Blood and Hope- Originally published in Fantastic Realms Anthology, 2021
The city burned under a sun gone dark, and it seemed selfish to worry about one small life in a world that was falling apart. But it wasn’t like the world was worrying about any of them.
No one manned the broad gate into the city so Elliot had to shove it open himself. He paused with his one good arm propped against the rough wood, gazing out at the charred beams and broken timbers that speared the eerie, twilit sky. His wide eyes stung and smoke burned his nose.
He coughed once then held his arm over his nose as he plunged into a street lit by the distant fires and a black sun.
It couldn’t all be gone. Not in one night. They hadn’t started burning things until yesterday, Pa said. So, the Refuge…there was a good chance the Refuge was still there. Gemma could have survived. Right?
His boots sent up little puffs as they stirred the ash packed between cobblestones. There, between blackened posts, he could make out the intact walls of the smithy. So, some buildings still survived.
The sun dipped toward the horizon, a black disk surrounded by a thin white halo. Nearly two months since it had gone dark and two weeks since Elliot had given up wondering if it was ever going to come back.
He surged down the street, frowned in confusion, then spun around to try a different way. He’d been to the Refuge nearly every day since he’d lost his arm, but the streets looked strange and unfamiliar in the half-light with rubble blocking the way.
He rushed around a corner, intent on finding street signs that hadn’t been toppled or burned. He should have been listening. The dull roar would have warned him to turn back.
He ran smack into the edge of the mob. They stood in front of a timber-framed house arrayed like a motley army, complete with weapons. The sight of so many pitchforks and shovels would have been funny if Elliot wasn’t imagining how many holes a pitchfork could put in a man. A couple of townsfolk glanced at their neighbors out of the corners of their eyes, like they were wondering who they should fork next. Others wore stained, frayed strips of blue wool tied around their heads. Bits of an enchanter’s cloak torn from someone who’d made the mistake of being special.
“Send him out, Martha,” a man yelled from the front of the crowd. “We know you have him in there.”
Elliot held his breath. He should have run the moment he’d seen the blue head bands.
“Send him out or we burn you with him.”
“You leave my son alone, Tom Cooper,” a voice called from a darkened window. “He did nothing to hurt you.”
“He’s not your son anymore. He’s an enchanter. And they betrayed us. Used up all the magic and made the sun go dark. Send him out or burn.”
A moment, a pregnant pause when Elliot wanted to pray, but he didn’t know what to ask for.
“Then burn us, you bastards.”
Elliot’s gut twisted as several townsfolk in the blue headbands surged forward, torches ready. His hand clenched while his feet itched, and he stood torn between the two impulses. Run or fight.
A torch bearer pushed past him, knocking into his shoulder. It would be so easy to spin and drag the burning brand from his hand. Dash it against the street.
Elliot squeezed his eyes shut, imagined brown eyes round in a face white with fear. He could only help once. Whatever he did here would earn him a death sentence from the mob.
He could only choose one.
He ducked his head and ran as the crowd cheered. His breath burned in his throat as he turned his back on a battle he couldn’t win.
One enchanter, he told himself. If I can save one enchanter, it’ll make up for this.
He pressed on, closing his ears on the screams as he continued toward Gemma.
***
Elliot’s feet faltered as he stared up at the blackened spire of the Refuge of Saint Redemption. The stained-glass windows stood empty, bits of colored glass scattered in the dry grass below, the roof burned away above.
His breath came faster as his gaze passed over a stone angel flanking the gate, its outstretched arms broken off at the elbow and shoulder.
Of course they’d torched the Refuge. If he was searching for enchanters to murder, he’d look for them at the source, too.
Except when Elliot looked at the Refuge, he didn’t see it as a home for liars and traitors. He didn’t see a place that created enchanters and spit them out onto an unsuspecting world.
He saw a red-headed girl sitting in the grass among the stone angels teaching a boy how to play leapfrog with one arm. He saw that girl spoon feeding the boy when he was too frustrated to use his left hand. And he saw that girl using magic to carve little rock figures to play with.
The wrought-iron gate hung from one hinge, stuck between the cobbles. Elliot jumped it and fetched up against the door of the Refuge, which didn’t budge. He put his shoulder to the wood, planted his feet, and shoved. With a heave, the door finally carved a path through the debris that blocked it.
Just inside a large shape lay across the flagstones, making Elliot stumble in recognition. It was an old wolf, grizzled jaw slack in death. His name had been Caerson, one of the shape-changing Zevryn that guarded the Refuge. If he was gone…
“Gemma!” Elliot called.
A pigeon startled and fled into the sky, scattering ash behind it. Elliot raised a hand to protect his eyes and peered around the dim interior. The dark sun’s weak rays barely made it this far in the late afternoon.
“Gemma?”
A few pews remained even while coals still glowed under the debris in the corners.
Elliot swiped the sweat from his brow. Caerson had to have been one of the first casualties of the riots. The City Liberators clearly had no compunctions about burning people in their own homes.
Thick waves of panic rose to choke him, and he shook his head, trying not to imagine Gemma in one of the pews, sitting there just like she did every evening, unaware of the danger.
The chapel stood empty, and Elliot had run out of prayers.
He yelled, raw and strangled, and kicked at a burned beam propped against the wall. It fell with a clatter and a little puff of ash.
A voice spoke just at the edge of his awareness, a question quickly cut off.
He froze, heart in his throat. “Gemma?” he whispered.
He turned in a circle, eyes scouring the soot-streaked walls. In the back corner of the chapel there had once been a door leading to the basement and crypt. Now a piece of charred roof leaned across it.
He rushed for the debris. “Gemma?” he called.
“Elliot?” It was her voice. Faint and blocked by stone and wood and fire, but he could finally hear it.
The wood was still warm, but Elliot set his shoulder against it anyway and strained. His boots scraped through the ash.
With a groan, the section of roof budged. Only an inch or two but it was enough he could duck underneath and find the door handle.
He turned it and yanked, and the door reluctantly opened, wedging itself under the fallen roof until he stared down into the blackness of the basement.
“Gemma?” Elliot whispered.
A figure rushed from the darkness and threw its arms around him.
Elliot clung to her, feeling her breath sob against his neck and her bright hair soft against his fingertips. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Gemma didn’t say anything, only tightened her grip on his shoulders in the lee of the fallen roof. But he could feel all the things she didn’t say. All the fear, despair, and exhaustion written plain in the trembling of her arms.
He pulled back, just far enough to look into her eyes. He didn’t have to say anything either. Neither of them had ever been good with words, but they didn’t have to be. Not with each other.
For one brief, mad moment he wanted to lean forward and press his lips against hers with the ash falling around them and the dark sun setting through the empty window frame.
“Gemma,” a voice hissed through the open doorway behind her, and Elliot snapped back to reality. “Gemma, get back here. You’re going to get us all killed.”
“It’s Elliot,” she said over her shoulder. “He came to dig us out.”
“You don’t know that,” the voice whispered. “It could be a trap to lure us out. They burned our home, Gemma. They’re murdering us in the streets. You can’t trust just anyone.”
They weren’t wrong. And Elliot couldn’t blame them when just down the street another house was going up in flames.
“He’s not just anyone,” Gemma said. “He’s Elliot.”
Finally, another figure appeared in the door and Elliot recognized Ysolde, the matrona of Saint Redemption’s Refuge. She was the one who took in those who were hurt and made them better. She was the one who guided enfani like Gemma as they learned to use their new abilities. She was a healer. She was a leader.
The last time he’d seen her, she’d worn the enchanter’s cornflower blue cloak over her long tunic. Of course, only a fool would wear the cloak and declare themselves an enchanter now.
“I’m sorry, Elliot,” she said, her rich voice hoarse from smoke or exhaustion, he wasn’t sure which. “But you’ll forgive me for being cautious. Come, Gemma. Anyone could glance in here and see us.” She jerked her chin toward the front door.
Gemma hesitated, and Elliot could easily see Ysolde dragging her back into the darkness and the dubious safety of the basement.
His sweaty fingers tightened on Gemma’s hand. “Please, mistress,” he managed to grate out. Ysolde had been the one to nurse him after his accident, but words always died in Elliot’s throat around her gruff confidence. “You’re not safe here. There’s a group of Liberators down the street. They’ll start digging when they run out of things to burn.”
“Liberators,” she said, voice flat.
He gulped. “Pa says that’s what they call themselves. They say they’re freeing the city from the lies of the enchanters.”
Her lips went thin and white. “And you’re just here out of the kindness of your heart?”
“I-I came for Gemma.”
Ysolde’s eyes found their linked hands and narrowed, but before she could speak, Gemma squeezed his fingers.
“I’m not leaving without my Family,” she told Elliot quietly. Behind Ysolde he caught the flash of a white face. There were more enchanters down there, hiding and hoping to stay alive until the city recovered from its madness.
He’d come for Gemma, not knowing what he’d do with even one enchanter when he found her. His father wouldn’t welcome them at the inn. But they couldn’t stay here, buried until the world forgot them. Elliot wasn’t sure it would ever forget them.
“You have to get out of the city,” Elliot said, bracing himself to face Ysolde. “It’s not…as bad in the countryside. And there’s more places to hide.”
Ysolde stared at him. In the silence, she couldn’t miss the faint sounds of terror and destruction that permeated the city.
He bit his lip. “I’ll help,” he added, though he couldn’t imagine how that would convince her at this point.
He might not have been the commanding, heroic figure he wished he were, but finally, she nodded.
Gemma gave Elliot a brilliant smile while Ysolde turned to the doorway behind her. “All right,” she said, sharp and effective. “Leave it all. Especially the cloaks. Bring nothing that will draw attention. Help me with this, Elliot.”
She and Elliot put their shoulders to the roof segment and shifted it completely off the door so the rest of the enchanters could push through into the chapel.
An older man, bent with age but with sharp eyes led a boy of about fourteen and a little girl out into the ruined Refuge. Enchanters were related by talent, not blood, but Elliot had never seen a closer-knit family than Gemma’s. Certainly his own relationship with his father wasn’t nearly so understanding.
Ysolde gathered her Family in the corner beside the door, paying their respects to Caerson where he lay.
Elliot stared at them, wondering what the hell he was going to do with five enchanters in a city that hated them. Shoulders slack, he glanced back up at the sky through the ruined beauty of the Refuge. The gray clouds grew dimmer as the black sun sank behind what was left of the capital.
Long, long ago, before Valeria was even a country there had been a Darkness like this lasting three months. The resulting chaos and lack of magic had torn apart a great empire, scattering its remains across the continent.
This Darkness could be the same, Elliot told himself. Three months and then they could see the sun again. Magic could return.
Or the Darkness could be forever this time. What if enchanters really had used up all the magic of the world and the sun never went back to normal?
Elliot’s hands clenched at his sides, and he drew in a deep breath, heavy with wood smoke.
He didn’t believe that. He refused to believe that. Sometimes belief was a choice, and in this moment, he chose to believe that enchanters were victims just like the rest of them.
He pulled his gaze back to Gemma and the rest of his charges and caught Ysolde’s sharp gaze. He flushed and hoped she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
He slipped across the ash to the front door and the enchanter gave him a nod.
“Be as silent as you can,” she told the rest of them. “Be quick. Follow Elliot without delay or argument. And whatever happens, no matter how dire things get, do not try to use magic.” She met each of their eyes in turn. “If they know what we are—”
“They’ll kill us,” Gemma finished for her.
Elliot led them out into the street and down a different way. He didn’t want to run into the mob of Liberators, and he definitely didn’t want to see what was left of the woman or her son.
Billows of smoke flowed above them, making the sky feel close and claustrophobic, and Elliot struggled to make sense of the jumble of streets with half the buildings burned or dark and empty.
Glass shattered too close, and Elliot froze at a cross street. He poked his head around the corner. A few doors down, a group of looters broke through the thick window of a storefront and started pushing through the bright copper pots hanging on display.
None of them wore bits of blue, and Elliot forced himself to release his death grip on the wall. He gestured for Gemma’s Family to follow him, and he crept along to the other side of the street. Gemma and her Family kept their eyes down, their movements small and inconspicuous until Elliot hastened them to another cross street where they could pass out of sight again.
Every now and then, screams or crashes came floating down the empty streets, making Elliot cringe. He tried to close his ears to the horrors, drown it all out with excuses, but he could still hear his cowardice ringing in his ears even after they left the screams behind.
They passed a low stone wall, covered with moss, pristine except for one spot where the green had been scraped away, and Ysolde stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Wait,” she said quietly.
He stood, feet planted, head tilted for danger while she knelt beside the wall.
“What is it?” Gemma asked under her breath.
“I’m…not sure,” Ysolde said.
Elliot whipped around to be sure no one was coming. He couldn’t think of anything more conspicuous than sitting in the middle of the burning city with an entire Family of enchanters arrayed around him.
Ysolde ran her hand over the stone under the scuffed moss and a spark sizzled and popped from her fingertips. She jerked back with a yelp.
Elliot sucked in a gasp and lurched forward. “What are you doing?” he hissed, a million anxious questions pushing their way through his normal hesitance. “Do you want to get us spotted?”
Gemma held him back as Ysolde sat on her heels with a wince, shaking her hand. She glanced around to be sure the sparks hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention.
“I didn’t know it was going to do that, or I wouldn’t have touched it,” she said.
“How did you do that? I thought there was no more magic.” Words stood out, carved into the stone, but Elliot wasn’t interested in them. “How? How, when magic is gone?”
“It’s not gone, Elliot,” Gemma said, speaking quickly. “Or well, it was for the first month the sun went dark. But now it’s just…” Her face twisted like she was trying to find the right words. “Unstable.”
“What does that mean?”
“Like water in a bathtub. Someone pulled the plug, and it all went down the drain. Now the tub is being refilled, but it’s all turbulent and splashy and nothing works right.”
Elliot’s heart rate slowly returned to normal. He could see why Ysolde had cautioned them to not even try to use magic. It had to be so hard not to reach for something that was a part of you, a piece that made you something special. Even if it would make you spark and splash and light up like a firework to anyone looking. No wonder so many enchanters had been caught.
Elliot finally glanced at the words. “Help is at the crossroads,” he read. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not specifically. I think another enchanter left it there, hidden,” Ysolde said. “But with things the way they are, I didn’t realize touching it would trigger the casting. Let’s get moving before someone comes to investigate.”
From here it was a fairly straight shot to the Seraph Gate. Elliot squeezed Gemma’s slick palm when he saw the great stone wings of the angels rising ahead of them. Only three more blocks.
The seraphs faced out, keeping the enemy at bay, and Elliot wished he could ask them to turn. The enemy wasn’t outside the city. The enemy was already in its streets.
“Hey,” a voice called from beside them.
Elliot jumped, dragging his eyes away from the wings. So close. They were so close. But if they ran now, they would throw away all of their careful anonymity.
At the edge of an alley, a man lounged. His bushy eyebrows drew together under the frayed, blue band he wore like a wreath.
Elliot had to swallow twice before he could speak. “Yes?” he said and arranged himself casually in front of Gemma and her Family.
“What are you skulking around for?”
“We’re not skulking,” Elliot said with a grimace. “We’re walking.”
“Not many people roaming the streets right now,” the man said. He straightened up and stalked toward them.
Probably all hiding from you, Elliot thought.
“You look like you’re trying to get out of the city.”
Elliot forced himself to breathe evenly. “The smoke’s not good for Grandfather.” He made a vague gesture to the old man, who obliged and coughed theatrically. “I’m taking them to my uncle’s farm. Air might be clearer there.”
“Lots of enchanters trying to make their way out there right now,” the Liberator said and spat on the cobbles. “Might want to be careful. You can’t trust them.”
“Right,” Elliot said, carefully not agreeing or disagreeing with the man. “We’ll keep that in mind.” He started to turn.
The man jerked his chin at Ysolde. “You look familiar.”
She drew herself up, face pale and lips pinched. She didn’t answer. Anything they said would invite further comment.
They started shuffling toward the corner of an intact building, where they could get out of sight. The old man herded the boy and the girl ahead of him.
The Liberator’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped toward them, feet stirring the ash on the cobbles. “Yeah…I know you.” Then his eyes widened. “Mistress Ysolde. From the Refuge.”
“Run,” Ysolde said, quietly.
Elliot grabbed Gemma’s arm and sprinted for the building while the others raced ahead of them.
Behind them, the Liberator shouted, “Betrayer! I’ve found a betrayer!”
People boiled out of the ruins around them, soot streaking their clothes but not enough to hide the bits of blue they wore on their heads and arms and around their necks.
Elliot’s heart beat in his throat, and he gasped, gagging on the dry ash that they’d kicked up.
Gemma tripped, and he hauled on her arm. “Just keep running. Maybe we can get to the gates.”
She didn’t bother answering, just gathered her long tunic up in her hands and sprinted after her Family.
A rock caught Elliot in the knee, and he cried out. He threw out his hand to catch himself, but one wasn’t enough, and he fell hard on the stump of his missing arm.
Ahead of him Gemma skidded to a stop and turned, mouth a perfect oh.
“No,” he called. “Just go!” She was the enchanter. She was the one the mob wanted to tear apart. He knew they would kill him for harboring a betrayer, but if that was going to stop him, he should have let it stop him before he’d even entered the city. If she was caught now, it made his death meaningless.
She didn’t heed his words, returning to yank on his good arm until he scrambled upright.
By then the Liberators had closed in on them.
The man they’d spoken to strode up the street, his wide grin revealing crooked teeth. He pulled a club from his belt, a thick impromptu weapon shaped from the leg of a chair with the end still splintered where he’d ripped it free.
Elliot hunched, breathing hard, but he flung his hand in front of Gemma.
A crack and a boom made them all stagger, and suddenly Mistress Ysolde stood between them and the Liberator mob. She clutched her side as if in pain, but her face was set in deep unforgiving lines. Her lips pulled in a grimace as she straightened, the edge of her tunic flaring around her feet.
The leader of the Liberators didn’t even hesitate.
One enchanter against the mob. Three months ago she would only have had to wave her hand. The altercation would have been nothing. A whisper in the course of history that no one would have noticed.
Now with magic scarce and uncertain…
Elliot stumbled back, dragging Gemma with him.
“Matrona,” she called, voice breaking.
Ysolde cast a short sharp smile over her shoulder. At Elliot, not Gemma. “Keep them safe,” she said.
Then she raised her hands.
Elliot ran, pulling Gemma along, but he couldn’t help glancing behind him. Ysolde pulled at the air, which sparked and crackled like salt thrown on a fire. It singed the edge of her tunic and licked at her bare hands.
Then she yanked up from the ground, and the cobbles around the Liberators’ feet erupted into the air, making them all stagger and fall.
Ysolde fell, too. She lay there as the mob clambered to their feet.
Then Elliot and Gemma turned the corner, and he couldn’t see anymore.
***
The Seraph’s View inn stood outside the gate along the road where farmers and travelers looked for cheaper fare than what they could find in the city.
By the time Elliot could see the rough sign banging in the wind, the dark sun had set, leaving behind only a night sky full of scudding clouds. He led the group unerringly to the back of the inn, where a big trapdoor opened onto stairs.
The Family followed him, pale and soot-streaked, and he noted their halting movements along with Gemma’s wide blank stare and the old man’s shaking hands.
No one had spoken since they’d left Ysolde. No one had cried. No one had mentioned the sharp boom behind them or the wind that had nearly knocked them off their feet shortly after.
No one suggested they go back for her because they all knew there was nothing to go back for.
The cellar stood dark and empty except for the barrels crowded against the far wall and the crates of roots and vegetables piled in the center. Elliot lit a single candle and glanced nervously at the cracks in the floorboards above them, but the first story of the inn remained dark.
He forced his hand still and his shoulders to relax. His father never came down this early in the evening. Only later when the ale upstairs ran out. That only happened if it was a good night, and there had been no good nights since the dark had taken the sun.
“Here,” Elliot whispered. “You can hide here.”
In the back corner of the cellar a wall took a sharp turn, leaving a square space filled with burlap sacks and old crates. His father had started building a wall to close it in and make a storeroom but had abandoned the project when the Darkness came.
The old man settled the boy and the girl in the corner behind the half built wall, pulling some of the empty sacks over them. It wasn’t cold in the cellar, but they shivered uncontrollably anyway.
Elliot took Gemma’s hand and drew her into the space. She went without resistance, but he didn’t like the way she hunched and stared around her blindly. Gemma was always the one who could see beauty in the world, no matter how sullen or angry or numb Elliot had felt.
Now she was the one who seemed numb. He started to touch her cheek, hesitated, then laid his palm against her smooth skin. She was cold and clammy, and he leaned in to press his forehead against hers.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” she whispered, and he could feel her breath on his lips.
It would be so easy to press his mouth against hers. To distract them both from the image of Ysolde lying on the cobbles as the Liberators closed in around her. So easy and so wrong.
He’d never told her. In all the years since they’d shared their childhood dreams, this was the one dream he’d never had the courage to voice. He and Gemma didn’t need words. But sometimes words could say what faces and gestures and hearts could not.
Except now wasn’t the time. The words he wanted to say had to step back and make room for the words Gemma needed to hear.
“Yes, she’s gone,” he said. “But she saved you. She helped us get out of the city. She might even have taken all those Liberators with her.”
Gemma squeezed her eyes shut, and Elliot realized that while Ysolde’s bravery and sacrifice had staggered him, they were cold comfort to Gemma and the others, who saw Ysolde as a mother.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For your loss. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it wasn’t for nothing.”
Her lips screwed up like she was trying not to cry, but she nodded and took a shuddering breath. He left her there, trying to sit comfortably among the scrap burlap and wood and he tiptoed around the cellar looking for something edible. All he could find were some raw roots and cheese which he arranged on a rickety crate.
“I’ll find more,” he told the old man. “I promise.” Then he glanced apprehensively at the floorboards above before he turned back to Gemma.
She turned a block of stone over and over in her hands, small enough to fit in the pouch at her waist.
“What’s that?” he said.
She tilted it so he could see. A square-cut piece of granite no bigger than Elliot’s hand. Across the smooth front a young stag ran, surrounded by brambles, its antlers stretched along its back.
He ran his fingers over the edge. “You carved this,” he said. Of course she had. She’d always used her magic to create. Half the relief carvings in the Refuge had been hers.
“It was the last thing I made before the Darkness came.”
It was the best he’d ever seen from her. The peak of her power and skill, both of which had been stripped away in the space of just a couple weeks.
“Matrona said to leave everything, but I…I forgot I had it.” Her voice broke, and she covered her mouth with her hand.
He reached to pull her against him, but the floorboards thudded above, making them all jump.
“Muck on all enchanters.” The gruff voice drifted down to them, clear as thunder rolling across the plains. “Should burn them all.”
Gemma’s face was hard to read in the dark, but Elliot could supply all sorts of expressions from his imagination and humiliation alone.
“Don’t mind him,” he whispered. “He’s been like that since…” He touched his empty sleeve, and her eyes followed the movement.
“Since we couldn’t save your arm.”
Elliot shrugged. “The enchanters didn’t save my arm, but they did save my life. I’ve always thought it was a fair trade. And besides, I got you in the bargain.”
She flushed deep and dark, and Elliot felt his own face burn. He looked down and around, at anything except her.
There was more cursing above them, and Elliot’s brow drew down. He knew all of his father’s moods. From the jovial camaraderie he shared with his regulars to the sullen grumbling when the weather kept them away. His tone now sent a spike of cold down Elliot’s spine. This one was pain.
“I have to go check on him,” he said.
Gemma didn’t protest.
The stairs let out at the back of the first floor beside the kitchen, and he slipped in, gazing around in the dark. The fire lay banked in the big oven, red and orange coals providing the barest glow. No one had lit the lanterns yet, and the black surrounded him, muffling everything.
“Pa?” Elliot asked quietly.
A short sharp gasp from his right made him turn, and he caught his breath. Gerard’s lean figure sagged against the counter like he couldn’t hold himself up.
“Pa, what happened?” He caught his father around the middle as the innkeeper lurched toward him. Elliot couldn’t hold his weight and they sank to the floor.
Beneath Elliot’s hands, something warm and wet spread across his father’s tunic.
“Enchanter…tried to get in,” his father ground out. “Tried to kill me just so he could hide in here. Didn’t let him.”
Elliot’s hands faltered. “He’s dead?” He couldn’t help imagining Ysolde lying dead on the cobbles. He couldn’t clear away the image of Gemma’s worried soot-streaked face in the shadows of the cellar.
“Course he’s dead. Don’t be stupid.” His father coughed and Elliot laid him back on the floorboards. “I got him. Too bad he got me, too. Tried to use magic.”
“And it went wrong,” Elliot said.
Gerard’s hand tightened against his arm. “How’d you know?”
“Just a guess,” Elliot said with a wince.
His father’s breath hitched, and a stab of fear twisted Elliot’s insides.
“Wait here, I’ll get a light.”
He scrambled through the dark kitchen trying to find a taper. Finally, his fingers closed around the long, slender tallow, and he rushed to light it at the banked fire. Then he used a poker to stir up some flame.
He turned back to his father and nearly dropped the taper.
Gerard lay back against the worn floorboards, face as pale as milk in the wan light, tunic stained deep and dark and irreversible.
“Pa,” Elliot whispered. He stood frozen, his mouth opening and closing as his mind ran in circles trying to think of how to fix this.
“Don’t fret, boy,” his father said, cutting off anything Elliot could say. “If I have to die, I’m glad I got to take one of them with me. Maybe—” He coughed, wet and pain-filled. “Maybe if we kill off all the enchanters, the Almighty will take pity on us and bring the sun back.”
Elliot fell to his knees beside his father, ignoring the bit of frayed blue tied around his arm. His hand trembled as he gathered the man close.
Gerard tried to push him away, but for once his hands were weaker than Elliot’s. “I said don’t fret. It’s time to be a man and be brave.”
Elliot’s teeth clenched, and his jaw ached with it.
“Elliot?” The quiet voice broke the silence of the kitchen like a stone on the surface of a pond.
Elliot shuddered and raised his gaze to Gemma who stood just outside the tiny circle of light, vague and indistinct and hesitant. He squeezed his eyes shut, torn between holding his father now, when Gerard couldn’t push him away, and rushing to hide Gemma.
“Who’s that then?” his father said, voice thready.
Elliot shook his head, hard enough to hurt, but Gemma stepped forward into the light.
Gerard’s face closed off, and he turned away. “Enchanter.” He spat the word. “You brought her here. You brought a betrayer into my house.”
“They’re not betrayers,” Elliot said. “They’re refugees.”
His father huffed and tried to roll out of his arms again. Muck, the man was about to die and they were going to spend their last moments arguing.
Gemma knelt on Gerard’s other side, gaze steady. No hint of shock in her expression, now. “He’s bleeding too much,” she said. “That’s the main trouble. If we can stop that, the rest will solve itself in time.”
Elliot pursed his lips and shook his head. Not because he was telling her no, but because he couldn’t choose. How could he tell Gemma to risk herself and what was left of her family for a man who would kill her if given half a chance? But how could he let his father die when there was a hope, however tiny, that she could save him?
He watched, heart in his mouth as she chewed her lip, obviously fighting her own battle inside her head. Her eyes flicked to the blue on his father’s arm, but finally, she nodded.
“Gemma,” he said, but she cut him off with a look before he could finish.
“Matrona helped anyone who came to the Refuge. Whether she could give them what they wanted or not, she never refused to help. And she taught me to do the same. I can’t ignore her now.”
“The Liberators will hunt you down,” he said. “They’ll kill you.”
“What they will do to me has no bearing on my choice right now,” she said. “With or without a sun, I am an enchanter. I can’t be anything else.”
She bent over his father.
“Stay away from me, betrayer,” he said.
“But the magic,” Elliot said, ignoring him. “It’s unstable. How do you know it will work?”
“I don’t. But if we all work together maybe we can hold it together long enough to do this one simple thing.”
That was when he noticed the rest of her Family settling to the floor around them. Even the boy and the little girl. He hadn’t even heard them come up the stairs.
He wanted to yell at them to run. To escape into the night and the countryside before the Liberators found them. He also wanted to beg them to stay, to do their best and save his father’s life.
He settled for sitting back on his heels and letting them work.
Gemma remained silent, taking his father’s tunic apart, tearing strips to make bandages, arranging Gerard’s limbs more comfortably. All normal things until you noticed her hands glowed a bright blue-white that grew steadily until it illuminated the whole kitchen, casting dancing shadows against the walls.
He glanced at the shuttered windows. If anyone passed nearby, they’d never mistake that light for the natural flicker of a flame.
The other enchanters sat on their knees, eyes steady on Gemma’s hands. They didn’t glow or move or chant, but Elliot got the feeling he shouldn’t interrupt them. Not with magic as unsteady as it was.
Desperate for something to do, Elliot stood and found a piece of cloth to drape over the cracks in the shutters, hiding what was going on inside.
Behind him, Gemma still worked. She was an artist, a creator, but she’d spent years working beside Ysolde in the Refuge of Saint Redemption, where the hurt and wounded were cared for. With Ysolde gone and the rest of the enchanters being hunted down in the streets, she was his father’s best hope.
Finally, ages later, she let her hands fall to her sides, and she slumped on the floor. In front of her, his father took a deep gasping breath.
Elliot dropped beside them. Gerard rolled to his hands and knees with a groan.
“Pa?” Elliot said. His hand slid across the floor until it covered Gemma’s trembling fingers. The rest of her Family drew back, leaving them in the circle of candlelight as they waited for Gerard to speak.
Surely this would mean something. Even his father couldn’t deny that Gemma had just saved his life.
Gerard raised a shaking hand to his chest, exploring the frayed edges of the makeshift bandages. As he raised his head, his gaze caught on Elliot’s empty sleeve. His eyes narrowed and his lips set in an angry line, and Elliot’s heart plummeted.
“I’ll give you three minutes to get out of my inn before I call the Liberators down on you,” he said.
“Pa!” Elliot said. “They saved your life.”
“They burnt out the sun. Stole all the magic of the world.”
“That’s not what’s happened. Look at how they healed you. There’s still magic; it’s just different.”
Elliot’s father hauled himself to his feet with a short grunt.
“You should rest, sir,” Gemma said quietly.
“Don’t tell me what to do in my own house,” his father said as he staggered for the door into the common room. “I’m going for the Liberators.”
“Pa, no—”
His father spun and stabbed a finger at Elliot, who flinched.
“If you’re siding with them, then I want you out, too.”
“What?” Elliot froze, the ringing in his ears making him sure he’d heard wrong.
“And you might as well not come back. You’re all betrayers as far as I’m concerned.”
Gemma’s hand turned under his and she squeezed his fingers. Quiet, gentle Gemma had already accepted the worst. She’d taken his father’s vitriol and returned it as grace. And now her stillness comforted Elliot.
It didn’t stop the cold that swept from Elliot’s chest, down his limbs, numbing him from the inside out. But it did keep him from opening his mouth and saying something he couldn’t take back.
His father had already said enough for the both of them.
The only reason Gerard hated enchanters was because they hadn’t made his son whole again. But Elliot had always assumed Gerard thought a broken son was better than no son at all.
Apparently, he’d assumed wrong.
The old man herded the rest of Gemma’s Family out the back door of the kitchen, into the night. They didn’t ask whether Gerard would make good on his threat.
Neither did Elliot.
He stood with Gemma, using the warmth of her hand as an anchor against the turmoil that tried to topple him.
Gerard stood in the doorway to the inn’s common room, staring. Elliot met his hard eyes once before he slipped out the back door, following the enchanters.
***
The message in the city had said “Help is at the crossroads.” It was the only clue they had, and it was the only idea Elliot had left.
There was nothing behind. With the city burning and his home lost to him, Elliot could only lead them forward and hope the message was true and not a trap.
How long could he lead them into the countryside, hoping that the next people they met didn’t want to kill them?
The little girl tripped on a rut in the road and the boy picked her up to carry her through the night.
Elliot stopped where one dirt track met the wide cobbled road that stretched all the way into the city and gazed up at the signpost.
This was a crossroads. But was it the crossroads?
He squinted, trying to make out the letters on the sign in the dark with only the glow from the city to help.
“Redemption’s Lane,” it read. Saint Redemption. The saint that sheltered those who suffered like him and the enchanters he’d thrown his life away for.
It had to mean something. Right?
“Is this it?” Gemma asked.
“I hope so,” Elliot said quietly.
Shrubs lined the route, wilted and stunted from two months without full sunlight. Elliot started for them, hoping to find some other sign, some other clue that would lead them forward.
The shrubs rustled and a figure stood, rising out of the dark underbrush.
“How do you like the air out here?” he said.
Elliot’s feet faltered in the dirt. He knew that voice.
The figure stepped onto the road coalescing into a man with blue scraps fluttering around his head like a wreath. Elliot recognized him even with the soot caked on his face and a dirty bandage wrapped around the stump at the end of his right arm.
Other figures rose around them as if they’d been lying in wait. Liberators from the city, who bore bloody bandages and marks of violence.
Ysolde had taken a piece of them with her, at least.
Elliot backed away and jumped as one of the Liberators passed behind him, cutting him off from the enchanters, who stood clumped together in the middle of the crossroads.
Gemma stared at him, her face white in the dark.
Elliot opened his mouth to say “leave them alone,” or something equally brave and useless, but he didn’t have the chance.
The closest Liberator lunged for Gemma.
Elliot yelled and tried to reach her, but an arm caught him around the middle and threw him against the ground. The lead Liberator bared his crooked teeth and raised his makeshift club.
Elliot rolled, and the club slammed into the ground where his head had been, kicking up a puff of dirt.
His heart raced as he searched for Gemma, but too many bodies got in his way. If he could just get through them, he could grab Gemma and escape into the dark.
Leaving her Family behind.
Elliot coughed on the dirt. That wasn’t an option either. He saw the old man go down under another club while the boy protected the little girl.
Gemma whipped around, wielding a pitchfork she’d pulled from one of the Liberators.
The lead Liberator stepped away from Elliot, aiming for Gemma through the chaos.
Elliot sucked air into his bruised lungs and scrambled upright. Then he flung himself on the lead Liberator, wrapping his arm around the other man’s throat. The Liberator staggered. He ducked down so Elliot tumbled over his shoulder into the road.
The man planted his boot on Elliot’s arm and raised his club high.
A snarl ripped through the night and a large moonlit shape made up of flashing blue eyes and powerful curves smashed into the Liberator, carrying him to the ground. His cry ended in a gurgle.
The other Liberators turned as the giant cat leaped on another man with a yowl and a slash of claws and teeth.
The rest of the mob didn’t stick around to see how many the cat could take out. They ran, stumbling over each other in their haste to disappear into the night.
“After them, Brann,” a voice said, soft and assured. “Make sure they don’t come back.”
“Gladly,” the cat said, a human voice coming from its animal throat. It bounded away into the dark and another cry echoed in the distance.
Elliot levered himself up out of the dirt, searching for Gemma’s bright hair. She stood, chest heaving, blood splattered up her arm.
The boy and the girl seemed unscathed, but the old man lay motionless in the road.
He stumbled forward as Gemma fell to her knees to check him. Elliot’s shoulders sagged as the man’s chest rose in a pained breath.
“Is he all right?” a voice asked.
Elliot spun, nearly losing his balance in the process.
A young woman stood at the edge of the road her hands raised, palms out. “It’s all right,” she said. “You’re safe now.”
“How can we trust you?” Gemma said, hand reaching for the pitchfork she’d dropped.
The woman just gazed at her with clear hazel eyes before lifting a hand and making a gesture, like she pulled a string from the sky.
Sparks fizzled and popped in the air and she snatched her hand back, shaking it. She stepped forward, walking with a pronounced limp.
“You’re an enchanter,” Elliot said.
The woman nodded. “The signs about the crossroads were mine. I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to prevent the ambush.”
The pale gray cat that had saved Elliot from a painful death bounded back up the road. It skidded to a stop, leaving furrows in the dirt, and now that Elliot could get a good look at it, he realized it was a large snow leopard complete with black spots and burning blue eyes.
“We’re all clear for a while,” it said in a distinctly masculine voice.
“Thank you, Brann,” the woman said.
Gemma placed a hand over her heart. “I’m glad to see one of the Zevryn,” she said. “You’re probably as hunted as we are.”
The cat shook himself. “Too many people know that we travel with enchanters. I’m…not sure how many of us are left,” he said. He turned back to the woman. “We’d better get moving. I don’t know how long before more Liberators find this place.”
The young woman gave a decisive nod.
The old man sat with a groan, clutching his bleeding head, and Elliot let out a sigh of relief.
“I can get you to the mountains,” the woman said. “I have people there, in a town I know is safe.”
“For now,” Brann added. “Until someone remembers the local baron married an enchanter.”
The young woman gave him a sharp look. “We’re making plans for that. Now let’s hurry. My—someone is waiting at a stable just down the road. He should have convinced the owner to sell his wagon by now, and he’ll get antsy if I don’t return soon.”
Gemma gathered her Family, helping the old man to his feet, encouraging the younger two, until she realized Elliot hadn’t moved.
She turned, and he swallowed as she searched his face.
“You’re coming with us, right?” she said quietly.
Elliot opened his mouth. Then he looked at the glow of the city on the horizon and closed it again. He didn’t see a city anymore when he looked at it.
He saw the way Ysolde had died, giving them time to escape. He saw the way Gemma had helped his father, knowing the consequences. He saw an old woman and her son daring a crowd to set fire to their house while he turned his back on them.
“I want to come…” he said.
She licked her lips. “But?”
But, what? He didn’t have a home anymore, and his city was in ruins. If the Liberators found out he’d helped a bunch of enchanters, they’d kill him just as readily.
Running away and living sounded like a good plan, especially if he could run away with Gemma.
But there was so much more he could do. Helping her had been all he’d been able to think about. But what if he could do more than help Gemma?
The other young woman watched his face as if she could see his decision written across it.
“We could use some help,” she said quietly. “Someone who can hide enchanters and lead them to safety.”
Elliot’s gut rolled. He couldn’t help remembering his father’s expression, that pinched, stony face that told him nothing in the world would change his mind. How many enchanters had seen a similar expression right before they’d died?
And how many enchanters could he protect so they wouldn’t have to?
He would go back. He knew what he could say to get his father to let him back in. Living with a man who’d told him how worthless he was couldn’t be any worse than what the enchanters were going through.
He could lie. He could beg. He could forget his pride for long enough to get Gerard to let him come home. And then he could use that home to hide enchanters. If he was quiet and clever about it, Gerard would never know how his son was defying him.
“I’ll be here to help,” he said. He’d find a way.
The young woman gave him a warm smile. “We’ll be here again, two weeks from now. We’ll wait at the crossroads until midnight to guide anyone that you can get out of the city.”
Elliot wanted to ask her name. To ask where she was taking Gemma and her Family. But if he was going to do this, if he was going to serve as a protector for any other enchanters, knowing those things was a very bad idea. Their safety would depend on his silence, and he couldn’t give away what he didn’t know.
It was the same reason he wouldn’t tell the woman about his father’s inn.
“All right, then,” the young woman said. “We should move.” She took one look at Gemma’s stricken face and helped the old man to the side of the road, leaving Gemma and Elliot alone in the middle.
His gaze roved her face, taking in every detail so he could remember it. He pretended not to notice that her eyes were wet.
“Maybe one day,” he said, voice rough. “We’ll see each other again. Maybe when the sun comes back and magic stabilizes, everything will go back to normal.”
Her hand fluttered up to gesture around them. “I don’t think there’s going to be any normal after this. We’ve lost too much.”
Elliot winced, but she was right. Trying to imagine a future after this was impossible. Even if the sun came back tomorrow, enchanters had lost all trust in humanity. And the rest of humanity had lost its mercy.
“It still doesn’t have to be goodbye forever,” he said. “I’ll find you when…when I can.”
“So, it’s just goodbye for now,” she said.
He pressed his lips together to keep them from trembling and nodded.
They moved at the same time, wrapping their arms around each other.
Kiss her, he thought to himself. Just kiss her. You don’t know if you’ll ever see her again. This could be your last chance.
His grip tightened on her for just a split second. Then he let go.
She stared at her feet, and he crossed his arm over his chest to keep from reaching for her again.
She glanced back at her Family, who were already disappearing into the brush, following the limping woman and the giant cat.
“Goodbye for now,” Elliot said, trying to make it easier for her.
She closed her eyes. “Goodbye for now,” she whispered. Then she turned and followed her Family.
Elliot watched, and now that she was walking away, he didn’t have to hide how his eyes watered. He swallowed down the lump in his throat.
He hadn’t kissed her. And he’d done it on purpose.
It meant he had to keep his promise. It meant he had to find her again.
***
Elliot sat in the cellar staring at the little alcove where Gemma’s Family had hidden. Above him, his father stomped, sending dust and dirt down through the little shafts of light that snuck through the floorboards. Elliot tried to ignore him the way Gerard ignored Elliot. It was the only way they could live together right now.
In his head, he made plans. He would finish the wall, make the storeroom just like his father wanted, but he’d leave space, a pocket of safety that no one would be able to find.
No one would think twice about the extra mortar and stone for the wall they were already building.
It wouldn’t be done in time to hide the first of the enchanters he intended to rescue that night, but maybe they would have something they could help contribute. Some little magic they could do together that would help protect the enchanters that came after them.
Elliot turned to get started, but something on the burlap sacks caught his eye. He stooped and picked up Gemma’s carving, a square-cut stone depicting a fleeing stag surrounded by brambles.
She’d left it behind. Either intentionally or by accident when she’d rushed upstairs to save his father. He didn’t know, and he couldn’t ask her now.
He knelt and positioned it in a gap in the wall, carefully angling it among the other stones. It reminded him of Gemma, beautiful and powerful, but vulnerable at the same time. Beset on all sides by thorns.
He gave the carving a final pat and turned to go upstairs to order more stone and mortar.