Chapter 74
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
NORA
A hot sensation snapped across the back of Nora’s neck. She heard a sizzle, then caught the distinct smell of burning hair. Without thinking, she reached behind to rub where it hurt, but felt…nothing. A lightness where her hair should’ve been. “What the fuck—”
She was slammed to the ground by a strong hand around her neck.
Airik pushed her flat to her side, shoving her under the bench.
One of his arms went behind her knees, drawing her closer until her body curled around his back.
His other hand kept her head down against his side, protecting as much of her as he could.
Unable to move, she looked straight ahead.
She could just make out a pair of boots, their toes cut off to accommodate talons.
Xallix.
Nora opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out was a weak croak. She heard Iver saying something, but it wasn’t in English, and even if it was, did words even matter? Xallix threw him a passing glance before aiming his gun at Airik again.
Over Xallix’s shoulder lay an arm—heavily muscled and with black nails—like the gruesome spoils of war.
Torren’s severed arm. A glowing yellow-green stake had been driven through its wrist, the skin around it already dead and blackened. But Xallix didn’t have Torren’s sword.
She pressed her face to Airik’s side, terror racing through her veins. Torren must’ve cut off his own arm to stop the kudra’s spread. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Airik’s own sword, just out of their reach on the table.
Using a gloved hand, Xallix clumsily pulled the spike from Torren’s arm, grasping at it several times, his movements slow, as if he were drunk.
Airik turned slightly toward where his sword lay. Instinct driving her, Nora tried to rise to get it for him. “No!” He smashed her down again, her ears ringing from the force of his denial. There was no escaping the cage Airik had built around her.
The light against the walls shifted again as another massive, heaving body stumbled aboard. Torren was already shouting, blood trickling in a steady stream to the floor from just below the shoulder, where his arm had been cut off.
Her vision flooded when she saw what he carried under his remaining arm.
Lucky’s body, his cheery colors muted with blood, hung limp in Torren’s hold. His tail—kinked and broken—was studded with at least three kudra spikes.
Torren dropped Lucky’s body, then readjusted his grip on his sword. He bolted to Xallix, who had backed against a wall. He took the other man to the ground, in a tangle of bloody flesh, struggling to keep him down.
Xallix drove the spike toward his chest. Forced to defend, Torren dropped his sword to catch the other man’s arm.
Airik’s body shuddered as he patted his body and then searched the floor around them. His head jerked up, spotting the gun on the table ahead—also out of his reach.
A crash.
Xallix, assisted by the suit, kicked Torren off but in the process dropped the kudra spike. Torren, now locked on his sword, crawled as fast as his blood-drained body allowed.
Airik’s hold suffocated her—he would not leave her.
She forced out words as best as she could. “Airik, help him—he’s your brother. I’ll be okay.”
All he could manage was a shaking growl, gripping her with all his might. “He is unkillable—you are not.”
His fingers dug into her with bruising pain as she twisted harder to escape.
Xallix grabbed Torren’s ankle. The floor, slick as Torren bled out, made it easy for him to be dragged from his sword. The gun from the table flew through the air into Xallix’s hand, magnetized or obeying some command, as he tapped something on the suit’s arm.
Torren swung a leg to kick the gun from Xallix’s grip. He missed, moving awkwardly, like an off-balance titan. As he tried to rise, his hand slipped in his own blood, and he collapsed back to the floor with a weak moan.
Frenzy filled Torren’s eyes as Xallix half rose to his knees in a jerky motion, like when Airik’s suit had malfunctioned on the cliffs, only not as bad. Torren pushed himself up, too, and grabbed Xallix’s wrist, but he lacked the strength to keep the gun from being pressed against his chest.
In the quiet, she heard a woman’s cries and Iver’s hushed encouragement to go a little faster, that she’d almost freed him.
Time slowed into a blur as Xallix’s finger gently tapped the trigger.
A pinprick of light blazed between the end of the gun and Torren’s chest. It grew outward, like paper set on fire.
Torren looked down, letting out a small huff as if surprised. Then he turned to Airik, his eyes blown wide with confusion. They glimmered, and for a moment, Nora thought she saw a little boy who had never been allowed to exist.
The white light consumed the rest of his chest, and his head fell forward. Xallix let the gun go, still trapped in Torren’s clenched hand. He kicked Torren off his wrist, then scrambled for the kudra spike he’d dropped.
The corner of Torren’s mouth curled into the slightest smile. Somehow he found the strength to push against the floor, flipping himself onto his side.
In the center of Torren’s chest, where his heart and other organs should have been, was a near-perfect circle of nothing, bordered by charred flesh. The wall behind him gleamed, visible through the hole, reflecting the glow of the setting suns outside.
Torren tried to speak, but without lungs, no air could power his final words.
An immense tremor passed from Airik to her.
His body went rigid, and he clutched her so tightly she was certain he’d tear pieces of flesh from her body.
On the edge of her hearing, she heard someone begging someone else not to move, saying he could fix everything if someone could just give him his bloody glove.
Air rushed past Nora’s cheeks as Airik—an engine powered by wrath, evident in his roar—exploded upward and claimed his sword. Its tip dragged along the metal desk, screaming along with its wielder.
He charged toward Xallix, who now stood armed with kudra pointed toward him.
Terrified and not knowing where to look, Nora’s eyes dropped to Torren, who still faced her. What little was left of the purple glow in his eye fizzled, and his face went slack.
She heard a soft whimper, forcing her to tear her eyes away from Airik’s brother.
Lucky lay where Torren had dropped him, but at some point he had turned himself upright to face Nora. He struggled to keep his fading eyes open. The moment Nora found him, he managed a puppyish smile.
Nora crept toward him, feeling the vibrations of Airik and Xallix’s struggle through the floor. “You did good,” she called to him, even though she didn’t know what he had done. “We’re gonna put you back in the healing pod and—”
Two large hands, remarkable in how smooth the palms were, wrapped around her ankles and pulled her back just as she reached Lucky.
“I’m sorry, darling.” Iver, who had somehow escaped the cuffs, yanked her across the floor to the far wall he’d just been bound to. “But if your prince survives, he’ll gut me for not keeping you down.” He shoved Nora into a set of frail arms.
The woman grabbed her hand. Nora jerked back, but the woman dug her nails into Nora’s wrist, holding her back. “You’re making things worse,” she said in a surprisingly admonishing tone.
Iver collapsed beside them, himself quite weak, but raised his hand, clad in the black glove with silver claw tips. Two of the claws came forward, separating from his hand, and flew toward Lucky.
The claws thinned and elongated until they resembled something like chopsticks. Iver twisted and turned his hand, which manipulated the sticks, plucking the kudra from Lucky’s tail. He made a weak bark, baring his teeth. Three of his four canines were broken.
The rest of Nora listened to Airik—the stomps of his boots and the grunts of his breath. As long as he kept moving in a pattern, she knew he would be okay.
After the third and final spike had been pulled from Lucky’s tail, the exhausted creature made a low yelp, and his eyes fell shut.
Iver’s claws threw the kudra spikes down the ramp, out of sight.
The metal spikes then returned to Lucky, hooked under the bow-collar Airik had tied onto him, and dragged him to where they sat.
Nora sprang up, but Iver pulled her back down.
“The prince must have exceptional patience—you’re determined to kill yourself.” Iver shoved her back against the wall, bringing his face close. His red eyes, bright with anger, bored into hers. “Get water. For your little pet. Now.”
Nora gaped at him—frozen and useless, as she always had been. Her head swiveled to Lucky, then back to Airik, still grappling with Xallix. An impossible fight between supercharged armor and a man. “I-I can’t,” she sobbed. “I won’t leave them.”
Rolling his eyes, Iver looked past her toward the woman. “Are you strong enough to fetch water? Lots of it—in case there’s a…mishap.”
Nora heard the slow shuffle of footsteps behind her, then the slide of the hall door as it opened and shut.
Seizing the brief distraction, Nora lunged to get up. Iver caught her by the loop at her waist, and she hit the floor.
“Stop,” he hissed. Iver helped her sit but kept a firm grip on the back of her neck. “A morazir won’t be killed—not unless distracted.” He said this not ten feet from where Torren lay, his eyes and smile extinguished.
“Now look at your sweetheart,” he said, both kind and mocking at once. “This is what’s known as a morazir’s death flow. Would you like to know their legend?”
Airik’s blade came down on Xallix’s neck, but just before contact, it bounced back like it had hit jelly, sending Airik nearly to the ground.
“No,” Nora cried, flailing, trying to break free.
Raining blows, from above and the sides, Airik forced Xallix to move backward through the narrow space between the desk and the wall of the command hall. But each time, Airik’s sword would not land a hit, somehow repelled.