Come Back to Me
Her vision blazed.
Air thick with heat began at once to scorch everything around them. The group broke and ran on instinct, desperate to outrun the flames. Louis had Adrian across his back, but the fire swallowed the world behind them at a terrible pace. Something crackled. The stink of burning hair filled the air.
No!
She was certain they would be taken—certain she felt the fire-demon reaching for her back—when a cool wind closed around the three of them. Before she could even draw a breath, their feet left the ground, and in an instant the wind had carried them to the edge of the forest.
North Wind…
The chill of it was almost pleasant, which only showed how fierce the heat had been. Jin turned to look back. The light was so blinding he could not see straight. Golden radiance flickered through his vision, bright enough to feel like darkness, and black spots danced before his eyes as if he had tried to stare into the sun itself.
None of the three spoke.
Little by little their speed fell away, and the North Wind sank as though its strength had finally given out. They tumbled to the ground. On any other day they would have rolled with the impact and been on their feet again, but none of them had anything left. If a spirit could not hold its power to the end, then something had happened to its master.
Adrian stayed crouched where he had fallen.
Nina. Nina. Nina.
Fury rose in him past all bearing, ahead of every other feeling. Why? I told you. I told you plainly! He drove his fist into the ground again and again. Then exhaustion took even that from him, until he did not want to move so much as a finger. He wanted to cry.
Instead he pressed his lips tight, forced himself upright, swept back his disordered hair, and wiped the blood away with a rough hand. His mind went cold. It was as if every feeling had burned off with the rage.
If Nina was gone, then his life was as good as over. Fine. Good. Whoever took her from me will lose everything too.
He was still dizzy, but he could stand on his own feet. The contamination seemed to have struck him harder than the blow to the head.
"Taken in by a priest the Temple sent."
His voice came out rough. Vice-Captain Louis let out a sigh. He, too, was finding it difficult to gather himself.
"It seems the Cult had already worked its way into the Temple."
When he had seen the fake priest's strangely glittering eyes, he had thought the man merely agitated, enraged by what the Cult had done. Something had felt wrong. He had never imagined the man was one of them.
Adrian bit his lip. The skin split and bled, and he did not even feel it. He had said the Barrier seemed compromised and asked them to come and hold it steady, and not for a moment had he imagined the priest would speak a spell and detonate the whole thing in an instant. Even while he listened to the chant, he had thought it was only meant to examine the seal.
You stupid bastard.
He dragged his breathing back under control. He could curse himself later. Louis spoke, soft and measured even now.
"Let us return to the fortress for the present. Your Grace's wounds must be seen to, and Kirill is there as well. We have to get back to Black Shield Castle."
He swallowed once before he added the rest.
"We may have to raise the Great Barrier."
"We're not going back?" Jin's voice was dazed. "To go to her—to Nina…"
He did not know what he was trying to say, and the words fell apart.
"We are not going back."
Adrian said it and started walking. The steps were slow and unsteady, but they were sure.
"Why? What if Nina's still alive…"
He said it low. Jin stopped. Adrian said it once more.
"If she is alive, she will come back to me."
Jin bowed his head. It was the first time that red hair had ever looked so limp. Helplessness washed over him, and he closed his eyes.
After a contract, a spirit-caster drew still more of a spirit's power through an Incantation. But if one wanted power beyond even that, an Incantation was no longer enough to offer—and to borrow strength from a higher spirit with no contract at all… He had heard stories of people buying that power with a piece of their own body. He had never thought he would hear such an Incantation from Nina's lips.
Slowly, Jin turned. Golden light was climbing the darkening sky.
"Nina. Nina."
Nina opened her eyes. She was crouched in the bushes, and a familiar voice was calling her. Her eyes went wide. Her older brother was smiling, holding out his hand, and her face crumpled.
"Oppa!"
"Let's go home."
She caught his hand and sprang up. Her eldest brother, so much older than she was, had always come looking for her. He had always come for the youngest—for the little girl who ran off insisting this was not her home. Tears spilled over.
"Why are you crying, hm?"
He lifted her onto his back. Nina buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
"I know it's a dream."
"Do you? Then it is."
He laughed outright. Nina ran her hands along the pigtails swinging past her shoulders. My hair was so long when I was little. She looked out over the wheat, gone the color of honey, and wiped her tears with both hands.
"Or am I dead?"
Did I cross the Glass Sea?
"No. No."
At his answer she clutched his head and held on tight.
"All right. Then it is a dream, and I'll say it anyway. Thank you for loving me so much. I only ever made trouble, but thank you for loving me all the same."
"Because Nina is the cutest Nina in the world."
She laughed through the tears. She was so happy she wanted never to wake.
"Now why is our Nina crying?"
At the bright voice she whipped her head around. Her sister stood there in the headscarf Nina had embroidered with clumsy hands, looking exactly as she always had.
"Unnie!"
Nina reached out, and her brother bent awkwardly so she could. When she threw her arms around her sister, the woman laughed.
"Oh, my sweet Nina. All grown up, and heavy too. Our Nina, the prettiest in the world."
Nina sobbed without a sound. Her sister's voice dropped, soft as a secret.
"Shall we go back together?"
Nina's lips trembled. She looked up at her sister through a face wet with tears.
"No. Not yet. I can't leave Adrian alone. So—so…"
She said it without taking her eyes from either of them, as if looking away might make her forget their faces.
"I know this is a dream. I can't go back, and I won't. So whoever is making me dream this—come out."
A rustle, like pages turned in a hurry. A gust of wind tore through, and Nina watched every scrap of the scene blur and come apart.
Two figures stood in a pure white space. No—they did not seem human at all. The woman in golden scale armor had great curved ram horns sweeping from either side of her head, and cloth covered her face all the way to the neck, so that nothing of it could be seen. The other wore shimmering silver plate and a helm, and that face, too, was hidden. Both stood nearly six and a half feet tall. Nina had to step back before she could take them in properly.
The horned woman offered a soft apology.
It was not a human apology, and she could feel that it was sincere. Nina eased almost at once. Besides, these were not bad memories.
"No. It's all right. I was glad to see them. But that wasn't real, was it?"
"…I suppose it is."
Her voice had gone small.
"I feel like I'm going to cry…"
The woman in scale reached out and brushed the tears away. There was no ceremony in the gesture. It felt, somehow, familiar—friendly. Nina was embarrassed, but she never thought of refusing the touch.
"So… what's going to happen to me now? You're both spirits, aren't you?"
She asked it with her head tipped, and the woman gave a low laugh.
A leisurely, beautiful voice. Strange. Stranger still, it sounded like a voice she knew. It was familiar.
"This is going to sound really odd."
"Have we met before?"