The Spirit Heir (13 page)

"Why is that so bad?" Jinji asked. Rhen had not seemed afraid of the soul—the phantom did not want to harm him.

The voice stuttered. Jinji could feel the foreign presence searching for the right words, racking its thoughts.

Suddenly, her vision grew spotty.

Jinji opened and closed her eyes, trying to clear the sense of lightheadedness. But black dots continued to grow, expanding, filling her eyes.

"Are you doing this?"

There was no response.

The world disappeared completely from sight. All awareness of her surroundings vanished. The dock beneath her bum faded away, the sound of the waves muted, until Jinji was floating through a void of nothingness.

"Hello?"

Colors flashed to life before her eyes, zipping and swirling as though Jinji were caught in the winds of a turbulent storm.

Then everything stopped.

Settled.

Jinji looked down over a wide field from a vantage point in the sky. On one side, an army of men marched, swords held aloft and shields poised at the ready. War cries filled the silence, in tune to the march of a thousand boots. Some were on horseback, but most were on their feet.

Suddenly, she realized what this must be—a memory. The voice had claimed to live a thousand lives, to constantly be reborn to the world, and now it was sharing one of those experiences.

Jinji searched for the gray mist, sure that the voice was trying to prove its danger. She did not have to look for very long. Across the field, another army stood, an army of phantom bodies undulating with swirling limbs. An army of ghosts.

Moving with lightning speed, the mist advanced. Before the humans could even react, the cloud of gray rolled over them, surrounding the men, enveloping them in darkness. One by one, the soldiers stopped moving, frozen in place, falling to the ground. Their bodies convulsed against the grass, shaking violently, until foam spewed from their mouths.

In a few seconds, it was over. The mist dissolved, disappearing from the battleground. All that remained were thousands of bodies.

Immobile.

Dead.

Jinji gasped. Terror flooded her limbs, frozen by a sight she would never forget. A sight that burned her eyes even as it began to fade to black, memory receding.

"Wh—" Jinji opened her mouth to speak, but her lungs were full, clogged. Breath would not come. Jinji coughed, choking. But the blockage would not clear, would not drain.

Her chest burned.

The voice disappeared with the pain. Her muscles grew weak. Unresponsive.

Opening her eyes, blue flooded her vision.

Water.

The sea.

Jinji was drowning. She must have fallen in during the vision, a moment when her mind had not been her own, when her body had been lost to her control. And now, it was too late.

Her arms would not swim. Her legs would not pump.

Heavy, Jinji sunk, helpless as the sun began to drift farther and farther away, the blue around her deepening until it became black. Her eyes no longer worked.

Time vanished.

The world slowed to a halt.

"Come on!"

Jinji burst to life, a cough ripping free of her chest as hands rolled her onto her side, slapping her on the back as a river flowed from her mouth.

"Let it go," someone cooed.

Jinji's eyes blurred. The world was lost to her as vomit tore free from her gut, and the liquid filling her drowned body gushed out. Throat burning, she continued to wretch, even after her body ran dry. And then finally, with a long gasp, cool air filled her chest, bringing her back to life.

"Rhen?" Jinji whispered, voice scratchy and barely there.

But when she turned over, it was not Rhen sitting over her. It was not even a boy. It was a girl with olive skin and a mysterious smile plastered across her lips.

"Princess?" Jinji gasped. It was the Ourthuri girl who had helped Jinji find Rhen in the golden palace. This girl had saved their lives, sneaking them from captivity and letting them go free. In return for her help, Jinji had promised the princess sanctuary from her father. But she never expected to see her so soon.

"I'm not a princess any longer," the girl growled. "You may call me Leena from now on."

"Leena…" Jinji shook her head, unable to dispel the shock from her system. How was this even possible? It was too much for her mind to process. The voice. The mist. The memory. Drowning…and now this?

Jinji took a deep breath, trying to gather her wits, and sat up.

"It’s an Ourthuri!" a voice yelled from behind.

"Seize them!" another shouted.

The princess's head jerked toward the noise, fear rippling across her features. But before Jinji even had a second to turn her head, strong hands gripped her arms, hauling her to her feet.

8

RHEN

~ RAYFORT ~

The siege had begun.

Rhen gripped the stone beneath his fingers, holding onto the wall as his eyes spread across the scene below. Disbelief seeped through his veins. The enemy had only made camp the night before, and already, a group of soldiers marched across the open field, gaining an aggressive position. Not all of them, not even half, but enough to do damage if he was not careful.

Rhen looked to the side, opening his mouth to shout a command to the soldiers waiting patiently for orders, but he closed it when he met Whyllem's gaze. The king regent should be controlling the wall, the first defense against the enemy. His brother should be keeping their people safe. But instead of taking over, Whyllem just offered Rhen a slight nod and slid his gaze back to the advancing enemy below.

Trying to ignore the hopelessness in his sibling's eyes, Rhen sighed. Only this morning, they had sent their fleet to guard the Straits against oncoming Ourthuri ships—only this morning, his brother had seemed so powerful giving a rousing speech to the sailors before sending them to what might become a watery grave.

But this was war. Rhen shook his head—casualties were part of the territory. And at least soldiers chose to fight, chose to risk their lives in combat. The people of his city, the women and the children, his own baby nephew Whyllean, they deserved to be protected. They deserved a warning, a chance to hide.

"Sound the alarm," Rhen instructed.

The commander to his left bowed his head, passing the information along. Rhen watched briefly as the soldier at the end of the line pressed his lips to metal bringing a howling screech to the air. Then one by one, the horns atop the wall began to blow.

As though the sound spurred the enemy on, the charge grew faster. Specks in the distance turned into men, their uniforms grew recognizable. The sky blue silks of Roninhythe were the first Rhen recognized, decorated with a roaring lion. Those colors were almost as familiar to him as the rearing stallion of Rayfort. But others soon called to him, the deep purple leathers of Fayfall and the green overcoat of Lothlian. Each one signified a different part of Whylkin—his kingdom, his home, a place he would not idly watch fall apart.

Yet, orders of attack would not pass his lips, could not, no matter how he tried to force them from the depths of his throat.

Rhen shut his eyes tight, swallowing the knot back down, wishing more than anything that Ourthuri and not Whylkin soldiers had been in the first line of attack. But the enemy knew his weakness. The Lord of Roninhythe, Cal's father, had seen Rhen grow from infancy, and he knew just how much his prince cared about his people.

So much that ordering their deaths was near impossible.

"My Prince," the commander beside Rhen murmured, "they have passed within range."

Rhen nodded, eyes still locked on the incoming soldiers. Arrows were still out of the question, but the catapults along the wall could crush those men if aimed correctly. Still, Rhen hesitated. Something felt off, not quite right.

Why did they march with so few men?

Why did they not pull catapults with them? A siege tower? A battering ram?

Nothing about this attack spoke of an attack.

And then the enemy soldiers slowed to a stop, kneeling behind elongated shields, pulling bows from behind their backs.

"What are they doing?" Whyllem cursed under his breath, confusion knotting his brows.

Rhen copied his brother's expression, lips pursed in thought. Arrows would never reach the wall from their location—not even longbows could shoot so far. So why?

His mind wandered back to summer days spent in the castle of Roninhythe, to the endless lectures Cal's father forced upon them. All Rhen remembered was growing glassy eyed and bored as more and more maps were shoved across the table, followed by more and more words he tried to tune out. Cal, of course, listened carefully to every morsel of knowledge. But Rhen, after months locked in classrooms with elderly knights, after so many hours yearning for freedom—for swordplay and riding lessons—Rhen was done.

Shaking his head, Rhen the man and not the boy could kick himself for failing to pay attention. Concentrating, he tried to pull any bit of information from his jumbled memories. Until suddenly, a thought filtered to the top of his mind, clear as the cloudless sky overhead. It was the one lesson Rhen had decided to listen to—a lesson on the rebellion that almost removed his ancestor Whyl the Conqueror from the throne.

The Lord of Roninhythe's voice droned into Rhen's ear.
And the rebellion would have succeeded if so many casualties had not been dealt on the first day. If the commanding officers had been just a little smarter, Rayfort, fortress as it is, would have fallen.

Remembering the words now, Rhen shook his head—the longing in Lord Hamish's voice had been clear. But as a naïve little boy, Rhen had been unable to recognize the duplicity.

"Trenches," he whispered to himself. Whyllem turned to the sound of his voice and Rhen met his brother's stare. "They are trying to locate our trenches, so when the right time comes, they can attack on a clear path—bringing their horses, their catapults, their heavy weaponry unhindered."

"Can they do that?" Whyllem asked.

With a sigh, Rhen nodded and pictured the ground below. Scattered under the dirt, hidden beneath a layer of grass held up by rope and tarp, were deeply cut holes in the ground filled with sharp spikes. The trenches. Throughout his kingdom's history, approaching armies had quite literally fallen victim to their deadly grasp. Horses, catapults, marching soldiers—all had been swallowed, claimed. Everyone in Rayfort knew of their existence, were told from infancy to leave the city only on the Great Road lest the ground open below wayward feet.

A little fire
, Rhen remembered as the Lord of Roninhythe's voice filled his thoughts once more. "The canvases covering the trenches are sturdy enough to hold the weight of five men, but as soon as the sixth walks over, they'll collapse, dropping every soldier to his death. Father believed that to be the only way a trench would be revealed, yet I heard a theory once that the canvases would burn if hit by enough flames, that a little fire would be their undoing."

"Fire?" the commander questioned but then nodded gravely as though agreeing with the idea. He stepped closer to the edge of the wall, as though trying to reach across the distance and read the enemies' minds.

But mind reading was unnecessary, as a moment later orange sparked to life in the distance—bright despite the afternoon sun. Gradually, the flames spread from neighbor to neighbor as arrows were slowly lit behind shields.

Rhen grinned.

Fire would never be his city's undoing.

"Should we attack, my King? The catapults are ready," the commander asked, eyes skipping over Rhen and landing on Whyllem, who flinched just slightly with the title.

"No," Rhen interrupted, uncaring if he broke protocol. Whyllem might be the king regent, but his brother was frozen with indecision, frozen with the weight of a king's responsibilities. "Firing the catapults might accidentally reveal the very trenches they are trying to unearth."

The commander held his palm out, signaling his men to hold steady even as the soldiers in the distance lifted their bows, aiming their arrows high into the sky.

"Give me room," Rhen ordered, stepping forward to the very edge of the wall. Immediately, everyone within three paces of him stepped back, eyes lit with curiosity—undoubtedly remembering the rumors that had been circling the city since before dawn.

The Lord of Fire.

Rhen sighed, breathing in deeply, calming his nerves. Would it ever get easier to reveal this secret? Would it ever feel normal to be so different?

Whyllem grabbed Rhen's forearm, squeezing just once before joining the other men standing a few feet away. But once was enough to give him strength. To make him feel just a little bit accepted.

A few hundred feet ahead, the soldiers of the rebellion loosed their arrows. Each one arched high, losing visibility against the bright white of the sun, before plummeting down to unseen targets.