68. Window to the Soul
~ MELEK ~
The world becomes very small during battle. Very small, and very quiet. A battlefield is a wall of sound, but I heard little beyond my thudding pulse. And the flutter of my mate in my head. Because she was courageous and determined, and apparently too fucking stubborn to make the right choice.
I’d lost sight of her, but I knew she was behind me now.
Back to back, we fought and I was doing my damnedest to make certain that we weren’t turned.
Because she was positioned where she had only to kill off anything that got past me on the way to that outcropping.
The natural little ravine that had been formed by the rocks on one side, and the rise of the land on the other, meant that most of our enemies remained in the bowl of the land below and as long as I could keep Yilan on higher ground than me, she would be safe.
But in battle movement is inevitable.
At some point I saw a flash of Jann, shouting and throwing a weapon to an ally, but then he was buried in the fray again.
I fought. I fought, and I roared, and I grieved.
My people would not listen. They would not ease. And because of that, many would die tonight .
How this kind of crisis had been avoided thus far, I didn’t know. But it made me weep that it was my vision for a future of character and peace that sent them over the edge.
I was so tired, I couldn’t feel my hands. I saw the weapons in them and thrust them, spearing Neph left and right, in chest, in groin, one even in the eye.
My spears grew slick with blood. My breath burned in my chest. My body ached and went numb, and still we fought.
I didn’t even know who I was fighting. I didn’t let myself see faces. Couldn’t. Because the truth was, many of these Neph in their right minds would be loyal followers. But they’d lost themselves to the bloodlust and rage of a frenzy.
There was no choice, but to kill those who attempted to kill me, and to pray there would be enough of us left to rule at the end when the red haze faded.
But as I plunged spearheads into living, breathing flesh, and killed Neph after Neph, I couldn’t feel any sense of triumph.
I only grieved. And loathed myself for not seeing this coming.
Then suddenly, the ground before us was empty of adversaries. I hefted the spear, then stumbled forward.
Dead bodies piled to the left and right. Pools of blood shining silver in the moonlight. And beyond them in the bowl of land below the outcropping, the battle raged on.
Yet I couldn’t tell who was an enemy, and who fought for me.
I staggered to a halt, wiping what I thought was sweat from my brow, only to draw my hand away and find that it was blood splatter.
How many men had I killed who would have stood for me?
I wanted to weep.
~ YILAN ~
Melek was struggling, and things were growing dire.
I stood at his side, linked with Diadre who was buried somewhere in that chaos, fighting alongside Jann.
‘We can’t attack, only defend. We don’t know which Neph are on our side!’ she said in my head.
I wanted to weep. Melek looked like he might as he scanned the carnage happening below.
“How can we know?” I murmured. “God, help us! How can we know?”
Melek glowered at the battlefield and shook his head.
“There’s no way to know. It’s a conflict of ideology, not nation.
I can’t know, Love. We’ll end up killing the very men who might have taken us into the future…
” Then he looked at me and his eyes glowed with grief.
Glowed green and bright despite his sadness. The fresh green of a new spring leaf.
My heart throbbed. If the eyes were the window to the soul, then life pulsed in Melek’s veins.
Deep in the back of my mind, something rang like a bell. A memory. Melek, in the early days, before I truly knew him. When I had just met Gall…
“His eyes are gold,” I blurted.
“So? Mine were also when I was born. That proves nothing—”
“No,” I said through my teeth. “Don’t start lying to me now. Your eyes are the bright green of a new leaf!”
“They are now. But when I was born, and even as a youth—”
“Bullshit! The yellow eyes are the sign of the irredeemable. If you were born irredeemable, you cannot change that—it is impossible!”
He’d been angry about the implication because of Gall. Told me I was “spouting drivel.”
It was a legend in my people. And it made sense. The Fallen had golden eyes. The Fallen could not be redeemed. Therefore, it was believed that those born to them could not be either. Hence the golden eyes. Yet Melek claimed his eyes had changed since his birth?
What if the eyes were a reflection of the state of the soul… not the other way around?
That bell of truth in my head rang again.
The cold fingers of fear gripped the back of my neck and forced me to turn, to survey the carnage before me. Then I sucked in a breath as my sight was consumed with a vision of Lucifer’s eyes, as if he stood right before me and leaned in so I could see nothing but his glowing, golden gaze.
‘Mine, Yilan. They’re mine. And this is what they’ll do to all of you as long as you resist me.’
“YILAN! LOVE! WATCH OUT! ”
Melek’s roar snapped me out of the vision in the blink before a Neph with teeth bloodied and bared leaped straight for me—and was batted aside like a kitten by my mate in the last possible second.
We were left, both of us trembling as he rushed to me and grabbed my face. “Are you here? Are you with me?!”
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry, I—”
“Fight, Love. Fight for your life!”
“But Melek—I think I know who they are!”
He frowned. “What are you—”
He whirled as another Neph came roaring up from the battle below, snarling like a wolf. When he’d dispatched that man, I knew I couldn’t distract him again, so I stayed at his back as he prepared to meet the next, but I showed him in his head.
Lucifer, eyes of gold.
Melek, eyes of green. Despite his birth. Despite how golden they may have been when he was young.
“How do you fight an enemy who cannot be killed?” I had asked my mate.
“You can’t. Not in the normal way. Deal with them when they’re in front of you, otherwise forget about them because there’s nothing you can do anyway. When they appear, don’t listen. Don’t agree. And resist whatever they give—including the fight. There is nothing else…”
What if it wasn’t a question of redemption, but of allegiance?
“Resist,” I breathed.
“What?” Melek gasped in front of me, spearing another attacker who screamed like a banshee as his guts spilled from his stomach and he tumbled down the low slope, taking two others in his path.
I put the image in Melek’s mind.
Lucifer, eyes of gold. Crouched in that window of the tower, glowering at Melek. “Green-eyed fuck…”
Melek, who resisted every part of the darkness the Fallen represented… and who had eyes of green.
But as my mate grunted and fought and I felt his heart despair, I knew he didn’t understand.
I needed to speak into his head! Why had God placed this barrier between us when I would have given anything to reach him so deeply?
To share my heart and mind and have him share his. Why? Why were we held apart?
Because you resist.
I gasped as my mind filled with images—all the moments when I spat at Melek, bristling unwilling to be led, yet angry when I wasn’t followed. All the moments he’d snarled at me for choosing my own plan when he’d rejected it…
Resist and remain untouched: Resist the enemy and thrive.
Resist your mate and destroy yourself.
I sucked in a breath, my ribs expanding as the vision of it all came together.
I had been so angry with Melek for resisting his God-given role as King, but I had also resisted the role given to him as my mate and protector…
The male God had given me as King, but also as my strength.
And I’d held him off until he agreed with me, then fought his choices for me when I’d known he was chosen by God as King of my people.
Resist the enemy.
Submit to your Love.
The same action, but very different results.
Gall and Istral giving their hearts freely. Holding nothing back. Choosing each other over themselves. Choosing right over safety while I fought my mate every time he sought to protect me—doing exactly as I’d hoped he would do for others.
Something in the bond shivered and thrummed, like hands on a doorknob, shaking it from the other side.
I sucked in a breath.
My mate was here, throwing himself into the battle to keep me safe, to maybe save some of us from death. He would give himself freely, over and over, on the chance he might save another, weaker than him.
I would not resist him anymore. I would not put my control over his.
I would trust him. Even when we disagreed.
That last, thin barrier between my heart and Melek’s burst open and the bond sang. I knew… I knew what would happen when I spoke to him—
Then the voice of the most dangerous creature in creation echoed in my mind, that image of Lucifer crouched in the window, spitting at my mate.
“Green-eyed fuck…”
Lucifer hadn’t come to Melek. Hadn’t tried to tempt him. Because he already knew Melek would resist. No. He’d come to me.
“The eyes,” I breathed. As the light and life of truth rang through my bones, I opened my heart and reached for my mate .
‘Melek,’ I sobbed into the link. I saw him jolt, but he’d just rolled away from yet another snarling Neph.
‘Melek, it’s in the eyes. Look for the light in them.
Those who are determined to resist the true enemy have life in their eyes.
It shows up in their eyes as the color of new life: Green.
Those that listen to him have nothing but cold wealth: Gold. So… look for life.’
There was a bare moment when he was free. More Neph rushed up the slope towards him, but he turned and caught my eye with his beautiful, emerald gaze.
‘The eyes are the window to the soul. The green means they resist. Like you.’
Melek roared. Even as a new wave of Neph rushed towards us, he whirled, grabbing me and carrying me back up that narrow valley between the outcropping and the rise of land, then turning and darting, his strides almost the length of my entire body, to reach the top of the outcropping, frenzied Neph barking at our heels.
“Hold on, Love!” he bellowed as he threw us off the rocks and into the air. I shrieked as my belly dropped, but then we were swooping, higher, higher, higher.
There was scrambling behind us, the boom of wing flaps, we wouldn’t be alone long.
“Tell them!” Melek shouted over the wind and the thunder behind us. “Tell them—those that are open will hear you. We can break through. Tell them to resist. Tell them about the eyes!”
And then he gripped me hard against him and dove. “Hear your Queen!” he roared as we swooped down at such dizzying speed I worried I would faint. “If you seek peace, if you seek life, if I am your King, open your mind and hear your Queen!”
I was horrified. How could I possibly reach all of these men?
But I felt Melek then, the surge of admiration and belief. The strength. The heart for me. And then I heard him in my head.
‘You can do it. I know you can do it, Yilan.’
I shook my head. I’d never tried to reach so many that weren’t Shadekin at once. The resistance in me rose again—sure that he was wrong. But as the bond shivered, I remembered all I’d seen.
Melek believed in me. He was given to me—as mate, and as King.
Resist the enemy and thrive. Resist your mate and destroy yourself.
Melek believed I could do this .
Sobbing, I gripped his steel arms that wrapped me and kept me safe, feeling the wind on my face, ignoring the thunder of Melek’s wings and the howls of those who pursued us. I prayed for strength and threw my mind wide open, stretching, reaching, begging our people to hear me.
‘Resist the darkness of the Fallen. Resist the darkness of your birth. Choose life! The eyes are the window to the soul. If you seek peace, if you want to follow, look for the green eyes, emerald eyes. The eyes that shine with the color of new life. Those are your brothers. Those are your allies. Those are the ones who resist the darkness.’
I gasped as Melek took another steep, banking turn and my stomach seemed to separate from my spine—then drop to my toes when he flapped to push us up again.
“Keep going,” he growled. “I’ll call them, you teach them!”
And so, as my mate roared to his people, calling them back from the bloodlust, I reached for their minds and showed them, over and over, how to know their allies. How to become an ally to peace.
Then I heard Diadre, echoing what I’d been sending. Reaching for those she could find as well. Our words singing together.
And below us, the frenzy shifted.
Where Neph heard Melek or me, they hesitated, then stared at their opponents. And here and there, first in a trickle, then in a flood, Neph turned their backs on the males they’d been attacking, and fought together against those still in the frenzy.
My heart lit up with hope.
‘Choose the light—resist the true enemy. Choose life over wealth. Choose peace over self. Come with us. Let’s show the world how to live!’
Again and again, diving, swooping, circling, Melek roaring for his people, and me singing in their minds, again and again, until beneath us, the tide turned.
The Neph who wanted life began to gather, and coordinate, and aid each other.
“You did it, beautiful. You did it,” Melek rasped in my ear, his voice failing. I held onto him and shook my head.
“We did it, Melek. We did it together.”
I felt his chest expand at my back. His wings gave one of those great snaps and we were propelled forward, so fast the wind pushed tears from my eyes. Then Melek laughed, and rolled. I shrieked and grabbed him as the world spun, but the moment he leveled out, I was overjoyed.
My mate was laughing with joy.
Our people were uniting.
We were winning… we were winning together.
Then he dove, snapping his wings wide to glide me over the battlefield.
“See that, Yilan?” he said hoarsely in my ear. “That is the last time that we’ll change the face of the world with violence. I vow it to you, this is the last time—”
I heard a sickening thwack and Melek roared, then we were plummeting straight to the ground.
We hadn’t been high so there was only a second to see the rocks and bloodied dirt rushing for us.
But as it loomed large, Melek growled. I could see nothing but black, ebony feathers until we slammed to the earth, Melek roaring, then slid several feet to a final, limping stop.