20. Silar
20
SILAR
F allon jerked as my tail seized upon his throat.
I had not felt rage like this since… since…
Since I’d killed that man on Zabria.
Fallon’s white eyes bulged, his claws sinking deep into my tail. I barely felt it. His hound snapped feral jaws in defense of his master, circling Tarion, but I paid the creature little mind. If Tarion felt threatened, he could deliver a single, skull-smashing kick.
No. All my attention was focused upon Fallon. Fallon, whose stampeding herd had almost killed my wife.
Thoughts about how Fallon was the youngest and likely the best among us were torn asunder, mashed up by memories. Memories of hearing the stampede and racing across my property, calling Cherry’s name but not finding her. Memories of spine-sheering panic as I’d rounded the house on Tarion’s back and saw my wife, trapped and disoriented, while Fallon’s cattle hurtled towards her like a storm.
I almost hadn’t reached her in time. It had been far too cursedly close.
And I had to do something with the frenetic friction of that fear. I had to do something before it strangled me.
So I would strangle Fallon instead.
“Silar!”
Clear as a note of music, Cherry’s voice called to me. I held Fallon in place and cranked my head to the side, searching the house’s doorway but not seeing her. But when she called my name again, I found her. She was on the roof, standing atop the flat portion of it at the back of the house and staring over the angled part near the front.
Fallon burbled. My tail burned and bled as he clawed me.
“Silar!” my wife cried for a third time. “You let him go! This instant !”
My body obeyed her immediately. Clearly, it was more devoted to her than it was to me. My tail loosened around Fallon’s throat and then entirely slipped away. The other man coughed and gagged, shooting white-eyed looks my way that I ignored as I watched my wife disappear from the roof only to reappear on the ground at the side of the house a moment later.
“Get inside!” I ordered her, turning my wary attention back to the bracku. Luckily, they had calmed now. They milled aimlessly around the flat pasture Fallon and I had forced them into.
Cherry sucked in a breath, looking like she was going to refuse. But then she, too, looked at the bracku, her face paler than usual. Giving me one of her human head-motions that I’d learned meant that she was in agreement, she hurried into the kitchen and slammed the door.
“Is she alright? Your wife?”
That frantic croak of a voice belonged to Fallon.
“Don’t you even dare to speak of her,” I snapped, rounding on him. “She’s the only reason you’re still breathing, Fallon. Keep her name out of your filthy mouth.”
“I did not even say her name!” he cried. “I do not even know it! I did not even know that she was here!” Fallon rubbed viciously at his throat. “Why did you not tell me? You could have sent me a message on my data tab!”
“Why the blazes should I have told you?” I snarled over his hound’s incessant barking.
“Because then I would have known!” Fallon exploded. “When the stampede started, I knew, or I thought , that you would be the only one potentially affected. No one else has a property this near to mine. And I know that you can ride a shuldu and that you’d know what to do if you were outside! You would not be in any danger. But then-”
His voice broke off and he dragged desperate claws through his pale yellow hair, his tail gesturing to the well-trampled and now-empty road.
“But then, there she was! I saw her fall! I had no warning!” His chest heaved, his eyes flashing white then brown, white then brown, before finally settling into their usual warm umber.
“You have no idea the shock of that, Silar,” he added quietly, sounding sick. “To suddenly see a vulnerable little female in the path of my cattle. And knowing in the deepest parts of myself that I’d never reach her in time.”
“I know exactly what it’s like.”
I’d seen the same thing he had. I’d watched my wife in the road. About to die.
Because of him.
“I need to see her,” Fallon said, his eyes going moon-white. “I need to make sure she’s alright. And apologize and-”
“You need to get off my property before I change my mind and kill you.”
My tail was already itching to find its way to Fallon’s throat again.
He cast a pained look towards the house. But he knew better than to argue with me.
Unfortunately, my wife did not.
Once again, she called to me from the house, shouting that she was “making some food and why don’t you bring your friend inside?”
My friend. My friend.
My fellow convicted murderer whom I’d nearly just killed in front of her.
Fallon, brainless fool that he was, was already ignoring my ire and directing his mount into a trot towards the house. I urged Tarion into a canter, quickly catching up with him.
“Wait,” I growled at him.
“She invited me!” Fallon reminded me defensively.
“Fallon, curse it all, wait. ”
Something in my tone caught him up short right after he’d dismounted. He paused, stroking his mount’s black neck as I followed him down to the ground.
“What is it, Silar?” He eyed my bloodied tail with suspicion.
But I’d restrain myself. I’d been so afraid of Cherry finding out about my murderous past and now I’d almost gone ahead and killed Fallon in front of her. She wouldn’t have to wait for me to tell her the truth. I’d practically showed her.
I reined in my rage, the way I would a bucking shuldu, and held it tightly leashed.
“If you go in there… You cannot…”
“Cannot what?” Fallon pressed.
I bit out a sigh.
“She does not know, Fallon.”
“She does not know what ?”
“She does not know .”
Fallon glowered at me, dragging his bloody fingers absentmindedly across his throat. Then, all at once, it hit him. I watched understanding, then horror, dawn on his face.
“She does not know ? That you… That we…” His voice lowered to a hissing whisper. “She does not know about the convictions?”
“No. And you don’t need to whisper like that. She’ll never hear us through the door.”
Fallon’s head whipped towards the door then back to me in alarm.
“Her hearing isn’t good,” I explained.
“It isn’t?”
“I think it is a human thing.”
“Oh,” Fallon said, his white eyes bouncing back and forth between the door and me. “Oh… Oh my cursed cattle… Alright… So…”
“So,” I cut him off, “you will keep your mouth closed for once. It seems as though my wife wishes to greet you. Therefore, you will sit down, shut up, and take whatever generosity she chooses to bestow upon you because the Empire knows that I have none. And Fallon,” I added on a dangerous growl, “if you breathe one word about my murder conviction to her then I vow to you, that breath will be your last.”