“Yes,” he said. “Unless we simply fight our way out.” But his expression made clear their chances of doing that.
“Not even that.” Anjhela took a ragged breath, curling over on her side. Not looking at them. “You can’t leave Ghehera while you’re wearing the glyphs.”
Trevarr turned on her, his sudden intensity like a blow. “Then you should have burned them into my flesh.”
Anjhela laughed, but it was a short and bitter sound, muffled by the hand she’d used to cover her face. “You would only have flayed yourself somehow. Why do you think Ghehera fears you so? You should know it best—there is no containing the kyrokha with nothing to lose.”
Kyrokha.
Garrie froze; her brain stuttered. “The what?” she said. “No containing the what?”
The scent of wood smoke and ash drifted around her; Trevarr glanced back, sharp and strong and maybe just a little bit imploring. “Kyrokha,” he said, an edge of bitterness to the word. “The thing they use, but never truly want me to be.”
“Kyrokha,” Garrie repeated slowly, stunned not only by the revelation, but by how quickly she accepted it—saw it. His fire, his use of energy, his easy movement between worlds and spaces, his easy ethereal connection with not just Sklayne, but Garrie herself. Just as the book had said. Just as Sklayne had been so reluctant to say.
And yet. “Kyrokha, like...the mountain entity. The one that’s eating people.”
Anjhela laughed, a wretched sound full of pain.
Trevarr’s impatience came as sharply as his bitterness. “The kyrokha on your mountain is in agony. It thrashes. It blames. You know this.”
She did know it. And yet it suddenly seemed like she knew nothing at all. Not about him, not about herself. Too many changes.
He returned to her in one sudden step, his hand wrapping around behind her neck, lifting her gaze up to his. “Trust me,” he said, eyes full of silver and wilderness. “Or we die here. Whatever we are.”
She stared back until the silver filled her world and the wilderness reached out to touch her. Long enough to see past it to the hints of desperation, to strength that would soon falter...to an endless loneliness. And beneath all that, to the man from another world who had been willing to sacrifice everything for her.
She stood on her tiptoes to close the distance between them, reaching for his shoulders as if she had every right. Maybe she did, at that. He pulled her up for a quick, hard kiss, his hands tight on her upper arms and lingering just enough to tell her the depth of what she’d given him. Given herself, when it came to that.
Still, she settled off her toes to give him an exaggerated skeptical look. “But...that book...those drawings...you?”
He smiled, ever so faintly.
Garrie drew the deepest breath, exhaling noisily. “Of course, you. Fine. Let’s just figure out how to get away from here.”
Anjhela had recovered herself to some extent, pushing herself up to sit on her hip. Still subdued, still...
Garrie would have said mourning. She didn’t know if she was right.
But Anjhela was recovered enough now to flow to her feet and lift her slightly pointed chin. “You can’t escape this place. Not without being the kyrokha. And our masters made sure you didn’t know how, didn’t they?”
Trevarr strode to where Garrie had dumped his gear on the floor, scooping up the duster and shrugging it on; finding Lukhas on the floor and sheathing it in the duster. “A lifetime of study in how not to be what I am,” he confirmed. “Of threatening my family, my people...my entire village.” He shot a dark glance at Anjhela. “They no longer have that threat to make.”
“And you still don’t know yourself.”
He slipped the satchel over his shoulder, none the wiser about the two echveria still lurking there, taking no particular notice of the expended echveria laying quiescent nearby. “I know where to look.”
Anjhela scorned the notion. “You can’t begin to look. Not without drawing on what lives inside you. The glyphs will kill you first.”
“Not if I invoke the change with other energies.” He glanced at Garrie, who only did her best to keep up with the conversation—understanding more about his life by the word, and hating Ghehera all the more.
Anjhela read her expression well enough. “Oh, don’t feel sorry for him. By no means feel sorry for him. He lived his life on his own terms here—as much as any of us do.”
“Then I feel sorry for you,” Garrie said quietly.
“Don’t,” Anjhela spat. “How far do you think you’ll get should you somehow escape this place? For how long? I’ll still be here in the life I’ve made for myself.”
“Don’t tell them about me,” Garrie suggested, as if it was the most reasonable thing ever.
Anjhela laughed.
“You and Trevarr had what you had.” Garrie turned to her, and Anjhela’s posture changed from restored arrogance to defiant and wary. She lifted her hand, fingers spread—it seemed an automatic gesture. But the living metal overlay didn’t appear. Unless, of course, Garrie counted the glint of metal at Anjhela’s fingertips.
She decided not to. “Whatever that relationship was to you, whatever it gave you, it’s done. So be what you are on your own, Anjhela. And give us a chance to be what we are. If you’re still person enough to do it.”
Anjhela lifted her chin again, nostrils flared into a wilder beauty. Faced with a decision bigger than she was—and bigger than Ghehera had ever allowed her to be.
“Atreya,” Trevarr said softly. “She will do what she does. We must go. As kyrokha, I can take us. Will you help me?”
Give him energy, he meant. Help him trigger the change he’d never managed, maybe couldn’t manage.
Help him be the mountain.
“Right,” Garrie said, shooting him a look of pure annoyance. “Because I came all this way to not help you.” Trevarr only looked at her, as hard to read as he’d ever been when she’d first met him. Too ragged, too used up, too close to his own past.
Garrie only sighed. “Okay, then. How do I help you turn into a dragon?”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 33
Blackened Glyphs
Rhonda Rose
The strong ethereal winds of this new world buffeted me into near incoherence—spinning me against rock, tangling me in thick trees. The touch of blackened purple fog left me dizzy and disintegrating; the roar of something hungry left me hunted.
Hunted and hunted again, until the predators encountered one another and snarled and spat for the privilege of swallowing me whole.
I found a slim crack in the bones of the world, slipping into the craggy rock underlying the mountain forest and resting there long enough to recognize an ethereally blank spot in the middle of the territory ahead.
Sanctuary.
I gathered myself, putting on a rush of such speed that I dizzied myself all over again. The predators stopped fighting to sprint along in my wake—a frenzied and frustrated pursuit, one that convinced me they knew of that blind spot, that if only I could reach it, I might indeed find safety.
I rushed toward and found myself rushing toward a high cliff face, quailing slightly and then renewing my effort, trusting over a century of ethereal survival instincts.
I rushed straight into rock and through it, also trusting I would come to such a place as would provide rest before I stalled and became a permanent feature of this edifice.
A cave.
A cave of some size. A cave of...
Creature comforts.
Basic wooden furniture. A water cache. A narrow bed of some length, piled with furs. All arrayed in utter darkness but perfectly visible to one who saw the world with more than physical eyes.
And I was not alone.
One end of the enclosed space held two beings, both distressed, one crumpled quite awkwardly on the rugs covering the stone floor. That man was not quite human, to judge by the feel of him, though I could not discern the nature of his other blood�
�only that his energies were in utter turmoil, his body deeply damaged. The second being held nothing of humanity at all—and while his fallen comrade was unable to take any notice of me, this second being did.
I had the impression of a spitting cat, a twitching stump-tail and lanky feline limbs.
I had the impression of defensive fervor, and the fury of finding me in this place.
“I am so sorry,” I told the being, knowing my words would be entirely unfamiliar to it and imbuing my coherence with every possible hint of humility. “I need shelter—I didn’t mean to intrude. But since I’m here...perhaps I can help?”
The feline being—more than feline, with that sparkling tumult of breezes focused around its every movement—responded with a smack of etherea, so similar to the slap of barely sheathed cat’s claws. Trespasser, said each stiffly offended twitch of whisker. But it returned its attention to its companion, pushing that limp personage with a thumbed paw.
Thumbs on a cat. I would have to approach this world with intense care.
“Perhaps,” I suggested again, “I can help? It would allow me to make amends for my uninvited presence here.”
Whiskers bristled in a silent hiss—but the creature’s ears gave it away, not so much flattened as held in a woebegone droop. It didn’t step away from its companion, but it withdrew the sharp edge of its hostility.
Carefully I regathered my coherence, presenting myself with simple clarity. When that failed to alarm the creature, I moved closer. At that, the creature used gentle care to roll its companion over.
The movement revealed a splay of long, dark hair, sweat-damp at temple and brow, and features of a startlingly handsome cast. But then, I had always been partial to a countenance of rugged beauty. This one was not marred in the least by the fresh scar beneath his lip, or a scattering of bruises over forehead and cheek. It was a young man’s face, not entirely grown into itself, just as the breadth of shoulder promised more from that painfully lean body.
If he survived. I did not need the feline creature’s concern to recognize how deeply out of phase this being had become, even if I didn’t know the cause.
His eyes fluttered open, revealing a flash of silver. He groaned, a deep and heartfelt sound, his breath stuttering and catching and tears watering the outside corners of his eyes in a way I immediately knew he would never allow if he understood himself not alone.
I made to withdraw, offering him privacy, but what happened then kept me rooted: his obscured energies surged, so clearly the attempt of some vital thing to break free. This wasn’t the dark, onerous energies I had fled, but a bright, clear nature, briefly sparkling with just as much vitality as those drenching the feline being beside him. The man’s entire body clenched with pain, and I had the brief, inexplicable impression of blackened glyphs—encircling him, enclosing him...capturing that energy and forcing it back.
And while I frowned, the feline made an angry chirrup of sound, quite deliberately drawing my attention. When I reoriented to it, it...well, it quite simply imploded.
Its entire being drew down into itself, ethereal waters receding before a tsunami and then spinning right back out again with the explosiveness of an expanding universe. By the time I caught my emotional breath, there it was—only now it was a tidy entity of ethereal nature. A biphasic being.
Then it was quite simply the cat again, one thumbed paw resting on its companion’s shoulder—a possessive gesture. I didn’t need the faint band of connective energies to understand the bond between these two.
And I had understood that little demonstration quite well. Whoever this man was, whatever this man was...he had another form, and it was being kept from him. Furthermore, it had recently been deeply damaged along with his physical self.
I could do little for his physical self. But those energies...
Those, I could soothe. Along with the roiling emotions of his friend, and the snap of vulnerability in his bright gaze as he did suddenly open his eyes, seeing me there.
*Treyyyy,* the feline companion emoted for me, nudging his friend again. *Trevarrrr.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 34
The Solid Flap of Wing
“How do I help you turn into a dragon?”
Yes, she’d just said that. Out loud.
“Dragon,” Trevarr repeated, with faint amusement. He held out his fisted hands, displaying the shackles, the chafed and bleeding skin, the deeper wound on the outside bone of his wrist. “These keep me from releasing that part of myself. These, and older glyphs. Older scars. I cannot draw on what lives inside me.”
The light dawned. “You can’t, but I can. The same way I got inside this creepy cave in the first place.” Using energy from outside this world.
The subtle lift of his head said enough. He opened his hands in invitation.
“Do it, if you think you can. I have places to be.” Anjhela looked away, arms crossed, her affectation one of boredom. “I offered you a solution,” she told Trevarr. “I offered you a place with me. Whatever happens now, it is your own doing.”
He spared her a glance—one that was grimmer than Garrie expected, responding to things unspoken. She drew breath to ask, and then released it. He’d tell her when he could, and until then, every moment they spent in this place brought escalating risk.
For everyone. Here, and at home.
So instead of asking, she placed her hands over Trevarr’s, grasping them—finding him still grim, still ready. She felt anew the warmth of his palms, the rough nature of grit and callouses. She grounded herself in every tiny detail of the moment—the faint flare of his nostrils, the only visible sign of emotions held in check. The scent of him. The rustle of the duster with the imperceptible motion of his breathing.
Though she couldn’t help but raise a brow and whisper, “A dragon? You?”
And he murmured, “Kyrokha.”
It sounded like...yearning.
Okay then. Garrie closed her eyes, going back to what she knew of herself. The discipline of Rhonda Rose, the reckoner of the Southwest, the woman who had channeled a portal’s worth of energy back into the San Jose earth. Surely she held enough to do this thing.
Kyrokha.
Already she pulled breezes into cohesion—soft twisting ropes, yielding and yet full of promise. She spun them out into clarity, separating them from the thread of burning cold Keharian energies that now also suffused her being.
But she also remembered what these energies of hers had done to him in the past, and she hesitated—seeking his gaze to ask are you sure? And doing it with warning in her eyes.
He held steady. No hesitation, no uncertainty—the whole of him alert and ready and all but quivering, a predator about to pounce. A man determined and bracing himself. A man, ready to fly.
Garrie understood in a sudden rush.
What these energies had done to him in the past was exactly what he needed now. The direct brush of otherworldly energies, waking the forbidden kyrokha.
She gave him a hint of a nod—a flicker of her gaze. The only warning.
Then she released the energies she’d gathered. Then more than a trickle, pushing onward while he struggled to absorb it all, bright pewter gaze turning to hot silver, his mouth twitching, his jaw growing hard, his gaze holding hers like a lifeline.
Anjhela scoffed, her scorn sounding strangely disappointed. “All this time they were afraid of what he might turn out to be—but there’s nothing to him, is there?”
Garrie couldn’t help but laugh, knowing how quickly he’d risen to the careful increments of increased energy flow. Trevarr closed his hands around hers, not the least bit gentle. But his eyes never left hers, and she saw the message there before he spoke it out loud. “Do it,” he said. “Do it now.”
“Atreyo,” she told him, ever so gently. Warning. And unleashed a flood of herself upon him.
Anjhela muffled a startled sound. Trevarr’s grip on Garrie’s hands tightened, and tightened again. He stiffened; his li
p lifted in a snarl of defiance.
But his eyes showed the edge of panic.
“Look at me,” she told him, struggling to catch her own breath, aware of a rumble but with no idea if it came only inside her own head or if the stone floor truly shook beneath them. “Look at me, dammit! You can do this. Just look—”
His gaze flickered, darkening—nothing to do with transformation and freedom and the struggle that consumed him. Garrie caught motion from the corner of her eye. Anjhela!
She jerked her hands free and snatched the knife from her pants, the one that sliced wood and skin and atoms all the same. It had length, it had purpose, and it slipped from its sheath with no more than an unheard whisper as she thumbed the release aside, whirling around.
And Anjhela was right there.
Garrie ducked wildly as metal claws slashed past her face and skidded across her shoulder, tearing deeply through cloth and flesh, as wild panic shot through her chest and right down her spine. But if reckoning had taught her anything, it was to finish what she’d started. No quailing, no flinching, no half-hearted sallies.
Especially when running wasn’t an option.
She pulled herself back into balance, spinning around the knife and putting it back out in front of her in an inexpert guard, all the while siphoning energy into Trevarr, a transfer that had taken on its own life. Pulling, tugging, a steady flow grown swift—
“There.” Anjhela sounded strangely satisfied, her voice a hard whisper beneath the ongoing rumble, the gauntlet still up to strike but her hand pressed to her side. “They cannot say I didn’t try.”
Garrie looked at the knife clutched so tightly in her grip and found it coated with dark blood.
Trevarr made a sound between agony and ecstasy and ripping grief, sinking down to his knees. Anjhela’s gauntlet melted away into skin and she took an unsteady step backward, and another, until she backed up against the side of the cave and briefly used it to stay upright.
“You didn’t—” Garrie said, trying to wrap her head around what she’d seen and felt and suspected. “You meant to take that hit!”
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