BRAX
The Sundering
Amournful wail pierces the darkness, leaking bitterness and heart-rending agony into the night. The dense Braxian forest stills beneath the high stone tower of the keep, all manner of creatures shrinking from the wrath of the Vatruke inside its walls.
Vos’s hands tremor, hovering over the too-still form of a babe wrapped in swaddling cloth.
“No,” she whimpers, her blue eyes flowing with the fresh tears of her grief. “No.”
The child was born weak, it had come too early, been too frail to survive. But she is no mere mortal, not a creature destined to succumb to the will of the fates. She is feyn, ancient and powerful, like the ancients who came before.
They fought to bind the fading threads of the child’s life to Terr. Fought and won, tethering that life to the life force of their world. Just as its fading heartbeat began to thrum in time with the rhythm of the oceans, the veils were torn. The sundering wrenched away the tender budding threads oflife they had so carefully woven.
“No,” she whispers.
Her mate rocks her in his arms, his face drawn with sorrow. A vain attempt to soothe the raw, permanent ache of her broken heart.
“Let me take the child,mi’ajna,” he begs in a near silent whisper, his lips buried deep within the long black of her hair.
“No,” she pleads, rocking the child at her breast.
“Please,mi’dair’a,” he says, “The child is gone.”
“No!” A brutal wave of power tears out of the female when she screams, expelling her rage into the room.
Her mate is torn from her side, thrown and pinned against the large stone walls of the tower. Eyes wide, he groans, straining against the gift that holds him. Until her power ebbs and he crumples to the floor.
He brushes the dust from his arms and collects himself, dropping a loving kiss on top of her head as he cups her cheek. Her eyes remain glued to the tiny bundle in her arms as he says, “I’ll bring the others to see the child before I take it.”
Salty pools of her sorrow form on the stone floor as she dips her head in a shallow nod and Kezik slips out of the room, into the dark of the corridor beyond.
“How is she?”
He startles at the sound of Muri’s voice. There is a trembling grief in her tone and a heavy weight of concern in the slow and cautious cadence of the question.
The female steps out of the shadows, her bright blue eyes ringed with red, shadows marring her fair cheeks. It’s obvious she shares in their grief. Out of them all, she had always been the most tenderhearted.
Waiting for his reply, she brushes a long lock of black hair over her shoulder and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Broken.” How else could he describe the female he left inside.
But Muri already knew. She didn’t have to ask what it meant to lose a child. No amount of time—centuries nor millennia—would soothe the ache of her sister’s heart. Just as time failed to mend her own.
“Will you speak with her?” His voice is thick with pleading when heasks.
“Of course.” She takes a determined step toward the door, collecting her strength, pausing to look back as she tells him, “The others are waiting.”
He nods as she turns on her heel, disappearing into the chamber beyond.
Kezik departs from the mournful cries of his mate, weaving through the dark stone halls toward their gathering place. He rounds the corner and finds them unmoved, still waiting by the large fire where they had come to greet the child.
Four males stand at a thick dark wood mantle soft from centuries of wear. Every stone of the hearth carved to remind them of their history. Of a time when the feyn lived alongside the rest of the fea, deep within the forests of Brax.
He dips his head in greeting. The room seems larger tonight, absent the two females he left behind. The males greet him in turn, one with white hair and three with black, all with the striking blue eyes of the feyn. He looses a long breath, a small relief washing over him when he sees the sadness in their eyes. They already know.
Two females sit beside one another on a large and heavily cushioned chair, both wearing long, thick braids of pure white. The low thrum of their voices fades when they see him, his own sorrow reflected back in their eyes. The white-haired male, Durek, approaches him and holds Kezik’s forehead against his own.
“I’m sorry, Kezik,” Durek says, “Each of us feels your loss as keenly as if it were our own.” It is not the frailty of grief that punctuates the quiet when he speaks. It is his anger, the pure and unrelenting hatred for the feyn who caused this. The feyn that shattered the world. “We will fix this.”
