Page 122 of Under the Iron Sky

Ikarus did not need the signal. Standing still as a statue, his powers reached across the stage like invisible hands to grasp each of the traitors’ helmets and rip them away.

It took ninety seconds for the symptoms to start. First choking, then blood spilling from their eyes, then their nose, their mouth. Each one begged for their life until the very moment they collapsed to the ground, twitching.

Ikarus’s eyes skated over each one of them—until the girl at the end of the row’s head snapped up to catch his eye, and something twisted in Ikarus’s chest like a knife.

His breath echoed around the inside of his helmet, suddenly labored.

This girl was not the human. She was a fairy, and clearly much younger, but those golden curls spilling out of her braid, and those eyes—so wide and green and terrified, and so fucking similar to ones he’d fantasized about plucking out not too long ago.

There was no air in his helmet.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away from the girl either. Her resemblance to the human took him so off guard that his blood ran cold just looking at her.

The girl clawed at the stage, blood dripping out of her nose and mouth, and raised a bloodied fist at Ramapheal, defiant to the very end, just like she was. Just as she would be.

For the first time since Ikarus had earned his horns, he had to look away. To the left, where his gaze met the old seer’s, and as Ikarus stared into her blood-red eyes, as the smallest smile spread across her face as she stared back, as she mouthed the words he lies one last time before succumbing to the poisonous air, Ikarus prayed that the God Killer hadn’t already brought death to his doorstep.

40

The room shook Soraya awake. She lurched out of bed, heart thundering in her throat because—Oh Gods, please, please say I haven’t missed the attack.

Rubble and bits of stone fell from the ceiling, the room looking as though it was seconds away from total collapse while the door to the bathroom swung violently back and forth.

She was sure it was an earthquake until she looked toward the balcony and saw that the rest of Illieck was perfectly at peace. Not even the few sparse leaves that did grow here seemed to shake.

She didn’t understand why it was only their room that seemed to be affected until she noticed Ikarus hunched over in the armchair. His head was bowed forward, elbows resting on his knees, fingers curled into claws against his scalp that looked seconds away from ripping his silver hair out by the roots.

It was his magic making the room react this way. The icy hum in the air was all him, bands of power lashing out like the tail of an angry serpent, smashing everything in its path.

Soraya rose onto her knees, bedsheets curled around her legs. Her jacket lay on the floor. Without its protection, cold air immediately sliced into her skin, goosebumps rising in its wake.

“Demon.” She threw the word into the space between them but got nothing back. “Ikarus.” Again nothing. What was wrong with him? Whatever it was, he needed to stop it right the fuck now, given how the chandelier was shaking like someone was swinging from it.

Narrowly avoiding the hot wax dripping onto the sheets, Soraya quickly scrambled across the bed and grasped his shoulders, intending to shake the idiot awake, only for a needling sensation to shoot through the back of her head. Soraya closed her eyes, hissing as the pain burrowed deeper, and when she opened them again, she was standing on a narrow rock walkway, staring at Noreen wrestling her twelve-year-old twin to point a gun at the Dar’rak dragging his bleeding body across the floor while a second older version of herself stood horrified by the wall, Ikarus beside her.

He was rewatching her memory—his version of it, anyway. Given the nature of his task, it made sense that he’d want to comb through every detail again to make sure he hadn’t missed something vital.

So then why wasn’t he doing that? Why were both Demon’s—the one wearing the same armor he’d worn when he’d collected this memory or the real one in the dark trousers and loose black shirt—watching her instead?

Neither paid any attention to the memory, both of them were studying her face, frowning as she flinched when a loud bang pierced through the screams, neither of their gazes faltering as a tear fell down her older version’s face in the silence that followed.

The real Ikarus swallowed. He stared into her face, and when the memory was done, he rotated his wrist, the scene around them rewinding like he’d just spun a dial on a holographic video, then played again.

She watched him replay it twice more before she could move. Not the entire memory, just those few seconds where her younger self had pulled the trigger, always watching her face. The pain there. The undeniable grief that this memory had brought with it. Grief for a people she’d then grown to despise.

There was an open door a few feet away. Not square like the doors in her own mind, but tall and arching and made of stone that met in sharp peaks like something from another time, and on the other side …

Soraya’s heart leapt a little bit, seeing all the boarded-up windows that spread all the way down the narrow-bricked hallway. Were they Ikarus’s memories? If she opened one of those rattling frames, would she see all the things he did when he wasn’t with her? Would she learn whatever this Hex was that he was developing?

Moving on silent feet, Soraya crept toward it. She kept her eyes on Ikarus, studying him closely as he watched that tear roll down her face again. He raised a hand as though intending to wipe it away, then froze.

His back went rigid. He whipped around, eyes blazing with cold fury when he spotted her standing on the other side of the ledge. The memory snapped away, and when they were back in their room Ikarus was standing in front of her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Soraya glared up at him, hands balled into fists at her sides. “What am I doing?! You’re the one who almost brought the bloody room down with your magic—and what were you doing watching that memory?”

His lip stuck in that spiteful curl she detested, he blinked around the room. How he’d not noticed the chandelier shaking or the bathroom door swinging, Soraya wasn’t sure, but one look from him and they both stopped.

“Does that happen a lot?”