The Fallen Prince

compacted, rotating mass.

Kera’s muscles spasmed. Controlling the wind ate at her strength, but no matter how much pain she was in, she refused to stop. Breathing hard, she compressed the inky darkness more, and when she was done, she cupped her hands and pushed up and away. The dark ball shot high into the air, higher than the clouds, until she couldn’t see it anymore.

The haze that had overshadowed the area lifted, and Kera sagged to her knees, gasping for breath. The sting on her wrist burned.

Elix rushed over and checked her friend for a pulse. After a long moment, she pulled back, her face long and weary and her voice hollow. “He’s dead.”

Morgan couldn’t die. Not after what Kera had gone through to save him. “I can heal him,” she insisted. She pushed Elix away and laid her hands on Morgan’s chest. Her touch grew warm as she passed her hands over his injuries. She labored over him until Elix angrily pushed her away. “Stop it! He’s gone.”

Kera stared at her hands. “But I can heal.” What had gone wrong? The gift was too new, and Kera didn’t understand why she could heal some things and not others.

“If you can heal, come help these,” Scoran said from his post by the victims.

Kera stood, shaking from her efforts with her eyes still locked on Morgan. She felt too hot, too slow. Her limbs shook as if ice water flowed in her veins.

Elix’s fingers slid Morgan’s eyelids down over his fixed gaze. Closing her eyes, she bent her head. After a moment, she stood and walked away.

Scoran took Kera by the arm. “You have done all you can. It would take more power than you have to bring back the dead, though it is never wise. Zombies are created that way, as are black-hearted men who think of no one but themselves.”

He brought her to a row of people, cut loose from the poison of the ironstone, and laid out like bodies waiting for their shrouds. Some were able to sit up for her, others laid still, their wounds deep and raw. With Scoran’s help, one after another, Kera tended their wounds.

Kneeling by a child, Kera knitted new skin. As she did, the black, raw strip along her wrist burned hotter. Deeper. She sucked in her breath and a slight moan escaped. She had been able to ignore it at first, but no longer. When she was through with the little girl, Kera tried to heal her wrist, but she couldn’t.

Strong fingers edged in blood gripped Kera’s arm. Elix knelt beside her and pulled out a bandage. “Did no one tell you? Healers can only heal others. Not themselves.” Elix wrapped the strip of cloth around Kera’s wrist and secured the end of the bandage. When she was done, she rubbed at the blood on her fingers. “His blood won’t rub off.”

Kera made to help her, but Elix jerked her hands away and looked Kera in the eye. “Don’t.” She scrambled to her feet.

“Scoran and I will take care of the dead.” She spun around and left, her sword slapping the side of the leather trousers as she jerked on a pair of dark-brown gloves. They hid her bloodstained fingers, but not the pain of her loss.

Kera turned her attention to the little girl’s mother, the last of the wounded, but her thoughts stayed on Elix. She was like so many of the tainted. Her spirit had been bruised too many times by the firsts, becoming wary of anyone who held even the smallest measure of power.

Smoke soon filled the air, spinning a cloud of gray against the sun even though Elix and Scoran had taken the dead to the opposite side of the clearing. Using his magic, Scoran quickened the process, and all too soon, the wind pushed the ash along the ground until it covered the area in gray. Kera tried not to think of the life that now fed the earth. If she hadn’t left, could she have prevented all this? Yet if she hadn’t left, Blaze would never have entered the human realm and wouldn’t have been with her in the forest when the millispits found Reece. He and countless others could have died.

Here. There. It didn’t matter. Someone would suffer. Guilt pressed down on Kera, making her head ache and her hands shake.

Nausea twisted her stomach as she knitted the last inch of skin over the last wound. Finished, she stood, her feet unsteady beneath her. She had saved eight and lost three, one a little girl no older than five. Huddled together like refugees, the people she had helped stared up at her, waiting. She had no answers for them, but surely they could help her understand. “I don’t wish to upset you, but I need to know. Why did they attack you? What did they want?”

The woman Kera had seen the dark souls question blinked up at her. “They wanted you.”

Her? That didn’t make sense, but then life in Teag had ceased to make sense years ago. Without warning, her vision darkened and her knees buckled.

Scoran and Elix were beside her in an instant, catching her before she fell.

Lying on the ground, she blinked away the darkness and slowly pushed herself to her elbows. “I’m fine. Just a dizzy spell.”

A dozen hands shot out to press her back down. “You’ve done too much. You need to rest,” a villager said.

So many worried eyes stared down at her. She caught sight of Halim’s owlish gaze poking at her from afar. So young, yet so tough. He was Teag’s future. She couldn’t allow exhaustion and fear to steal that future from him. She’d fought her enemy and won the battle, but they would be back. She had to be ready. Not just her, all of them.

“I haven’t done enough.” Without thinking, Kera pulled more power into her.

She was suddenly reminded of something her father had said. He had known the Lost King by his first name, Baun. They had been friends, and even when Baun had been crowned, they stayed friends. When Baun first ruled, he would go for weeks without sleep because he was able to draw power from the earth at will, something most firsts couldn’t do. His drive to become the perfect king drove his need for power. Her father believed that constant need eventually caused an imbalance in Baun, and that imbalance affected his mind.

Had his insanity begun as simple as that? Wanting to help his people? Tearing through the energy until his body insisted he shut down? Had his extreme exhaustion caused his hate-filled delusions? From her position, her father’s theory was all too easy to believe.

And what did it mean that she could access the same power so easily?

Kera accepted the water Elix offered and shivered. Scoran placed his coat around Kera’s shoulders and sat next to her. After a few moments, the sallow cast to her skin pinkened and a collective sigh of relief passed through everyone. Yet all eyes stayed glued to her.

“What’s wrong? Why are you all staring?” Kera croaked out.

Scoran’s sharp gaze softened. “You’re a healer. The last healer died more than fifty years ago. Not just that, you sent the black souls away, something no other first could do, even if we combined our power.”

They all nodded. A girl with long, tangled brown hair hugged her knees. “They came in a rush of wind and darkness. Pulled us from our homes. No warning. No time to think.” She bit her lip and turned away, blinking back tears.

“You firsts did the same to my father and brother. They were in the field when they were taken. Beheaded and nailed to a post.”

The girl stared in horror at Elix. “Are we being justifiably punished, then? I deserved to be tortured? They deserved to die? Is that what you’re saying?”

Elix looked away and Scoran spoke up. “No. Never.”

“What were those things?” Kera had to know if what she saw was real.

A woman clutched her young son to her side. “I thought they were a myth. I should have known better. They are called the black souls.”

Kera thought back to all the stories she’d been told, and none had ever touched on anything like what she had seen.

“When I was younger,” Scoran said, his voice low and fearful, “an old man whispered a tale about the birth of the dark souls. They were—are—the creation of hate, and once made, nearly impossible to destroy. I never thought the tale was true. But to see them with my own eyes… I’ve not heard of anyone using dark magic for