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“Not… Elara. Vaelar. He knows. He… can help. Ad… an… Kill her before Dalyah uses her. Kill her or take her…” more coughing, I didn’t even flinch as the drops of warm wet went everywhere. “Ad-d-an.”
“Add a what?” I asked, he tried to say the word again, but choked on the blood that was pooling there. I lifted him, letting it drain in a flood of red.
“Take her magic,” he said through the last of the blood as I lowered him back to the ground.
“Take her magic? I can’t take magic.” His grip tightened on my tunic, pulling me even closer as those wide eyes slid in and out of focus.
“You are a Sypher. It’s not a… You steal magic.” I shook my head again. Vaelar had called me a Sypher that night he came to kill me, but I did not steal magic.
“I steal time. Like your King.”
“Not time. Vaelar… he is a… Vynari. You, Sypher, you swallow magic. Time is something… else… something from… the Fae Queen…” His words were gasps and garbles as he grabbed my hand, pulling me closer. With blood stained fingers he pressed my hand against his face, the skin far too cold for someone who was still talking. “But Magic… steal mine. Sypher’s find… more… time. Magic.”
Blood poured from his mouth with every word, thick droplets going everywhere as he spoke. The icy flood of my magic swelled as though he had beckoned, as though it knew exactly what this man, my great-grandfather, was talking about and what I was supposed to do.
“Take my magic… before it’s too late,” he said again, the words nearly lost as he choked on his blood.
“Magic? But you are not Fae.”
“I am… but not.” He wasn’t making sense, but it was getting harder for him to talk now. “Take care of Kryamri. Save them all, only you can. You were the one Vaelar saw. It’s you. Tell him it’s you, not the girl. The King needs you.”
He was talking gibberish as his life slipped away, and I knew from experience I could not take time from those already gone. I was unsure how that worked with magic, but I had an idea.
I had felt it before, after all, when Lily had given me her magic. When I watched her fade into the black waves under the Qit.
My magic became an ice storm as I pulled at the life within him, what little that remained flooding into me the same as it always would. Except there was something more there, something warm, like a golden string that was hot to the touch. It wasn’t life, but I pulled on it anyway, watching the man before me sag into the ground, his chest caving in as I pulled. A feeling of ground and air overtook me with each tug on that glittering thread. It was as though I was inhaling an entire forest, the vastness of it opening up inside of me. I took the last of his time and continued to pull on that thread of gold, pull on that magic that raced into me. That became part of me.
I had thought the magic of a Sypher stole and used time, but as the man drifted to ash, fading into nothing, I was left not only with the fragments of his remaining time but also his magic.
“It was you!” I spun at the voice, at the boiling rage that ran over my skin. I was covered in blood, the ashen remains of the man coating my hands and blending in with the soot from the fire I was covered in.
I had already drawn my blades as I turned toward the horrified face of the woman I had raced so far to protect. Jayse.
I knew at once she wasn’t angry at the blood that covered me, or at the death I had surely instigated; but rather the type of death she had witnessed, and the connection she had made.
After so many years of protecting her from this secret I couldn’t protect her. Not anymore.
“You killed him! You killed Jack!” That solitary shout had turned into a scream, her eyes wide and damp.
“I can explain.” My blades dropped to the ground as I held my hands out, the blood and ash that covered palms doing nothing to help me.
“Can you? Because what I saw… that was what happened with Jack… you told me that man killed him.”
“Jayse, I–” My boots scuffed against the blood covered dirt as I stepped closer, and she took one very broad step back.
“Don’t come any closer to me!” She was screaming now, her voice carrying as she continued to back away.
“Jayse, you have to listen–” my voice cracked as my heart did, a pain stretching over my chest as something heavy and deep flared against my soul, a weighted prickling sensation I had never felt before. It wasn’t the heat of my flame, or the ice of time, it was something heavier, larger, dangerous. Something that felt out of control.
“I don’t have to listen to you! Why would I after you killed him! You killed my brother! The only part of my family I had left!” She screamed as that weight inside of me grew, something heavy and forbidden rumbling over my skin.
“Jayse!” Her name was a shout of panic and warning as that heaviness thundered from me and exploded in a crack that split through the ground, everything shaking as a fissure opened through the dirt and foliage between us.
“What’s happening?” Jayse screamed, backing up as she looked from me to the ash covered ground in horror. “What are you doing? What kind of monster are you?”
Monster?
I wasn’t the monster.
