Kill your darlings, p.9
Kill Your Darlings, page 9
“That would leave Midgard without defenses,” says Novei.
“Then we recall the Eastern Division to protect Midgard until Torvel is secure.”
Praxus’s russet eyes flash to Valen. “Commander-General, surely you won’t entertain the notion of uprooting two branches of our army for this paltry attack.”
“We’ll send scouts to determine the number of shadowtroops in Torvel,” says Valen. “If there’s an unusually large concentration, I’ll commit to the Lightbringer’s strategy.”
My hand shoots into the air. “I can go with Cendrion.”
“Sending our two most valuable assets into enemy territory, unguarded?” Praxus scoffs. “Out of the question.”
“We can take care of ourselves,” says Cendrion, poking his head through the flaps to join the conversation. The tent’s not big enough to house his bulk, so he’s crouched outside.
“Can you?” says Praxus.
Valen shoots the other man a warning glance. “You’re out of line, General.”
“The last time Kyla Starblade took matters into her own hands,” Praxus continues, unrelenting, “she confronted Zalor and cost Cendrion his lightmagic.”
“I do not begrudge Kyla for what happened,” the dragon growls, showing an excessive amount of fang. “Neither should you. The choice to fight was mine.”
“Besides,” I say, “we’re not confronting Zalor, we’re scouting for intel. I’ll wield a lightmagic illusion to mask us from enemy eyes. No one will know we’re there. It’s the safest bet.”
Not even Praxus can argue with that, though he does have some more generalized arguing to do before Valen dismisses the war council.
“That could have gone better,” Valen says heavily, watching the higher-ups return to their respective battalions. Now it’s just me and my core squad.
“It also could’ve gone way worse,” I point out.
A tiny, mirthless smile tugs at his lips.
“So, did you just conveniently discover how to wield?” Rexa drawls as we leave the tent, veering north to avoid the main camp.
“I didn’t need to. I know exactly how many shadowtroops are in the city and how many Zalor has stashed in the mountain caves.”
I may not have magic, but being omniscient is a pretty good consolation prize.
“What will you do when it comes time to battle?” Asher asks me.
“Fight, obviously.” He scrunches his nose, and I can’t help but laugh. “Sorry. I have a friend back home who makes that exact same face whenever I do something dangerous and dumb.”
“So, all the time,” says Rexa.
“Pretty much. But I’m not gonna sit on the sidelines.” There’s nothing I hate worse than an inactive protagonist. Plus, if anyone would understand my desire to fight, it’s Rexa.
Rexa, however, scoffs. She looks at Valen and says, “Are you going to allow this?”
“I don’t see how we can avoid it,” Cendrion says before Valen has a chance to respond. “We need her knowledge of the battle. It will be best if she stays with us as the skirmish plays out.”
Rexa heaves a long-suffering sigh. “It’s your funeral.”
“It’s no one’s funeral,” I snap. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“Kyla, we appreciate your offer to help,” says Asher, “but people on both sides will ask questions if you don’t wield.”
“Not to worry. I’ll fly with Cendrion during the battle—if that’s alright,” I add, glancing at the dragon. I feel solid with him, but I don’t want to overstep my place by making assumptions about his willingness to cart my magicless ass around.
He meets my eyes and nods, pearly horns glinting.
“Now, if lots of fire were being tossed around me when I fly, I think the shadowtroops wouldn’t notice my lack of light.” Steeling myself, I turn to Rexa. “Could you call in some phoenixes for this battle? I’d like both you and them to fly with me.”
I’ve said the magic words. The thrill of the hunt kindles in her gaze, as does the thirst for revenge.
“Fyr’thal and his blaze are in fighting shape,” she says. “Nothing they like more than burning shadowtroops, and I owe Zalor a good whomping.”
It’s all I can do to contain my grin. Victory on two counts: Rexa’s agreed to my plan, and I’ll finally get to meet Fyr’thal.
“Excellent,” I say, keeping my face neutral and my voice professional. I look to Asher next. “As for you, I need you to craft us something wild, something literally out of this world: a battery.”
“A what-now?”
Solera is technologically advanced compared to many famous fantasy lands in Earthling literature, but its technology is magic-reliant. There’s little call for batteries when you have voltmagic wielders running around. There are enchanted firelamps, glowbulbs, and natural light-emitting crystals, but no wires and circuitry to accompany them.
“A battery is something that can store and release potential energy. Since I don’t have a soul—or rather,” I amend myself sourly, “since my Earthling soul is devoid of magic, our communication rings won’t work on me.”
The silver rings are enchanted to transmit one person’s spoken words to another’s ears, but they require energy to function. In the same way a car needs an initial spark of electricity to get the engine running, so do our comm devices. That spark is the soul itself: a person’s magicsource.
“I’m happy to help,” says Asher. He’s great at crafting and inventing things. “But how would I go about making something like that? My earthmagic can only go so far.”
“That’s the beauty of it. A battery generates energy without magic. You’d create it through science and artistry alone. It, ah…” I pause, spirits sinking. I know everything about Solera, but—irony of ironies—very little about my home planet.
“Shit,” I mutter. “Okay, so you have to find different metals that, like, create electricity through chemical reactions with each other. As an earthmagic wielder, you’ll have a natural affinity with the raw elements needed, but without asking Google, I don’t know exactly which materials to use.”
“Who’s Google?” Asher says guilelessly.
“Never mind. Bottom line, I’m an idiot and I never paid attention to the workings of Earth technology. We have three days for trial-and-error tests to see which metals can generate enough power for my comms device. Think you can manage that?”
He grins. “I’m up for the challenge. It’ll be nice to get back to craft-wielding. It’s been a long time since I had a chance to do anything unrelated to the war.”
That’s true, and it’s a shame. Asher’s magical talents are wasted in a military setting. Craft-wielding is an entirely different discipline than battle-wielding. It requires nuance, weaving threads just so, creating something greater than the sum of its parts. Battle-wielding requires its own skillset, to be sure, but the art of war is not the same as the art of… well, art.
“I’ll need access to metals,” Asher continues. “Not compound materials, but pure ones. That way I can test which of them work best.”
“There are dwarven mines scattered throughout these mountains,” says Cendrion. “I’m willing to fly you to the nearest one.”
Asher bows to the dragon in gratitude. “That would be perfect. The dwarves wield earthmagic, too. They’ll be happy to help experiment.”
“You should go now. All of you,” I say, including Rexa in my statement. “This battle isn’t the end, it’s the beginning of the end. Everything snowballs from here. We have to be prepared to win this war without Kyla’s magic.”
Their faces fall, and I mentally curse myself. We were working together for a brief moment, acting like a team. The reminder that I’m not their heroic friend is sobering.
“We’ll be back before the battle,” Asher promises. Cendrion crouches in invitation, and he vaults onto the dragon’s back. With a mighty flap that kicks up whirlwinds of dust and leaves, they’re airborne.
Rexa’s body ripples, contorting as she shapeshifts. Her chimerical form shrinks. Brilliant red and gold plumage sprouts from dark fur and mottled scales. Her arms become sweeping wings. A blazing glory of rectrices fan behind her. A diamond-sharp beak elongates from her face, melding nose and lips into bone and keratin.
Suddenly she’s a phoenix, half as tall as I am, gleaming and resplendent. She can’t wield firemagic in this form—wielders are born with a single magical affinity, and Rexa’s is changemagic—but she’ll have the physical attributes of a phoenix, including speed and endurance.
Her amber eyes meet mine, and she dips her avian head in a small gesture of acknowledgement. With a shrill cry, she takes off, zooming south.
I watch her receding form for a while before I realize Valen and I are alone. A strange lightness twists my stomach into knots. My emotional response to him is automatic, but I don’t want to betray any hint of attraction. I’m not Kyla, and I can’t blur that crucial line.
“Good work today, soldier,” he says in a neutral tone. “I’m glad you’re thinking ahead.”
“If I can change the ending of the story, I can save Kyla’s friends. And Kyla.”
“And the world,” he adds.
Saving the world. Energy sparks in me, setting me alight.
Sluggish thoughts stir, surfacing from the darkness that shrouds my memories of Earth. I always dreamed about being a hero. As a child I was precocious, bursting with potential. I had big plans. I was going to help people.
Somewhere along the way, everything changed. I stumbled and fell, and never bothered to get up. It wasn’t anything specific. I just started… failing at things. Career opportunities, keeping in touch with friends, taking care of my health. Even the simplest tasks, like leaving my apartment, became impossible obstacles.
I retreated to a different world for solace and sanctuary. This world. And when I signed my book deal, I thought everything would change.
It’s a small power, writing things, but when millions of people read the things you write, that power grows. I wanted my story to be one of forgiveness and hope and redemption.
Then I killed my darlings in cold blood. Why?
It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill them, Zalor did. He still might, if I don’t stop him.
I’m aware that I’ve drifted into a state of daydream stupefaction. Giving my head a little shake, I pull myself out of it. When I bring Solera into focus, I find Valen watching me.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your thoughts. You had that familiar sparkle in your eye.” His chest expands and deflates with an inaudible sigh. “I almost believed she’d returned.”
My shoulders slump. Why does he have such power over me? How can he make me ache with longing and lacerate my heart in the same breath?
I turn to leave. “You should see to the troops. I’ll make myself scarce.”
Before I can take a step, a gentle hand closes on my arm. My pulse jumps as I glance at him.
“I delegated today’s tasks to General Praxus,” he says. “You and I have work to do.”
“Work?” My voice is embarrassingly breathy.
“You said it yourself: we have to be prepared to win this war without Kyla or her magic. From your descriptions, it appears we’ll be facing months of grueling bloodshed.”
I nod, drowning in his gaze.
“Then you need to be able to protect yourself, and I need to make sure you can sell the illusion of being Kyla Starblade.” He walks to a nearby patch of towering bamboo. With a spark of lightning, he slices through two thick stalks, catching them deftly. He pares these down with his belt knife, chopping off their fluffy tops and extraneous leafy protrusions, until he’s left with a couple of sharpened sticks.
He tosses one to me. Instinct kicks in and I grab for it, catching it clumsily.
“Kyla is an expert swordsman,” he says, squaring off in front of me.
“Swordswoman,” I correct him.
His lips quirk in the tiniest almost-smile. “I’m well aware,” he murmurs, and his velvet tone sends a shiver right down to my toes.
I’m playing a dangerous game. Am I foolish enough to believe that Valen might fall in love with me, the person who upended his life and displaced the soul of his soulmate? Even if he did (which he wouldn’t, because Valen is loyal to a fault), there can be no happy ending here. Like all my potential Earthling relationships, this one’s doomed to fail.
“Mirror my ready stance,” he instructs, all business once more. “Arm out, elbow in. Knees bent, feet at perpendicular angles.”
In my youth, I took fencing lessons. But that was years ago, in a different world. A different life. It’s been a hot minute since I engaged in hobbies outside writing.
Still, as I shift my weight, my body settles into a long-forgotten, once-familiar stance. I’m struck for the first time by how very different Kyla’s form is from my Earthling one. She spends her life wielding and fighting, while I spend mine hunched in front of a computer. She’s also eleven years younger than me. I feel the easy give in her knees that my real, decrepit, thirty-one-year-old body would never have allowed.
I smile and roll my shoulders, embracing the simple power this body provides. “En garde,” I say glibly, and I lunge.
Valen parries my attack and whirls out of my way. He attempts a riposte at my unprotected left side, but I know all his tricks, and I’m already moving to dodge. Kyla’s legs carry me to safety, though I wobble. My consciousness is unused to the motion her body has trained for.
He strikes again at my left flank. Since he’s left-handed, and I—and Kyla—are right-handed, he thinks he can exploit that side. But I know this trick, too. He’s feinting left in the hopes that I’ll parry, then he’ll disengage and cut at my right side. I ignore the feint and slash at his sword arm.
He evades with a bit of fancy footwork. Something burns in his eyes—the inner spark I’ve described in my writing so many times in such loving detail. Seeing it for myself is mesmerizing.
“You’ll have to do better than that, Adrai,” I quip, using the honorific for ‘teacher’ in his home kingdom of Olthoria. Kyla trained with him there for a year before she joined the Mortal Alliance, which is how they met and fell in love. Screw the Wise Old Mentor archetype, and not in the fun way. Give me a young, brilliant peer adviser any day of the week.
“You can’t rely on your supernatural knowledge of my tactics to keep you safe,” he chides, circling me. “What happens when you face an enemy you’re not familiar with?”
“I’m familiar with every enemy.”
I stab, adding a sneaky disengage. Valen doesn’t need supernatural knowledge to block with ease. He was forced into the military at ten years old, and he’s had a decade-and-a-half to master his swordsmanship.
“Besides,” I continue, closing distance with him, “a great swordswoman knows her enemy intimately—”
Valen parries my blow and our bodies brush. My blood sings at the brief contact.
“—and employs that knowledge to her advantage.” I know how his heart leaps when he stares into Kyla’s eyes. He falters for a fraction of a moment, and I strike. My left hand leaves the bamboo sword and flies toward his neck.
Lightning fast, Valen’s right hand intercepts mine and twists my wrist, forcing my arm down. A hiss escapes my clenched teeth and I buckle toward him, trying to avoid the pain of his subduing grip.
We’re locked hilt to hilt, heart to heart. Indefinable energy flows between us. When my chest heaves, it touches his. I could soak in his warmth forever. It’s doubly enticing now, since I can’t shake the cold that’s clung to me since Temereth’s failed spell.
“So you were listening to my training lectures.” His voice is halfway between a purr and a growl.
“Every word.”
Despite my physical exertions and the dangerous lure of Valen’s slightly parted lips, my heart slows. I shiver. It’s only now that I’ve stopped moving that I sense something’s amiss. I’m far too cold.
My mind rifles through a series of scenarios—a lingering scrap of poison from the assassin’s blade? A new darkmagic spell wielded by an invisible enemy? A side effect of the botched exorcism?
My bamboo sword gives beneath Valen’s applied pressure, and I collapse. In a flash, he drops his weapon and lunges to catch me. I hang in his arms, limp and pathetic.
“What’s wrong?” His eyes scour my body. With a shuddering gasp, I struggle upright.
“Cold,” I say, my voice trembling. “Don’t know why.”
He presses the back of his hand to my brow, then places two fingers against the corner of my jaw, taking my pulse. His face clouds.
“Brace yourself.” His hand moves to my rib cage, hovering over my too-slow heart. At first I’m afraid he’s going to shock me out of bradycardia. Instead, he begins unbuttoning my uniform.
“What are you—?” I can’t get the sentence through my clenched jaw. My teeth begin to chatter. Even the terrifying intimacy of Valen’s touch can’t warm me or jolt my failing heart to life.
He slips his fingers beneath the collar of my shirt and presses his calloused palm against my bare flesh. My body begins to heat, energy spreading from his hand through my veins. As voltmagic-warmed blood flows to my extremities, I slowly return from the brink of disaster. My heart stutters, hitches, then catches in a familiar rhythm.
Valen retracts his hand. His eyes dart toward the encampment. No one can see us in such a compromising position. Not only would it fracture faith in Kyla’s power at a moment when appearances are everything, the military higher-ups would use it against us if they knew we were in a relationship.
Which we’re not. I must keep my identities straight. Valen loves Kyla, not me. He loves the sparkle in her eye, the jaunt in her step, the light in her soul.
“Can you stand?” His face is so close. He’s still cradling my shoulders.
“I’m fine,” I wheeze, shrugging out of his grasp.
