Quist ran his fingers along her orange arm. “I don’t think so. I thought, possibly, she was at first but she knows too much to be so... yet so little as well. She mentioned that there are others.”
“Others?” He wondered if they all looked like the slight creature before him. If they did, he was doomed.
“Yes. They fell with her from the sky. I haven’t seen any though.”
Sundamar’s heart raced. “We’ll find them.”Before the other valos do.He didn’t say it aloud.
“No.”
His nostrils flared. “You dare defy me?”
“Yahiro’s hurt, tired, disoriented, and far too weak to stay on the ground much longer. Once the light returns, I plan to take her back to the city.”
Sundamar felt the burn of defiance course through him. No one went against a direct order, not Galan, not Annahs, and not Quist. He bore his willpower through his brother’s puttering heart, furious that he would even chance the words aloud.
Quist had been a heretic since the beginning of days, since before Lusheenn had left, and Sundamar abided by his brother’s ill will because their Creator had. But to utter words against his was treason. He fisted his hands at his side and his broadsword drew near him. The light that shielded them flared.The stone reacts to my will.His eyes once again fell upon it where it rested on the female’s chest.
She holds more sway than I do now.He ground his teeth together.And she hasn’t even uttered a word.The prospect that she was hurt, that she wasanythingdidn’t bother him because now that he was present, everything would be better, for him, for Quist, and especially for her.
The need to have her in his arms grew with his rage.
He heard the feathers surrounding him straighten and saw them lengthen in his periphery.
“Calm. Calm down, Sundamar.”
Sundamar’s hand shot out and gripped Quist’s neck just as his broadsword shot back into his hand, but not before the whip coiled around his neck.
“What the!?” The female startled awake and tried to move out from Quist’s hold but his brother wouldn’t let her. Her foreign words fell dead on his ears. Neither one of them would hurt the female.
“Smart to keep her between us,” he sneered.
She stiffened and stopped fighting, her heart thundering for all to hear. He could smell her lifeforce and blood thrumming through her body. The power that screamed she was his roared in his ears. He wanted her more than anything in that moment, regardless of the noose around his neck.
“Sundamar, don’t.”
He heard his brother but reached for her anyway. The cord tightened around his neck, cutting off his airway.
Allshadowed dirtbroke loose.
The sword came down between them to slice the whip but it didn’t cut. The female screamed. She was thrust away out of his reach and beyond his sight behind Quist’s wing.
His mind cleared long enough, but too late, to realize what he had done.
“Stop!”
Quist leaped on him, slamming him back and tightening his hold on his whip. Sundamar gasped for breath and pivoted on his side, straight into a feathered wall. The whip slithered around him, around his hand, and over his sword. He fought its hold with all the remaining light he had left.
He lifted his sword to slash at the golden thread but not before darkness overtook him. The deep black shock of it was more startling than hearing Yahiro for the first time. He swung out without thought, desperate to go after the light and the girl who held it, fighting against the roars in his ears caused by Quist’s voice, and struck true.
The whip released and slithered to the ground. Sundamar sucked in a painful breath and moved to rise but was pushed back and thrown to the mossy ground. The connection fading further and further away as his brother’s body landed on top of his.No.
Sundamar dropped his weapon and caught the jerking tremors of Quist’s body.NO!His chest was quickly drenched in hot blood that wasn’t his own.I can’t see!He maneuvered the body flat onto the ground and checked for wounds, finding where his sword had cleaved Quist’s side.
He couldn’t see!
“Don’t return to the clay!” he ordered, pressing his palms into the gash that continued to flood his hands. Quist sputtered a wet reply Sundamar couldn’t make out. “NO!” he screamed feeling so many emotions that his mind went blank until it was eclipsed with dread.
“You can’t go. Don’t go.” Not after losing Annahs so recently, not after rediscovering... Sundamar leaned his head into his brother’s chest and begged... Not after rediscovering sorrow. Sorrow and hope.
