Altair smirked darkly.“I just wish I had finished the job.”
Hadar hummed.“Is your sister hiding around here somewhere, too?”
“Tarazed knows nothing of our choices,” Okab said.“She has nothing to do with this.”
A cruel sneer spread across Hadar’s expression.“She does now.”
Okab shouted and rushed towards the Beta, drawing his sword.Altair was right behind, again wielding his sword made of fire.Silver magic pooled in Iyana’s hands as she pulled from Emmeric, and when she felt an influx of magic, she knew he was siphoning from one of the magical beings surrounding them.Hadar’s steps faltered—that’s where the magic was coming from, then.
The squat star threw out a blast of magic as the twins approached him to stall their attack, then he was gone.Disappeared into thin air.
“Where did he go?”Altair growled, rounding on Okab.His fire sword winked out of existence.
“Nowhere we should follow,” his brother responded.
Iyana couldn’t worry about Hadar once he had left.Not when her village was a blackened husk of what it used to be.She ran into the wreckage, calling out the names of her friends, her family.There was no answer.Nobody was calling back to her, asking for help.There were no buildings that hadn’t been touched by fire.
She fell to her knees in the middle of where Imelda’s hut should have been, a puff of black ash rising up and coating her skin.Iyana pulled a singed baby blanket out from underneath the rubble.
Cradling it to her chest, she screamed.
Chapter 43
Altair
Iyana’sanguishedscreamtorethrough his soul, but Altair forced himself to allow Sullane to be the one to comfort her.Hadar was dead.The next time Altair saw him, the Beta would be drawing his last breath.
For now, though, he would do what he could to help his astalle.Altair, Okab, and Kaz all began searching through the rubble, and soon one thing became very apparent.
“There are no bodies,” Altair muttered.
“Could the fire have consumed them?”Kaz asked.
Okab shook his head.“It wasn’t hot enough.We would have still seen bones, at least.But there’s nothing.”
“Iyana!”Kaz called.The Aztia’s head emerged from Sullane’s arms, tears streaking down her face and carving rivulets into the ash coating her skin.“There are no bodies!”
Iyana frowned and detangled herself until she was standing on her own.She marched over to where they were, taking a closer look at the wreckage.
“There are no bodies?”she asked, a small tint of hope to her words.
“I think they all survived, my—Iyana,” Altair said.He desperately still wanted to call her his astalle and use the nickname he’d given her, but he knew it wouldn’t make her happy.If anything, it would only upset her more.
“Where would they have gone?”Okab asked.
Her light-brown eyes widened, and she smiled as she turned to Sullane.“Maybe they—” Iyana glanced back at Altair and Okab.“Kaz,” she continued.“Could you sniff them out if I gave you a direction?”
Altair understood her hesitation to trust them.It still hurt, but he understood.
“Yeah, of course,” said the shifter.
Iyana pulled Kaz off to the side to whisper directions to her, and although Altair tried to listen in, she had thought ahead and blocked the sound using air magic.A small smile tugged on the corner of his lips.Gods help him, but he was proud of her for how much she had learned.
Kaz shifted into her black leopard form and loped off towards the east.They all watched her go until she was a speck on the horizon.
“What now?”Sullane asked, directing the question to Iyana.
She sighed.“There’s something I need to see.”
