35. The Violet Gaze #3
He stopped just inside the square, gaze fixed on the pouch at her hip.
Talons clicked on stone. Behind him, a massive tail shifted—long, graceful feathers as black as his wings.
Through the fading smoke of burning flesh, a scent cut sharp and strange—wild, like rain-soaked stone, with an edge of something bitter that prickled the back of her tongue.
His voice came low, smooth, and cold enough to spread the gooseflesh from her arms to the rest of her body.
“Sokar, you have taken something which does not belong to the Flaeme.” A pause. For effect. “You will relinquish it.”
But Auryn didn’t move. Didn’t dare. Not against him. Not against this. Because this was a beast ready to cleave her in half, and if she showed the slightest tremor, he would.
She steeled her jaw. Dropped her panic, fear, and doubt to the back of her mind as she so often did when faced with danger.
His violet eyes churned, but he did not make the demand again.
He waited.
With hands steadied in the fires of plague-ridden temples and battles in the Axis Hall, Auryn held her satchel tight and looked at him right in the eyes.
“We shall do no such thing,” she answered.
“You have taken from our dead,” he accused.
She lifted her chin, pulse hammering in her ears. “If you wanted them, you’ve had days to claim them. Instead, you’ve left your dead here to pollute Our city. Therefore, these items now belong to the Lattice.”
Something flickered in his eyes. The glaive rose in one smooth motion until its blade hovered inches from her throat.
The steel caught the last glint of Polis light, cold and merciless.
Emerald refracted on the aethersteel, and for a moment Auryn wondered if she would become another scuff on its edge.
Behind her, Lu’ma shifted. Sudden and sharp.
Auryn’s hand came up.
A command to stop. To hold.
A demand for stillness.
Auryn did not step back from the Glider’s threat. Instead, she lifted her hand and set her palm flat to the edge of his blade.
“Do not think you may do as you please here,” she intoned. Smooth. Calm. Controlled.
Mana surged into her fingers, silver and gold light searing along the steel, spreading like glowing ink from where she touched outward. The metal hissed, warping and bubbling.
The Glider’s eyes narrowed. He flinched back.
Just a breath.
Just a reflexive twitch.
But the blade was so sharp that it sliced into her hand.
Silver blood welled—bright against her skin—yet she didn’t so much as glance at it. Her gaze stayed locked on his.
“The Gliders have no reason to attack Us,” Auryn decreed, her voice steady. “We’ve done nothing to warrant such hostility.”
His eyes dropped to the blood on her palm, then lifted to meet hers again. Silence stretched between them. Heavy and nauseating. Auryn’s hand throbbed in pain. Blood trickled down to her wrist. That scent hit her again. That bitterness on her tongue that reminded her of ceremony, of ritual.
“You have done enough,” he said at last, his tone unreadable. “The Sky has reason enough to strike at the Flaeme’s heart.”
“Enough to warrant an attempt to assassinate the Sokar?”
“Your head still sits upon your shoulders,” he countered. “A true attempt would have left you without.”
Auryn swallowed past the dryness in her throat.
“We think it odd that your Matriarch would sanction such actions when her petition for Vessar with Our Resh’Agar is still in effect. The Writ of Luster allows trade between Our people, but it does not sanction acts of war.”
The metal beneath her hand hissed and whined as it melted to liquid and poured onto the stone at her feet. The glow spread farther down the glaive. This time, when the Glider moved, Auryn released the weapon.
But still—she did not step back.
The Glider’s eyes narrowed further.
Auryn took another silent breath. “You did not cross the Arc of Mourning to enter Krystopolis. Had you done so, We would have known of it. Instead, you violate agreements long kept in place to crawl up through the Cataclyss and attack Us.”
He did not answer. But his talons clicked on stone. His feathers flared, chest puffing, tail swishing. His head tilted. Just a degree. A measure of her worth, perhaps.
More silence.
Either his glaive would give to her Weave or he would step back.
"Veskra na'voth,” he said at length. “Iri kal'dren shava."
This isn’t finished. I will return.
Auryn’s jaw clenched so tightly that pain spiraled up into her temple. But she forced herself to answer in a steady deadpan.
"Kal'dren shava—iri vosh'taren karesh," Auryn replied. Smooth. Without hesitation.
Return to me, and you risk my retribution.
He paused. Blinked. His talons didn’t click on the stone this time. They scraped as he turned to face her more fully. His feathers flared once more, wings pulsing outward. Increasing his size. Lengthening his shadow on the ground.
“Your tongue hasn’t earned the right to taste the Sky,” he warned in Glider speech. “Attempt it again, and I will cut you down, sanction or not.”
The ground answered his threat. Lu'ma jumped to Auryn's side and cast a ward around them just as an ear-piercing explosion shattered the quiet of the alley.
Auryn braced herself as a violent shudder rolled through the cobbles, rattling her very bones.
Far off, a familiar horn keened—one, then another, taken up by a chorus from deeper in the Commons.
Solutus.
Auryn felt it in her teeth. Lu’ma’s head snapped toward the sound. The Polis light around them lit up with emerald brilliance in response to the sound, then steadied.
The Glider’s head tilted to the horns—listening, measuring.
Duty crossed his face like a shadow. He lowered the ruined blade of his glaive a fraction then leaned a hair closer.
His eyes first lingered on the thin golden braid at her shoulder then focused on her hand, nostrils flaring and pupils contracting.
He drew in the sharp tang of her blood like a scent he meant to remember.
“Not finished,” he declared—no flourish, only fact.
One wing swept open, blotting out what little light reached the square. The other followed, the downstroke striking her like a physical blow, a gust of air spiraling upward. Auryn stumbled back, lifted her arms to block the sudden gust of wind. But she couldn’t keep her balance.
When the chaos cleared, he was gone.
Hands supported her at her back and shoulders. She looked down. Lu’ma was signing, her black eyes heated, 'Your Radiance, we must report this to His Quintessence immediately. That creature—' she fumbled, seeming to be at a loss for words.
“Don’t worry, Lu’ma. I will tell him.” She looked around, holding back shivers, willing her knees not to give out. “This is larger than I could have thought. That male wasn’t like the others. Zarrek should know, too.”
The horns pressed in again, wailing like a eulogy through the mist of mana smoke and Polis light around them. Auryn stood still, her blood dripping in slow, steady drops to the cobbles.
I want to go there. I want to see. To understand.
Her eyes slid to the key sigil on her wrist. She touched the cuff. Five glowing sigils woke like stars.
But I promised. I promised him.
Lu’ma signed, 'Your Radiance, we must leave. Take shelter.'
The Attendant reached into her own satchel, pulling out a shawl she’d taken to keep the chill at bay if Auryn stayed out longer than expected. She pressed it against her Host’s wound, but Auryn hardly registered it. Her gaze was still fixed on the space where the violet eyes had been.
Lu’ma’s hands signed with deliberate clarity, 'This Nameless will remember his face.'
Auryn nodded once. She didn’t tell Lu’ma a frightening truth. That she’d already seen those eyes in her dreams, and that his face had been a part of her visions for months.
This time, when she touched her bracelet, she did so with firm intent. One of the five sigils blinked out as a portal irised open behind them, light fanning over the street around them.
“We’re not finished,” she swore to the empty dark where the Glider’s violet eyes had stared her down before.
And with that promise made, she and Lu’ma stepped through the portal.
To the Lattices.
To another battlefield.