by S McPherson
Victoria truly smiles now, her white teeth gleaming, eyes bright. ‘I think that could be arranged.’
BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS
Once inside the hollow— Milo’s wings thankfully tucked in nearly all the way—I immediately pull a vial of extroosal from my bag, and lather it onto his chest. He winces and hisses through gritted teeth, his fists bunched.
‘Hold still,’ I scold but he grips my wrist.
‘Save some for you.’ His eyes find mine. They’re an endless blue, like a lit ocean, and they’re stern. This isn’t a negotiation. I’ve plastered so much of the searing blue liquid onto his skin that rays seem to ripple from it as the wounds sizzle and repair. I grimace. I’ve got used to the penetrating throb and ache in my side. Though every move I make makes my eyes water, and though nausea churns away at my gut, I just know the agony of the extroosal will be far worse. Gingerly, Milo pushes himself up onto his elbows, his colour having vaguely returned, the pale giving way to tan, and his arms seem stronger.
‘Lay down,’ he instructs and frowning, I obey, dreading what will come next. With confidence, he adds, ‘This will hurt,’ and he rips up my shirt, tearing the fabric away from where it’s sealed itself over the gash in my skin.
I scream and lift my head off the ground, just enough to retch over my shoulder. Little comes out of me, there having been little there in the first place. My side burns as if red-hot razors were being scraped over it and I feel the warm throb of blood as it rushes out of me. Milo tugs at the remaining strands of clinging material, each pull jerking the knot in my gut. I’m sweating more than I already was, my eyes clenched shut. The world spins. I am distantly aware of Milo’s touch as he works, sure I’m lying in limbo between life and death.
‘Breathe,’ he growls before the blazing heat of extroosal rages through me like a thousand thorns forged of flame. I scream, twist and writhe, which only enhances the pain. My throat’s hoarse, my lungs burning; I can’t breathe. Milo lets me squeeze his hand, my grip waning then strengthening as the agony returns in waves. And just when I’m sure I’ll pass out, I feel his lips on mine.
I thrash and convulse under him but he continues to push my lips apart with his own, until I eventually return his fervour. Craving the distraction, I fling my arms around his neck. The extroosal rips through me but Milo’s kiss and the feel of his hands on my body lock me between suffering and desire. When my fingers brush the tips of his wings, though, I hesitate.
Sensing my change, he pulls back, staring down at me with hurt and longing in his eyes.
‘Milo—’ I say, but he rolls away.
Pain from my side zings through me like electric shocks but I breathe evenly and turn my head to face him. He stares at me, saying so much whilst saying nothing at all I wish I could read his mind and so attempt a mindle, but either it doesn’t work here or he’s put up his mindle shield. I am met with hard silence.
‘I suppose you have some questions.’ He looks across me as he talks, as if studying the walls of our hollow.
I bunch my lips, half shrugging and instantly regret it as my side protests. ‘Some.’
He sighs, heavily. ‘So, ask.’
‘What happened tonight? Out there.’ I don’t look directly at him, at his horns or wings. Instead, I stare at the lacerations on his chest, still raised and raw but almost sealed, a damned sight better than they were.
‘I…matured.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘Remember when I told you about my father?’
I nod. ‘He left when you were two. Tried to reconnect when you were older but you weren’t interested.’ I think back to that day in Fishy Chippy, to my first time in Coldivor when I discovered just how quickly one’s life can change. Milo had talked briefly of his father, shrugging off most of my questions. I’d taken it to mean he wasn’t willing to open up to me and so didn’t press the matter. At the time, he barely knew me. A stranger passing through for a fortnight. But now, as my eyes flick to the wings clasped behind him, I sense his reluctance to talk back then had been much more than that.
‘You asked where he lived and I told you Telathrodon.’ Milo wriggles slightly, no doubt feeling cramped. This place would have been a squeeze even before his transformation, but it beats being out in the open and I welcome the soothing breeze that wafts in and caresses my bare skin. ‘That was a lie… I told you he came back when I was eleven and I decided a relationship wasn’t worth what he did to my mother…That was another lie.’
He shifts again and I decide to sit up, carefully propping myself against the wall opposite him. It’s scratchy and my head practically scrapes the roof, but at least Milo now has more space. He rolls onto his back, letting his wings unfurl. They do not reach their full expanse, wedged in here, and I note how he carefully keeps the one nearest my feet from touching me.
‘So?’ I proffer, snarling at the ache in my side. The wound is sealing, the edges starting to clot, but the pain still very much remains. ‘What’s the truth?’
Milo rubs his brow, clearly weighted by what he’s about to reveal. He frowns and clenches his fists.
‘Milo,’ I say, gently but demanding of an answer.
He exhales, ‘There’s a ninth empire of Coldivor, one called the Dragonysius, and they’re almost as powerful as the Elentri, some say even more so.’ My mouth slaps open and shut but he goes on, ‘Most of their abilities come from their markings. Like an Elentri’s pointed ears and a Premoniter’s lock of coloured hair, the Dragonysius have wings, horns and breaths of…I suppose, in a way, of fire.’
I gawk at him. I don’t know what I expected but sense he has more to say, and my eyes glaze over. He carries on as if I’m not here.
‘There are seven empires now. The Elentri were destroyed, the Dragonysius…removed, but originally there were nine. My father lives in Dragonysy with the other Dragonysius. Theirs is the one empire whose gifts the Elentri never shared. Some say they were made when Peravia Brune—the most powerful Travisor of all time—merged with her dragon in a feat to save both their lives.’
There’s a pang in my chest. A rush of bitter cold bites the tips of my fingers and toes. Men forged from dragons and humans? Silence suffocates me as Milo lets me gather my thoughts.
‘Dragonysy? Where is it?’ I croak, my heart still stammering, gut still roiling.
He turns to face me, a wry smile on his lips. ‘Did you ever wonder what lies beyond the mountains? Beyond Aulock Peak?’
I bury my face in my hands and press my fingers into my scrunched eyes. I can’t make sense of this. No matter how my mind twists it, this is crazy and I think I might have had my fill of crazy lately.
‘I wondered,’ he goes on, ‘and so I set off to climb the mountain when I was eleven and there met my father.’
The silence hangs between us like a corpse. I long to say something, but for a while words turn to lead on my tongue.
‘He told me everything. He explained everything and I listened.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That I’m a joint-breed,’ Milo sighs. ‘Part Teltreporthi, part Dragonysius, though a Dragonysius does not gain their ability until puberty. They call it maturing.’ His wings twitch and I wonder if he’s aware of their small movements. ‘I’ve felt it coming for a while now but suppressed it, forced it down, and it seemed to be working. Tonight, I was sure the Denurib would kill me and that I’d perhaps be better off, but…then I saw you, lying there, mauled and fading. I couldn’t leave you.’ He shakes his head. ‘So, instead of shoving a part of me away, as I’d got so used to doing, I looked at you and then I called on my heritage.’
‘You never told me,’ I gasp. It’s a weak response but all I can think to say.
‘I never told anyone.’ He rolls onto his side and pushes himself up on one elbow. ‘Only my mother knows and she hoped not being amongst them might delay the change if not stop it entirely.’ His eyes flick over the wing sprawled in front of him. ‘I guess not.’
My mind�
�s reeling and I grip my head, as if I can steady my thoughts. ‘Wait,’ I frown. ‘I… I don’t… You mean… Wait…’ but words fail me, flowing then ebbing like the tide. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘I didn’t want to believe it.’ He grimaces, ‘I didn’t want everyone to think I was a monster.’
‘Milo, you are not a monster,’ I gasp and crawl closer, careful as I wriggle over the smoothness of his wing, trying not to focus on how bizarre this all is.
‘No?’ He slightly tilts his head questioningly.
To prove it, I lie down beside him, pressing my ear to his chest, feeling the steady beat of his pulsing heart. His wounds still remain but are more scars now. No.’ I burrow my nose in his hot flesh, inhaling the scent of salt and warm vanilla. Gently, I place my hand on his chest, close my eyes and curve into the crook of his arm, welcoming the soft mattress his wing provides. It’s nothing to rival a bed, but much better than the hard earth.
‘You said the Dragonysius were removed,’ and I run a finger down his side, shivering when he trails one of his own along the back of my neck, running it in circles. ‘Did people think of them as monsters?’
‘Not at first, no. But Dragonysius ability is unpredictable, wild and hard to tame which many struggled to do when they first matured. It led to countless disasters; deaths. Eventually, the other eight empires asked them to leave, for all their sakes. It was an amicable departure, for the most part. But it was a divide nonetheless.’ The words leave him easier now, Milo perhaps comforted by my closeness, by knowing that I don’t see him any differently, and if I do, it’s only as more desirable. A beautiful, breathing painting; a fallen angel.
‘What is their ability?’ I ask, looking up at his face. I remember thinking he was stronger and fiercer the last few times I saw him, now it’s starting to make sense. He was maturing.
‘We call it Emorev, meaning move. I believe the Corporeal call it Tel-e-kin-esis,’ he says, slowly, as if the word doesn’t suit his tongue.
‘Telekenesis?’
‘That’s it. Dragonysius can move things with their minds. Great things. Once they accidentally moved the ground and caused a series of earthquakes, and they’ve moved buildings, causing implosions, and they transported the sea. Every time they thought something it happened, resulting in destruction and death. The final straw was when they accidentally moved the mountains. People were crushed, hundreds if not thousands.’
‘So…you can do these things?’ My brow furrows as I try to organise my thoughts into one neat little line but it doesn’t work, and they just bounce about like they’re on springs. ‘You can move seas and mountains?’
Milo stiffens but doesn’t disagree. ‘Only time will tell.’
‘And the Dragonysius just moved to the other side of the mountains and that was it? They never mixed with the other empires again?’ I’d stood atop Aulock Peak so many times with Milo. I wonder now if he took me there to feel closer to his father, perhaps in the hope of meeting him again.
‘Not publicly, but many of them would sneak out and mix at festivals on the mountain tops. My mother and father spent a lot of time at such celebrations, and I’m told they fell madly in love.’
I try to imagine Mrs Thor, younger and carefree, falling head over heels for a part-man, part-dragon. Sneaking out after dark, ignoring the rules, the chains society enforces.
‘If anyone had found out, though, they would have been forced apart,’ he adds.
‘Sounds familiar.’ How history repeats itself.
Milo chuckles, the sound reverberating through my fingers still resting on his chest.
‘But they did it anyway. They courted for nearly two years, meeting at the mountain, but when my mother discovered she was pregnant with me, she broke it off.’
‘Why?’ I breathe.
‘She was afraid I would be taken from her.’ He shrugs, ‘Afraid that their relationship was getting too complicated. She didn’t tell him she was pregnant but he somehow knew. He sensed it, I think.’
‘And what happened?’ My voice rises indignantly. All these damned rules and barriers, tearing people apart. Saying who they can and cannot love and why, and yet when it truly comes down to it, where it fundamentally counts, we are no different than snowflakes that fall from the same sky and fade on the same earth.
I wonder now how much of Mrs Thor’s disapproval of Milo and me was about me being the counterpart to the last Elentrice and how much was to prevent Milo from suffering a similar fate to her.
‘My father went after her. He flew into Telathrodon, tracked her somehow and appeared on her doorstep. He kissed her and told her he wasn’t leaving.’
My heart leaps as I imagine the impossible romance of it.
‘My mother let him in and for three years they lived together, my father in hiding.’
‘He never left the house?’ I gasp.
‘He did, but usually late at night or to visit his family. Dragonysius have the ability to glamour themselves temporarily, hiding certain aspects of themselves.’ He gestures to his horns with a flick of his eyes. ‘But it’s hard to maintain.’
‘And after three years?’ I ask but feel I already know the answer. His father must have grown tired of living in hiding and chosen freedom over his family.
Milo’s eyes trace the cracked stone of the roof. ‘The Vildacruz attacked. At first, the Coltis thought they could handle it but things grew bleaker by the day. One night, when fear and fury were at their peak, the Coltis attacked the enemy whilst my father flew into Dragonysy in search of aid. They outright refused, no matter how much he pleaded, and when he returned, the empires had been destroyed. No one but the Vildacruz remained.’
‘They went into hiding.’
Milo barely nods. He swallows and I get the sense he’s struggling to tell this story, no doubt only having had it told to him but never retelling it.
‘He arrived when all those of Taratesia had been forced into Melaxous. He searched everywhere, but at the sight of the destruction he believed us dead. He flew back to Dragonysy and told the Dragonysius of the invasion He mourned us and moved back home. He didn’t look back until…’ but now he drags a hand down his face.
‘Until?’
Milo sighs, ‘It was my eleventh birthday and something compelled him to climb the mountain, to plant a tree in my memory. That was when he noticed the life that had blossomed in Melaxous like flowers thriving in winter. The Coltis had survived and rebuilt a pale reflection of their former home, and he believed my mother and I were a part of it. He called it fate that for the first time in nearly a decade he flew down the mountainside and entered empire territory just as I was contemplating a visit to Aulock Peak.’
I gasp, thinking of a small Milo, his blue eyes blazing, looking up at the high mountains as a figure with outstretched wings glides towards him. I see the shock and astonishment when they look at each other. Father and son. A father who thought his son was dead and a son who thought his father had abandoned him.
I stammer words that don’t make sense.
Milo half smiles, ‘My thoughts exactly. That same day, I told my mother he was back and desperate to see her but she refused. She said he was out of our lives and we were better off without him.’
‘No,’ I almost whimper.
Milo absently strokes his fingers through my hair. ‘After that I met him in secret and occasionally he’d glamour himself so we could venture into Devirum. He even taught me how to sword fight in Deadwood, where he could release his glamour. I was lucky when everyone just assumed I’d taught myself.’
‘And now?’
Milo meets my gaze of curiosity, his bright eyes overcast. ‘A few years later, he told me he was being forced to marry. His father was the Czar of Dragonysy and he was dying.’
‘Czar? As in their ruler?’
Milo grimaces but doesn’t respond. ‘He told me he couldn’t risk coming to empire territory anymore. That, as the new Czar, his first thoughts had to be for his o
wn people and for keeping the peace. Apparently, they feared his involvement with me would lead to them being discovered by the Vildacruz, and…he agreed.’ I watch Milo as he speaks, trying to garner his emotion in the dim light of the torch, but he speaks so matter-of-factly, his jaw taut.
‘After that my father told me he would always think of me…and then he left. I called after him, screaming, tears streaming down my face like some kind of idiot, but he didn’t even look back. He just left.’ Milo presses his fingers to his scrunched eyes. I expect to see tears when his hand drops away but there are none save for my own.
‘That was it?’
‘It was,’ he nods. ‘Until earlier this year.’
I jolt in surprise and his wing flaps unappreciatively.
‘What?’ I cry.
‘He came to see me not long ago, in Blade Upon Blade. It was the place he bought me my first sword. I expect he wanted to see if I’d matured. He also told me he has a daughter now, a new heir to Dragonysy.’
My fingers find Milo’s and I squeeze.
‘She gets his love, his land. All he ever gave me were swords, horns and wings.’
Words fall flat on my tongue. His breaths come in ragged bursts. And then I remember something he once said to me, a promise I’d made to him: never stop laughing.
I stretch, yawning, ‘And you don’t even like to fly.’
He chuckles and jabs me playfully in the side.
‘Those,’ and I gesture to his horns, ‘change nothing. You still are and always will be Milo.’
He screws up his mouth, scratching the back of his neck. ‘It’s Milore.’
‘What?’
‘My name.’ His lips twitch in that way they do when he’s trying not to smile. ‘It was my grandfather’s name. My mother shortened it after my father left, but my true name, given to me by him, is Milore.’
SACRIFICES
Time is non-existent in Vedark, an endless stretch of rusted daylight. Vladimir leads the others through the powdered earth, stopping every so often so Mandeck can unravel the past and then they continue on. They trek across the rolling and unchanging land; its only variation and sign of life being trees that grow frail and snap to dust like brittle bones.
