King of Dust

Chapter 04

Screams echoed across a battlefield. Everything rushed around me, a blur of color and noise, and I spun frantically among fallen and falling bodies to find familiarity. Inches from my face, a sword moved through an Ebian soldier's eye. I watched his soul leave him as he slid off the blade, my life flashing before my eyes. I was going to die that day. I felt it. I followed the tip of the sword, frozen in place on the battlefield, to meet the eyes of my brother.

"What, Darius?" he asked, his face coated in the blood of his enemies, his warpaint smeared from sweat. "Afraid of a little blood? Darius?"

"Darius? Darius! Oh, where the hell did he go, now?"

"Darius?"

I snapped awake and realized that I had dozed off in the tree. My heart jumped into my throat as I saw the first rays of early morning sunlight peeking through the bough. I dropped from the branch I had lost myself on and turned into a bat, using my wings to break my fall. Before I hit the ground, in a puff of smoke I returned to my Human form. Astrid and Urien were looking for me, Astrid's face frantic.

"I'm here!" I said as I moved back toward the camp. "I'm here. I'm fine."

"Where the hell were you?" Urien demanded.

"I went to get some air and lost track of time. I'm sorry."

"Pack up your things," he replied, curt as ever. "We're going into town."

"People are going to recognize me, Urien. You said it yourself!" I complained as I scrambled to stuff my things into my rucksack.

"Wear this."

Urien thrust a dark cloak at me. The threads shimmered in the morning light. As it touched my fingertips, magick shot up my arm like sparks. Was it enchanted?

"You're not going to be leaving the wagon, anyway. Astrid and I are going to get supplies."

I pulled the cloak over my shoulders and when I went to run the fabric under my fingers, I saw not my own, tanned (though, granted, now it was more of a sad pale) hands, but a white man's. Astrid smiled at me as she got into the wagon, seeing something that I could not. It must have been a hilarious disguise. Urien would be the kind of man to carry around an alteration cloak among his things. He had to hide his horns, after all.

"Are you sure this cloak will be able to keep me safe? Where did you get this?" I asked as I threw my things onto the wagon.

"Doesn't matter where I got it. Now, behave."

Urien climbed into the driver's seat on the wagon and with a crack of the reins, we were on our way back into town. I pulled on a pair of gloves to protect my hands from any rogue beams of sunlight and looked into the woods. Dawn was beautiful, but I could never bathe in her light.

Yra nodded off in the back of the wagon with Astrid and I, and I sighed as the wheels rolled over uneven soil. I was too careless. I took a moment to process the fact that I almost lost my life that morning. Burnt to a crisp. I suppose the townspeople would've gotten what they wanted. The past had a tendency to swallow me up, and any time I sat still my mind would wander to places and times long since passed. I could not sleep, and yet ghosts haunted my half-dreaming mind.

Astrid bumped into me as the wagon went into a pothole. She jumped out of her skin and put her hands up to apologize. "I'm so sorry, Your Majesty, I m-mean Darius, I—"

"Astrid – Astrid!" I laughed. "It's okay! You just bumped me."

She looked as though she had seen a ghost. It wasn't me that she was afraid of, was it?