Page 1 of The Last Aether

1

Pain. There was nothing but flashes of light and an endless sea of agony. But within that sea, there were snatches of my dream. The man’s face I didn’t recognize yet somehow knew. The furious man yelling threats down the hall. The fire.

The angry voice morphed into something else. My name.

“Aura!”

But it wasn’t the angry man. This was someone else, a voice I knew. Deep and gruff, yet gentle. Some part of my brain recognized Atlas.

Hands gripped my shoulders. “There’s too much blood. Someone get a healer!” Kai yelled.

“Is she breathing?” Agony filled Phoenix’s tone, as if the words were ripped from his throat.

“Move,” Riven barked. Fingers pressed to the side of my neck. “There’s a pulse, but her breaths are shallow.”

“Where’s the fucking healer?” Atlas growled.

The pain in my chest burned impossibly brighter, as though it were shredding muscle and bone. And maybe that was exactly what was happening.

An array of grunts sounded.

“You feel that, right?” Kai gritted out.

“It’s her pain,” Atlas answered.

“That shouldn’t be possible…” Phoenix’s words trailed off.

“I’m calling the healer again,” Kai gritted out.

“She doesn’t need a healer,” Riven said.

Sounds of a scuffle filtered around them, and then someone was slammed into a wall.

“We won’t let her die because it would make your life easier,” Phoenix growled, menace lacing every word.

There was no sign of Riven fighting back, but when he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “She needs us.”

Something about those words. I wanted to lean into them. To open my eyes and go to all of them. But I was fading.

Darkness engulfed me. No matter how hard I fought against it, the sea of black continued to claim me. But I didn’t stop fighting.

Consciousness came in flashes.

Hands lifting me. Brutal, white-hot pain. The sense of moving.

A forehead pressed to mine. “Fight, Aura,” a smoky voice whispered.

Then my entire body was on fire. I’d felt that kind of agony before. The kind that said death was imminent. I’d escaped that fate once, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it out this time.

2

Heat swirled around me. Not the burn of death, but a sweet, comforting warmth. I tried to turn into it, to burrow deeper, but the moment I moved, pain washed over me. As if every muscle in my body had been bruised and then I’d been forced to run a marathon.

“She’s waking up,” a honeyed-whiskey voice said.

Gentle hands were on me then, an equally gentle tone giving voice to the action. “Don’t move. You’ll hurt yourself.”

I blinked, my eyelids scraping against my eyes like they were made of sandpaper. Light came in bursts, making me squint. It was as if I’d been in darkness for years.