The Heir of Aiwan--Book 1

chapter 7

It's been almost a week since Emma was kidnapped and they've barely made any progress. The tightness inside Kira is like a coil about to spring. Her chest feels like it has a weight tied to it. Her sleep has been off and the fatigue of her constant training is wearing on her muscles. The joints feel like they are about to snap. Kira trains hard in order to sleep but every time she tries lay down, she can hear that scream that pierced her night. The people she should have sensed, Jame should have sensed. They had spent her entire lifetime with the inevitability of their return to Aiwan. She hated being on the back foot.

The doc has been working tirelessly to perfect her plan. She's been working on this for over a decade but now that it's getting real, she's quadruple checking everything. The problem with the whole scenario is that she won't even know if it's worked. They don't have a way of communicating across the fold. It's like throwing a pebble in a pond, thinking it's going to hit the bottom eventually but having no idea if it has or where it's landed. Except that pebble is a human, or fae in this case, and someone they love. Alwyn wanted to go first, which Jame was not about to let happen. He will go with him, he doesn't know it but Kira will also be making the trip. When it's time to "storm the castle," for lack of a better word, they'll all need to be together, with the doc on this side to coordinate any of the fae on this side.

Alwyn's anxiety this last week is about to reach a breaking point. The anxiousness has nothing to do with the travelling part, he trusts that the doc has had so many years to perfect it, they will get it right. She is nothing if not a perfectionist. He knows that the only reason they haven't tried this before is because of his dad. He's not even Emma's protector but her guardian and father nonetheless. As her protector, Alwyn needed to be there. Not knowing if she is ok, or even alive, feels like a void inside him. A black hole that is threatening to collapse the rest of him being into nothing. He misses the tug of her energy on him. Since returning from the mission with Kristen, he has taken her safety very seriously. He had begged his dad to let him stay at the house but he insisted that a twenty-two year old needs to be on his own. Earth really has rubbed off on him. 

He's pacing back and forth in the lab as the doc prepares all the moving parts of her little magic-slash-science trick. His nervous energy only feels sated with movement, the constant struggle of a sidhe without a battle to fight in. He has only experienced one moment of this war, too young to remember it, but he feels it inside his blood. This waiting game could be the death of him. Dad would say I'm being dramatic but he knows that he feels it, too. Only he's been playing this game for much longer than Alwyn has. He look across the room at Jame, his body is so still that if he didn't know any better than he'd think he was a Greek statue made of parian marble. Where his body is toned and lithe, he is all bulky mass, a true sculptures dream. Alwyn get his own figure from his mother, also sidhe, but much more agile. He will likely never look like his father, except within the steel blue of our shared eyes. And, of course, our temperament.

After what feels like hours, the doc has everything set up. She is positioned across the room with Kristen, standing inside one of the two janitors mop buckets full of water. He can see the sour look on Kristen's face from here. I've known her long enough to know that is doesn't actually bother her to be sitting in the dirty water regardless of the sneer on her face. She likes to pretend that her Santa Barbara background has made her snobby, but she never fit in with her mother's crowd. He knew her back when she wasn't as good at pretending.

Between Kristen and Alwyn is Kira, her jaw clenched tight. She's a brave girl but the unknown is never an easy thing to face. She isn't even the one about to transfer her matter from one world to another. Alwyn's tension is probably just about as heightened as hers. Kira will be taking a brunt of Doc and Kristen's magic into herself, acting as a conduit to move them to Aiwan, her blood like a beacon to the other side.

He's spent the last hour, as Doc and Kristen were filling up mop buckets, trying to conjure as many memories of the place as he can think of. The first image that always comes to mind is the old cottage they had lived in. He can remember sitting at a hearth with his mother. Her face is blurry to him, the actually memory replaced by his father's recollections of her. From back when he used to like talking about her. 

Meditation has never been his strong suit, too much of his dad's sidhe blood running through him to truly still his mind. Bodily movement is what helps me center. He can feel the precipice of this magic trick reach its head. He still and positions himself on the black x the doc has drawn onto the lab floor. They're standing in a sort of line. Kristen and the doc standing in water on either end, Kira in the middle, Alwyn and Jame between Kristen and Kira. Kira is facing me, looking at me intently. Her violet grey eyes tight with worry and concentration. The sirens, like Kristen, do not need the water to weave their magic, it just makes it more concentrated and easier to manipulate.

"Everyone ready?" Dr. Jonsson says just above a whisper. For a professor, her natural voice is softer than it would need to be. He has seen her in the lecture hall, though. Her voice has a unique ability to carry. Probably something to do with her siren abilities. He never thought to ask. And now is not the best time to bring it up. He breathes deep and re-centers his mind, closing his eyes, he nods to the doc. His father's grumbled response coming from behind him. He can feel his tense energy. It's an energy he knows well from his childhood. He pushes that thought away. His father's worry will not help him now.

A soft hum bubbles up to the surface as Kristen and Freya begin to sync their power. He feels a vibrating on his skin as he says his mother's name over and over in his head, picturing her on her knees in front of the bushes in the garden, pruning and humming to herself. Everything goes silent then black. He feels an arm grip his forearm hard, his father's growl grows deeper. He can only concentrate on the tickle of power currently pulsing through his body. Then he feels every muscle in his body pull in opposite directions, a scream erupts from him as he was pulled into the void.

Jame can feel my fury building in me every breath I take. A dark, black hole has been drilled through my heart. He hears Alwyn's scream rip through the room but his eyes land on Kira, she has grabbed onto Alwyn. His fury is aimed towards her but he feels another set of hands grasp his shoulders, Kristen. Freya had warned me of the risk to Kira, which I had been cautious about. She was stronger than her petite, young frame appeared to be. She had been training for this specific task for the last few years. He had been training her body and her mind to be her sisters equal. In the moments before the spell started, he had worked to clear the fear and the fatherly instinct that he had had for the girl, prepared his heart for the possibility that she would be, well, damaged after. He could see no other way around it. She wasn't supposed to go with them, though. His white hot fury is building within him. Their eyes meet across the space before everything goes black.

Kira has spent her whole life preparing for a moment like this. Jame's lessons always felt like not an in-case but an eventuality. There was no way she was letting them go without her, use up her power to get to Emma and leave her behind, this was her battle, too.

The two worlds were created from the same energies, they used to be one world. She feels a gentle tug downwards as she says Emma's name over and over in her head, picturing her on the last day she saw her. In the last moment, she lunges forward and grabs always arm, tightening on the sinewy muscle with every ounce of her strength. Everything goes silent then black. She can feel every muscle in her body pull in opposite directions, she grit my teeth, trying to focus on her connection to Alwyn but she feels her body pulling away from his. Jame is not going to be happy about this if my body explodes into a million pieces.

When she lands, the feeling of ground strikes her knees, sending a reverberation up her spine that rattles the teeth in her skull. Her hair had been swept back but a few strands break loose and cascading around the crown of her head. It takes ages but he vision eventually clears, beginning as soft gray blur from the darkness. The first thing she can make out is the rolling of green and with the moon rising from the tops of trees. She falls forward with the weight of this new world. The brown desert of her youth replaced by so much lush green. Her hands catch her as she makes out the sound of heavy breathing to her right, her neck resists the movement of turning but she forces through it. To her right is Jame and Kristen is sprawled out beyond him. She sags against the weight of the magic coursing through her, Kira's breath coming out ragged gasps. 

We did it.