Traitor (18 page)

“I know this beast,” Araxie muttered as she pointed to the image of Icarus, the black king drake, embroidered onto the fabric. “I have seen it in battle. This is a woman’s token, is it not?”

I blushed. “Yes. It was a gift.”

“From the one who rides the black dragon.” She sent me a satisfied grin. “I knew it must be a woman when first we fought.”

“How?” I was curious how Araxie had figured that out. Granted, Beckah was definitely a woman, but I thought she’d done a pretty decent job of obscuring that fact so she could fight.

“Because I’ve never met a man, human or elf, who could match me in battle. When she bested me, I knew it must be a woman.” She twirled a hand in the air like it was obvious as she swaggered away.

When she opened the door of the hut, the sounds and smells of the jungle rushed in at me like a warm tidal wave. For whatever reason, I’d just assumed we were on the ground. We definitely weren’t. We were at least a hundred feet in the air, inside a hut that hung off the side of a giant tree. Gazing out, I could see the endless expanse of the forest all around us. Other huts like ours clung to the sides of the trees, connected by the spiraling staircases engraved into the bark. There were swinging bridges and intricate terraces that formed a network—a whole village far above the jungle floor. Its beauty was staggering, and I was immediately transfixed by it.

Araxie had been exactly right—things were different now. There wasn’t any stress or strain on my body to feel the world around me. I didn’t have to focus or force myself to listen to the voices of the jungle. It didn’t cause me any discomfort. They were a part of me, every bit as constant as Mavrik’s presence in my mind.

Araxie stood beside me in the doorway. I noticed she didn’t look nearly as mesmerized by this place as I was. If anything, she looked deeply worried. Something was still bothering her. I certainly wasn’t any kind of genius when it came to women and the way their minds worked, but even I could tell that much. She was frowning and chewing on the inside of her cheek again, looking around like she was expecting something bad to happen at any moment.

“Come along, if you still insist on seeing that murderous friend of yours,” she said and gave me a nudge out the door.

“Jace,” I corrected her. “His name is Jace.”

She just wafted a hand in the air like it didn’t matter what anyone called him.

We left the hut and began making our way down the elaborately carved staircases and across the swinging bridges that led to the ground in a zigzag pattern. On the way, I realized Araxie wasn’t the only one acting tense around me. The villagers we passed wouldn’t even look me in the eye. They bowed their heads or turned their faces as though they didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask Araxie what was going on.

“They are ashamed, too.” She glanced back at me with a small, reassuring smile. “Because of what happened they fear you will refuse to help us now.”

Directly in front of us, I saw a young woman with a pair of toddlers, trying to herd them out of our path. She appeared flustered and afraid, and she kept casting panicked glances in my direction. Suddenly, one of her children broke free of her grasp and came running toward me. She cried out in alarm, calling for him to come back.

The little boy, who couldn’t have been more than two, didn’t pay her any attention. Instead, he wrapped himself around one of my legs. He gazed up at me with big, curious eyes sparkling in all different hues. When he grinned at me, I bent down and picked him up. His poor mother was pale with fear. She stood by, clinging to her other child while she glanced between Araxie and me like she wasn’t sure what to do.

“Funny thing about being a halfbreed—if I didn’t know how to survive a little abuse, then I wouldn’t have any friends at all,” I said and smiled as I handed the child back to his awestruck mother. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first ones to beat me within an inch of my life. I doubt you’ll be the last.”

I almost ran into Araxie when I turned back around to keep following her. She had stopped to watch and was gazing up at me curiously. “You don’t look anything like her,” she said quietly. “But when you speak, I hear her spirit.”

“My mother?”

She nodded. “I was just a little girl when she walked among us. But she taught me so much. We all loved her, Jaevid. That’s why no one understood it when she left. I think it hurt my father most of all because she had always been something of a mentor to him, even if she was the younger of the two. He trusted her above all others. Without her, he … seemed to think his fate was sealed to fail.”

“She never mentioned any of this to me. I didn’t know I had any family here.” It was a little painful to admit that. I didn’t understand why my mother had kept this all from me.

“There must have been a reason,” Araxie decided. “She always had reasons for everything she did.”

I wanted to believe that was true. And yet when it came down to it, I was forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I hadn’t really known my mother at all. I’d known her smiles, her love, and her gentle words. Those things were important. But now I was wishing she had told me more about herself, her family, and what my future might be like.

Araxie gave me another nudge, pushing her shoulder against mine to get my attention. She offered a tentative, comforting smile. It made her already pretty face glow with otherworldly beauty. And once again, I got the eerie sensation that I’d seen that smile somewhere before.

“It seems like you’ve had an interesting journey,” she said. “You should tell us about it. It might help everyone feel more at ease if they knew where you came from and how you got here.”

She was probably right about that. And telling them about my past might actually help me start to piece together some of the mysteries in my life. I also had a faint hope that it might help guide my steps in the future.

Our eyes met again, and that’s when it hit me. All of a sudden, I realized who she reminded me of. She favored my mother. They had the same face shape and that familiar glittering energy in their eyes. When Araxie smiled, it was even more obvious. The family resemblance was strong.

And for whatever reason, that put a twinge of jealousy in my gut. I looked so much like my human father. Now that I’d met her, I started wishing I looked a little more like my mother’s side of the family.

I kept those thoughts to myself and followed her down to the ground toward the ancient temple. There was so much to take in—villagers going about their daily lives all around me—I didn’t realize where we were going until I was standing on the stone front steps.

We entered the temple through a pair of massive double doors. Inside, a long atrium boasted a domed ceiling that was open to the jungle above. All manner of plant life was spilling down into it, growing down the walls and filling the spacious room with the smell of flowers and earth. The floor was adorned in a beautiful mosaic of Paligno, the stag-like creature who was supposed to be a god, standing amidst a sea of stars.

“Seems like an odd place to torture your prisoners,” I pointed out.

Araxie didn’t look back as she led the way deeper into the temple. “Believe me; I have no preconceived notions that Paligno won’t punish us somehow for this sacrilege. But if there’s any excuse for it, it’s only that we have nowhere else to go. Sometimes I think the only reason we haven’t suffered any divine wrath is because we are already living in hell.”

“What do you mean?”

“First, see to your friend. We’ll discuss the rest after,” she whispered quietly as we came to a stop at an open doorway. Beyond it, a few oil lamps created heavy shadows in a small, windowless room. I could smell incense burning, and the familiar sickly sweet scent of infection.

Jace was lying on a pallet on the floor with a few old women, who must have been healers, seated around him. They were burning medicinal herbs that filled the air with fragrant smoke and making poultices to help cleanse his wounds of infection.

When I entered, however, they all bowed their heads and began to clear the room. They didn’t go far. In fact, there was quite an audience of people gathered in the doorway, pushing and shoving to watch. It was bizarre, and I could sense their hopeful apprehension at what I was going to do.

Even though it had been a few days since our last beating, Jace didn’t look good at all. He looked worse, actually. His face was more ashen. There were dark circles around his eyes. His body was covered in a sheen of sweat and his breathing was shallow and labored. He was in pain. I could sense it. I could taste it like a coppery flavor in my mouth.

I knelt down and put my hand against his forehead. “Jace?”

He didn’t respond.

Through that small amount of contact, I could tell he was fading. He wouldn’t live much longer. Not unless I intervened. I wasn’t sure what to expect from my power now. Things were definitely different, and I honestly wasn’t sure what I might be capable of, be it good or bad.

But for his sake, I had to try.

Before, whenever I healed someone, it always caused a stretching, straining sensation that drained me to the point of near exhaustion. Now, it was as simple as reaching out to hug someone, and it gave me a warm feeling very similar to that. It was comfortable.

I simply took some of the power that now flowed freely through my veins and used it like a thread to stitch his broken body back together in my mind’s eye. I saw the palm of my hand beginning to glow with radiant green light. I felt Jace’s heartbeat quicken. His body grew tense. I flushed the fever from his system—the infection, the suffering, the broken bones—I took it all and washed his body clean of every ailment.

And at the end, when my work was done, I was completely at peace. That is, until I got a glimpse of something I hadn’t intended to.

It only lasted a second or two, but it left me reeling: the image of a young boy standing barefoot in the ashes of a burning city, his clothes tattered and his tears making clean streaks down his face. He looked terrified. And he looked quite a bit like Jace. There were chains around his neck and wrists, binding him to the saddle of a black horse. I saw the reflections of flames in his eyes, burning brightly against a dreary sky.

And then it was gone. I took in a sharp breath. I’d been able to meld my mind with animals before. That wasn’t difficult. But for as many times as I’d healed people, I’d never gotten anything in return except violently ill. I’d never been able to glimpse into their minds.

Until now.

I looked down to find that Jace’s physical appearance had changed. He looked like himself again. The swelling, bruises, and fever were all gone. His skin had a natural, healthy glow to it and his breathing was calm, deep, and even. He didn’t appear to be aware of what I had seen in his mind. A nightmare or a memory … or perhaps both.

From the doorway, I heard whispers of amazement from my captive audience. Some of them had started chanting what I suspected were most likely prayers. It was weird, and it made me pretty uncomfortable. I wanted to leave.

I glanced over at Araxie, who was quietly stepping into the room. She squatted beside me and studied Jace with a steely expression. “Will he live?”

“Yes.” I was confident about that much, at least. “He just needs to rest now.”

Without needing to look up, I could feel the pressure of her intense gaze upon me. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

I had to laugh. “Yeah. A few times.”

There wasn’t any time to celebrate my ability to heal people without almost killing myself in the process. From outside the temple, the sound of horns blaring echoed through the halls all around us. I looked at Araxie. The color was draining from her face.

She cursed in the elven language and jumped to her feet, stealing out of the room without an explanation. I followed her as she walked briskly back out onto the temple’s front steps, right into the face of absolute chaos. Gray elves were running everywhere, screaming as they frantically tried to gather up their belongings and family members. They were coming straight for us, fleeing into the temple.

Araxie didn’t run. She stood firm, her eyes narrowed, and her silver hair flying. I heard her make a sound, like the shrill call of a bird, and from overhead there was an answering, shrieking sound that I knew all too well.

Her shrike landed before us, snapping its jaws eagerly as she stepped lightly to the saddle and unhooked her blades, bow, and quiver. Her sharp eyes tracked to me, and at once I understood. I’d seen that look before—though not on her face.

Something was coming.

As villagers ran past us, packing themselves into the temple for shelter, I shrugged out of the long, bell sleeves of my tunic and tied them around my waist. I couldn’t afford to have them getting in the way. I drew the scimitar from my hip and took a place beside Araxie. The heavy temple doors shut behind us, sealing off the temple, but we weren’t alone. Other gray elf warriors dropped from the trees armed with their bows, spears, and swords.

Kiran was among them. He came over immediately and stood beside me, glancing me up and down swiftly as though he were surprised to see me out here with them. “Those clothes don’t suit you,” he muttered as he pulled an arrow from his quiver and strung it along his bowstring.