Page 6 of Ruin of Revenants

But I never let Mama see my worries, instead matching her smile with one of my own. “I was planning on baking banana bread with the flour Fern smuggled us yesterday,” I told her. “I’ll get right to work.”

Brushing a kiss to her cheek as I hugged her, I tried not to notice how frail her frame felt or how there seemed to be more white in her black curtain of hair than there’d been the day before. Instead, I hurried to our treehouse, climbing the steps and pausing in the kitchen to collect ingredients. Children across the clearing were playing games, leaping from their treehouse porches and transforming mid-air. Their laughter would have once brought me joy, but now my heart stung. How long before the mysterious, invisible plague hurting our older people started to strike the younger as well?

Shaking off my fears, I returned to the clearing and the communal stone ovens. Before long, I’d lost myself in the joy of baking: mixing ingredients, heating the oven with my fire, and sitting back and enjoying the scent of banana bread enveloping me.

“Mmm, make enough for me?” Brook asked, sitting beside me on the bench I’d settled upon, watching the village awaken and go about their morning tasks. Some were using the other ovens, some were still gathering fruits and other plants from the garden, and others had set off toward the river to fish or hunt. A few had taken morning flights to stretch their wings and soak up the sun like I had, but never for long and never straying far. Except for the few who made the dangerous trips to nearby villages outside our sanctuary to obtain needed supplies, we didn’t leave our haven tucked away in the jungle. Not when the outside world wanted to kill us.

“Always.” I smiled and rested my head on her shoulder.

Noticing Mama was settled with some other females across the clearing, enjoying morning tea and gossip, I dared to speak freely. “Do you think she looks more worn today?”

Brook sighed. She understood my pain intimately. “I’m afraid so. She does a good job of concealing it, but she’s in pain. She doesn’t want you to worry.”

“How can I not worry? Luna is at death’s door and I’m afraid Mama and the others will follow. There must be a cure. Our magic doesn’t just…vanish.” I swallowed thickly and sat up, turning to study Brook’s expression. “What if Maris has an answer?”

Brook frowned. “The oracle? She only sees each of us once. As children. You’d never gain entrance to her cottage again. The way is magically barred unless she opens it, remember?”

I huffed in frustration. “What if those are only stories? This is urgent. Shouldn’t we try?”

Turning toward me conspiratorially, Brook lowered her voice. “On my walk to the Passionfire this morning, I ran into Brenton. He confessed everything when I demanded where he’d been. He’d snuck away last night and flew all the way to the mountains to try to speak with Maris, but the way was barred.”

I held my breath. Bren went to see Maris? Without even telling me?

“He said boulders shifted, trees reached their branches toward him, and the mountain itself quaked when he tried to climb the path,” Brook continued. “He never even saw Maris’ cottage. The rumors that the oracle blocks off the way to her are true, I’m afraid.”

“So she’ll only accept visits from children due for a prophecy.” My eyes stung with tears I refused to shed, not when Mama might look over and notice. “Then what do we do? How do we save them?”

Brook bit her lip, her gaze turning distant. “I don’t know, Isa.”

But I had an idea. Another, aside from the trip to Maris, that had been growing in my mind. One so dangerous, I didn’t dare speak it aloud, because it was forbidden.

And yet…if I didn’t take the risk, what if we all lost our magic and slowly perished from this illness?

A scream startled me from my thoughts.

“Zinnia!” a male shouted.

Brook and I turned together in time to see a child transform back into her fae form mid-air, her wings vanishing without warning and her body spasming as if hurt. She tumbled toward the ground, plummeting so fast that her father couldn’t reach her before her little body slammed to the dirt.

My stomach hollowed out as I leapt to my feet and charged, time slowing and speeding up all at once. I reached her the same moment her father did. Her face was pale, but when she cracked her eyes open and whimpered, I exhaled my relief and dropped to my knees, placing my hands on her leg, which was twisted under her at an odd angle.

Strengthen my magic, Sanvo, I prayed to the god of healing as I closed my eyes, drawing on my power. Warmth spread through my body as my mind connected with her, tuning me to each broken place. The broken bones in her leg and arm, the fractured rib, the bruised flesh. And something else, something dark and painfully familiar that pushed back at me. I directed my magic into her, sensing as the bones fused back together and the bruising began to slowly fade and heal. Unfortunately, that darkness didn’t leave, because it never did. It was the same sensation I experienced when trying to heal Mama or Aunt Aurora or any of the other older fae who’d lost their magic.

Zinnia’s magic was gone, the lingering pain she now felt no longer from physical injuries but a nefarious ailment we couldn’t fight against.

Even as the pain I’d taken from her stole my breath and I gritted my teeth, I turned to her father. The male threw his arms around Zinnia, holding her close and openly weeping. I met his gaze, seeing the same despair consuming me now mirrored in his eyes.

If the young phoenix shifters were losing their magic too, it was only a matter of time before we all did. With no solution in sight, we would all waste away from this curse.

We were running out of time.

Chapter Three

Archer

The hairs on the back of my neck rose when I plucked the old tome from the shelf, and I couldn’t tell if it was my own fear or some unseen power emanating from the book itself.

With a muttered curse, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure there were no other visitors or librarians nearby. Nothing but dancing shadows in the cobwebbed crevices of this far side of the library greeted me. Most everyone in the castle was at the king’s revel, a common occurrence these long nights as he worked to convince those citizens safe behind the barrier that there was nothing to worry about. The kingdom wasn’t falling to ruin. The dead here were all burned before they could rise. And the revenants gathering into organized regiments and forming an army most definitely would never pass through our barrier and threaten us.