Page 6 of Of Empires and Dust

“Calen.” Tanner straightened himself in the chair, smiling softly and unfolding his arms as he stood and grasped Calen’s forearm. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed with purple. “How did it go?”

“We were ambushed.” Calen reached out as he spoke, scratching at the side of Faenir’s head, the rough hairs of the wolfpine’s outer coat bristling against his skin. He forced himself to look down at Ella, taking her hand in his and running his thumb across her knuckles. “Uraks. They must have come down from the Lodhar Mountains.”

“Did we lose many?”

“Almost three hundred.” He squeezed Ella’s hand gently. “With the glamour gone, the Blood Moon in the sky, and so much of the Darkwood burning, they’re testing their limits. The Nithrandír should hold them back from the city.”

“This is it then,” Tanner said, folding his arms.

“This is what?”

“The North is burning. The Darkwood is burning. The southern provinces are in rebellion. The Blood Moon has come again. We now stand in the heart of this Age’s great war.”

Calen sighed, looking down at Ella. “It’s not like the stories.”

“Nothing is ever like the stories. If the stories told the truth, people would never pick up swords.”

A moment of silence passed between the two men, broken by Calen. “Where is Aneera?”

Tanner nodded over Calen’s shoulder to the back of the room behind the door. “She’s been like that since the sun rose.”

Aneera sat on the ground with her long, fur-covered legs folded beneath her, eyes closed and clawed hands resting on her knees. At first, Calen couldn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed her there, but the Angan were like shadows when they wanted to be.

The last time Calen had seen Aneera, she had told him she would reach out to others of her kind – and the druids. It had taken Calen more than a second to process that. There were more druids alive. According to the Angan, what happened to Ella was not the first instance of such a thing. And there were those who may be capable of bringing her back to the waking world.

Calen allowed his gaze to linger on Aneera a moment before turning back to Tanner. “Elia says you’re to go down for some food and rest. I’ll stay.”

For a moment, Tanner looked as though he was going to argue, but instead he gave a short nod.

“And Tanner.”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

“Rhett was my family,” Tanner said, resting his hand on Calen’s shoulder. “He loved her fiercely, and I can see why. That makes her family too. Your sister has a fire in her, Calen. When she decided to come find you, there was no stopping her.” Tanner squeezed Calen’s shoulder. “She will find a way back.”

Tanner let out a soft sigh, then stepped from the room.

With Tanner gone, Calen dropped himself into the chair beside the bed. The closer he looked at his sister, the more the worry gnawed at him from the inside out. Beneath her shifting lids, he knew her eyes were white from edge to edge.

Before Haem had been forced to return to the knights, he’d told Calen that Aneera had said Ella’s mind was fragmented. That it had shattered and split between two worlds: the mortal plane and a place called Níthianelle – the Sea of Spirits. A world between worlds.

Calen had no idea what that meant. All he knew was that he wanted his sister back, he wanted her to be all right. He’d only just gotten her back, and now she was taken from him once more.

He leaned forwards, taking Ella’s hand in his. An anger bubbled within – an anger at Haem for leaving him alone again while Ella needed them – but he held it down. Like everything else that seemed to be going on around him, Calen didn’t understand Haem’s oaths, but he knew the knights had suffered great losses when the Blood Moon had risen. And one thing he did understand was being there for the people who fought at his side. Haem could do more good with them than sitting here by Ella’s bedside, twiddling his thumbs. Even still, he prayed to Varyn – or more rightly to Achyron himself – that it would not be long before he set eyes on his brother again.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Calen lifted Ella’s hand and kissed her knuckles. “Please come back to me…”

Darkness.

Everywhere Ella looked, all she saw was unfaltering, unending darkness.

No sounds reached her ears. No scents touched her nose. She was falling. How long had she been falling? For some reason she couldn’t remember. She could barely remember anything at all. The passing of time was a blur. An hour might have been a day, might have been a year, might have been little more than a second. She could have been falling for a lifetime or no longer than the blink of an eye.

Her only memory was of panic flooding her, consuming her, yielding to despair in a hazy blur. But now… at that precise moment of awareness, something was different. Something had shifted in the fabric of this place, and she was conscious.

“Please.”

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