Angelfire (Dark Angel) Read online

  This year Michaelea designers favor blues and greens, layered in pleats and frills. Urielos, the only seaside Seraphim city, is the most daring in showing off flesh with the skirts above knees and strapless pieces. Gabriela designers seem to have taken their inspiration from tulips, with puffy shoulders and gathered waists of bright oranges and pinks.

  One of the Gabriela models, a girl with thick blonde hair cascading over her shoulders contrasting against the deep blue of her gown, winks at Lutando as she floats down the centre of the airway.

  “Did she just wink at you?” demands Elysia.

  Lutando blushes but he doesn’t take his eyes off her. “We know each other.”

  It didn’t matter how much Elysia prodded, Lutando would not elaborate any further.

  After the parade the group of friends head to the games area. They enter a few games just for fun.

  Lutando is first, entering the archery challenge. He has to fly across a field, shooting his twelve arrows at the moving targets, which are being blown about by AirWhisperers. Each target hit is worth ten points. In addition, he has to dodge the bullets of colored paints being thrown by the WaterBearers at the sidelines. Each hit costs five points.

  Lutando comes fifth, having hit nine of the twelve targets, and only being hit by paint once.

  Xavier tries his hand at the bubble race. He floats at the starting line along with seven other Seraphim, a bubble of Air-magic hovering in front of each of their faces.

  The winner is the first to blow his or her bubble across the finish line, hands tied behind their back.

  The starting whistle goes off and bubbles start to fly everywhere. The crowd cheers from the sidelines as the competitors flit their way across the field.

  Xavier almost comes third but he blows too hard near the finish line and the delicate Airbubble pops in his face. His friends can’t stop laughing.

  Alyx and her friends make their way to the Castus competitions to watch the gifted Seraphim compete using their magic.

  Alyx’s favorite is the Alchemists’ challenge. Here competitors stand in front of a long table. In front of each competitor are four glass bowls, all empty except for the first bowl which is filled with water. Alyx recognizes Ferrum, her steelforger in the line-up. She catches his eye but he doesn’t say hello.

  The start whistle sounds. Alyx keeps her eye on Ferrum. He is the favorite to win.

  Ferrum scoops his hands into the first bowl, cupping the water. Holding his hands over the second bowl he lets the liquid pour through his fingers. It comes out thick and red and gives off a sharp fruity smell. Wine.

  He then scoops his hands full of wine and releases it over the third bowl. Shavings of metal fall from his fingers, tinkling against the sides of the glass. Iron.

  Finally, he scoops his hands into the bowl of iron shavings. By this stage the crowd is chanting and calling his name. He is clearly in the lead with the other competitors at various stages of the iron conversion. One Alchemist is still struggling with his wine conversion.

  Ferrum holds his cupped hands over the last bowl, a concentrated look on his face. He releases his hands and a shower of gold falls into the bowl like grains of sand. A huge grin bursts across his face and the crowd roars. He has won again.

  A call sounds, announcing the beginning of the ultimate leader combats, one of the highlights of the Festival. Alyx and her friends make their way to the fighting arena, a huge suspended spherical cage surrounded by a crowd of jostling Seraphim. Alyx squeezes her way to the front, a benefit of being her size.

  Each competitor enters the cage with only one sword and one dagger. After the first two fights, Symon is up against Varian. An unlucky pairing for Symon. Alyx yells out words of encouragement to Symon as he enters the cage even though he won’t be able to hear her over the crowd. The announcer calls the start of the fight.

  Symon and Varian clash back and forth across the inside of the cage with their swords, kicking against the bars to propel towards each other. Symon is the first to disarm Varian of his sword. But soon Varian kicks Symon’s sword from his hand. Their fighting draws closer together as they attack each other with their daggers.

  Soon both their daggers have been disarmed. The crowd is jostling roughly and yelling now. This has already been a longer and more exciting fight than the first two.

  An overexcited crowd member starts spraying a stream of Water into the cage. The referee has to blow his whistle and have him removed from the arena. Symon and Varian barely notice as they pummel each other into the bars of the cage.

  A lucky hit to the jaw causes Symon to drop from the air. He lands hard on the bottom bars, the crowd crowing in sympathy. The fight is over. Varian has won.

  As Varian pumps his fists towards the rowdy crowd, two waiting attendants carry Symon from the cage. He will be taken to the fighters’ tent to rest while his body recovers.

  The festival ends an hour before the official start of the evening Announcement Ceremony. It is just enough time for everyone to return to their tents or pods and ready themselves in official garb; white robes in a thick heavy material.

  The trumpets call just as the sun is leaving its final kiss on the underside of the sky. Alyx closes her pod door behind her. Clear globes of dancing fireflies strung along the trees and bushes have begun to light up the paths between the city buildings. Glow-algae scooped into more globes have been released onto the Great Lake, sailing forth like little boats, their reflections creating water-fractured twins beneath them.

  Amongst the trees of the forest of Michaelea, the Seraphim from the other two cities have setup their camp. Green cloth pockets hang from the sturdiest of branches looking like ripe teardrop-fruits, glowing from the halolights inside them. Seraphim now float from their tents across the forest in white streams toward the Heart. Alyx joins them.

  The melody of the Seraphim choir grows louder as Alyx approaches the Heart.

  Inside, the usual tables and chairs have been cleared away to accommodate the swell of Seraphim. The Heart is lit like the night sky with silk strands of glow-cocoons strung across the rafters and curling around the base of each platform creating halos over the lightwarriors on the floor. Temporary cloth seating has been strung up across the Heart like long elevated hammocks.

  There are so many faces that Alyx doesn’t recognize. Despite the differences in their coloring, from china to olive to charcoal, they all have that feline quality to their eyes and soft glow to their skin.

  Alyx spots Passar through the crowd and squeezes her way towards him. She greets him with a friendly nudge. He smiles at her but she knows immediately it is a veneer. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes rimmed with violet shadows, stark against his pale skin.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, putting her hand on Passar’s arm.

  A short clipped laugh bursts from his mouth. “Terrified, actually.”

  “Of what?”

  He doesn’t answer her, instead he asks, “Do you think you’ll be announced?” His voice sounds faded, partly erased.

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  His face creases at the brows. “I made an application. So, if I’m not...”

  ... he will never be.

  “Is that what you really want?” Alyx asks in surprise. Passar has never mentioned before that he wanted to be one of the entwined.

  Passar doesn’t answer.

  “Entwinement will mean you’ll have to give up being a lightwarrior.” Alyx elbows him gently and tries to keep her tone light. “You’ll have to give up having your butt kicked by me in training every day.”

  “What kind of life is this Alyx?” Passar says quietly.

  She bites her lip. Before she can speak again she is cut off by the clanging of the official ceremonial bell. A weighted hush settles inside the Heart as Elder Michael takes the lectern.

  “Seraphs and seraphelles, my Seraphim,” he begins. “Times are changing from when we were first entrapped to this earth. This planet, our home, grows weak unde
r the overrun of the mortals. They grow selfish, destructive, greedy. Should we be content to watch as our planet dies around us? Mother Earth is starting to cry for help. The signs from the Divine are starting to show us that perhaps there is another way. Be prepared for the coming of a new era, my Seraphim.”

  Without further elaboration, he places his fingers on the Thread rolled across the lectern in front of him and begins to read out the Announced.

  “What was that about?” Alyx whispers out of the corner of her mouth to Passar. He doesn’t answer but his lips press in a firm line.

  As Michael reads through his list Alyx looks around, watching the faces and reactions of the Seraphim. They hums and claps at each calling, some pairings more popular than others. Occasionally Alyx catches a flash of disappointment across someone’s face. Did they hope to be promised to the one who was just paired?

  “...finally I’d like to announce that my direct descendant Daniel of Michaelea is to be entwined to Alyxandria of Michaelea.”

  The crowd draws back a collective gasp. There is a cry that Alyx realizes has come from her own throat. Surely there has been a mistake?

  Passar swears. He looks as stunned as Alyx feels. His name hasn’t been called out.

  “Passar,” she says, “are you okay?”

  His lips draw to a thin line. “Congratulations Alyxandria. I hope you shall be very happy.” The use of her full name, so formal, stings.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want this,” she pleads. Suddenly everything has become her fault. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  The stunned silence is broken by a few hesitant claps which slowly builds into cheers. The crowd’s reaction is a faded roar in her ears, like one of a distant sea.

  Alyx stretches her arm out to Passar, to comfort him, to be comforted. But he steps back evading her grasp and slips through the wall of Seraphim that has started to close around her.

  She barely registers all the congratulations. What is happening? She can’t see any of her friends. Where is Xavier? Symon? She needs someone, anyone, right now.

  There must be some mistake.

  “Congratulations, Alyxandria.” Constantine blocks her path, a hand on one jutted hip and the other twirling a curl of red hair. “Daniel is quite the catch. A direct descendant of an Elder no less.”

  “Thanks.” Alyx isn’t convinced in the slightest that Constantine is sincere.

  Before Alyx can push past, Constantine grabs her in a gripping hug, nails digging into her arm. In her ear she hears Constantine hiss, “You are nothing. Just remember that an Entwinement can be revoked. When you screw up, I’ll be waiting.”

  Alyx’s mouth drops open and her brain goes blank. When Constantine pulls back, the smirk has been replastered on her face.

  “Remember what I said.” Constantine’s voice is thick with honeyed poison.

  She lets go of Alyx’s arms leaving a fan of tiny red marks and swishes away through the crowd.

  Chapter 16

  “You’re early,” Mayrekk says, locking the door to his hut as Alyx approaches him from behind. She doesn’t ask how he knows that it is her.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  Mayrekk turns and scans the sky, still a deep pre-dawn violet, and the trees around them before he grunts. “Don’t get in the way then.”

  He wears a long-sleeved shirt and long pants in mismatched shades of brown. He has sturdy-looking gloves on his hands and a tightly-weaved basket slung across his body. He turns from his door and ambles towards a thick part of the forest. Strange that he likes to walk.

  Alyx follows, drifting along behind him.

  After the shock of the Announcement, after she had managed to slip away from the noise and the crowd and the attention, she had fled to her pod, her stomach empty from skipping last meal, and had lain on her back staring at her ceiling.

  Later that night when she had finally drifted off, she had dreamt of him. Again. She had woken with a cry, his sadness fading until only her own was left. Sometimes she couldn’t tell whether these feelings belonged to him or were her own.

  Who was this Rogue? Why could she feel his presence with her? Why could she hear the strands of his thoughts on her mind like a ghostly melody? Why was she so connected to him?

  This was why Alyx found herself at Mayrekk’s hut this morning, earlier than respectable.

  Mayrekk stops at a cluster of ferns, pulling Alyx out of her thoughts. She watches as he picks only the leaves at the tips placing them in his basket. Further along he floats up towards the height of a tree, picking off several blush-colored fruit. The whole time he is silent.

  “What are you doing?” Alyx asks when curiosity overtakes her.

  “Collecting.”

  “Collecting what?”

  “Leaves, berries, roots.”

  “Why?”

  He starts explaining about the different plants along the way.

  “These are edible,” Mayrekk says as he picks a berry so dark a purple it is almost black.

  He pulls a berry off another shrub a short distance away. “See these?” He shows her his palm, which contains a berry from each bush. “Look the same? They aren’t. One of them is poisonous.”

  He rolls the berries over with his fingers. “See the top where the stem comes out? The poisonous one has the little leaves, see?”

  He crushes each berry, one in each hand. “Smell.” He holds his palms to her face. One smells sweet, the other is so sour that it makes her eyes water. “Only eat the sweet smelling berry.”

  Mayrekk cuts the bark of a particular tree and a sap oozes out; a glue-sap he explains. He shows Alyx how to treat the glue-sap to make it stronger or to mix it with another type of sap to make it weaker.

  “Why would you want to make glue weaker?”

  “Think child, think.”

  Alyx shakes her head.

  “Depending on the weakness of the glue it will fail after a certain time. If you get the mixture right you can create a series of bird feeders to open every few hours.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  Mayrekk gives her a look as if to say why wouldn’t you want an auto-timed bird feeder?

  Mayrekk shows Alyx a tree with a vine strong enough you can weave into a rope, strong enough to hold a person’s weight.

  “Do you know what I’ve noticed Mayrekk?” Alyx says.

  “What’s that?”

  “That your accent drops in and out.”

  “That ain’t true.” His voice is suddenly rough again.

  “You did it again just then. Why do you put it on?”

  Mayrekk stares at her for one long moment. He says quietly, “It’s better for me if people underestimate me, think I’m an old fool or that I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “They tend to leave me alone that way.”

  They.

  “They Announced me last night. To Daniel.”

  Mayrekk turns. “Michael’s son?”

  “Yes. They’re taking away my lightwarrior status. I will be entwined in less than a moon-cycle. Why would they do this to me?”

  “You know what they say, ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’.”

  Alyx recognizes this saying. She has read it before. In a mortal book. “How do you know about Sun Tzu?”

  Mayrekk narrows his eyes at her. “How do you know about Sun Tzu?”

  Alyx curses herself silently. What excuse can she give for her illegal knowledge? What excuse?

  Mayrekk’s frown melts and he laughs, loud and full. “Oh child, I am not going to turn you into the Elders just as I know you won’t turn me into them.”

  Relief floods her. Mayrekk also reads illegally. He won’t turn her in.

  She barely knows him, but he will keep her secret as she will keep his. A secret that she hasn’t told to anyone, not even Symon or Xavier or Passar. The last of her apprehension of Mayrekk begins to fall away. Alyx decides that she may be able to trust him.

  �
�I dreamt of him last night, the one from my vision,” Alyx says. “It wasn’t the first time.”

  “Not here, not like this,” Mayrekk hisses, eyes darting around them. “The forest has ears.”

  Alyx’s eyebrows furrow. Are they being listened to? She glances around at the trees, seeing no one. Just a few birds.

  Back at his hut Mayrekk locks the door behind them and shuts all his windows. He drags Alyx to the very back corner of his hut before he will let her speak. Hesitantly at first, she starts to tell Mayrekk about her dreams. As she speaks about him Alyx feels a heat creep across her body. Does Mayrekk notice?

  “It’s always him,” Alyx says when she finishes her explanation. “Always the same person. What does this mean?”

  “Unusual gift.”

  Alyx frowns. “But why do I just see him?” And why should she be having all these strange... feelings as well? When he was hungry, she hurt for him. When he was tired, she hurt for him. Her heart was bursting with a need, a need, to be close to him. “Maybe another Elder will know?”

  “No,” Mayrekk says, startling her with the ferocity of his tone. He leans forward, his face serious. “Alyx, you need to keep this to yourself. You can’t let anyone else know. Especially not the Elders.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I’m not entirely sure yet. But you need to let me know if you get another vision.”

  Alyx narrows her eyes. Mayrekk knows something. Something he won’t tell her. As she studies his face she sees something under his cool mask that unnerves her.

  Mayrekk is afraid.

  Chapter 17

  Alyx arrives at class just before it starts. Most of the other Seraphim have already taken their seats. She can see Elysia sitting with Xavier, Passar, Lutando and a group of lightwarriors from another flock up near the back. She starts to move towards them.

  “My promised,” Daniel calls from several benches away. Alyx blinks and looks over to him. Daniel is calling her his promised. This is too strange.

  “You should sit here beside me, and your new friends.” Daniel waves his arm across his Castus entourage. Most of them smile at her, but their smiles are contained. Except Constantine. Constantine is glowering at her.