Smoke Rising: Book III

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Emery

Everything is so different. The sun looks different, brighter and warmer. The wind feels cooler, sharper and cleaner. The sky is clearer. The frost that glistens along the courtyard in the morning, it's sharper, and it glitters like diamonds along the blades of grass when the sun sneaks over the horizon.

The blankets on my bed are softer, the eggs and bacon I eat with Nicholi for breakfast taste better and he is softer. Kinder. And Mateo, he has been... Mateo. More jokes. More covering up. He doesn't think that I see it but I do. And I feel it. Maybe he forgot that I could do that. He certainly did last night. The moment I asked him if he was okay—if we were okay, he was overwhelmed with pain. But I couldn't place it. Was it pain for betraying Ana, or something else entirely? Something neither of us wants to face.

Theo slips his hand on my forehead as I chew my last bit of scrambled eggs.

"Your energy seems to be perfectly fine."

I roll my eyes.

"Have you heard any voices or seen any ghosts?"

Only one.

"Nope."

"And you can't take Shadow form, correct?"

"I already told you last night, Theo."

"But you tried again this morning, and it didn't work?"

"No, I can't take Shadow form."

"But you can go to the Dark lands."

The Shadow Casters call it the Shadow lands, but Casters apparently have their own name for it.

"Yes."

"And what do you see there?"

"I think I'm done." I scoot back my chair and rise to my feet. "I'm going to go for a walk."

Nobody stops me.

I step outside in the winter breeze and I feel the ice climb into my bones. Its crazy to think that last winter I was scavenging for whatever food I could find to feed my sick sister and her devastated parents. It's almost been a year since I unbound my powers, and I'm amazed by how far I've come.

Caster, prisoner, soldier, princess, human, and now... what am I now?

I'm all of those things and none of them. I'm something new, completely unheard of. And I'm blonde, too. Weird. I still don't know what happened to my hair or why it's streaked with white. None of the Shadow Casters I've met have natural deathly looking highlights in their hair. I push the thought out of my head. It doesn't really matter. I didn't come here to make up with my father, be Theo's patient, or even investigate my new abilities. I came here to get my magic back so that I could kill the Chancellor and free my home from the dictatorship that's ruled for decades. But now that I'm here, maybe I can free more than just my home too. Maybe I can send word across the world that America is a safe place for humans. I can take a page out of the history books and set up a network of human sympathizers to help free any slaves brave enough to run. Maybe I can do more than just kill a bad man with too much power.

"You want to go find her?" Nicholi says. I hadn't even heard him come up behind me.

We stand near the training platform, our hot breath steaming in the cold air.