The girl didn’t seem like she was ever going to stop running, but then she came to a screeching halt and changed back. She no longer looked upset, she looked concerned as she motioned for both Volaris and Esylle to change and be quiet. Esylle changed and opened her mouth like she was about to continue their conversation when Soryn rushed over to her and clamped her hand over her mouth. Volaris moved over as quietly as he could and looked down at her. The upset girl from this morning was gone, but the cold girl was not back. She looked fierce now, like a hunter or fighter. Like maybe she could end this war with just five people.
“The humans are in that clearing,” she whispered. “There’s thousands of them there and they are arguing about something. We need to get close to hear what they are doing. I know where they end up, but I don’t know when. Be quiet and get as close as possible. Use the animal in you to hear them from a distance and don’t let them see you. I can’t stop them with the two of you and I’m not going to kill them.”
Volaris still wanted answers. He had more questions now than this morning. If this new light nearly killed Esylle, why couldn’t she use it to kill them all from the brush before war even broke out? He followed her and they all laid on their bellies under a brush. The clearing was filled with armed humans. They had enough weapons to wipe out the tribes double. There were swords, crossbows, longbows, and giant shields.
“We’ve looked everywhere. They have to be back on Idric. If they are there, it will be an easy kill!” a muscular bearded man announced.
“If this girl can do magic there, we could be walking into a trap!”
“I saw her before they left. She’s small and should be easy to capture. We can kill the rest of them and bring her back and study her. They said she might be the Princess Lisana. If she is, she hardly has any fire to kill us. Tollam said she was surprised and had to be helped when she touched him. He thought she didn’t know it would happen. I don’t think she has magic there if Tollam was the first time she had done that. If she can still do it, think about it. We can hold her and force her to gift us like Tollam. Some of the beasts we could become could make us unstoppable!”
“How will we get there? It looks like the boats have stopped running.”
“Some of you will have to go back and sail a ship here big enough to carry us all there! What we’ve wanted for so long is in our grasps, men! We need to get to Idric and end this!”
Soryn motioned for them to fall back. He thought she might actually talk to them, but as soon as they got deeper into the woods, she changed again and began to run. Esylle watched her go. They were out of earshot of the humans now.
“Even though you upset her and it hurt to hear it, I’m glad you told me what she might be hiding,” she said.
“We should go after her,” he said. “I still want answers from her.”
They both changed and Esylle ran and he flew. It took a while to get back because Soryn had run far while they were chasing her. By the time they got back, they struggled with the doors. Volaris cursed to himself while trying to push a thirty-foot stone door through sand. He wished it opened as easy for the rest of them as it did for her. Once they got back to the corridor, she was about to sit again. Esylle made like she was going to run to her and stop her, but Volaris didn’t think she would make it in time. He grabbed her arm and warned her what happened to her last time.
“I don’t want to wait. Now that you told me what you think, I need her to tell me the truth. I can’t be here any longer watching her in that chair and knowing she’s afraid. She said she was just afraid of the light, but what if it’s because she knows she’s to die?”
Volaris finally admitted he approached the whole situation wrong. He should have known she would try to run away again when they upset her. He thought she had grown past that since they got here, but she must have been hiding more than he originally thought. He should have approached her calmly with the rest of the kings and not said anything in front of Esylle or Leodos. He suspected part of what upset her so much was Esylle and Leodos’ reaction to what Volaris said when he burst into their chambers. He knew she was coming to care for them.
Volaris and Esylle got as close to the throne as they could. It was never easy watching her in that chair. Her entire body tensed and her back arched. Her hands were drawn in like claws and her head flung back while the light flowed through her. Volaris finally asked Esylle if she had said anything about being in pain while she sat. Esylle informed him she said last night that it didn’t hurt, but if she was giving them a false future, she didn’t know what else she was lying about. She had been honest with them about being afraid and about her dreams. Esylle thought she was finally starting to trust them, but she now thought she may be telling her what she thought she wanted to hear about the pain the chair caused.
They both stopped talking and watched as her entire body seemed to convulse as the light left her again. She gave one last shudder and lay limp in the chair. Leodos wasn’t here, so Volaris picked her up. He had barely gotten her out of the corridor when her eyes fluttered open and she weakly asked him to carry her to the other Farkhi. Not knowing what she wanted with them, he carried her to the kitchens where most of the women were. They had braided her hair and she looked beautiful like that. They quickly cleared off a table and he set her down. Esylle was fluttering over her, but did not ask her about what upset her this morning.
The girl sat up slowly and looked at Volaris. “I need one of you to mark my skin like you do.”
The Farkhi were the only tribe that permanently marked their skin. The others didn’t. Volaris couldn’t imagine what had happened in the chair that she wanted to mark herself as well. He wanted to ask if her she knew she had chosen Sono and that was why she wanted to be marked like them, but he knew she would refuse to talk about her choice. Sono told him this morning that she told him that she loved him, but she also loved the other two in different ways. Volaris was still hoping that what she loved about Sono would make her choose him. It wasn’t just that it would mean his son would rule with her if she wasn’t lying about staying. He knew how much Sono loved this girl and wanted her to choose him. He would be crushed if she chose someone else.
One of the women left to get someone who could mark her and she asked for parchment. He watched her sketch out something. She drew a circle and in the circle, there were the four symbols that she made the kings sit on when she changed them. In the center was a flower. It looked like the flower that he had seen grow red on her chest since they got here.
He wasn’t sure she would answer if he asked why she wanted her body marked with this. Her eyes were dead again, the way he didn’t like.
“This is the symbol on the ceiling where the light comes from while you are in that chair. I flew up there to look at it when Sono helped me through my first change. If you won’t answer the questions put to you this morning, at least tell me why you need to mark yourself with this sign.”
“It will let the light enter me easier and keep it with me longer when it leaves me. I know you worry when I need to sleep afterward. This way, I won’t need to.”
“Has anything you’ve told us aside from your dreams and being afraid been a lie? You said the chair didn’t hurt you and I watched you look like you were in pain. Did you lie about staying to rule because you knew that was what we wanted to hear? I’m not trying to push you, but I have to know. I can’t imagine how you would end this with just five people without all of you dying.”
“This is why I tell all of you nothing! You want me to trust you and tell you things, but I let my guard down with Sono last night because I felt safe and you all took everything I said the wrong way! I haven’t lied about anything. You knew how much I just wanted to go back home. If I was going to die, I would have just told you I was going back home so you never knew! I still don’t want to rule and I still don’t want to choose. The chair comes to my dreams and shows me what happens if I don’t do what it tells me. Do you think I like being shown horr
ible things to be forced into doing something I don’t want? I still just want to go back to Idric when this is over, but I can’t!”
“I thought after the past few days, you would want to stay with Leodos and I. We don’t care if you don’t want to rule, we just want you to stay.”
Volaris watched the uncomfortable girl from their journey come back as she sat, hunched and looking away from Esylle. Volaris hadn’t touched her since they mated, but he needed to make this morning better. She was still sitting on the table and he tried to pull her down to embrace her. She must have been angrier at him than she thought. She normally just sat there looking uncomfortable before, but she roughly fought him off and glared at him with flames in her eyes.
“What were you thinking? If you had a question like that for me, why did you have to ask it in front of my mother? You should have known how she would react. Leodos as well.”
She had never been that angry with him before. She wasn’t even this angry with him when he was trying to keep her away from everyone after she suggested they mate a second time. “I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “I suppose I was so upset thinking you were going to die that I didn’t think about how your mother or Leodos would react.”
She glared at him and he was surprised by what she said next because he didn’t know she had learned this. “The things I do affect other people. I say what I do because none of you are ready to hear what needs to be said next. The things you say to me around other people affect them too. If you question something I’m doing, ask me privately. I don’t want to see my mother that upset again.” Esylle opened her mouth and the girl cut her off. “You got upset over misinformation today. You had no need to be upset. Seeing you like that made me have to leave again. I don’t want to see it. If both of you have questions for me, ask me in private and don’t ambush me again!”
Esylle looked like she wanted to speak again, but the look on the girl’s face gave her pause. They were all interrupted when Circos walked in. He stopped in his tracks when they all stopped arguing to stare at him. Volaris introduced him and he walked over slowly. She showed him her sketch and he got out his tools to mark her.
Esylle
Esylle had never been so frightened as she had this morning when Volaris burst into their chambers and said what he did. Lisana could have told them as soon as he announced his thoughts that it wasn’t true and calmed all of them down. She lost control and ran again. Unlike before, she could run after her. She was too upset while trying to chase her to really experience what running freely was like. She was only half calmed when Lisana told them Volaris was just confused and she hadn’t been lying about staying. She was upset again when Lisana told them she still didn’t want to stay and just wanted to go back to Idric. She had thought after the past few days, she would want to stay with Esylle, even if she didn’t want to rule.
Esylle tried to push this morning out of her head and not say anything to her that marking her skin upset her. She sat next to her at the table while Circos tapped a large spike he kept dipping into ink into her back with a small mallet. Esylle winced with every tap of the mallet because she was sure it was hurting her, but she had that dead look in her eyes again that Esylle hated. Esylle took her hand and she let her hold it, but when she tried to ask her if it was hurting her, the reply was short and curt when she told her she couldn’t talk right now.
“Will you be done soon?” she asked Circos. She didn’t like the fact that Lisana had removed her robes on the top and so the ties wouldn’t get in his way. She was holding them in the front so that she was not totally exposed. Esylle didn’t understand why she seemed so comfortable being half naked around these men.
“This cannot be rushed. If it means what she says, it needs to be perfect.”
“I worry you are hurting her.”
“If you don’t want to worry about me when I need to sleep, you need to let me be in pain for now. It will be over soon.”
“Does it hurt badly?” she asked. She knew Lisana wouldn’t like the question, but she needed to know.
She saw Lisana shoot her look, but they were both interrupted when Leodos came barging through the door. He moved towards Lisana, then stopped when he saw she was holding her robes up and demanded to know what was going on. He told them he had been looking for them everywhere and had only just heard they were in the kitchens. When it didn’t look like Lisana was going to talk, she explained to him what had happened after they chased her and after they got back. She saw relief pass over his face when he heard she wasn’t supposed to die. He made a move towards her like he was going to embrace her and she held up her hand to stop him. Circos warned him not to move her because he needed a steady hand for what he was doing. He looked to Esylle for answers and she tried to explain why she was marking her skin.
“You look like you don’t like this,” he told her. “If it keeps her from fainting, this will help her and you can worry less.”
“I’m sure she’ll find something else to worry about,” Lisana said tersely.
Esylle didn’t comment and Circos said he just needed to put the red in the Myalis flower like she had asked. She tried to ignore the tapping of the mallet and just hold her hand when Sono also came into the kitchens.
“They told me you asked to be marked. I wanted to be here for it,” he told her.
“Why did you discuss what I told you in your chambers with your father? If I knew you were going to tell other people, I would have told you nothing. I trusted you,” she shot at him. She looked hurt and Esylle knew only Sono could make this better.
She watched him kneel before her and take her other hand and kiss it. “Because what you told me frightened me. Even if you don’t choose me and choose another, I don’t want you to die. If I have to watch you with Oris or Neptis, it would hurt me, but not as much as losing you. I didn’t think my father was going to rush into your chambers like that. He doesn’t want to lose you either. None of us do.”
“You should know by now I would never lie to you,” she said, pulling her hand away from him. “I told you things I haven’t told anyone else because I thought I could trust you.”
Sono leapt to his feet and gave her a kiss that made Esylle uncomfortable. Leodos pulled him away from her. She watched as Sono and Leodos argued. Leodos was asking him what he was thinking and Sono thought he should be allowed after finding out she really was going to stay. Leodos demanded to know what had happened before they showed up to fetch her if he would kiss her like that in front of them. Esylle expected Lisana to get angry, but she just sat very still while the spike was tapped into her back and didn’t try to stop them. Sono and Leodos finally stopped arguing when Circos announced he was done and started to clean her back off with a cloth and a bowl of water.
He held up a glass to her back while Volaris held one to her face so that she could see it. Circos looked proud of his work and Volaris seemed happy she wanted to mark herself like the Farkhi. Lisana told him it was perfect and Esylle was surprised when she embraced him and thanked him. Esylle walked around to look at it on her back. It was right between her shoulders, in the middle of her spine, just under her neck. She didn’t dislike it as much as she thought she would and if it prevented her from fainting, she could get used to it. She rushed in front of her so no one could see when she began to fumble with the front of her robes. She didn’t understand why Lisana seemed so uncomfortable with affection, but didn’t seem to have any issues with anyone seeing her nude. She fussed and tried to press her robes over her shoulders. She didn’t think he should, but Volaris reached over her shoulders and tied them around her neck.
Once they were secured, she stood like she was going to leave and Leodos pulled her to him and wouldn’t let her go. She didn’t relax like she normally did now and he noticed and asked her what was wrong. She pushed him away and he looked down at her confused. She wasn’t upset anymore; she was angry about this morning.
“You all expect me to do all these things I don’t want to do. W
hen I tell you that I’m going to do the exact thing you have been begging me to do since you found out who I am, all four of you accuse me of lying. The only time I’ve ever lied to you was when I first got here and I thought you would hurt me if you found out what I am. I don’t like being called a liar when I’m doing things I’ve said I don’t want to do,” she said, stalking out the room.
Leodos and Esylle both went to go after her and Sono stopped them. “She’s angry with me, not you. I was the one that told my father what she thought she was telling me in private. I should make it better,” he said, going after her.
Esylle didn’t want him to go and started to follow, but Leodos stopped her. “He and Volaris are the ones she upset with. I think she knows deep down that the only reason we reacted the way we did was because we were scared. You didn’t see her face when I stopped her before she changed. She was upset and crying and I haven’t seen her do that yet. I think it’s a combination of what Sono did and how we reacted. Let him talk to her and we can try when she comes back to her chambers.”
As much as Esylle didn’t like it, she didn’t follow them.
Soryn
As she walked away from Leodos and Esylle, Soryn was confused if she wanted them to come after her or not. She had been in a dead sleep and sleeping better than she had since she came to the mainland when Volaris burst into their chambers this morning. She didn’t know what he wanted and as soon as he opened his mouth and Leodos and Esylle were both pulling her to them at once, she knew she might lose control. She had only cried once on this journey and couldn’t help doing it again. She didn’t want them to see and tried to leave. Only Leodos saw and he tried to protect her like he always did. She transformed and ran after everyone started yelling again. She didn’t understand why Sono had to tell his father what she had told him in private. If something she had said frightened him, why didn’t he wake her and ask her?
The Spirus Page 33
