Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
The sun seemed brighter, the air fresher, and the Tangle more vibrant than ever as Rekosh and Ahmya journeyed toward Kaldarak.
Though he remained aware of the danger, Rekosh couldn’t help but notice the boundless beauty all around. The rich colors, the varied shapes and sizes of the leaves and flowers, the play of sunlight breaking through the canopy and the mesmerizing dance of shadows below.
Yet the sights were only one aspect of that beauty. Sound and smell enhanced it. The song of the wind through the boughs, of animals and insects calling, of branches swaying slowly, gently. The heady, cloying aromas of plants and blossoms, wood and earth.
He could appreciate all of it this fully, this deeply, because of Ahmya. She experienced the world with wonder and curiosity that made him consider everything anew.
They conversed as they traveled, laughing and chittering freely. Ahmya sometimes hummed, sometimes sang, and seemed to dance around Rekosh almost as often as she walked beside him .
He’d never seen her so radiant, so carefree, so alive. Her spirit burned brighter than the sun, and it uplifted him. His steps felt light. Felt effortless.
Rekosh had expected their departure from the ruins to be harder, as both he and Ahmya had been reluctant to leave the place that had become their private sanctuary. He would never forget what he’d shared with her there.
But now that they were on their way back to Kaldarak, Rekosh was glad. With each step, he was increasingly eager to reach their destination and see their friends and family, their tribe, again. But more than anything, he was eager to make his claim upon Ahmya known to all. To show everyone that she was his and his alone.
And then they would finally make a den together. A home.
As midday neared, Rekosh heard the faint sound of running water. It had to be the river, which they’d trekked toward after working their way around the rocky cliffs.
“We need but find a safe crossing and we may reach Kaldarak by sunfall,” he said with a trill.
Ahmya stepped into a beam of sunshine ahead of him, tipped her head back, and spun in place. “I wouldn’t complain about spending one more night with you under the stars, but it would be nice to have four walls and roof tonight.”
“If we must den in the Tangle again, kir’ani vi’keishi …” Rekosh closed the distance between them and scooped her up, cocooning her in his embrace.
She laughed, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.
He nuzzled her cheek, breathing her in with a rumbling purr. “I will be your shelter.”
As he lifted his head, she moved a hand to his face, brushing his hide with her soft, delicate fingertips. A gleam smoldered in her brown eyes, and pink blossomed on her cheeks. “Mmm… I do love it when you’re around me, over me… ”
She grazed her lips over the seam of his mouth and said in a low, husky whisper, “ Inside me.”
A shiver passed through Rekosh, and he nearly groaned. Fire slithered along his veins, coalescing in his pelvis. His stem pulsed and pushed against the inside of his slit. He drew his claspers in tight, ensuring it couldn’t extrude.
“Ah, female…you tempt me.”
Her grin was anything but innocent.
Perhaps they would spend one more night in the jungle after all…
He held her gaze as the heat between them built. His claspers relaxed, and?—
The sound of stones clacking together echoed between the trees, dulled by distance but unmistakable.
Rekosh’s hearts leapt in his chest, and the fine hairs on his legs stood.
Ahmya’s eyes widened as she lifted her head. “Was that…?”
“Yes.”
Those sounds had been that of blackrock against blackrock, the manner by which shadowstalkers had long signaled each other out in the Tangle.
The way Rekosh and his friends had signaled each other.
As though she’d anticipated what he would do, Ahmya was already releasing her hold on him and lowering her legs before he set her down. She stepped back the instant she was on the ground and looked in the direction the signal had come from.
Rekosh swung his bag to his front, opened it, and withdrew a pair of blackrock knives from within. He banged their flat sides together, tapping out a response.
As the last clack’s echo faded, he held his breath and listened. The Tangle seemed unnaturally quiet in those moments. All the jungle had paused, waiting with him.
When the answering clacks drifted to him, they came on a hot gust of wind that carried the sickly-sweet smell of wet, rotting vegetation so prevalent in parts of the Tangle.
“Is it the others?” Ahmya asked, turning her excited gaze to Rekosh.
“It must be them,” he said, closing the bag and returning it to his back. “Garahk likely sent word back to Kaldarak, and our friends must have come to help find us.”
Ahmya stuck out her bottom lip in a pout, but the light in her eyes was playful and teasing. “Aww. Guess we won’t have tonight to ourselves under the stars after all.”
He growled and caught her wrist with a lower hand, drawing her close. “I will have you to myself one way or another, nyleea .”
She laughed, stood on her toes, and grasped his braid, which hung over his shoulder and down his chest. With a little tug, she drew him down into a kiss. Much too soon, she pulled away, sliding her arm out of his loose hold. “Now’s not the time to keep everyone waiting, my luveen .”
Chittering, Rekosh strode in the direction from which the signal had come. Ahmya fell into step beside him.
Despite having spent half the day traversing the jungle, their pace was quicker now, urged on by newfound excitement. Occasional signals from ahead guided Rekosh to appropriately alter their course; their path was veering aside, seemingly moving parallel to the river rather than toward it.
Each time the clacking sounded, it was closer, clearer, making Rekosh’s anticipation only stronger.
With every step, he and his mate drew nearer to their future. He couldn’t guess what it would hold, but under the gazes of the gods’ eightfold eyes—and the gaze of anyone else—he would make sure that future was full.
Their path led them gradually uphill, through terrain thick with rocks and vegetation, where visibility was limited from the ground. But the excitement in their strides did not waver .
When the signal came again, it was from no more than a hundred or so segments ahead. Rekosh answered it quickly.
Another series of stone-on-stone clacks came from somewhere behind.
His friends must have split into groups to cover more area in their search, and they were now all converging.
But some instinctual part of Rekosh insisted that he and Ahmya were now surrounded, being enfolded. That two unknown parties were closing in on them like a pair of fanged mandibles ready to land a killing blow.
“We’re almost there,” Ahmya said, jarring him from his thoughts. “I can’t believe our little adventure is about to be over.”
Rekosh chittered. “ Little adventure?”
She scrunched her nose. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t quite so little.” Her lips stretched into a smile. “It has been an adventure though, hasn’t it? I could have done without the almost dying parts, but everything else… I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
His mandibles rose as he brushed his foreleg against her calf. “Nor would I, kir’ani vi’keishi . Except for almost dying. You are not allowed to be in danger again.”
She laughed and lifted a hand, sweeping loose strands of her dark hair behind her ear. Rekosh turned his attention forward again.
They were approaching a huge tree, its base spanning at least ten segments wide. Based on the sound of the last signal, their friends had to be just on the other side.
“Who awaits?” Rekosh called as he and Ahmya rounded the trunk. “The impatient hunter, or the overcautious delver?”
No response came.
Rekosh’s fine hairs rose as realization struck him.
None of the blackrock signals had possessed the usual little flourishes he and his friends, especially Telok, added to them. And it was unlike Telok and Urkot to not respond, especially from this close—and especially to such friendly teasing. They should’ve hurled eightfold as many insults at him in the time it took for his next few steps.
That uneasy feeling reasserted itself. His fingers tightened around the haft of his spear, and his fine hairs remained standing, picking up the various scents on the air.
There was a faint smell of vrix, but it was no vrix with whom he was familiar.
The vegetation to their right shook.
He should have kept Ahmya to his left, shielding her with the tree.
Rekosh’s upper right hand darted out to grab hold of her arm, and he yanked her toward him. She released a startled sound as her feet left the ground. Her spear fell from her hand.
A male shadowstalker with dull green markings and gray ash smeared over his face burst from the undergrowth, a coil of silk rope in his hand, green eyes ablaze with fury.
Not Telok. Absolutely not Telok.
Ahmya’s momentum carried her straight to Rekosh. He caught her against his side, banded his arms around her, and twisted to draw her away from the lunging vrix. In the same motion, he brought his spear around and thrust it toward the attacker.
The other male dug his legs into the ground and threw his weight backward, pitching his hindquarters into the dirt. The sharpened point of Rekosh’s spear passed within a finger’s breadth of the male’s face.
Ahmya clung to him with arms and legs alike as tightly as she ever had.
Wood cracked overhead. Rekosh braced his left legs against the tree trunk and shoved off, leaping clear of it just before a second male, this one with amber markings, came crashing down on the spot Rekosh had just been standing.
Vegetation thrashed and branches snapped as two huge females charged around the trunk. Like the males, they had ash on their faces. Both carried long war spears and were clad in dull, dingy, beaten-up adornments and armor pieces—gold that had undoubtedly been weathering the worst of the Tangle’s conditions for the last several moon cycles.
They were Queen’s Fangs.
Zurvashi’s Fangs.
“Capture the traitor!” The lead female commanded in a booming voice.
Rekosh knew her, knew those clear blue eyes. She was Ulkari, sister of Urshar. One of the vrix still loyal to Zurvashi of whom the females in Goldflame Tunnel had spoken.
Rekosh scrambled backward, spear raised and ready, putting precious distance between himself and the attackers. But he knew all too well that the gap could be closed in a heartbeat.
Only as the two males righted themselves did Rekosh see the black furs draped over their shoulders, as dirty and worn as the females’ gold.
Zurvashi’s Claws.
Ahmya whispered something, but her words were muffled against Rekosh’s shoulder. She was trembling, her nails digging into his hide, her heart racing.
And he felt the same fear. Fear for the future that had seemed so close, fear for his little mate with her huge, loving heart. Fear that once again, his entire world was on the verge of destruction, held aloft over some yawning, bottomless pit only by the most frayed of threads.
An ember of fury sparked in his chest, but it was instinct that drove him.
He turned around and ran.
“Coward!” Ulkari roared. “Betrayer!”
The ground rumbled as the ambushers gave chase. Twigs cracked and snapped, leaves rustled, vrix growled and grunted, and Rekosh’s hearts pounded like thunder in his chest, pumping sizzling blood through his veins.
He yearned to kill them all. To end Zurvashi’s legacy of blood and terror in a final brutal surge, to leave their bodies to the scavengers, to let their flesh rot and their bones be swallowed by the jungle.
But Ahmya was more important than bloodlust, than vengeance, than anything. And no matter the potency of his rage, he knew this was a fight he was not likely to win.
So Rekosh poured all his strength of body and will into his legs, keeping them moving at an impossible pace.
Ahmya bounced against him despite his firm hold. There was simply no way to spare her while maintaining such speed, and he could not allow himself to slow no matter her discomfort.
Ulkari’s order hadn’t been to kill the traitor, but to capture the traitor. Rekosh wasn’t foolish enough to believe that meant these loyalists to the dead queen planned to show mercy.
“Rekosh,” Ahmya breathed.
“I have you, vi’keishi ,” he growled. “I have you.”
The sounds of pursuit persisted behind him, the ambushers shouting as they ran. Though based on the volume of the noise, he was widening his lead on them, he dared not look back for fear of losing even a shred of his forward momentum.
The river was their only hope. If he and Ahmya could get to the river…
Even if they had to brave being swept along by the churning waters again, he would do so. Their chances were better with the unforgiving river than with these vrix.
Only when movement flickered at the upper edge of his vision did he recall what had so unsettled him moments before—the unknown group that had signaled from somewhere behind Rekosh and Ahmya.
A pair of male vrix were perched atop a thick bough that crossed above Rekosh’s path, with a net stretched between them.
Rekosh’s legs skidded along the leaves and detritus atop the jungle floor as he struggled to change direction. The males leapt down.
Ahmya screamed. The males landed on either side of Rekosh, and his momentum carried him straight into their net. The strands closed around him and tangled on his limbs. He desperately attempted to maintain his balance, but his stumbling steps only worsened the net’s constriction. His upper body tipped forward.
The males yanked hard on the lower portion of the net.
His hearts leapt, clawing their way into his throat, and paralyzing cold exploded from his core.
Rekosh’s legs were swept out from beneath him, and he fell, his body skewing to the right. He tensed and attempted to contort himself to shield Ahmya from the impact, but he could not stop himself from coming down atop her.
He felt her soft form pinned beneath him, felt her nails scraping his hide, felt and heard her breath burst from her lungs. The spear snapped under him, but he barely felt the bite of splintered wood.
“Ahmya,” he snarled, fighting the netting to brace his hands on the ground and shove his weight off her.
She writhed beneath him, struggling to draw in a breath, and her near silent gasps were the most alarming and heartbreaking sound he’d ever heard.
“No, no, no, breathe, please.” With claws and fangs, he tore at the net, hooking any stands he could. He needed to give her space, needed to be able to see her, to check on her, to tend to her.
He’d harmed her. It made no difference that it had been unintentional.
The males were still tugging on the net. Every pull allowed Rekosh’s claws and fangs to bite deeper into the silk ropes, every pull was like a gust of wind feeding the inferno in his chest.
“Rekosh,” she rasped. “I’m… oh…”
One of the ropes broke, slackening the net. He pushed outward on all the strands, seeking further weaknesses. Another rope broke, then another.
“Restrain him!” a female commanded from nearby.
Rekosh growled and pushed harder. He felt more of the ropes fraying, and as they gave way, his rage intensified. This was not how he and his mate would meet their ends. They would not have their future stolen when they’d only just laid claim to it. He would not allow this to happen.
Ahmya’s trembling hands found his face, their touch still warm, still soft, despite everything. “I’m…okay… I’m o?—”
Something with all the weight and solidness of a boulder slammed into the side of Rekosh’s head. The net ripped as the force of the blow knocked him aside, away from his mate, away from her hands, her touch.
“ Rekosh! ” Ahmya screamed.
He tumbled over the uneven ground, over branches, rock, and debris. The Tangle did not cease spinning even when his body came to rest, his hand landing upon the jagged edge of a stone.
A thick, heavy leg came down on his chest, pinning him in place. Rekosh grasped it reflexively. His claws sank into tough hide, which only seemed to draw more weight upon him.
Snarling, he looked up to meet Ulkari’s blazing blue eyes.
“Bind this betrayer,” she growled, snapping her mandible fangs, “and his creature.”
“ No! ” Rekosh’s rage flared, hotter than any goldworker’s forge, flooding him completely.
No one could touch his mate. No one .
A bestial roar erupted from his chest as he grasped the sharp, jagged stone and stabbed it into Ulkari’s leg.
Gold adornments clanked as the Fang reared back, snatching her bloody leg away. Rekosh kept his claws latched onto her, dragging himself off the ground and shredding more of her hide in the process.
With a furious cry, Ulkari shook him off. At the edge of his vision, he saw Ahmya crawling out of the net. He would not let them have her. Crimson filled his vision as he lashed out with a wild flurry of claws and kicks. The males who had caught him in the net joined the battle. He sent blows at them too, so quickly and savagely that they had no time to counter.
Do not touch her.
She is mine.
Mine!
Rekosh didn’t know whether he only thought those words or shouted them. Hands grabbed at him, yet his claws bit into flesh again and again and again, splattering his hide with warm blood. What pain he felt was distant—like a voice echoing from another world.
Ahmya. Mine.
Must reach her.
Must protect her.
He didn’t perceive individuals around him. They were but the limbs of a faceless monster, and he would slay the beast at any cost. Anything between Rekosh and his mate was to be destroyed.
“Enough!” a female vrix yelled.
With another roar, Rekosh lunged toward the female.
A wave of terrible, overwhelming cold crashed into him, forcing him to an abrupt halt when he saw her.
The female, another Fang called Nuriganas, had one hand wrapped around Ahmya’s neck from behind, holding her aloft. Ahmya’s kicking feet were more than a segment off the ground. She clutched the Fang’s thick fingers with both hands, and her face was already red.
A firestorm clashed with that bone-deep chill. He needed to tear that arm off the female’s body, needed to rip out her throat with his mandibles, needed to kill, and kill, and?—
“Submit,” Ulkari demanded from beside him, “or we will show you what our queen did to the first of these creatures.”
Terror and fury swirled within Rekosh, as powerful and violent as the worst storm to have ever battered the Tangle. He met Ahmya’s gaze.
Her eyelids were flaring and drooping, and the light in her eyes was fast dulling. But the fear in them remained apparent throughout, tinged with desperation as her struggles continued, a little weaker with each heartbeat. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
All Nuriganas had to do was tighten her grip, and…
And Ahmya would be gone.
A simple contraction of muscle, and Rekosh’s mate would be taken from him forever. Before he could say a word, before he could move any closer, before he could so much as blink, she would be gone.
I am sorry, kir’ani vi’keishi.
Ulkari and the two males were already grabbing Rekosh as his legs, suddenly numb, gave out, and he fell onto his leg joints. They pulled off his bag, wrenched his arms back, and lashed them together, claws digging into his hide as they worked.
He knew it didn’t matter now, but his hearts stuttered at the thought of losing the dress. Ahmya’s gift.
Nuriganas released Rekosh’s mate.
Ahmya fell and crumpled forward onto hands and knees. With her head bowed and her hair hanging in disarray, she coughed raggedly and desperately gasped for air.
Rekosh pushed forward, but the males held him fast.
“Ahmya,” he rasped, straining toward her .
Ulkari stepped in front of him, grasped his hair, and dragged him upright. “We have caught the weaver. She will be pleased.”
“Should have killed him,” one of the males growled with a clack of his fangs. “Not worth the trouble.”
Rekosh couldn’t see his mate, but he still heard her labored breathing, her harsh coughing. His hearts pounded, and his fear and rage remained caught in their maddening storm.
“Have you lost faith, Vuljaz?” Ulkari asked, not looking away from Rekosh.
“No,” Vuljaz replied, his tone subdued.
Rekosh’s hands curled into fists, and his claws punctured his hide. The pain he should’ve felt remained beyond his reach.
Just like his mate.
Ulkari jerked Rekosh’s head back, forcing him to look up at her ash covered face. “Bind that disgusting little creature. We shall bring them to make an offering to our queen.”