Page 92 of Enchantment of Silver and Sea
“What happened?” I asked. Or tried to ask. My words were swallowed up in a gust of wind. Its howl was enough to leave my ears ringing.
“Kieran, please!” Nya screamed at something behind me.
It clicked into place. Kieran. Kieran was there.
Snapping out of my stupor, I tried to sit up, but the weight of Nya’s body held me down. The air was thick with something like humidity but denser. More ominous. I struggled weakly against Nya’s grip, pushing on her arm until she finally lifted it.
Her cheeks were wet with tears, and she was shaking, but her expression was full of hope. “Tell him you’re okay.” Her voice was barely audible over the violent gusts. “Tell him, Maila!”
I raised myself and instantly knew Nya was wrong.
I was not okay. I was dead. Because there was no other way to make sense of the scene before me.
It was not nighttime, because what was above us was not the night sky. It was black, solid onyx. No moon or stars or even a cloud to be found. It was not storming, and yet something like wind, ear-shatteringly loud, was ripping across the battlefield. Across the ground. Across everything. Chunks of dirt and grass, the loose pieces of concrete that had once been part of the wall, even the wall itself…objects were being lifted on this mysterious wind, only to disintegrate into nothingness. As if they had never existed to begin with.
Holy shit. Was that the roof of the Knowledge Center?
Before I could comprehend what that meant, my eyes landed on something else. Someone else.
Leon.
If not for those blue eyes that stared upward, unseeingly…those miserable eyes that I would never forget as long as I lived…I would not have known it was him. The corpse I had left behind was destroyed. Obliterated. As if it had simultaneously been incinerated and torn limb from limb.
As I watched, the remains began to lift and sway as if in a funnel cloud. Carried upward by that strange wind. Then they disintegrated. Leaving nothing behind, not even ash.
I might have rejoiced, but it was happening all around me.Enforcers. Strangers. People on both sides. Bodies were scattered everywhere, as far as I could make out. And they, too, were floating up on the wind and disintegrating.
Nya gripped my arm so hard that I cried out. “You have to stop him!” she shouted. She jerked my shoulder, forcing me to look behind me.
In the midst of the felled bodies and the field that was turning to nothingness, Kieran stood as still and as straight as if it were any other day. His arms hung limply at his sides. His clothes were in tatters that whipped frantically around him, barely concealing his body.
Hishealedbody.
All evidence of the scuffle with theEnforcerswhen he jumped the wall, the torture that he had endured from The Council, the wounds from battle…it was gone. His hair, as dark as the sky above, was being tossed in the wind in the same manner as his scraps of clothing. A few strands brushed across his face. Across his eyes.
And therein was the only indication that something was not as it should be.
His eyes often gave the appearance of glowing. But this time, there was no denying that that was actually what was happening. As iridescent as Larimar’s skin, the light they reflected was coming not from outside, but from within. And despite their beauty, there was something dire in them.
“Kieran!” I called out to him.
He didn’t react.
“Kieran!”
Still no reaction. Not even a twitch. His eyes stared out at the horizon, unseeing.
“Kieran!”
I was comprehending now the full gravity of our situation. The reason behind Nya’s panic.
This was all his doing. And he was going to destroy us.
He was going to wipe all of us—no, all of Cyllene—off the face of the planet. Or worse. What if it didn’t stop here, with us? What if this thing, whatever we were witnessing, just kept going? Taking everything and everyone down with it?
I turned fully onto my stomach and dragged myself closer to him. Nya followed suit. When I was within reach of him, I grabbed hold of his ankle. Then his knee. And slowly, carefully, I was standing. Bracing myself against him to keep from getting carried away. Turned to dust.
Nya was slamming her fist against his leg, outright punching him. It was such a Nya thing to do, it made my heart ache.
