Soulless (Maiden of Time Book 2) (26 page)

Fifty-One

Cornered

Kiren pulled on his reins. Miles’s beast skidded to a halt beside him. He nodded at the boy, welcoming him into his thoughts.
Have we lost them?

Miles scanned the dark horizon, his hollow cheeks pinched from heavy breathing. He met Kiren’s stare, the word clear in his pupils.
No.

Kiren snapped the tethers and kicked his stallion. His riding companion fell into stride, leaning over his animal’s neck. Kiren shouted over the roaring hooves. “Did Lester and Ethel retrieve the pendant?”

Miles grimaced. “I think they did. There is so much noise!”

If he held still, Kiren almost thought he could hear them, the buzz of a thousand voices clamoring.

“They are driving us away from the inn.” Miles’s teeth clenched, eyes mere slits.

“We should split up.”

The boy’s brow crinkled. Kiren groaned—hating that he should even suggest it. The Soulless sensed Miles the same way he felt them—ever since he’d shielded Alexia from their detection and opened his own mind to their touch. Though Edward had argued with Kiren for years that he should stay far, far away from the lad, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The boy had needed him. Still needed him. More than that, he needed the boy. Miles was his family.

“Ambush, ahead,” Miles jerked his horse off the road and into a field of wheat.

Dirt churned up beneath the animals’ feet, throwing stalks into the air.

Miles yanked his steed to a halt.

Kiren slowed and circled back around. “What is it?”

The boy’s pupils nearly consumed his eyes. “We’re surrounded.”

Kiren’s fingers bit into the leather of his saddle. Ice seeped into his veins. “Then we make a hole. Where are they the thinnest?”

Miles’s head shook. He grabbed the back of his neck, elbow rolling up over the top of his head, eyes squeezed shut, skin crypt white. 

Kiren’s blood ran cold. Had he fallen into their trap by trusting the lad?

He scanned the landscape, wheat fluttering like the ghostly fingers of a white sea. In the distance two skeletal willows stood, young and choked for nutrients.

Kiren lifted his face to the sky in desperate prayer.

He only had one chance at this, and despite what everyone told him—even himself at the moment, he still believed in Miles. “Can you evade them? Make yourself invisible to them, like before.”

Miles head whipped up. “You have a plan?”

“Miles.”

He nodded, brows quirked, frown weighed by guilt. “But what about you?”

Kiren palmed his reins. “It is best you not know my course of action. Now go.” He slapped the boy’s horse on the rump. It whinnied and shot forward. Kiren watched the dust cloud distance, taking slow, even breaths and stilling the dread in his breast. He would
not
draw them to him by panicking.

He turned his mount and aimed for the only break on the horizon, the young trees. Movement swung his head toward the road where a ribbon of blackness swooped toward him. He dropped from his horse’s back and ran, bent over, head down, obscured by stalks. His beast shrieked and thundered away.

Kiren sprinted faster, glancing up. The little hollow loomed just ahead. Wind whipped in his ears, the rich scent of grain masking his own perspiration. Hisses whispered through the frosted breeze, nearing.

Searing heat raked across his back. He whirled and slammed a fist into the creature’s jaw. It flew off to the side.

He kept moving and reached back to examine the flesh, still intact, but his jacket was shorn. Midnight writhed toward him from all directions. His heart sank.

Reaching down, he found a dead tree branch and hefted it. If they wanted to take him, they were going to see a fight like they’d never known!

He turned at the crunch of stalks, swinging the branch upward. It rammed a creature’s chin and threw it back into a mass of blackness. Creatures toppled like wooden dolls.

Kiren lumbered past them, toward the pitiful copse of trees. Twenty feet more.

The enemy circled in, cutting him off. He bit down. His muscles tightened. His knuckles popped.

He swung!

Two bodies thudded to the ground. Weight slammed into the back of his legs. His knees crunched into the earth. Pain shot up his legs. He couldn’t move, weighed down by multiple enemies. He flailed around, swinging blindly. The wood connected again and again, but he couldn’t free his legs. The branch was yanked out of his grasp, raking a trail of splinters across his palm.

Bodies crashed down.

Blackness consumed the world.

He couldn’t breathe. Desperately, he tore at the creatures scraping through his clothes. This was it. They had won.

Alexia.

He shivered and pictured her face in his mind, her soft lips, her compassionate, evergreen eyes, the wonder of her fingers gliding across his skin, and the warmth of her soul intertwined with his own.

No, they would not capture him. Not tonight.

He grabbed hold of the nearest assailant, begged a silent prayer of forgiveness, and sucked the creature’s life into himself. Sickly energy trickled into his skin. The limb beneath his fingers withered and narrowed.

A shriek pierced his ears.

A chorus of wails echoed. 

He shoved upward off the ground, launching the startled creatures backward and hurdled a dead log. His knees screamed in agony. The damage was deep, and he didn’t have to look down to know how much healing would be required.

Kiren slammed into the nearest trunk, no wider than his leg. This was an insane idea. There was no way he could make it work, not in time.

He wheeled around, unarmed and exposed. Five black bodies billowed toward him from different angles.

No choice. He had to make it work. He grabbed the feeble trunk and pressed his free palm into the other one. He closed his eyes and focused. Bark thickened beneath his skin. He commanded the roots to dig, following them with his mind, deep into the earth, burrowing around stones in their way and lacing together in an intricate network of lattice. They dipped into that gulf of groundwater, hidden far below the surface.

Up,
he commanded.
Help me.

The roots gulped water, drawing it in along with needed minerals and through the swelling cells of wood. Energy suctioned out from his center, wringing him like a rag on a press as that power flowed into the plants. Kiren gasped.

Branches burst through the ground at his feet, shaking the earth. Limbs shot out of the weeds, tripping his enemies. Roots launched upward, impaling the fallen creatures.

He let go and dropped to one knee, clutching at his heart. Wood beveled around him, cocooning him behind copious thin bars, like a wild prison, but too thin a barrier to protect him from the oncoming tide.

The breeze died against his cheek. A chill raced over his skin. His eyes snapped to the black figures hedging in a circle. Clicks echoed off the half-formed trees. Outside his protective circle, crimson pupils burned into him.

Not yet. You will not take me yet!

He shoved both hands into the earth and thrust his strength outward. Branches burst out of the ground around him. They groaned and stretched, thickening.

The Soulless screamed and rushed forward.

Wood filtered up from the earth, green and new, bloating and pressing together. The Soulless disappeared. Branches groaned as they locked into place, blacking out the night. They wrapped across the sky. He turned his head up, taking in the last of the stars as limbs wound together and widened, sealing him into darkness.

He collapsed.

Fifty-Two

Tidings

Alexia set the tray of food down next to Sarah. Her sister had not moved, not since the birth. The distraught woman stared off blankly into the corner of the room, quilt shifting only when she breathed. John sat just as silently across the room, staring at his hands, still dirty from the little grave he’d dug last night, just beyond scorched earth. He hadn’t expressed it, but Alexia sensed he’d hoped stepping over the brink would somehow save the child. The weight on both of them was breaking her heart.

She turned for the ladder.

John cleared his throat. “Do you wish to learn what has become of your fiancé?”

She stopped. Every nerve snapped to awareness. There was only one way John could know what happened to Kiren—if the Soulless had apprehended him...unless he was attempting to deceive her. But why would he do that? She was here, vulnerable in his presence, and he was doing nothing to threaten her.

“You can have no news of him, John.”

He chuckled bitterly.

She whipped around. Her airways constricted, blackness dancing before her eyes. It couldn’t be true! Surely they hadn’t caught Kiren or she would know. Wouldn’t she? She took quick, shallow breaths, slowing her heartbeat, and pried the nails from her palms one at a time. “What do you know?”

“He was on the road, headed north.” John climbed out of his seat and stepped toward her. “He was in the company of a young man called Miles shortly before he was hunted down and surrounded.”

Her vision danced. She reached for the wall and stumbled. John’s warm hands latched around her arms and braced her up.

She locked her knees. Surely the Soulless didn’t wish him dead or they would have murdered him when they took the medallion—but they might make him one of them. “Is he...” She couldn’t finish. Her body was shaking.

John wrapped his arms around her shoulders, tucking her up against him. She inhaled chestnut, and could think of nothing but that Kiren was in danger, or—dare she think it—
gone
?

Father didn’t believe in an afterlife. She had often questioned its existence herself—until stepping out of time and meeting her mother. But Kiren believed. He believed enough for both of them.

He was not gone!

She looked up and realized her entire body was trembling, that she’d crinkled John’s coat with her white-knuckled grasp. Tears spilled over her cheeks. “What more do you know, John?”

His brows crushed together, tears pooling in his own eyes. “He was entombed.”

Her head shook “How?”

“To escape them, he interred himself in a crypt of wood.” He pulled his handkerchief free and offered it to her.

“Then he might have survived.”

“No.”

“You do not know for certain.”

“Alexia.” His crimson eyes bored into hers. “He was my best friend.”

Fifty-Three

Clinging

Was. Was my best friend.
Alexia stumbled out the kitchen door and into the yard, a ring of wild blossoms hedging her in. Their little heads bowed in the pink light of sunset with the heaviness of her heart.

A tear rolled down her cheek. What could she do? Reverse time, stop him from ever leaving—an entire week? Just the thought made her dizzy. Would such a jump kill her? And then how would she convince him to abandon the medallion?

Golden light trailed across a sky of clouds, fading into red and finally violet—the violet of loss. She pulled in a shaky breath and stepped over the line.

Silence touched her ears. Where she expected to find his warm presence in her heart, there hung a black stillness. Her legs shook and weakened, knees smacking into the hard dirt. Her lungs wouldn’t work. The thump of her heart slowed, as if shriveling.

The whisper of movement pulled her head around. Miles stood against the setting sun, his skin paler than normal, a traveling hat clasped in his hands. His near-translucent eyes met hers, glassy. They widened.

Her vision narrowed, hazing around the edges. Colors faded.

Miles rushed toward her.

The thump of her heart dulled, echoing through her ears.

Hands grabbed her.

The world dipped into blackness.

Alexia gasped, sucking in air. Her eyes shot wide, strength pulsing back into her limbs. Miles knelt over her, staring and panting.

The cast of violet light painted his skin ashen, and she wondered if he was feeling well. He’d always been a good friend to her.

“No dying today, Alexia,” he whispered. “You are not allowed to die.”

She blinked up at him, memory rushing back over her. Her stomach heaved dryly as her insides hollowed out. This could only mean one thing, one terrible thing. “Tell me it is not true,” she barely managed. “Tell me he is safe. Tell me he is well.”

His bottom lip trembled. Tears pooled in his eyes. He crushed her in his arms, his cloak reeking of smoke and perspiration as his shoulders shook.

Her brain worked like sludge. It wouldn’t grasp what she already knew. “Miles, tell me he is not dead!”

The word hung in the air. An empty omen. A dark void. A nothingness that would consume her.

“Show me,” she whispered, clutching his shirt. “Show me he survived.”

Miles pulled back, tears streaming down his grayed skin. His jaw clenched. Long fingers landed on her cheek and she met his troubled eyes, wide with pain.

She did not want to see this.

She had to see this.

She had to know.

Alexia nodded.

Hunger pulsed through her. The man’s heart was strangely silent as they tore at the cocooning trunks. Already she knew it was impossible to reach him.

Then kill him.

The command rang clear through all of their minds. As one they turned to the east and bowed their heads. A few individual wills twitched against the order, their protests no more than blips in the collective consciousness. They all understood the Passionate leader would torment and destroy their kind until he was disposed of. Tonight that war would end.

In unison they gathered dry reeds and lay them at the base of the mutant tree. Many heavy hearts weighed on her. Were they capable of tears, a few would have shed them, but that power had long since faded, along with their humanity.

Solemnly, almost reverently one of them knelt with flint and steel, shooting sparks at the dry foliage. It caught. Tendrils of smoke rose.

Flames appeared. They grew until the entire mass of wood was consumed, black clouds billowing up into the sky.

All night they burned.

The air stung her lungs, charred flakes littering the trampled wheat like snow in a demented world where light was darkness—the place her soul had been banished. Alexia closed her eyes, squeezing everything down into the pit of her stomach. She opened them and slid off her horse.

No, not her. Miles.

He thudded to the ground, scraping ash into a clenched fist. The tree tomb was nothing but cinder.

The field dampened into black, twilight-heavy clouds, Miles fingers warm against her cheek.

She breathed in, chest aching from the weight.

Kiren was gone. He was really and truly gone. The few precious moments they had shared, her memories, these were all that remained of him.

The world disappeared behind her tears. Her fist flailed forward, connecting with something solid. The agony rattling through her bones couldn’t break the numbness, the emptiness consuming her soul.

Fingers wrapped around her trembling fists, pulling them away from the warm surface they’d struck, rubbing along the aching flesh she no longer wanted to possess.

She blinked through her tears, her soul tearing like the weft of fine velvet. Arms squeezed around her. She shook as a wail leaked from her lacerated core. The sun had melted into blackness, beaten into a pit of deformed coal that would never warm again. Her world, the vibrancy of flowers that dotted her mental landscape, shriveled instantly and disintegrated to dust.

Screams pierced her ears. Her lungs ached. Her mouth was open, pain ripping at her vocal chords.

There would never be another sunrise. She would not dive into the infinite sea of Kiren’s eyes again and drown beneath the waves. She would not know the caress of his touch nor the aching compassion that bled through his every word.

“No!” She slammed her fists into Miles, one after another, and he let her. She wailed and crumbled in his embrace. She gasped, and gasped again, unable to draw enough air. Panic rocketed through her.

She sucked inward, but no air entered.

She tried once more.

Nothing.

Was she dying? She had heard of a shortness of breath, how people with an extreme condition could die in the grasp of panic. Her father had suffered such an attack once.

“Breathe, Alexia. Please.” The words were distant, like an echo down a tunnel.

She tried. Her airways seized.

It wasn’t working. She couldn’t breathe!

Alexia sucked again. Her throat had swollen shut as though filled with clay!

She really was going to die. Their war had come to an end. The Soulless had won, and Kiren? Her dear, wonderful Kiren had paid the ultimate price. Did an afterlife await for her, or did something else happen to the Maiden of Time? Would she be locked in some strange purgatory waiting for an heir in the absence of time who would never arise?

Lips crushed down over hers.

Chill rolled into her. Icy air. Her skin cooled. Frozen light bloomed through her being like an empty glass, filling from an endless, iced-lemonade pitcher. She welcomed the cold, soaking in its wintry invigoration.

His mouth pulled away. “Please.”

Her lips parted and air filled her lungs. Fingers stroked through her hair and cupped her cheek.

She focused on Miles, startled and amazed by the way his gray eyes trembled, the violet sky staining them with an unusual hue.

They were almost beautiful.

Her skin tingled where his fingers pressed it, the icy prickles that woke her into a crisp winter dawn.

Ice to sunshine. But she craved the warmth of summer! She jerked away from him.

Beautiful?
What was wrong with her?

He’d kissed her.

How dare he kiss her!

“You were dying.” He reached out to her, but his hand fell short, eyes turned down as if ashamed.

She shivered. Of course he was only doing what was necessary to keep her alive, but what did it mean? Why couldn’t she look at him without her heart hiccupping?

She touched her lips. Was bonding after a loved one’s death possible? Is that how he’d saved her? By initiating the first hopes of a new bond?

She didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want a new bond.

Miles clasped his hands in his lap. “He is the only one who ever treated me like a whole person, the only one besides...” He glanced up at her and back down, russet hair tumbling across his brow and hiding his eyes.

Tears blinded her. Of course. Miles had lost his father figure and truest friend. Who else had completely understood, trusted and loved him? She was not the only one suffering.

She reached out, hesitated, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Miles’s gaze lifted to hers. “I cannot lose you too. Please.”

She shook her head, biting back a sob.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Please do not leave me.”

She closed her eyes, forcing her heart to slow. Her own sorrow she could face, but Miles’? He had known so much suffering already—losing his parents to the Soulless, being forced to abandon his home because of her... She would not see him suffer more.

“No.” She shook her head.

“You promise?”

Alexia blew out a long breath. “You are not going to lose him, Miles. And neither am I. I do not care the cost.”