I shut down my thoughts with some serious effort. “Come on, Ry. What will make you feel better? I’ll do anything.”
He wasted no time, slipping out of my arms and down from the bed. He searched through his suitcase, returning with something behind his back. “Read to me?”
I knew which book. This was his oldest trick. “No.”
“I want to hear one scene. The one we saw yesterday. With the boat and the cliff.”
I breathed four breaths in one go.
“Please?”
“Only if you don’t tell anyone,” I said. He jumped on the bed, handing over the worn paperback copy of the Elementia trilogy. The book was wider than it was tall, all three novels smashed into one mass-market binding. “Find the page.”
He flipped through, and I was surprised that he made it about a hundred pages in. “I thought Cate was filming in sequence.”
“They shot all the scenes for the island kingdom of Cerul back in LA. They’re going to do all the shots for mainland Elementia here. So Ireland is Elementia. Isn’t that a great idea?”
“Sure.”
He handed the book to me, the binding falling open, evidence of a well-read section. Glancing over the words, I disliked them immediately. All fantasy lingo and thesaurus-inspired color descriptions.
Before I could stop myself, I slipped into my sole memory of Grandma Mae. A snapshot. She’d taken me for a walk in the park and told me that the sky was not blue. It’s azure.
She died a few months later. “[Expletive deleted] cancer,” as my dad would say.
“Iris?”
I glanced at my brother. “You won’t tell anyone that I read this? Especially Dad?”
He nodded solemnly.
MANIFEST
Sevyn eyed the drunken old man with disgust. She moved away from Coad, edging along the boat and pulling her cloak tight. The wind sought to push her to Elementia with a cool hand, so unlike the air her father commanded on Cerul.
She imagined this wind came from the north, somewhere with snow. She had seen drawings of snow, and Evyn had told her about his trek to the top of Eyelit Pass, where he scooped handfuls of white powder until the burning touch of his fingers made it disappear.
I glanced at Ryder. “So Evyn and Sevyn are twins. Unfortunate naming there. Where’s scrappy Eamon slash Nolan?”
“We don’t meet him for a while.” My brother’s smile was blissful. “Sevyn was cursed by lightning. No one can touch her. Evyn was blessed by the power of fire. Sevyn’s dad—who can control the wind—hates her and loves Evyn. He has some issues.”
“Clearly.” I remembered the teaser trailer, the sparks jumping between the two hands in the dark. “You’re serious about the lightning?”
He scowled with his eyes closed. “Keep reading. It’ll make sense.”
Remembering Evyn made her ache with fear. She stared at the midnight sky with its coin-faced moon and prayed that wherever he had been taken, he was safe. Alive. No matter how small the chance. “I’ll find you,” she whispered. “I’ll go to the mainland. Survive its poisons. Somehow…”
When sleep finally came, she dreamt that she was an eagle, soaring over Elementia. She surveyed an ancient, dense forest and an argent river. She turned in wide arcs, shifting her wings until she could see the coastline. A beautiful woman stood upon the cliffs, her chestnut hair waving as it caught the wind.
Wake, she told Sevyn. You are astray.
A thunderclap rang in her ears, forcing Sevyn’s eyes open.
“This isn’t what we saw yesterday. Sevyn wasn’t an eagle when Maedina was on the cliff. She was in the boat,” I said, trying to line up what we had seen with what I was reading.
“Cate said they have to change things to make it a better movie. There’s no Coad too. And you know Sevyn and Evyn are supposed to be thirteen, but now they’re eighteen, so they could cast Julian Young for sex appeal.”
“Ryder!” I blushed, although I couldn’t argue. “Cate Collins is onto something. The casting of Julian Young is the saving grace of this whole experience.”
My brother’s grin was joyous. “Can I ask Cate to give us bit roles? Please?”
“Absolutely not, and you know why.” I kept reading to cut off that line of questioning.
Bump. Bump.
Sevyn struggled to sit up. She had slipped into the bottom of the boat. It was early morning, and the sun scalded the water with golden rays. Her mouth was parched and her skin was crusted with a fine layer of salt.
Coad still slept at the other end of the boat. His head was thrown back, exposing the stringy ligaments of his neck.
Bump. Bump.
The boat was caught on something. Sevyn swung her head over the edge to behold a hand projected from the water, outstretched and ghostly white. She stifled a scream, remembering the clawed fingers that had ripped Evyn out of her life.
But then, the bleached appendage was not a real hand; it was the raised limb of a sunken marble statue. Beneath the surface, Sevyn could make out the armored head and body of a soldier. The raised hand gripped nothing, its sword long lost.
All around, the azure water was a graveyard of statues. Most were broken beyond recognition, but she made out the headless bust of a royal woman, barnacles blotching its ivory surface. Beyond that, two child figures held hands against a large marble slab. They appeared frozen, their small faces pointed toward the sky.
Sevyn swept the scene, eyes catching on a rock. It was strewn with bird droppings and seaweed, but underneath, it had the distinctive shape of a castle battlement. The white marble had been cut into massive crenels, carved with the images of men and elves.
“Manifest,” Sevyn whispered. Her favorite stories had been about this great city. This was where
