Burn the Night

Thirty

The wind threaded its fingers through the black feathers of my wings as I soared overhead toward a distant thicket of trees. The sun had just broken over the horizon and was glazing the earth in its golden glow. I could feel myself growing weaker the brighter the sky became. We had spent most of the night arguing tactics before we were all evicted from Mira’s town house in Savannah a couple hours before sunrise. The Fire Starter declared that she needed to have a private meeting with the other gathered nightwalkers before they sought a safe place to spend the daylight hours.

Cynnia, Rowe, and I retreated to the house Shelly was renting in another part of the city. The witch tripped into the house minutes after our arrival, looking exhausted and pale, but also relieved. The human called Gabriel would not only survive, but might also regain his ability to speak due to her diligent ministrations. I had a feeling the news would go a long way toward calming the Fire Starter’s frazzled nerves, but her temper would not be under tight rein again until we finally took care of Aurora.

With protective spells in place, we all settled into our respective sleeping spots an hour before dawn, but sleep would not come. I lay with Rowe’s arm possessively thrown across my stomach, his soft snoring rumbling in my ear. However, my own rush of thoughts kept me awake. I knew what we were planning would never be enough if we hoped to defeat Aurora. Something else needed to be done if Cynnia, Rowe, and so many others were going to survive the coming days and nights.

Using a spell to deepen Rowe’s sleep, I slipped away from him and out of the house without disturbing the protective spells or alerting anyone to my exodus. With a sigh on my lips, I took to the sky with my wings spread wide on the breeze I had conjured up. The feeling of flying free above the earth, even as the sun rose behind me, was exhilarating. For just a brief moment in time I felt free of the burdens that had been weighing on my shoulders during the past several months. There was only me and the soft caress of the wind blessed by the Great Mother.

Yet, as I drew closer to Aurora, I knew it all was an illusion. The weight was still there and growing heavier by the second as I approached her camp. I didn’t know her exact location, but then I only needed to step into the perimeter of her camp and her guards would pick me up and take me to the demented queen. I hated not telling Cynnia or Rowe about my plans, but I knew that neither would have let me out of the house if I’d revealed my intentions.

I circled the clearing once before bringing in my wings enough to glide down to the earth. My feet had barely sunk into the soft soil when a harsh voice ordered me to halt. I raised both of my hands, palms out, to show that I was unarmed. I extended my wings as far as they would reach on either side of me, keeping myself vulnerable. I was surrounded by six naturi, all of whom had weapons trained on me.

“I’ve come to speak with Aurora,” I announced in a loud voice, so it carried to the other guards, who were waiting in the shadows of the forest. A low murmur of conversation drifted through the trees like a breeze whispering through the leaves.

“Her Majesty has nothing to say to you, traitor,” barked one of the naturi. “She simply wants you dead along with your traitorous sister.”

“She’ll meet with me. Just ask her,” I said, my voice full of confidence.

The murmur of conversation resumed as they weighed my words. I’d been banking on their hesitance to kill the one person who had led them through the centuries. Once Rowe had been trapped outside the cage, I became the captain and commander of Aurora’s armed forces. They were accustomed to following my orders.

“Besides, wouldn’t she rather see me killed in person than hear about it later?” I asked. This new incentive was enough to get one naturi ordered back to Aurora’s camp for orders. I was a dangerous creature in my own right, and they were more than a little wary of bringing me within their safe haven.

Slowly lowering my hands while wrapping my wings around my shoulders, I sat on the ground and crossed my legs as we all waited to hear what Aurora wanted. The five naturi that stepped out of the woods upon my landing edged closer. Wrist crossbows, short swords, and bows and arrows were trained on me, ready to be loosed if I so much as breathed too deeply.

While I didn’t come to Aurora’s camp unarmed, I was careful to keep my weapons limited to a couple small daggers concealed on my person. I was secretly hoping they would forget to search me—I might need to fight my way out of Aurora’s camp before this meeting was over.

After several minutes, two naturi returned to the clearing, including one I’d rather not have seen.

Greenwood was tall and lanky, his long brown hair flecked with gray. His face was slashed with wrinkles, as if worn by exposure to the elements. The earth clan did not age gracefully, but remained long-lived and spry despite their appearance. Greenwood had always been upset that Rowe was chosen to be Aurora’s consort over him. He had both age and experience over the wind clan member. However, Rowe’s ruthless grace had appealed to Aurora at the time. Now it seemed that Greenwood was finally getting his shot.

“I’m surprised you came,” he said, opening with a soft chuckle. “You were always a careful strategist, taking only calculated risks that were in your favor to win. Surely you realize you’re not leaving this camp alive, even if you are permitted an audience with Aurora.”

“I did not come to speak with you, Greenwood. The earth clan and your play at politics are of no interest to me. Take me to Aurora. She will want to hear what I have to say.”

Greenwood took a wary step backward as I rose, eyeing me with a new caution. I showed no fear despite the fact that my heart was pounding like a thing gone mad in my chest, and my stomach was twisting into knots. Six naturi surrounded me in the immediate vicinity, but I could sense another dozen waiting in the shadows of the trees. I didn’t have much of a chance against these odds. Even if I took straight to the sky, there was a good chance they would shoot me down before I got far. But given my reputation, the naturi watching me now were afraid to be the first to strike. I had to use that fear to my advantage.

After a long silence, Greenwood let out a low chuckle that sounded strained and forced to my ears. “Lose the wings and let us bind your hands, then I will have you escorted to Aurora so she can see you killed in person. I’m sure that would bring her some pleasure. Wouldn’t it be a great triumph to carry your head on a pike into battle so it is the first thing Cynnia sees as she faces us?”

I said nothing, focusing on causing my wings to dissolve into black sand that poured like a waterfall down my back to the ground. Putting my hands together in front of me, I kept my face perfectly blank as one pale naturi stepped forward and roughly bound my wrists behind my back with a thick piece of rope. At the same time, a second naturi stepped forward and patted me down, removing my two knives.

The naturi that bound my hands gave me a hard kick that sent me stumbling forward. “Get moving,” he ordered with a laugh.

The walk to Aurora’s camp was one of the longest in my entire memory. It seemed as if all the naturi that rallied around her banner had come out to see me, jeering, spitting, and stabbing me. While most of the wounds were relatively superficial in nature, I was bruised, bloody, and covered in dirt when I was finally brought to Aurora’s pristine white tent. Beside it, there was a somewhat less grand green tent, most likely Greenwood’s. It was somewhat reassuring that they were maintaining separate residences for now. If I knew Aurora as well as I thought I did, I suspected she was waiting for him to deliver both Cynnia and me to her feet dead before finally taking him as her consort.

As I came within a dozen feet of the tent, the two sides were parted and Aurora stepped out. It seemed as if a shaft of golden light shot through the trees to shine on her beautiful blond hair and pale skin. She shone before me like a fallen star or a ray of perfect sunlight on a cloudy day. She wore her usual white robes, but now with a breastplate made of polished, gleaming gold. I knew, however, it was merely a ceremonial piece in an effort to more closely align herself with the army that she would soon order to their death.

My older sister looked down on me and smiled smugly. She didn’t care that she would never have been able to accomplish this if I hadn’t willingly turned myself over to her. Her only care was that she had me bound and battered, striking a blow against the traitors rising up against her.

“The first of the traitors has come to meet their fate!” she exclaimed to the crowd that had gathered before her. A loud cheer went up, causing the tree limbs to tremble. A shiver ran through me as I listened to those bloodthirsty voices. It sounded as if she had acquired a greater army than I initially thought she would. I knew all the naturi would not flock to her side. Some had rallied around Cynnia’s banner, while another group remained as far from the two sides as they could, hoping to remain unnoticed until the fighting finally blew over.

“I’ve come to talk,” I sharply said as the cheering died down.

“You lost the opportunity to talk your way out of your execution a long time ago,” Aurora smirked at me.

“You never gave me that opportunity. You proclaimed me to be a traitor and then ordered my execution before I could plead my case to you,” I growled, taking a step forward. As I did, a pair of swords points dug were pointed at my throat, keeping me from moving any closer. “But I’ve not come to plead for mercy from you. I’ve come to offer you a chance at preserving your own life. It will be your one and only chance. I wouldn’t turn my back on it.”

“My life?” Aurora laughed, tossing her blond locks away from her face. “If you’ve not figured it out by now, we are the ones that are going to destroy Cynnia and her little army. We are the ones that are going to restore order to the planet and save the Great Mother.”

“That would be hard to accomplish without the Great Mother on your side. Is she listening to you now?” Aurora’s face twisted with rage. I was questioning her connection to the earth, something that should have been absolute, since she was the queen of the naturi. But I knew better. During her time in the cage, she had lost her connection with the earth, and I had a feeling it was the reason for the madness that now claimed her fragile mind and spirit.

“How dare you question me?” she screamed, pointing one quivering finger at me.

“In all the years that you have known me, have I ever lied to you?” I demanded. She knew that I had never told her a falsehood in the all the time I’d served her. She would know if I were lying to her. “Just a quick meeting to discuss the future of the naturi people. Isn’t that what’s best for both sides? What’s best for the earth?”

Aurora stared at me for more than a minute in silence, her arms stubbornly crossed over her chest as if to protect herself from my words. She wasn’t happy, but she was turning over my words in the back of her mind. I was willing to bet that she was hoping to get some valuable information out of me regarding Cynnia’s forces before she killed me, but then I had hoped to gather the same. I just needed to think of a way to escape again so I could get the information back to Cynnia.

“Bring her into the tent,” Aurora snapped before turning in a swirl of robes and reentering it. The swords at my throat were lowered and I was shoved forward. My escort took me to the center of the tent, where I was pushed down to my knees on a bearskin rug in front of Aurora, who was now seated in a golden throne with plush pillows of deep green.

“Leave us alone,” Aurora ordered. The guards hesitated, glancing at each other and then back at Greenwood, who had entered the tent behind me. “Leave us, I said! Do you think I cannot handle my own sister, who has already been bound and beaten?”

“Me as well?” Greenwood inquired.

“Leave us alone!” Aurora screamed, tightly gripping both arms of the chair so she nearly came out of her seat again. No one hesitated. They all quickly scrambled to leave her sight and close the tent door behind them.

I watched as Aurora sank back in the chair and took a deep breath, as if to calm her frazzled nerves. In the shadows of the tent, I could see the lines of worry starting to extend from her eyes, and long, deep furrows at the corners of her mouth, which was perpetually pulled into a frown. Returning to earth should have rejuvenated my older sister, but it seems the healing powers of the earth were not reaching her. For some reason I had yet to understand, she had truly lost her connection with the earth. A part of me wondered if I could restore it the same way I had for Rowe, but I knew she would not see it as the gift that it was, but a power that I had over her, which would only get me killed faster.

“I see that Greenwood is still trying to insinuate himself at your side,” I observed in a low voice. Slowly, I moved off my knees and sat so my legs were crossed before me. Not only was that position more comfortable and less formal, but I could also rise with more stability and speed than if I’d been kneeling.

Aurora gave a low snort and slumped in her chair. “He cares nothing about me or the naturi people. He’s still only determined to see an earth clan member wearing the crown. It’s been eons since they last sat on the throne, and it’s eating away at him still that I did not choose him when we were all younger.”

“But you’re dangling the carrot in front of him now,” I said as one corner of my mouth quirked in a half smile. “Very wise. You’ve won the allegiance of the earth clan under any circumstances so long as Greenwood thinks he may one day become your consort.”

Aurora matched my smile with a devilish one of her own. “He thinks I’m a fool. If I were to make him consort, I would be found the next morning dead in my bed and him on the throne.”

“As long as Greenwood is leading them,” I said, “I would not trust the earth clan. They follow him blindly and will turn on you at a moment’s notice. They have not been what I would call a trustworthy group for centuries.”

“Trustworthy?” Aurora exclaimed, sitting straight up in her chair again and gripping the arms for support. “What do you know of trustworthy?”

For just a second she had forgotten that I was no longer her devoted sister, but her enemy.

“I never turned my back on you, Aurora,” I calmly said, hoping my soothing voice would help to ease her temper. “Not even when you ordered the death of our staunchest friends and allies. I followed your orders to find Cynnia and bring her back home to you. I knew nothing of her plans. I just wanted us to be a family again and enjoy the power that flowed from the earth now that we were home.”

“You never should have been permitted to live,” she sneered, easing back into her chair again. “Father was wrong to protect you. You should have been killed at birth, and now you’re a blight on our people. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was your influence that corrupted our Cynnia in the end.”

“I’m not what’s killing our people,” I firmly said, trying to brush aside the same venom I had put up with for most of my existence. I had to remain focused on the reason I’d taken this risk in the first place. “I know you saw it while we were caged. There was no hiding from it. Our women were no longer producing children, and those few babies that were born died at a young age. And then there were the hunts. Hundreds of our people were slaughtered in the name of treason.”

“And what is your point?”

“Our people are dying!” I cried, outraged by her bland attitude. “We can’t afford another war. Not a civil war amongst ourselves or a war with the humans, who have grown infinitely more dangerous with time. A war will destroy any hope we have of seeing the continuation of our race.”

“Oh, do not act as if you care about our people!” Aurora snapped. “You are the Dark One. The one who should never have been born. You don’t care about a race that never wanted you.”

“Regardless of their feelings for me, I am still a naturi, and I don’t want to see the slaughter of our people to continue. You have to know that we can’t survive much longer as we are. This division of the clans is weakening us.”

Aurora remained silent for a long time, staring just past me, lost in some dark thought. I could only hope I was finally reaching her; that the madness that had claimed her was only temporary and she was coming back to reason now that she was out of the grasp of our gilded cage.

“What do you propose?”

I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and released it through my clenched teeth. “We have to end the wars. All of them. I propose that you leave Cynnia and me alone. Leave us to pursue a quiet life and let us simply return to the earth. I also propose that you abandon this need to destroy the human race. Pursuing a war with the humans will not only lead to exposure after centuries of being little more than a myth, but they will actively hunt down those of our people that remain. We will eventually be wiped from existence.”

Aurora’s reply was a low laugh that grew both in volume and intensity until she was nearly rocking in her chair. And then the laughter stopped almost as quickly as it started. She stared at me with cold, merciless eyes that held no memory of the fact that I was her own flesh and blood.

“You want me to abandon the earth?” she whispered.

“No, that’s not what I said.”

“But that’s exactly what you want if I am to leave the humans untouched. You’re proposing that I abandon the earth to those monsters.”

“Attacking the humans will destroy our people.”

“You must be willing to make sacrifices for the Great Mother!” she cried, shaking her fist in the air. She slammed it down on the arm of the chair before leaning forward to glare at me. “The humans are destroying the earth. You cannot be blind to that even if you have lost all contact with the earth.”

“I am aware of their actions,” I admitted.

“Then you must know that they cannot continue to go unpunished. That is why we were created. We must protect the earth at all costs, preserve and nurture her strength. If we protect the earth, then she will in turn give us strength in battle.”

I shook my head sadly at her. She wasn’t listening to me at all. At one time she had closely listened and considered my counsel, but now she was deaf to my words. “If we continue on this course, there will be no one left to protect the earth. You are leading our people to extinction.”

“No, I am leading us to salvation,” she proclaimed with a beatific smile. “However, I am happy to see to your extinction before I turn my attention to our other traitorous sister and her band of misfits.”

“Aurora! This is a mistake!”

“Guards!” she shouted in a loud, angry voice. In the blink of an eye two guards pushed into the tent and stood on either side of me. Aurora sat back in her chair again and absently waved one hand in my direction. “Take her outside and kill her.”

“Aurora! You’re not just killing me! You’re killing our people!” I shouted as the two guards hooked their arms through mine and lifted me up off the ground. They proceeded to drag me out of the tent while I continued shouting at my sister. “You can’t save the earth if Cynnia kills you first! Call off this war now!”

The last thing I saw before I exited the tent was Aurora’s smiling face. Triumph filled her features. She was going to have me dead at long last. She had tolerated my existence for centuries, used me to do her dirty work, and now that I had reached the end of my usefulness, she was happily putting me down.