Page 55 of Shadows and Flames
“Get the fuck off of her!” he yelled until one of them broke off from the rest with a dagger in his fist.
“You violated my sister, you demon,” the man spat, and the humans cut the blade further into my neck. More arms held me still, but my focus was on the Vyrkos. He wasn’t even paying attention to his own helplessness! “You are both abominations.”
The man sunk the blade into the Vyrkos’s heart in the same moment my cousin appeared.
My eyes widened. Was it poisoned? I couldn’t tell from here, but by the color of metal, if there was even a trace of silver that entered the Vyrkos’s heart and poisoned his blood, there would be no hope for him.
“Enough!” Meline’s voice erupted, sharp and rage-filled, and the darkness came first. She, like the Vyrkos had, eyed the blood running down my neck, but her indignation did not manifest in insults. She did not bear her fangs.
Hands raised, Meline released her power, and the black tendrils, like ivy, found their targets. They wrapped around the humans, andpulled. Screams abound, more claims of evil and devils, and I exhaled, body released as the mob was pushed to the walls.
Elián and Tomás appeared, weapons in hand, but it was over before it’d truly began. The humans screamed, shouting more cursing prayers to their God, and the Vyrkos slumped to the floor.
“We tried to be respectful and keep to ourselves. If you’re so set on determining evil where you don’t understand, then I can give you what you seek.”
Oh, no. This was what we’d been tryingso hardto prevent. Elián and I both jerked forward, hands outstretched to stop her. It wasn’t taking over her gaze yet, the brown and gold still there, but black was eclipsing her hands like oil, creeping further and further up her arms.
My magic flared in response, distant recognition, but I doubted some healing spells or flashes of light were any match for Rhaea’s wrath.
The humans screamed, some even weeping in terror. And my cousin looked on, lip curled back and Death dancing around her.
Until… until her Shadow touched her. Right where the moving vines of darkness reached toward her elbow. He met her darkness, and Meline flinched. Her hold on the humans tightened, releasing another wave of shouts.
Underneath them, though, I could hear his whisper. “Your cousin is fine, my queen. You see? Revenge will not serve us today.”
I felt Meline’s sweeping look over my body, cataloguing every inch in the matter of a second before it moved to the Vyrkos—Fenix! I spun, dropping down beside his collapsed form.
“Demons! All of you! You’ve no right to live and walk among us!” The woman’s brother, the one who started all of this, yelled from the wall, but I ignored him as I turned Fenix over. To see his wide eyes stare up at me, at nothing.
My heart slammed against my ribcage, and magic flared brightly in my palms. The dagger was still planted in his chest, so I cupped my touch around it, seeking, searching for the problem within.
“As soon as we arrive in Vharas, you will behanged. Tried and executed to the fulles—” The man’s shouts were muffled,and I glanced upward, finding Tomás stuffing a rag in his mouth. Though the rest of us had sheathed our weapons, save for Meline and her power, Tomás wielded a long, curved sword. By the menacing yet lazy sweeps, he would have no trouble cutting one or all of the humans down if need be.
“Meline. Look at me,” Elián urged, now. And I chanted, increasing the aether flowing into Fenix’s body. Healing magic was a complex, sometimes tricky thing, but where Meline was the expert fighter, I’d had just as many centuries honingthiscraft.
My magic was another sense, almost like all of them at once, and I parsed through what it revealed to me, that the only silver was in the burns on Fenix’s throat. Where his body was preoccupied with fighting its spread, too overwhelmed to heal this and the stab to the heart at the same time.
Luckily for him, Vyrkos healing was more advanced than a mortal, and the boon of fresh human blood helped him stay on just this side of his True Death.
“Tomás,” I called, “come pull the dagger out.”
He was watching my cousin, or rather, the way her power was coiling over Elián now as he held her. The male was completely unafraid of it, letting it wrap around and brush against him as he gingerly pulled Meline into his chest.
“Tom,” I urged, and that brought his attention to me and Fenix on the floor. While I resumed chanting, calling for the tissues in Fenix’s heart to knit back together, for the flesh of his throat to do the same, Tomás slowly pulled the blade out and away.
He tucked it underneath his belt, and sat back, hands hovering.
“He’s going to be okay. Thank you,” I assured them both. Myself.
It was always a wondrous sight, watching the shimmer of aether weave through the body like thread, an otherworldly loom commanded by my word. When Fenix’s eyes fluttered, his stare no longer faraway, I pulled my touch back and muttered thanks to the aether for heeding my call once again.
“She could kill us all, couldn’t she? Without even a thought.” Tomás had resumed watching Meline’s power with a mix of wariness and awe. I followed his gaze, taking in the blackened tendrils that were still present, yes, but appeared less vicious. No longer a twitch from snuffing out all mortal life on the deck.
Elián was… he was holding her. Arms firmly wrapped around her now, Elián whispered more words, now too low for me to hear, even with the humans quieted to hushed pleas and whimpers.
And my cousin blinked, the tension slowly draining out of her with each word, each caress of Elián’s thumb against her side. With each time his nose bumped against the shell of her ear until her hands dropped to her sides. The midnight color of Death lessened to a transparent, quivering gray.
I answered Tomás’s forgotten question. “She could.” I wanted to say that she wouldn’t. That she would never. But if her Shadow had not been here? If his presence hadn’t remind her that life, including her own, could be precious?
