Immortal Reign(25)
“Well . . .” Nic considered this carefully. “If I could communicate with it, I wouldn’t want to eat it. So, yes, I suppose I would like to know how its day had been.” Then he scowled at Ashur, his cheeks growing hot. “Are you laughing at me? I’m amusing to you, am I?”
Ashur’s smile only grew. “Endlessly so.”
The point was, Ashur knew magic. And it wasn’t until he’d been present in the forest beyond the campfire that Nic could think as clearly as this, even if it was only to remember a trivial conversation with the prince.
Ashur had done something to help Nic. Some spell, perhaps.
Nic wasn’t sure.
And neither was Kyan. The fire Kindred left the campfire and returned to the cottage where he’d been staying since the failed ritual.
Olivia waited for him there. She sat outside on the ground by the door, her hands entwined in a fresh growth of weeds that would be green and lively in the daylight. Beneath the meager moonlight they looked unpleasantly like the grip of a gigantic black spider.
The earth Kindred had spent the last two days surrounding their temporary home—a meager stone cottage—with lush greenery.
Kyan eyed it with distaste. “You’ll draw attention to us with all of this fresh life. Paelsia is a wasteland.”
“Not for long. I will restore it all to how it was long ago.” She looked up at him, unable to mask the cold look in her gaze before he saw it. “I couldn’t restore them.”
Nic knew she meant the former owners of this cottage—an elderly couple that had resisted giving up their home. Their corpses lay close enough that the scent of burned flesh still lingered in the cool night air.
“You don’t have that particular power, dear sister.” This came out more harshly than Kyan had intended. “Earth magic requires a spark of life on which to grasp hold.”
“Oh, much gratitude for explaining that to me, Kyan. I wouldn’t know such a thing, would I?”
The cutting manner in which she said this almost made him wince. “Apologies.”
“All these mortals will be gone soon enough, anyway. We’ll have a fresh canvas on which to start anew.” Olivia stood up and brushed her hands on the front of her dress. “Did you find Prince Magnus?”
“No,” Kyan lied. “It would have been convenient to have him enslaved to me, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Fine.” The earth Kindred’s face twisted with annoyance, distorting Olivia’s immortally beautiful features. “Then you need to set your sights on finding the sorceress and wooing her back to our side. We can’t finish this without her.”
Kyan summoned patience. “I know.”
It wasn’t as if Nic could hear the fire Kindred’s thoughts, but he could clearly sense them. Lucia was vital to them, more so than Kyan had ever believed.
The fact that he had to go to her, this mere girl who had destroyed his former shell, to beg for her help . . .
Kyan would rather burn the world right now and be done with it all.
But he couldn’t.
He desperately needed to be reunited with the others—water and air.
Cleo and Taran.
Panic coursed through Nic at the thought that Cleo was in terrible danger and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
He had to try to gain control. If he could think, he wasn’t gone. He wasn’t dead.
Focus, he told himself.
He focused on his hand. His right hand. He concentrated on trying to move it, something that had once been an easy and totally unconscious decision.
He tried to move it, to raise it up ever so slightly, but not enough for Kyan to notice.
He failed to move his hand. But he did move his little finger—ever so slightly.
Not much, but it’s a start, he thought grimly.
“He’s still waiting for you,” Olivia said as she went to the door of the cottage and opened it. “And asking so many questions I decided I needed the silence of outside.”
Kyan followed her into the cottage, sweeping his gaze across the meager home. He nodded at the hearth, and a fire lit within it. Then he shifted his gaze to the young man cowering in the corner.
They’d found him wandering nearby with two of his friends. Kyan had burned the friends into oblivion immediately but thought this one—Lord Kurtis Cirillo—might be useful to him.
“I don’t know w-why you’re doing this, Nicolo,” Kurtis stuttered. “But my father is a great and powerful man. He will pay you as much gold as you want for you to release me unharmed.”
Kyan just stared at him, finally allowing himself to smile.
He loved mortals the most when they begged.
“My name is Kyan.” He lit his hand up with flames, enjoying the look of terror that entered Kurtis’s wild gaze.
Nic, however, felt an odd jerk of sympathy for Kurtis, even though he thoroughly despised the former kingsliege. A swift death would be so much kinder than what Kyan had in mind.
Kyan cocked his head. “Let’s begin, shall we?”
CHAPTER 9
LUCIA
PAELSIA
Magnus would have thought her mad to stay here as Amara’s guest a moment longer than necessary.
And so Lucia embraced the thought of leaving this strange, dusty compound. It was her birthplace, but it wasn’t her home.