed at Kitara’s exposed neck. With her remaining strength, she shoved her remaining blade up and into his chest.

He froze: the edge of his sword a hair’s breadth from Kitara’s skin.

As flesh blackened and swelled around the knife wound, Itzal’s scimitar fell from his twitching hand, leaving a shallow graze across Kitara’s throat before landing with a clatter on the floor. Sucking a final tortured breath, Itzal’s eyes glazed over, and he collapsed.

Dark power ripped him apart from the inside out, reducing him to an empty husk of charred bones and swirling darkness.

But she’d lost control. The shadows grew, creeping up the walls of the room and eating away at the structure. Reality, animate and inanimate objects, started dissolving into nonexistence. Stone and bones, fabric and flesh, all disintegrated like illusions vanishing into the ether.

With a tortured groan, Kitara dragged herself to Storm’s side.

Baylen appeared in her blurring vision just as the ceiling began to fall, supporting Declan with one arm. Blood trickled from a gash in Declan’s temple while a ragged wound gaped in his throat, exposing bloody muscles and tendons. Scarlet had nearly torn his throat out.

Black feathered wings, dancing with an oilslick iridescence, spread from Baylen’s shoulders, shielding them as best as he could from the crashing rubble. “Kitara!” His voice reverberated through the crumbling room. He stretched out his other hand and light bloomed from his fingers, pushing back the encroaching darkness.

Kitara blindly grasped his arm. Baylen put his other hand to Storm’s shoulder. The walls of the room shimmered and danced, though Kitara didn’t know for certain if it was her unmaking, Baylen’s reality-bending, or traumatized shock.

Blackness overtook her as an explosion rang in her ears, and Baylen yanked them through space and time just as the fortress crumbled.

They appeared almost on top of a Healer in the AIDO infirmary, collapsing in a heap on the white marble floor. Kitara coughed and rolled over, gagging on dust and blood. She raised her head to wheeze at the terrified angel. “Find the Commander and the High Councilor. The High Engineer too. Go!” she barked when the angel hesitated.

“What is going on?” another Healer asked.

Baylen’s wings had disappeared, making Kitara wonder if she’d imagined them. Declan’s breath came in shallow gasps, and his skin had paled to a sickly gray.

“Heal the Captain,” Baylen ground out, his voice harsh from dust and tension.

“And get us a room,” Kitara rasped as the Healer knelt at Declan’s side. “It’s Storm Avensäel. He’s badly injured.”

“Avensäel…?” The Healer took in Storm’s tarnished wings, his state of undress, and skepticism flashed over his features.

Kitara turned to her cousin in desperation. “Baylen?”

“Right.” Without a word, he ethervesced her and Storm into another part of the infirmary: an empty exam room.

“Help me get him on the table.”

Baylen obeyed, his face tight with concern. “Kitara…”

“Don’t,” she snapped. “Don’t even think about talking me out of it. You have to keep them out of here, Baylen. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing, and they can’t interrupt me while I figure it out.”

“You just brought down an entire Ostragonian fortress—”

“Goddammit, are you going to help me or not?” she shouted. “I have to save him!”

Maybe it was the panic in her tone, the wildness in her eyes, or the white-knuckled grip she still maintained on her blade, but Baylen thought better of arguing. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Do better,” she snapped.

He sighed and left the room, pulling the door closed. Muffled, agitated voices carried from the hall outside, but Kitara ignored them. She found a rolling stool and sat beside the exam table. Her knife clattered to the floor. Storm had lost consciousness again, wheezing agonizing, labored breaths.

She hadn’t had enough sleep. Stars knew the last time she’d eaten. She was injured, exhausted, overwhelmed. She’d just ripped apart an enemy with power she’d stifled for so long, it leveled everything in the vicinity and threatened to rip her apart too.

None of that mattered now.

Kitara reached for Storm’s mind. His aura. That familiar, silver-white aura that felt like home.

Home.

She put one shaking hand to Storm’s arm, the other to his sternum, and closed her eyes.

Everything about him felt foreign now. The aura she knew almost as well as her own had vanished.

She frowned, her brow wrinkling, and without stopping to consider, she forged ahead.

Instead of a golden tapestry like Kenric’s essence, Storm’s soul manifested like an expanse of flowers—snowy white flowers. Something akin to the black frost of Ostragarn spread throughout, encasing each blossom in an unrecognizable mass, as if someone dumped tar over the field. And it was growing.

She had to stop that first. Find the source.

She blinked and there it stood: a diamond-like tower, weeping black ice.

Picking her way through the corrupted parts of Storm’s essence, Kitara proceeded to the center of his soul. She couldn’t unmake the diamond. This wasn’t a situation requiring a blunt instrument. In her mind, she shuddered. She needed to clear it of the corrosion. But how?

She willed something like fire into her hands. Something with heat. Something to melt away the icy sludge.

To unmake it.

She hadn’t lied to Baylen: she had no idea what she was doing. Operating solely on instinct, she sank her hands, rippling with warmth, into the blackness. Suddenly, her own shadowy power didn’t seem nearly as sinister. The icy ooze writhed like a live thing, cold and dark.

Well, Kitara had faced cold and darkness before and survived. She wouldn’t give in now.

Slowly, reluctantly, the black ice melted, shrinking against the power of her unmaking. Little by little, the diamond tower emerged from underneath the muck, gleaming and whole.

Kitara didn’t know how long she worked on the center of Storm’s aura. Minutes, days, years. Inch by inch, she eradicated the corrosion, until the tower stood pristine and unmarred again, but still surrounded by a field of blackness.

Weariness settled in Kitara’s bones, but the memory of Storm’s screams forced her onward. She would not lose him to Itzal’s vendetta. How did Kenric bear it when this happened to Robert?

He didn’t, a voice in the back of her mind whispered as she surveyed the remnants of the Fallen rot. He threw himself into his work until he was promoted out of Spokane.

She thought cauterizing the source of decay was laborious. Cleansing the rest was worse. Each blossom required individualized care: gentle removal of the black ice, then even gentler coaxing to make each bloom unfurl again.

There were thousands of them.

The longer she worked, the more she saw the muck as tar, not ice. She could understand now why an immortal using their power in this state would kill them. It would be like setting fire to the field. Highly flammable. Combustible. Destructive. Deadly.

While she cleared away the mess, warmth blossomed around her as each flower reemerged.

After what seemed like decades, the expanse of Storm’s soul stretched out clean and bright, not a speck of black marring the tableau.

Kitara opened her eyes.

She noted several things. First, her limbs felt stiff, indicating she’d sat stationary for some time. Second, she wasn’t alone: Kenric, Cornelius, Ilythia, Robert, and a handful of Healers had sneaked into the room without disturbing her. Third, Baylen was nowhere to be seen, while the rest wore expressions ranging from shock to awe to terror, in the case of one of the Healers. And finally, the familiar, reassuring warmth of Storm’s silver-white aura rippled off him in waves once again.

Kitara glanced down to ensure she’d withdrawn the smoky darkness of her power.

His eyes fluttered open: bright, silver, restored.

“Take him to Valëtyria,” she croaked, her voice rough with disuse. How long had she been here?

She didn’t have an opportunity to ask. Darkness encroached on her vision. She vaguely recognized someone caught her before she hit the floor as she tumbled off the stool. Then she succumbed to unconsciousness.