Chapter 57
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
AIRIK
“Stay behind me,” Airik said, powering his own sword.
The suited figure’s head snapped toward them, arms dropping to their sides. They leapt down from the ship, graceful as any morazir would be.
“Oh, fuck,” Nora gasped as he pushed both her and Lucky back around the corner to shield them.
Airik cast a quick glance down to ensure his knife was in his boot.
The morazir sprinted toward them, shouting. “Airik!” they called out. “Brother!”
Airik drew back, the voice familiar.
Then why did you teach me that word?
All he heard was Nora’s yelp before the morazir collided with him, taking him to the ground.
“Airik,” the morazir said again. He spoke the common language: “You’re alive. My brother, you’re alive—”
“Torren?” Airik grunted, struggling to push him off.
Torren tore off his helmet, long white hair getting into Airik’s face. “You only have one brother.”
“Get off of me.” He tried to rise.
Torren forced his shoulders back down to the ground with inescapable strength, his eyes bright with blue emotion. “Let me check you. By Ulliel’s Grace, I prayed I wouldn’t find you smeared on the rocks like an insect. I’m so happy—”
Two small hands came around Torren’s shoulders, gripped his harness, and yanked him. Beside Nora, Lucky bit Torren’s suited toe, pulling and hissing.
“You’re crushing him!” Nora tugged with all her might, but it was like a child trying to pull down a building. Airik lay mesmerized, watching his human try to rescue him.
Too lightheaded from the sudden shift in speed and wholly focused on Nora, he barely noticed when Torren leapt up and drew his sword. Only when Nora shrank back, frightened, did the spell break and Airik shoot up.
Though Torren hadn’t yet placed his sword’s point across Nora—he stood in an oddly stiff stance as he faced the others—Airik kicked his knee out from under him, then hooked the other with his ankle, bringing Torren down.
Airik seized his wrist with one hand, trapping him, then shoved his sword away with the other. “Stop,” he growled.
Torren glanced at all of them, not making a noise—so uncharacteristic of him that panic surged through Airik. “What is this, brother?” he asked.
Airik heard Nora stumble. His beautiful cheranna trembled, awash in all the colors of the building lights and the drozekar. She looked up, her eyes filled with tears. “Brother?” she said. “He’s your—”
“No,” Airik replied quickly, not wanting her heart to break more. “Not my brother. A…friend—he doesn’t know English. Just this word.”
She nodded, blushing a little from the misunderstanding.
Annoyed, he turned back to Torren, only to find him already gaping up at him.
“You told her I wasn’t your brother, didn’t you?” Torren said in the common tongue, a slightly deranged smile on his face. “That wasn’t very kind—after I came all this way to save your hide.”
He turned to Nora. She dropped her head, still holding the collar of her shirt high.
“I have a very simple question. It does not require much elaboration on your part; I know you must be out of sorts. But—is that a human?”
Airik shifted but did not loosen his hold. “Yes.”
“And is that an overgrown, though beautifully colored, ooshi?”
“Yes.”
“But—how?” Torren turned his head in an arc to indicate their surroundings. “And why is Ed’un even intact at all? Unless…” His eyes narrowed. “I knew that striker was shit.”
Airik looked to Nora and Lucky, his chest tight.
Despite Airik’s insistence that Torren wasn’t his brother, Torren was still a morazir and had been his forgemate.
More than that, he was the only one, other than Aelior and Nora, who had ever seen Airik’s tears.
He had no choice but to trust that bond and hope it was stronger than the Veynari’s hold on them.
He shut his eyes and offered the best explanation he could, hoping Torren would accept it.
“Her vessel appeared in the portals—neither of us understands how. It crashed. I lost the striker in pursuit. She’s not a pilot or a warrior, and this was not her intended destination.
We need to get back to Vorakon immediately. ”
Torren cocked a brow. “She’s wearing your clothes. A morazir’s issue.”
Airik bristled. “She was not equipped for a long journey. We’ve been here for quite some time—extraction took longer than anticipated.”
His friend snorted. “I knew that complaint was coming.” He gave Airik a look, then frowned. “Where’s your suit? Kudra is in every single building, according to the scans.”
Dread rolled through Airik. He checked to make sure Nora hadn’t drifted too close to any of the building doors. “It malfunctioned. We have been careful to keep away from kudra.”
Not wanting to give Torren another chance to ask irrelevant questions and waste time, Airik got up. He found himself offering a hand to Torren—a gesture no morazir would ever make.
Torren made an amused face but accepted it, almost knocking Airik over from the uneven strain of his weight. He looked at his hand, then at Airik’s, and smirked. “I think the atmosphere has been getting to your head, if not the crash itself.”
While he went to retrieve his blade, Airik quickly told Nora, “It will be okay. He is good. He has been with me, learning to be a morazir and to fight, since we were small.”
She smiled, but then her expression faltered. “What do you mean, fighting since you were small—”
“She speaks calmly to you,” Torren said, joining them, standing much too close to Nora.
Airik swallowed the growl rising in his throat and the impulse to smash him to the ground.
“Salvaged lives always seem to scream—what a delightful change that this one is not.”
Nora flinched as Torren took one step toward her.
Without thinking, Airik placed himself between them, shielding her.
His friend made a surprised sound, stepping back.
“She has no reason to be frightened,” Airik said.
“I know a few of her words. As I said, she is not meant to be here. I have already explained to her that she is now in the Veynari’s custody and that her future is for them to decide.
” He looked toward the drozekar, a prickle gripping the back of his neck.
“Until she can be transferred, she is mine. I have her compliance. You don’t need to interfere. ”
Giving him a bewildered look, Torren studied Airik’s face for long seconds, his lip twitching as he fought a smile.
Finally, he shrugged, evidently satisfied.
He pulled a cloth from one of the small compartments on his suit belt and held it out to Airik.
“You’re not a very good custodian of your charge.
She’s bleeding—haven’t you noticed? Or do you think I might have frightened her and she bit herself? ”
Torren craned his neck to see past Airik. “I am sorry, strange little human, but it was your fault for touching a morazir. Here, I’ll make amends by doing something that will most certainly earn me a brand, but I feel poorly about the impression I’ve made.”
He tapped his chest, then pointed to her. “Sooraven,” he said, bowing a little. “My name is Torren. Tor-ren. I—”
“Do not speak to her more.” Airik tore the cloth out of his hand. “She can’t understand you.” He turned to Nora, trying to shake the spots coming around his vision.
Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered. That is what you are for now. Act like it.
Airik touched his lip as he handed her the cloth to indicate what it was for, deeply regretting that he hadn’t fled with her into the wilderness.
She took the cloth and smiled at both of them, dabbing at her lip. “Sooraven,” she said quietly.
Airik’s breath hitched, hearing Nora say the common greeting.
“Sooraven, Tor-ren,” she repeated, making the little bow as Torren had.
It was as if he had forgotten how to breathe. Had the Veynari common tongue ever sounded so beautiful as now, spoken in her clumsy accent?
The word love exploded in his mind, over every one of his thoughts, seeping into his heart where it pumped life wildly through him.
Another word—more ancient—sang softly in his mind.
No.
His hand flew to his chest, an attempt to quell the heart racing inside and the tremble of his body. Why was he afraid? It was just a word. They both meant the same thing, and both were just words.
Gulping down big breaths, he tore his gaze from her. Lucky perked, his ears turned toward Airik. Don’t come to me, he thought, needing to hide whatever was happening to him.
But those words—love in Nora’s English or the other he wouldn’t even think of—were not a beginning for him but an end.
He couldn’t let that happen.
“How unexpectedly…charming.” Torren stepped around him, thankfully unaware of the calamitous reckoning within Airik. “I think the human and I are forging some sort of bond—I’ve already taught her our words. This is unprecedented.” He waved at Airik. “Hurry. Translate for me—”
“You are not forging any bond, nor will you ever.” Jealousy rammed through his chest. Lucky wrapped his tail around Airik’s ankle, reminding him to breathe and to behave as if Nora were nothing to him. “We are morazir. Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered. You are tempting all the oaths.”
Fuck. It had only been mere minutes, and he already acted as if his brain had melted in the crash.
“I assume you’re here with the drozekar to decommission Ed’un,” he continued. “Hurry and do so. We must return to Zarmur immediately. Much has gone wrong here. And the human—I need to ensure her transfer is handled safely.”
Torren looked between them, even casting Lucky a suspicious glance, as if they were forgelings whose childish joy in playing tricks on instructors hadn’t yet been beaten out of them.
He sighed. “You’re right,” he said, starting toward the drozekar.
“Let’s get your human properly secured. There is much to discuss. ”
Airik watched Nora and Lucky as they went up the ramp. She kept her head down, her hands gripping the straps of her pack, and softly encouraged Lucky, who still couldn’t bear weight on his back leg.
Hoping to smother the fray of his emotions, he collected Lucky, using the opportunity to brush Nora’s thigh and breathe in her scent.
She gave him a quick smile, as if she’d been waiting for his attention.
It placated him—a little.