Yann glanced down at Eliska walking next to him. She glanced up at him at the same moment and they both smiled. Her cheeks flushed and he felt his burning.

  They both carried bundles of firewood on their way back to the barn. The crisp chill of autumn in the air made their breath come out in clouds of steam.

  Eliska glowed with pleasure and happiness, especially when she smiled up at Yann. He couldn’t remember her looking this happy since she took Barsali’s Darkness.

  It still came out in subtle ways—and in not so subtle ways. She still occasionally snapped at people or pushed people away or said she didn’t care what the group did.

  She slowly worked her way back into the group, but the Darkness never went away completely. It never would. Yann knew that now. He didn’t have to ask. It would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  He just wanted to give her days like today—days where she could enjoy herself and smile a little bit.

  She let herself get closer to the other Watchmen, too. Barsali’s loss brought her closer to all of them. She really was one of them now.

  They took extra care around her now. They all understood and accepted her Darkness. They knew why she acted the way she did and they treated her gently when she lost control of it.

  Yann’s eyes darted up from her face to Anríq walking on Eliska’s other side. Anríq carried a bigger bundle of firewood than Yann’s and Eliska’s combined.

  Anríq faced front and pretended not to notice Yann and Eliska smiling and blushing at each other. Anríq did that a lot.

  Yann pretended not to notice all the little smiles, blushes, and intimacies between Eliska and Anríq, too. All three of them went out of their way to pretend that none of that was happening between any of them.

  None of them took any steps to further the situation—in any direction. Neither of the boys advanced things with her—not that Anríq ever did in the first place.

  Yann holding Eliska’s hand while Anríq healed her didn’t mean anything more than him taking care of her. No one treated it as more.

  She never mentioned taking it further with either of them and she never acted on it. She smiled, blushed, and showed all her little affections to both of them equally. Anyone looking from the outside would see her treating both of them platonically as just two more of her brother Watchmen.

  Yann could live with that. He liked things the way they were now. He didn’t need anything else.

  The three travelers made it back to the barn. Anríq transferred his load to his left arm while he hauled open the sliding door at the end of the barn.

  He slid it shut behind them and dumped his load on the floor before he climbed up to the hayloft.

  He lowered a rope on a pulley and waited while Yann tied a bundle of wood into the noose. Then Anríq hoisted it up to the loft, unloaded it, and did the same thing again.

  The three friends worked to ferry the wood upstairs and then Yann and Eliska climbed up. Yann kept an eye on Eliska as usual to make sure she made it all right.

  She had regained her strength in the three days since she woke up. She was back to normal.

  Yann didn’t really need to keep an eye on her anymore, but he did it anyway. It had become a habit for him to look after her, sit near her, to make sure she ate and slept enough, and he went everywhere with her.

  Anríq did all those things, too, except that he didn’t talk to Eliska while he did it. Yann, Eliska, and Anríq had developed a habit of going everywhere together, sitting together around the fire, and they slept next to each other every night.

  No one questioned this, not even the three of them. It just happened naturally.

  The minute Yann got up to the loft, he saw Marine sitting up. This was the first time she’d woken up since Barsali’s and Omer’s deaths. She’d been unconscious ever since.

  Anríq and Eliska spent hours every day performing healing magic on Marine, but they always insisted that there was nothing wrong with her physically. She’d gone so far out into the Dark that they didn’t dare to bring her back.

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  Anríq and Eliska went straight over to her, but she scuttled away from them yowling and shrieking. She huddled in a corner and glared at them from under her long dark hair.

  Eliska stopped in her tracks and stared after her. “I suppose we should be happy about her getting back to normal.”

  “She’s still in there,” Yann told her. “You know she is. The real Marine isn’t gone.”

  “I know.” Eliska sighed. “I just wish I could see her again—just once.”

  “You will. We all will.”

  “But for how long? Whenever we see her, it will be temporary. We’ll never get her back for good.”

  Yann shrugged. “You’re right. I guess we just have to enjoy her company while we can.”

  Eliska stayed there studying Marine even after Anríq turned away. He squatted down by the fire to add some of the new wood to it.

  Neils sat there and Rien squatted while he skinned a waterbuck he’d killed. Eliska joined them.

  “Would you like me to do that for you?” she asked.

  “I can do it,” Rien asked. “Thank you for offering, but I’m almost done.”

  She sat down on Anríq’s other side. “Let me know if you want any help.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  Yann turned to Anríq. “Is Marine back to normal?”

  Anríq nodded. “She’s whole again.”

  Yann let it go and looked around the loft. The Watchmen had closed off the big open bay to keep the warm air in, now that winter was on the way.

  The Watch had boarded up the bay on the other end of the barn, too, but only halfway. That left a good-sized window to let in light and air.

  That was the moment when Yann saw his father and Niyazi standing off to one side. They talked in low tones so no one could overhear.

  Yann picked up something wrong right away. “What’s wrong with Niyazi?”

  “We don’t know,” Neils murmured. “He won’t talk to any of us and the Watch Commander won’t tell us anything.”

  Yann knew better than to go over there to find out, but just then, Yvan left Niyazi standing there, strode over to the fire, and looked down at the three young people.

  “Would you two mind coming over here for a minute?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.”

  Anríq and Eliska stood up and followed Yvan back to where Niyazi waited for them.

  Yvan didn’t specifically invite Yann to join their conference, but Yann went anyway. He couldn’t even explain why, but whatever this was concerned him as much as the others.

  Eliska looked back and forth between Yvan and Niyazi. “What’s going on?”

  “Niyazi has been having nightmares,” Yvan began.

  “And day-mares….or whatever the hell you call them,” Niyazi muttered. He stood with his shoulders slumped and his eyes cast down to the floor.

  “Are you seeing those armored Darklings again?” Eliska asked.

  “No, not them. These are the old kind—the normal kind, I guess you could call them—the same kind that destroyed Middleborough.”

  “And you see them in the daytime, too?” she asked.

  Niyazi nodded without looking up. Yann couldn’t remember him ever acting so defeated and deflated.

  “Is this the first time it’s happened?” Eliska asked. “You seemed fine right up until now. Did it just start—like last night or something?”

  Niyazi’s gaze darted to Yvan. They exchanged glances.

  Yvan took a deep breath. “Niyazi is an orphan,” Yvan began. “His family died in a plague in another city and the Black Watch adopted him. He grew up in the Watch and eventually took the oath himself. When he was just a boy younger than Yann is now, he was on watch with his brother Watchmen on the wall when that city came under a Darkling assault. He got pulled into the Dark Layers before some of his brother Watchmen pulled him out.” Yvan shot Niyazi one more sidelong glance. “He’s suffered from nightmares ever since. He never told anyone except for me.”

  “So this is the same nightmare you’ve been having all along?” Eliska asked and glanced at Yvan. “I don’t understand why you’re asking us to intervene if this is normal for you.”

  “It never happened during the day before.” Niyazi glanced up. His eyes darted from one face to the next before he looked back down at the floor. “I’m losing my mind.”

  “Not necessarily,” she replied. “We still don’t know what these things are. They might be real.”

  Anríq stepped forward and passed his hand up and down in front of Niyazi’s head. A ripple of magic passed over Niyazi’s face before Anríq stepped back.

  “He’s normal, isn’t he?” Eliska asked. “He’s as normal as Rien, Barsali, and the Watch Commander were when they started having these nightmares.”

  Anríq nodded.

  “You see?” Eliska went on. “Whatever is happening to all of you isn’t affecting you physically, mentally, or magically.”

  “What does that mean?” Niyazi asked.

  “It’s the closest evidence I think we’re ever going to get that these invisible Darklings really are real. I don’t see how neither Anríq nor I could detect anything wrong with any of you if the Darklings weren’t real. It’s the only logical explanation as far as I can tell.”

  “That doesn’t explain why Niyazi is seeing regular Darklings instead of the armored ones,” Yann interjected.

  “We’re in a different Layer,” Eliska suggested. “Those armored Darklings might have been confined to that Layer.”

  “It’s too bad we can’t ask Omer which Layer they were in when he saw them,” Yvan suggested.

  Eliska turned back to Niyazi. “I don’t know what to tell you except that it will hopefully pass. Rien and the Watch Commander are both back to normal. I’m sorry, but you just have to go through it.”

  He groaned and passed his hand across his eyes. “Can’t you just put me in a coma for four days until it’s over? I can’t live like this.”

  She smiled up at him. “I really wish I could.”

  The barn door banged open and then slid shut downstairs. Vidal must have returned from hunting.

  That sound did something to everyone involved in this conversation. They ended their discussion and turned away to return to the fire.

  At that moment, a hissing sound swept toward the barn from the opposite side. It sounded like a sheet of heavy rain covering the landscape as clouds moved in.

  Everyone glanced toward the open bay window as the curtain of water covered the countryside.

  Yann barely had time to turn around. He saw in one split second that it wasn’t rain or water. It was a solid curtain of pure, wild magic.

  The next instant, it enveloped the barn and completely wiped it off the face of the earth.

  End of Chapter 26.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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