Burn the Night

Thirty-one

As the two guards dragged me down the hill from Aurora’s enormous white tent, I pushed my feet against the slanted earth and flipped over the two naturi, pulling free of their grasp. I quickly backed away from them, remaining wary of the other naturi soldiers closing on me from other directions. I had to think of a way to safely get out of Aurora’s camp, but then I had always known that my chances of escape were extremely thin and highly unlikely.

Tapping into the energy flowing up from the earth, my enormous black wings sprung from my back while at the same time I summoned up a massive burst of wind. I curled my body into a tight ball while extending my wings to their fullest extent. The wind carried me higher into the trees while arrows soared toward me straight and true. Their tips buried deep in my arms and around my body, forcing a scream of pain to rise up in my throat, but I swallowed it back. I had bigger problems. My hands were still tied, and the trees I was attempting to fly through were beginning to reach for me. The earth clan was using its powers to control the trees so their brittle limbs clawed at my wings, plucking black feathers.

The wind gusted again and again, hammering at the trees as they struggled to reach for me while being pushed about by the wind. I was pulled back but found a thick branch with my feet. I shoved off and stretched my wings again, struggling to gain altitude. This was my only hope of escape. If I didn’t get away through the air, they would hunt me down too easily on the ground.

Beneath me the shouting of the naturi increased as I flew higher. Above the din, I could hear Greenwood’s deep voice directing his people to go after me. There was desperation in his tone as his voice rose to a shriek. And then silence fell over the camp. My stomach twisted with a new fear even though I managed to clear the last of the treetops. With the wind blowing fiercely, I flapped my wings once as I turned around in time to see Aurora standing outside her tent, staring up at me. I knew the look of rage that twisted her features, sweeping her beauty aside.

You will not escape me!

You’ll have your shot at me another time, I replied, but I knew she wasn’t going to let me go so easily. Fire surrounded her in a crackling rush before it shot from the ground in a massive swirling vortex toward me. Pulling my wings in against my body, I dive-bombed, plunging back through the trees. A rush of heat surged up one side of me as I narrowly dodged the funnel of flames, but it was still close enough that several of my feathers were singed and burned. Tree limbs scratched at my face and pulled at the arrows and darts that protruded from my body. I dodged the fire in time but was back on the ground again.

Keeping my wings tucked close to my body in case I got a second chance to use them, I ran as fast as I could through the woods. I darted between trees and leapt over fallen logs while sliding through piles of dead leaves left from the previous fall. My arms, tied behind my back, screamed in pain. On my heels I could hear the light footfalls of naturi closing in. I had put enough distance between Aurora and myself that she wouldn’t have another shot, but that didn’t mean I was safe. The rest of her army was hot on my trail. To make matters worse, I was stuck on the ground, while being chased by the earth clan. It was only a matter of time before they halted my progress. I had to get back to the clearing where I had initially landed so I could regain flight.

As I ran, more arrows thunked into tree trunks and whizzed by my head. Laughter followed my progress as they tracked me. My heart pounded in my chest and my lungs struggled to pull in enough air as I plunged through the woods. My legs were starting to ache, causing me to misstep here and there. I slid down a small grade, nearly losing my balance before pushing on like a rabbit being chased by a fox.

This couldn’t continue much longer. I needed to stop and free my hands. I needed to get back into the air. I had spent a lifetime in battle against those that would kill me, but the odds had never been so great in their favor. And in truth, I didn’t want to kill them. I had spilled enough blood of my people and I’d grown sick of it. They followed Aurora because she was the only queen they knew and they had always trusted in her judgment. They didn’t realize they had a choice.

With a grunt of exhaustion, I pushed forward while in the back of my mind focusing on the powers coming up from the earth. I turned the energy toward the skies above me. Dark clouds rolled in overhead, blotting out the sun. For a moment I could feel another force in the area pushing against the coming storm, leaving the sun to break through in sparkling patches. Aurora was fighting me. Gritting my teeth, I summoned up more energy and pushed harder against the spell she was attempting to weave to block my own. We pushed and pulled for several seconds before I could hear her scream in the back of my mind in either pain or frustration.

Clouds poured forth like a black wave, blotting out the sun so that night reclaimed the earth. The wind gusted, throwing my hair in front of my face, nearly blocking my vision as I dodged between one set of trees after another. Occasionally, limbs would reach for me, but I pushed on, moving just out of their grasp. My shirt ripped in several locations and the weight of my wings seemed to grow on my back. They needed to be stretched, lifting me into the sky instead of pulling me down.

As I leapt over another fallen log, the heel of my right foot landed in a sinkhole covered by leaves. I slammed to the ground hard, knocking the wind out of me and nearly breaking my nose as I was unable to catch myself with my arms. Twisting onto my side, I tried to get my feet under me again, but the ground was shifting beneath me from all the leaves.

“Stay down!” ordered a familiar voice. I jerked around so I was lying on my back, looking up at Rowe as he stood over me with swords drawn. The one-eyed naturi charged forward and in a few swift motions killed six of the naturi that had been chasing me. Sliding one sword into its sheath again, he spun around and walked back over to me. His face was a blank mask, but I could sense the rage boiling inside him. He pulled me up to my feet with one arm, then used the sword he was still holding to cut the rope that bound my wrists together. Then, wordlessly, he shoved me forward.

We never spoke as we ran through the woods. He simply handed me one of the swords and remained one step back to protect me from behind, while it was my job to take out anything that got in our way from the front. For several minutes we plunged through the dark woods, killing anything that crossed our path before we finally reached the clearing.

Standing in the center of the clearing, both Rowe and I threw out our wings while a group of naturi surrounded us on all sides. Plunging the tip of the sword I was carrying into the ground, I held my arms out to my sides, letting the power of the growing storm consume me. Lightning jumped from cloud to cloud, only to be followed by a hammer of thunder. When the naturi had closed in far enough and I could feel the earth beneath my feet starting to grow soft, I called down the storm. The clouds broke open in a tidal wave of rain while lightning pounded the earth in a brilliant blast of white light. My enemies were charred in an instant, leaving me standing alone in the rain with Rowe.

Calling up one last large gust of air, I threw out my wounded wings and caught the wind, allowing it to lift me high into the dark sky. Rowe was behind me, keeping a close watch to make sure we weren’t being followed. I wasn’t willing to take the chance of leading them back to Cynnia in the heart of Savannah while the nightwalkers were sleeping. Kane’s forces remained just outside the city, like Aurora’s, leaving Cynnia’s only immediate defense a handful of naturi and an exhausted witch.

We flew silently for nearly twenty minutes before I decided to land in pasture below that appeared halfway between Aurora’s camp and the camp of the animal clan. I didn’t need to deal with Kane and his people looking as I did. Besides, I had a feeling Rowe might have a few choice words for me that I didn’t want anyone else to hear.

My legs were wobbly when I hit the ground, but they held me up. I slowly pulled in my sore wings, not wanting to look at the burned and broken feathers. I was lucky I’d been able to take flight at all. Rowe’s wings disintegrated almost as soon as his feet touched the earth, while I was slower to remove mine. He stood before me and roughly turned me to the left and then to the right, pulling out small crossbow darts still embedded in my body.

“Does Cynnia know?” I asked, finally breaking the silence that had grown so thick I could hardly breathe.

“No.”

“How did you—”

“Because I’m not the fucking novice you take me for,” Rowe snapped at me. “I taught you that spell. Did you honestly think I would ever teach you something you could use against me?”

“How long were you following me?”

“Almost from the moment you took to the skies.” He paced away from me before spinning back around. “Do you have any idea what it was like watching you march into that camp and know that I couldn’t follow you? Do you know what it’s like waiting to see if you could actually make it back to a place where I might be of some help to you?” He grabbed both of my shoulders in his strong hands and gave me a hard shake. “I couldn’t follow you into the camp because they would have sensed me. I had to hope that you had enough smarts to get yourself out again.”

I jerked out of his grasp and took a step back. “I was managing fine on my own.”

“At first maybe, but when I last saw you, you were laying facedown on the ground waiting for those bastards to shove a knife in your back!”

And he was right. I had been managing on my own until I fell. Then Rowe bought me the crucial seconds I needed to escape the naturi chasing us. By some slim chance I might have been able to make it to the clearing on my own, where I could easily strike down my opponents, but Rowe ensured that I made it out of the woods alive, and I owed him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, bowing my head to him. “You’re right. I would never have made it out of there without your assistance.”

Rowe cupped my face with both of his rough hands and kissed me deeply. His tongue thrust into my mouth, claiming possession, reassuring him that I was safe and alive. I kissed him back, sighing deeply as I put both of my hands on his chest. Beneath the palm of one hand, I could feel his heart beating like a frightened hare. Anger gilded his words for now, but behind those words was a looming fear that I had nearly been killed.

Slowly, he broke off the kiss and leaned his forehead against mine. His breathing was heavy, sounding more labored now than when we were on the run. “If you ever do something stupid like that again, I’m going to kill you myself. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I needed to know something,” I murmured, closing my eyes as I took a deep breath. He smelled of summer rain and freshly dug earth. Heat radiated off him, chasing away the chill left by the spring rainstorm.

“What?” he demanded, finally releasing me so he could step away and clearly look me in the face. “What did you have to know so badly that you had to risk your life and mine?”

I was about to argue that I had never intended to risk his life, but I swallowed the sentence before it could leave my throat. If he caught me sneaking out of the house, then there was no question that he was going to follow me wherever I went.

“I wanted to talk to Aurora one last time. I wanted to try to reason with her,” I said. “I thought that maybe now that she had been on the earth for a while, the sickness in her brain could have passed. I thought she might have healed and was thinking more clearly.”

“She’s insane, Nyx! There’s no changing that,” Rowe snapped. “Nerian spent his entire existence on earth and it didn’t stop him from losing his grasp of reality, particularly when it came to Mira. Our only choice is to stop Aurora.”

“I had to know.”

“Why? Why was this more important than your own life?”

“I had to know before we went into battle. She’s my sister, Rowe.”

“Aurora never cared about you,” he snarled, beginning to pace again. “You said it yourself—that she used you. In the few years we were together, I saw how she despised and abused you. Everyone saw it.”

“She’s still my sister,” I repeated, my voice starting to waver. “And there was something else that I had to know.”

“What?”

I hesitated, staring down at the ground as I struggled to organize my fragmented thoughts. As I stood before Rowe, I realized what kind of a liability I was becoming.

“I had a shot at her and I didn’t take it,” I admitted in a soft voice.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It probably would have resulted in both our deaths, but I didn’t do it and I should have. Killing Aurora today in her own camp would have stopped the war. It would have spared you, Cynnia, and countless other naturi. If I had just killed Aurora today, I could have given our people a second chance. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Nyx, it doesn’t mean—”

“But it does. I don’t think I can kill her,” I admitted, hating to even utter the words aloud.

“She’s hated you since the moment you were born,” Rowe argued, shoving one hand through his hair in frustration. “I have no doubt that she can sense you are more powerful than her. She’s paranoid and jealous when it comes to you. And as you saw tonight, Aurora will not hesitate to kill you.”

I shook my head at him, knowing I would never be able to get him to understand my feelings. “You’re not telling me anything that I don’t already know. But in the end, she is my sister and she is my queen, despite all the promises I have made to Cynnia. I will defend and protect Cynnia with every breath in my body, but I also can’t kill Aurora.”

Rowe heaved a heavy sigh as he reached up and placed one hand against the back of my head. He pulled me forward and pressed a gentle kiss against my forehead. “Then I guess you will have to leave me to the task of killing her.”

“Do you honestly think you can?” I asked when he pulled back and I could look him directly in the eye.

“She’s tried to kill both me and you. I think that’s enough to sign her death warrant. I can’t leave someone that wants me dead walking around.”

“What about the Fire Starter?”

Rowe gave a sharp bark of laughter before pressing another quick kiss to my lips, leaving me feeling more than a little confused. “Mira’s the only real challenge left in this world, and it seems that we’re allies instead of enemies for now. I guess the Great Mother had a plan for the Fire Starter after all. Otherwise, I’m quite sure I would have succeeded in killing her already.”

With a shake of my head, we started walking across the field, back toward Savannah. We wouldn’t enter the city again until the sun was preparing to set. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Cynnia’s hidden location until I knew there was another layer of protection in place. Exhaustion weighed on my shoulders. I was both physically tired and emotionally sick. When the final battle came and went, at least one of my sisters was going to be dead. In the end, I could only hope that the Great Mother had a plan for us all.