“Well, Slavik is sure a boost for morale,” I said.
Easton gave me a look.
“What?” I asked.
“Slavik sure is something.”
I snorted, and Easton and I moved a few feet towards the group. Suddenly, I heard something behind me. I froze and turned slowly on my heel.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“No, but something feels wrong. I miss our wards.”
Easton mumbled that last part, and I wasn’t even sure he realized he’d said it out loud.
“Let’s go see what it is.”
“Every time we go over to see what it is, it’s always someone or something trying to kill us,” Easton said.
“True, but that seems par for the course these days.”
“Do you sense him?” Rosamond asked, and I turned to the Seer. My eyes went wide.
“Where is Emory? Didn’t you just go the other way?”
“I did. They’re making sure the others have their night of peace. But it’s time to face someone that should not be here.”
“You should go back,” I said quickly. “Go get Rhodes.”
“No, I will go with you. Rhodes doesn’t need to see this. Nor does Delphine.”
“What is it, Seer?” Easton asked.
“It is of what should not be. It is of darkness and death.” She paused. “It is a perversion.”
I gasped. Knowing who it probably was. “Eitri.”
The Seer nodded.
“So, when The Gray shadows took him that way, what did it do to him?” Easton asked.
“It is of what should not be,” the Seer repeated.
“Okay, then. We need to go,” I said, my Wielding at the ready. I was exhausted, the training had taken so much out of me, but it didn’t matter. From the way Rosamond was staring into the darkness, I had a feeling it had to be Eitri. And she didn’t want her brother to be forced to see another of their family twisted in this way.
“Do you need to be here, Rosamond?” I asked.
“I do. For one of us needs to be near family. And my brother does not need to bear that burden.”
She started towards the forest, her dark hair flowing around her, the brown of her skin shining in the moonlight.
I swallowed hard and followed her, Easton right beside me.
“I don’t like this,” he growled.
“I don’t like any of this, but Rosamond wouldn’t lead us into danger.”
“I want to believe that. So, I’m going to trust her.”
I knew that trust didn’t come easily when it came to Easton. We had to fight back the fear. We needed to see who was here.
As we made our way through the forest, bile rose up into my throat as I saw what lay in front of us.
Eitri was there, his body gray, large gashes all over his chest and arms as if he had been cut with a sword many times. His eyes were rimmed in red, and drool slid down his face.
As he looked at us, I noticed his neck had an odd angle as he growled.
“This is what happens when dark magic fails. When the Wielding of the shadows enters a body but doesn’t quite leave it. This is what The Gray could be if he had not been strong enough to withstand it.”
I glanced at Rosamond.
“What do you mean?”
“The Gray accidentally put part of himself into this one. Out of anger, out of spite, out of darkness. The Gray uses his Wielding to put on a face of beauty, of what should not be. He hides from me, from the other Seers. So, I cannot see everything. My cousin here is no more, just a shade of what he once was. Of who he once was.”
“What do we do?” Easton asked, Fire Wielding in his palms.
“I will take care of this,” Rosamond said.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I do. My grandmother lives, my brother lives, as do my friends. At least, some. But the line of our family will fade into dust one day soon if we do not prevail. The shade in front of us is not a true Lumière anymore. He is what The Gray would have been without power,” she repeated.
I froze. “How do we defeat The Gray, Rosamond?”
“You need to find the power within him and strip it so he is no longer a man.”
“How do we do that?” I asked.
“The fates have not let me see. But I’m afraid that there isn’t a way.” Her voice broke at that, and despair filled me, my hands shaking. “There has to be a way. All of this was for nothing if there isn’t.”
The Seer looked at me, her eyes full of clouds and mist. “I know that, Priestess. I’m not the one with the power to defeat him. For I cannot see. Eitri here, though he cannot move, though he cannot speak, has come somehow, to show us what should not be.”
“Who sent him here?” Easton asked.
“The fates,” the Seer whispered. “They show us what we must do, even if it makes no sense.”
“Rosamond,” I whispered.
“We must find a way. For I cannot see it. And I fear if I cannot see it then it cannot be done.”
“We’ll find a way,” Easton whispered to me.
“Of course, we will. We will not lose.”
As I looked at Rosamond, the idea that she had no hope, that a Seer could not see a path to victory, scared me more than anything.
Because I had always trusted Rosamond to help us find our way.
If all she saw was mist and death? The unknown?
Then how would we find our path and know what to fight for?
“Be at peace, Eitri,” Rosamond whispered.
The boy who was once the cousin of two of my dearest friends, the true prince of the Lumière, looked up, his eyes wide. Suddenly, he let out a gasp and was no more.
Because the power within him had not been real, it had not been true. And, somehow, the Seer had used her Air Wielding to pull it from him.
But, as she’d said, he was just a shade of The Gray.
And that was not how we were going to defeat the tyrant.
I looked at Easton, worried now beyond anything I’d felt before.
If we couldn’t find a way to defeat The Gray, we would lose. And we would perish.
And all would be lost.
Chapter Twenty
Lyric
I needed to speak with the Spirit Wielders.
Throughout my short life—though it sometimes felt far longer than the mere two decades I had lived—the Spirit Wielders had always brought me to them. I had called out to them in pain and begged for help, and they sometimes listened. They’d intervened to save my life, had overheard my words in order to scold. And had listened to me to try to teach.
As the dawn of our battle approached, something I knew deep in my bones, I knew I had to ask them for help. I understood that they wouldn’t be able to give me much. They weren’t of this world, of this time. So, asking for help in a physical sense would never amount to anything.
They had given up part of themselves to save me the first time I nearly died with Easton bleeding out near me, succumbing to the same mortal wound as I had.
But perhaps they could give me advice or something now. I felt as if I were floundering with my five elements, even though I had mastered them as much as I could in a short period.
I could Wield all of my magic, although Spirit was the element I wasn’t sure I would ever understand. I didn’t know the intricacy of its power. That would come later, I knew it. For I wouldn’t have Spirit within me to match The Gray if it wouldn’t be important later.