She nods dutifully, and just when the color returns to her face the general takes a heated step toward her and warns, “Careful with her, Riah.”
I roll my eyes. The male must think I’m made of glass.
“As you say, General.” She salutes.
She’s gone the second she’s dismissed, replaced almost immediately by Riesh and Kishek. The circles under Kishek’s eyes continue to darken and if he wasn’t feyn I would be worried. Though, with what little I really know about the feyn maybe I should still be concerned.
Awri collects me not long after, her face as drawn as her brother’s, but still, they both look better than Kishek. The grounds are quiet this morning, and my friend tells me that many of the guards have been dispersed in pursuit of the La’tari crew. She says there have been whispers of sightings near town, but so far, all of their searching has left them empty-handed.
The breeze coming in from the harbor is absent its normal morning chill, and the blue sky overhead brings with it the promise of warm summer days soon to come. Flittering birdsong fills the air with merriment, and my friend could not look less cheerful as she trudges along beside me.
“Is everything all right?” I ask, knowing it’s a silly question.
She fails to muster a convincing smile when she nods. My brow pinches and she lets the façade fall with a sigh when I stare back at her in disbelief.
“Kishek,” she admits.
“Is he all right?”
“He will be.” She says it like a warning to the fates to let it be so. “He’s never known when to quit.”
“Sounds like a rather feyn trait, present company included,” I say, giving her a friendly nudge with my shoulder as the stables come into view.
I cringe when her frown only deepens and she says, “Being difficult to kill does have a tendency to skew your idea of what you consider dangerous. Centuries go by, and it’s easy to begin testing mortality. Millennia pass and maybe you begin to believe you truly are immortal. And then something happens to remind you that somewhere, unseen, is a tiny thread, an invisible line woven by the fates that marks the end.”
Riah comes into view when we round the last of the wild hedges that border our path. She paces the ring, hands clasped behind her back, a strong muscle bouncing at the edge of her jaw. It appears the presence of the warship is weighing even more heavily on the A’kori military than I first thought.
“I’ve never been much for consoling or giving advice,” I tell my friend, “But I will say that it isn’t a purely feyn trait to need to be reminded of your own mortality.”
I shiver off the memory of icy water entering my lungs as a hand wraps around my ankle to pull me into the depths.
I continue, “Perhaps humans don’t need to be reminded as often because our lives are already so short by comparison, but it really is the knowledge of our own fragility that makes the rest of life so sweet.”
She hums thoughtfully as I clasp the wooden border of the ring and leap over it. Riah raises an eyebrow, and I make a mental note to use the gate next time.
“Will you be training with us today, Awri?” the lieutenant asks.
When she doesn’t answer right away, I look over my shoulder to find her contemplating.
“If it makes any difference to you, training always helps me clear my head,” I say.
She takes a deep breath, nods firmly, and rushes toward the stables to change.
“Who was it that saw to your training in La’tari?” Riah asks.
My head whips back to the lieutenant to find her eyes narrowed on me.
“A friend of my father’s. A soldier who retired after the war.” The lie slides off my tongue with ease.
“A soldier?” she balks, and I wonder if I’d been too sloppy with my form for the tale to be convincing.
The air leaves my lungs in a forced exhale when her fist strikes out toward my heart. It’s a killing blow, if thrown hard enough. The force of the impact interrupting the natural rhythm of the heart can stop it altogether, ending your opponent before the fight even begins. The attack is pure Drakai,and she delivers it perfectly—her stance, the curve of her elbow, a flawless portrait that even Bront would applaud. She only makes a single error, and it has nothing to do with her form. The mistake is her choice of target.
For every deadly strike crafted by the Drakai there is an equally lethal counter. I shift my body, just enough to let the blow glance off my chest as I step into her, throwing a fist to her ribs. It’s a reflex, one I’d been taught in order to survive. The return strike will break a rib when landed correctly, often puncturing the lung. A sure death sentence on the battlefield.
My fist connects with a thin plate of steel hidden beneath her leathers. My hand crumbles, pain igniting every nerve and scrap of flesh like an arching bolt of lightning.
“Foc!” The scream slips past my lips unsummoned when Riah clasps my broken hand in hers.
