A beast like none I’ve ever seen alights on the ground outside the cave.
Chapter11
My hammer is in my hand, the creature’s appearance triggering my fight reflexes, but Elowynn is quick to lift her hand. “Easy, Blacksmith.”
The creature’s wings fill the space between the rock walls of the pass outside the cave, and its talons scrape the ground as it turns toward us.
It looks like some sort of enormous bird with inky-black feathers and a dark-purple beak. Amethyst light continues to sizzle around its form, snapping and crackling like lightning.
Despite my limited view, I register how serene it seems, how settled, and how beautifully formed it is. Not like any monster I’ve ever encountered.
It settles onto the ground and I’m stunned to see my brother sitting atop it on what looks like a saddle—a two-seated saddle with Gliss sitting in the front. She must have gone to summon this creature.
“Asha!” my brother cries.
He slips from the saddle, slides down the bird’s extended wing, and races toward me, carving a path between the fae warriors.
I can only watch as he runs toward me. I’m afraid that this must be a dream, that the blood loss has finally taken a toll and I’m hallucinating. “… Gallium?”
“I’m here.”
“Gallium!” I choke back a sob, my heart responding to his presence, a little of myself surging to the surface despite the darkness that has taken hold of me.
Seeing him again is like being cast a lifeline, a length of rope into the dark pit I’m trapped in, a way to climb out.
He hurries toward me, his brilliant, green eyes filled with concern, his arms reaching for me. There was a time when he was little for his age—a time when I threw myself in front of him like a shield, determined to protect him with my life—but now his presence is likemyshield.
He’s taller than I am. As tall as the Vandawolf and just as broad in the shoulders. His muscles were honed over years of construction work within the human city, along with relentless combat training with the Vandawolf. His eyes are the same shape as our mother’s eyes, and his jaw is as strongly cut as our father’s. His silver-blond hair catches the moonlight, radiating light around him.
He’s wearing what I last saw him in: sturdy-looking pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but his clothing is smudged with dirt and ash, no doubt from the trip through the wasteland.
I need the hug into which he’s about to sweep me, but just as he’s about to reach me, I remember myself.
I’m a danger to him. Just as I’m a danger to any living creature.
I backpedal as fast as I can, veering to the left and hitting the wall at the side of the cave.
“Stay back, Gallium!” My cry is filled with overwhelming panic. “I could kill you!”
My left hand is up, my palm out so he will see the medallion and understand the threat, but I prepare to retract it quickly.
At the last moment, before he would wrap me up in a hug, his focus falls to it.
He jolts to a sharp stop.
“Asha?” His expression is falling. “What happened?”
“Forge-fire,” I say, even though that’s hardly an explanation. “I can’t get it off.”
I pull my left arm back to my chest, closing my hand around the medallion. My breathing is heavy and my shoulders are hunched. Tears are leaking down my cheeks, and I want them to stop.
I wish that my brother’s presence and the concern in his eyes didn’t have the power to make me feel my heart again.
“Oh, Asha, no…” His gaze passes from my tarnished hair to my arms to my left hand.
“Maintain your distance, brother. I’m no longer myself.”
My brother’s focus is dropping to my wounds.
