Free Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) by D.K. Holmberg Page B

these old stories?”
    Ciara thought about what the lizard had said, the only thing she remembered from the strange creature. Hadn’t there been some comment about darkness coming? Did that mean the lizard was a part of darkness, or was it a part of light?
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    She sensed it as Fas took a step closer to her, shifting his feet as he moved toward the ridgeline leading down and away from the point. His heart hammered more rapidly in his chest. Was it fear or something else that drove him?
    “Don’t know? What did you see?” her father asked.
    “I saw,” she began, thinking of what had happened while she was out on the waste, “draasin. They were injured, and those of Ter attacked.” She had stopped them, hadn’t she, but had she been fast enough? She had been taught to revere the draasin, that the creatures of fire deserved her respect, but she had never before known why. Maybe what her father described was the reason why.
    “That’s not all that you saw, Ciara. You had help, didn’t you?”
    She shook her head slowly. “There was a man all in shadows and then another, a creature that helped—”
    Fas took another step, this time toward her, but his foot slipped on the rock, leaving a trail of stone falling to the ground far beneath the point.
    Ciara glanced over in time to see him slip from the ledge and fall.

7
    Ciara
    I have struggled to determine when the shin of Rens learned skills that once existed solely in Hyaln. Is it possible that Hyaln has chosen a side?
    —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

    C iara wasn’t fast enough to reach Fas.
    He fell, and she heard the sickening way his body bounced off the stone, bones shattering in his descent. He cried out with a whimper, barely more than that, and fell silent. It was his eyes that bothered her the most. They fixed her with intensity that burned into her, holding her with what she could only call regret. A black knife slipped from his hand and fell uselessly to the side.
    As she started down, she swore she saw a shadow swirling around him for a moment before flittering away.
    Ciara raced down from the ledge, careful to use her j’na as she went, making certain not to slip. She’d already fallen enough times recently and the lizard wasn’t around to help this time. Her father wheezed behind her, sliding along the rock more slowly than her, the steady tap of his j’na marking the rhythm of his passing.
    At a lip of rock, she found Fas sprawled across the stone. Blood pooled from his face and his arm was bent to the side awkwardly. His eyes were glazed, and for a moment she thought he was already dead, but then he took a breath. Water sensing told her that his heart still beat, but it was faint, and the thrumming of his heart told her how injured he truly was.
    Her father pushed past her and dropped his j’na as he crouched next to Fas. Laying his hands on him, a shaping built, swelling through Fas. One hand tapped on his chest, moving with the rhythm of his heart, while the other rested on his cheek.
    “He’s been too badly hurt,” he said.
    Ciara could see that and doubted Fas could survive a fall like that. Stormbringer, but she shouldn’t have survived a fall as she had and might not have without the help of the lizard.
    “What was the darkness around him?” she asked.
    Her father glanced up at her. “Ciara… those were just stories. There was no darkness.”
    Ciara knelt alongside him and touched Fas on the chest. She might not have the same ability with water as her father, but she could sense the injuries and knew how severe they were. Bones were broken and he bled inside, enough that he wouldn’t last much longer. Her father’s shaping slowed the bleeding but didn’t stop it altogether.
    “Fas didn’t fall,” she said, recognizing the way he welcomed the pain of death. There was no fear in him, nothing that should be there, only a quiet acceptance of what was to come.
    “He slipped. I was