I’m sick of trying to get the beginning to work smoothly, so I’m just going to lump in what I’ve done and move on. This is the first draft… I’m allowed to be rough with it.

o-o-o-o-o

Love you all and hope you enjoy it as much as you all seemed to enjoy ‘the Phoenix Arrow’. Uni sucks and so does life so I didn’t get to reply to everyone (anyone) regarding all those amazing reviews for the last story. I still want to, but I’m being realistic now. I probably wont ever have enough time to reply to them, and I’m sorry that that makes me such a lame ass. I hope you have it in your hearts to forgive me and my dumbness.

o-o-o-o-o

Kimra

o-o-o-o-o

o-o-o-o-o

The Phoenix Feather

Prologue

Kimra Lelanst

o-o-o-o-o

She tried to breath, tried to remain calm as she faced the one man she had ever loved and the only one to ever betray her. Tears of a broken heart traced a path of desolation down her checks, evidence for anyone who would look, but nobody did, nobody dared.

He reached for her and she pulled back, afraid. Not for herself, not anymore. Her life had ceased to hold meaning when he had thrown her aside so many months ago. But she was guarding someone else’s life now and for that life she would give absolutely everything.

His hand flexed, green eyes feigning a casual disregard for her response as he looked elsewhere.

“When did it happen?” His voice was soothing, but she knew better, she had learnt that lesson at least.

She knew when, she could pinpoint the moment when it had happened. Anyone else before her and she would have confessed, would have told them that it had been the Sun’s Dawn that marked the moment. But not him, not anymore. Her heart was broken, but not her intelligence so she would keep that information with her to death.

“When!” He shouted, his fist tightening and she braced herself as best she could, expecting the blow, expecting no less from him.

“Not long ago.” She confessed, though it was a lie. A necessary lie. His anger seemed to curb, his expression softening. But she knew there was an eruption waiting for release under the surface of that cool expression. No training could hide the truth from her eyes, not now she was looking.

“When where you going to tell me?” He tried to smile, but it failed and they both knew it. In his room, guards at every door, two behind her and however many hidden, everyone knew the smile failed.

Sensibility kept her from saying ‘never’ but so honest and forceful was that answer in her mind that she could think of none other to give.

“It is mine isn’t it?” The second smile worked, a cheeky smile that suited his playful nature more.

She wanted to lie, make up anything to change his mind but he would know, have a mage test if she lied. Besides he knew he was her first, and only. She had been a stranger when she had come to Skiara, a young woman who’d lived with her parents in the isolation of the country.

“You are the father Liam.” More tears leaked from her eyes, following the path set across her face.

He paid no mind to her tears, pacing two steps forward in a fast manor his expression once more angry. “And when where you going to tell me?”

She tried to face his anger, knew she was meant to be brave but the tears would not stop escaping her. Her parents had shouted at her rarely, the priests had been kind and gentle and even in this city no man had raised his voice to her. She looked away, one arm grasping the other as she tried to become small, tried to disappear into nothing. She had to be strong, she knew that, but knowing was different to doing.

He gave a soft chuckle, bitter and angry tones thick through it. “You weren’t where you?” He wasn’t facing her, his body moving with the chuckles as they increased and she felt only the need to flee, to get away from him as fast as she could. “You where never going to tell me!” He lunged at her as his voice broke, a mad looking in his emerald eyes and she was running before she knew what she was doing.

The red of burning embers flared in her eyes, passion and anger and fear all conjured by the moment. She wasn’t a skilled athlete, but nor was she weak, and the protective instincts that had grown in her over the last few months where strong enough to propel her beyond sensibility.

She pushed past the first startled guards into the corridor, relied on what little luck she had left and turned right, her feet never stopping to rest. She knew she was being followed, and didn’t care. Down dark corridors with thick stone walls, past locked doors and small windows that lead to the sea, trying to retrace her steps. But every wall looked the same, every window the same view, and heavy footsteps pursued.

Regrets would surface later, when she could breath, only then would she have the capacity to question her own foolishness. For now she ran, seeking familiarity or safety as the echo’s of foot falls drew nearer.

She only ran faster, as fast as she could, but she was no fighter. Before meeting him she had never had need. Her life had been peaceful, and also boring, and a peaceful life did not prepare you to try and out run heavily armed and well trained warriors.

She stumbled at every corner, faltered in her pace and was terrified of falling, falling could kill it, anything could kill it, but she had to risk it, to escape to get out of this place. She knew there where people who would help her, who could help her, but she couldn’t think, not for a moment, not with so much relying on her attention to the here and now.

She turned a corner and thumped into something, the force of collision causing her to stumble back, an arm wrapped around her belly in protection. She never hit the floor, and took only a moment to realise why; she had collided with a guard, and he had caught her to stop her fall.

She blinked up at him, a stranger she had never met, and saw no hostility in his expression.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered freeing herself from his careful hold and tucking a strange of fire red hair behind her ear. She didn’t even remember just then that she was being pursued because he smiled and she felt at east. It wasn’t until the voices of those following shouted out that she realised her assumptions where wrong and the smiling man before her could, in fact, be dangerous.

“Stop that girl! Sargent!” Reminded her of everything at stake and she pushed past the guard, ready to run once more. But the guard was faster than her and the dagger that tore in through her shoulder as she passed him proved it.

She screamed, her legs giving way beneath her as the metal wedged into her shoulder and began to rip into her psyche. She could hear it like a roar in her ears drowning out all other noise as it fought for dominance. Her thoughts went to the child, unborn and suffering the same trial, and she was the cause.

She didn’t hear the command to ease her pain only felt it as the metal was withdrawn from it’s cavity. She didn’t move at first allowing her body and mind to readjust, but even without the blade in her she was still bleeding.

“What is this about?” A voice she knew demanded. Her breath escaped in a sigh of relief knowing this man, Ikaris, would help her. “Neiran?” His surprise was clear and with his next words so was his anger “What do you men think your doing?”

“Ah sorry sir, Sargent Beli stabbed her. He wasn’t aware we where to capture her without injury.” One of the guards explained with as much formality as he could conjure on such short notice.

“A foolish mistake, don’t you agree, father?” There was a shuffle as the guards acknowledged Liam’s arrival. Neiran closed her eyes against the sound of his voice accepting the inevitability of her ending.

“Is this your idea Liam?” Ikaris ground out. “Attacking a woman who was your reason for breathing two months ago?”

“Oh please father, I was being poetical.” Liam swept away with disregard. “Besides she has something of mine that we want, very much.” He made a noise of annoyance which jarred those around, then commanded. “Lift her from the ground, gently.” Despite it being command, he used the same flowing tones he always used when speaking to his lessors, the ones than made it hard to tell when he was angry or pleased.

Foreign hands gripped her arms and raised her back to her feet, revealing the scene that would decide her fate. Both father and son looked at her, the elder with pity and apology, the younger with nothing but contempt and the lingering hints of sexual interest.

She turned away from Liam hatred in her soul but also trying to understand exactly what Ikaris was trying to tell her with his expression. And looking, clearly at him, she began to doubt, doubt that the old man would have the power to help her when his son held so much more sway.

“Please.” She begged of the older man “don’t let him do this!” She felt desperate tears working their way into her eyes. “I’ll leave, no one will ever hear from me again. But I need to live!”

Liam’s hand soothed over her hair, and a touch that would have made her happy so few months ago made her shudder.

“I’m not going to kill you dear. Your far too valuable alive.”

Neiran ignored Liam, only watching Ikaris, pleading with him silently, begging for the last hope of rescue she had.

“Son,” Ikaris began, his voice careful and practiced. “I really don’t think this is a course of action you should follow-“

Liam’s hand dropped from her hair. “You don’t?” He asked in a monotone.

Ikaris’ nervousness began to show, a subtle shifting of the eyes as he fully assessed the situation. Four guards ready to do as ordered, a son with more power than the father, and a woman barely grown pleading for the most fundamental commodity; life. “This girl has done nothing that can not be forgiven, surely.” But there was doubt in his voice.

“Has she not?” Liam moved from behind her, a touch on her shoulder and then she could see his hard expression and knew there was no longer any hope.

Her lips moved in apology, arms wrapped with protective instinct around her belly. She would have given everything for the unborn child, the last of her kinsmen, and she would fight with her last breath of will to save it, but it seemed nothing would hold against this ill fate.

“Surely.” Ikaris tried to push, but he looked at her with clear uncertainty.

A swift movement from Liam, the anger appearing in his expression and a blade sliced across her face before anyone knew what was happening. She cried out as a line of flesh from her ear to nose peeled open. The anger of metal burning into her face jarred her mind as well as her body. Her eyes flashed a bright red, fingers tensing as she prepared to fight her last battle. But instead of further attack Liam sheathed his dagger and turned his angry attention to Ikaris.

“She’s pregnant. To me. And she thought to leave without telling me. Thought to disappear and keep it to herself.”

All of Ikaris’ horror fled from his face and he stared at first her then her stomach. “It’s yours?” He stuttered and through her anger and pain she looked to the old man she had come to know so well and her heart stilled.

“Do you think I’d care if it wasn’t?”

“But-“

“It’s not up for debate father. Take her to one of the more comfortable cells, we can’t have her getting sick.” Liam demanded, and the guards began to move without preamble. “And have someone see to her face, that cut looks nasty my dear.”

She felt the tears thick at that moment, tears that came from horror as much as relief. There where too many things to realise, too many outcomes to consider, but for that one moment she knew there was hope, for herself and her child, but it was not pure hope, nor irrefutable hope.

She found herself looking at Ikaris as the guards began to lead her way. His face was marred with a line of her blood and a sorrowful apology in his looks. She smiled at him, a forgiving smile that was soft and small but true.

“It’s okay.” She assured him, “it’s okay.” She managed a broken smile. “As long as my baby’s alive. I don’t care.”

o-o-o-o-o

o-o-o-o-o

Kalika, Fire Who Walks, and betrayer of all she had once been loyal too, was not a woman to be ignored. She had made that clear enough to anyone who would doubt it, because her weapons often moved faster then her mind and, in most cases, had she had time to think she would never mind attacking those who second questioned her.

She had been watching the sky lost in the feeling of it wrapped around her like comfort and forgetting all her previous appointments. Often these days her eyes came to the sun above her and she would stare at it fixedly, puzzling over why it seemed duller then ever before. It didn’t hurt her eyes, it didn’t even bother them like it once had, but she didn’t put much thought into that, too busy trying to decide how something could look duller, but not seem to have faded.

Someone approached her, the sound of footfalls she recognised so she turned her attention from the sky for the first time in hours.

He was coming towards her, a little frown on his dark brow, black hair rustled and clothes as casually appealing as always.

“Seres.” She greeted with the slightest of head nods and then tilted her head back again to stare beyond the moment.

“You missed a meeting.” He informed, not angry just curious, concerned. He had told her he loved her not long ago, she could remember that well. It had made her think he would change, become something else, but he was still himself it seemed, just a little more subdued around her.

“The sun is pale.” She said without thinking, the kind of words that slipped out of you and then you spent a lifetime trying to understand why you had said them. More often then not, those where the kind of words she found herself saying these days. She almost expected him to laugh, her brother would have, her brother found everything amusing.

Though perhaps he didn’t anymore.

Seres stilled himself instead, tilted his head back to glance at the sky and then without ceremony folded his black encased legs and perched himself before her. “Tell me more.” He insisted and she couldn’t help but find herself amused.

She didn’t hide that from him, her brow raising ,a grin slipping onto her peach lips and all intense focus leaving her.

“About the sun being pale?” She demanded with a tart exasperation. She hadn’t meant to say the words at all so his curiosity about them made little sense to her.

“Everything has a meaning Kalika.” He insisted.

“Maybe it means I’ve been in light too much and I’ve just adjusted to bright things?” She was teasing a little, though it rang with something like truth in her brain, even if she couldn’t understand it.

He nodded his head. “Maybe. Or maybe your ill-“

“What would the sun being dull have to do with my health?” She demanded, a bit infuriated with the idea because he kept saying odd things to her, ever since the battle she couldn’t recall, ever since she had made her choice. The choice that had sealed her to his side and severed all ties of honour and loyalty from the life she had known before.

He looked thoughtful, not upset with her tone and she felt herself recoil at that thoughtfulness, he had a secret and he wasn’t sharing. She had seen the secret for some time, seen it in the eyes of some of his men. His two leading generals, Gorsan and Driken both gave way to her commands with an eerie sort of surrender she didn’t like, the other generals though, they didn’t.

“Phoenix’s go to the sun, don’t they?” He asked it slowly. She thought it might be a hint of his thoughts but it made no sense. It seemed more off topic than anything else. She went with it anyway, it was a topic she knew a great deal about, having come across a Phoenix Feather in her youth she had studied the immortal creatures in her spare time.

“When they die- that is… the first time.” It wasn’t that she hadn’t read everything she could about Phoenix’s, it was simply that there was little to read about them and most of it was guesses and myth forged through centuries of uncertainty.

“Maybe your feathers telling you something.” He settled himself back against his arms watching her through slitted eyes. She kept her eyes on him in disbelief, her fingers touching at her belt where the blue feather remained tied. She had not fitted it to anything since the great battle when it’s arrow had burnt away, she was content to keep it close.

“Maybe you cracked your skull in that last battle.” She retorted it. The feather was still talking to her, feeding her help and reassurance, but it certainly wasn’t effecting the sun and she would be damned if he tried to convince her otherwise.

“Nonsense, you where there the whole time.” He reached out to her, a slow movement she could have pulled from but she let it happen, let him brush the hair from her face with his thoughtful expression intact and let his fingers linger on her cheek for just a few seconds.

“Maybe it’s always been cracked.” She refuted with just a little amusement. But it was over, the conversation, she was finished with it, so without a word of explanation she rose from the ground and left him alone.

o-o-o-o-o

Seres Tricuon watched his love walk away from him, a frown marring his features as he tried to decide what to do. It was strange to him how much she could give away without knowing what she was saying. He had watched her take flight, all fire and magic and life not long ago, the power of the Phoenix in her blood raging to protect her fragile human body. And she didn’t know.

He had thought she would remember, come upon it in her own time like many who faced overwhelming situations, but nothing had come, no hint that she knew the blood in her veins.

He had suspected from the beginning that she was a Phoenix, all power and uncontrolled nature, he had seen hints enough to convince a blind man, but it was still hard to grasp. Phoenix’s where, by nature, secretive creatures who lived out a human existence until their first death and then transcended mortality in the flames of life. It had been a common folk tale amongst his people that the new born Phoenix would rise into the sky and travel to the sun, where it’s kind lingered for eternity.

If that where true or not he could not tell, but he knew that she had an affinity to the sun, and more recently then before he had found her watching it lost in her own thoughts. Human eyes would have been scorched and blinded by the intensity she stared at it, but she never seemed fazed, never concerned, and only in the dark at night did her eyes betray any fallibility. He kept the fire stacked high for her.

“Seres?” One of his women asked with a soft voice. He glanced to see who it was and wasn’t too surprised to see Yan’s concerned expression fixed on him. He motioned her over to his sitting figure. She had been his first, and even though he had no sexual interest in his harem anymore, she would always understand him better then the other women.

“Tomorrow I leave. Only for a few days however, I’ll have a guard assigned to you and the others until I return.”

Yan nodded slightly, taking her own place on the ground before him with a soft expression. “Kalika will be going with you, my lord?”

Seres barely looked at the beauty before him, his own attention shifting to the sky. His focus and attention still on Kalika. Soon, he would have to tell her. Magic didn’t break out then disappear like hers had. It was lingering, waiting to unfurl once more and if she was not warned it could do far too much damage. But a part of him, one he couldn’t even understand, thought it best to keep it from her. She was too damaged still, crying when she thought she was alone, shaking when a battle was to break. She had given up everything, and he was not foolish enough to overlook that sacrifice, nor the effect it would have on her.

He heaved a sigh, looking to the silver haired woman before him. “I worry about her.” He confessed, feeling foolish.

“She is strong.” Yan insisted a spark of admiration in her eyes. “She will survive beyond whatever concerns you.”

And he believed her, not because Yan’s conviction was so strong none could argue, but because he knew Kalika, and the Kalika he knew would overcome anything that came at her. Even if it concerned her blood, and the magic she hated. A gave a half smile, bitter to the core at that thought, wondering what fool had made her so cautious of magic when it flooded her veins so completely.

“She’s coming with me.” He announced, thought it was unnecessary. She barely left his side, he made sure of that when he could and his harem knew it. Though it would not last, he knew, it would only be a matter of time before Kalika became unstable and he was forced to do something he did not want to do. For now though, for now he was wait out the wave and deal with it when it arrived.

o-o-o-o-o

----

----

o-o-o-o-o

Ick. What the hell was all that? You might ask… or you might not care… or you might just be trusting me to make things make a little sense before the end of it all (lets hope for the last one there).

o-o-o-o-o

Anyway. Reviews make the world go round… at least they make my world go round… so save an author donate a review.

o-o-o-o-o

Cheers!

o-o-o-o-o

p.s. I'm sorry about the crappy layout... I've still not figured it all out. (I used ot be so easy!)