Chapter 9 #3
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, not trusting my voice. I simply nod.
Caius barks orders at us like we are soldiers in his squadron. I grit my teeth to hold back a retort. I’m too tired to fight with Caius. As much as I hate to admit it, he’s the only one in our party who has any idea what he’s doing out here.
The trees have grown wide as the apartments in the city proper, with branches that can afford sleeping space for two.
“We’ll take that one.” Cressida slings her arm through mine, gaze turned up, locked on a branch three meters above us.
“That’s fine. Dom and I will take that branch.” Caius nods at a branch to the side and about two meters higher. Dom glares at Caius before starting the climb, not happy with being stuck with the dark prince, I’m sure, but not willing to argue the point.
Tucked into our bedrolls, and tied to the branch, Cress and I are close enough that our shoulders touch. I hear scuffling from the branch above.
“Shove off, won’t you?”
“Where do you want me to go, Dominic?”
“Oinarriajī seems fitting. Don’t they reserve the deepest levels of hell for monsters like you?”
It’s quiet for a stretch, the noises of the night growing deathly loud. “Perhaps, but you will not be the one to send me there. It’s a long journey ahead. You’d better learn to deal with a demon in your midst.”
Dom scoffs. “You really don’t feel any remorse for what you did, do you?”
Caius’ voice drops to the tenor of a rockslide. “What do you know of it?”
“You could have come to us. Even if you told Nero. You could have warned Damascus! Given him a chance…I thought you were one of us. But the only person you care about is yourself—”
A screech tears through the night. I bolt up in my bedroll, searching the dark, but the canopy overhead has blotted out any semblance of light. The dark is oppressive in its totality.
A green glow tumbles down from the branch above. Dom stands with a glow globe in his palm.
“Put that away!” Caius roars. But it’s too late.
A feathered beast swoops overhead. Landing before Dom, it stands at twice his height.
The glow of the moss tints its leaf litter-toned feathers a shade of green, the tips glinting in the low light, summoning images of the creatures of Oinarriajī.
The creature squawks, gnashing its sharp beak, and for a moment I believe that it could have once been an owl, before its form was twisted and remade into a monster made to devour men.
“Dominic,” Caius says, his voice measured. “Slowly, put the glow globe away.”
Dom’s fingers tremble as he moves to cover the light. The owl-monster splays its wings out, a piercing shriek ripping through the branches, sending a wave of air that knocks Dom back. The glow globe slips from his fingers and falls to the forest floor below.
Now all I can make out are shadows above. “We have to help.”
Cressida comes to stand at my side, watching the shadows tangle on the branch above. The monster stalks forward, its wing tips drawing furrows into the branch with each step, its flight wings edged like blades.
“Dom, get behind me.” Caius stands with his sword drawn and full attention on the beast.
When Dom has nearly backed into Caius, the bird lunges.
Caius drives forward to meet its beak with his blade.
The clang of metal striking metal rings through the stillness.
Dom’s foot slips, dragging him from the branch.
He falls. His tether saves him from a broken neck, but now he is suspended in a tangle of ropes beneath the branch.
The owl turns, observing the easy meal. Adjusting, it sinks long talons into the branch, twisting to snap at Dom. Caius lunges for its back. Sinking his blade into its flesh. It shrieks, tossing about to try to dislodge Caius, who holds tight to the hilt of his sword.
The sky stones tingle at my neck, my hands warming. “I have an idea.”
I snatch a coil of rope, slinging it around my body before I start the climb for the next branch.
I’m surprised to find Cressida at my heels, but when I swing up over the branch, she scuttles under, heading for Dom.
The creature is occupied with Caius still clinging to its back, clutching the hilt of his buried sword in one hand and stabbing repeatedly into its feathers with a dagger clutched in his other.
It appears to do little more than annoy the beast.
I see my opening. After securing the rope to an anchor, I dash forward, ducking under a wing that sings like a blade over my head, then thuds into the branch beside me, carving into the wood like it’s nothing more than sticky rice.
“Oliviana! Get out of here!” Caius roars.
“Not yet,” I grit through my teeth. I duck around the bird, now focused on me, taking snaps at the air where I had been moments before.
“That should do it.” I turn to dash for the safety of the trunk but am yanked backward, my coat caught in the beak of the beast. It tosses me into the air.
I flail, looking for anything I can cling to, any hope of climbing to safety, but there is only air then a warm spray of blood, the iron saturating my breath.
Then Caius’ arms are wound around me, his blade bathed in crimson held between us and the creature as we slip through the night, falling into the green glow below.
Caius crushes me against him just before the line goes taut.
We hang suspended for only a moment before Caius eases the line down, all the while his focus is caught on the owl above.
As soon as we hit the forest floor, he releases me, shoving me behind him, his blade held at the ready, but when the owl dives from the branch, it only makes it half the distance to the forest floor before it’s jerked violently backwards, the ropes I tied around its talons pulling taught.
It flails on the line, screeching into the night, but there is no escape for it now.
“Are you alright?” Dom pulls me to my feet.
“Are you?” I ask.
“This one cut me down.” Dom smiles and nods at Cressida, who has moved up to her brother’s side, both focused on the beast.
“What is it?” Dom asks.
“A monster of The Above. One of many. You’d do well to keep your voices low and put that light away. We don’t want to summon any more,” Caius snaps.
With no other choice, we collect our things and hurry through the darkness, working to put distance between us and the creature we left swinging in the trees.
When we finally settle for the night, it’s at the base of a great cedar, the illusion of safety in the canopy shattered with a screech of terror.
Better to fight with our feet on the ground.
And while Caius won’t let us use the glow globes, he does allow a fire.
“The creatures crave the light of the below; it calls to them, but they fear the power of fire,” Cressida says in a way that makes me believe it’s a recitation.
I’m too tired to ask, so instead I snuggle into my bedroll warmed by a roaring fire at my feet, sending lazy sparks floating on the inky breeze. My vision goes hazy, the weight of my eyelids calling me to sleep.
“I’ll take first watch.” Caius stands up from a log near the fire.
“I’ll join you.” Dom comes to his feet beside Caius.
Any notion I had of sleep washes away as I watch the two men glare at each other. This was going to be a problem. I groan and slowly extract myself from my bedroll.
“I’ll take first watch with Caius. You and Cressida can take second.”
Caius grunts. “You all need your rest. It would be better if we each took single shifts. You’ll get more sleep.”
With the exhaustion pressing into my bones, I can’t fault Caius’ logic.
I would die for a full night’s sleep, but the hard set of Dom’s jaw tells me there will be no compromise.
He doesn’t trust Caius, hells, I don’t either, but I’m also certain he isn’t waiting to slit our throats in our sleep.
Why drag us a two-day’s journey from Bǎodela and battle a monster of The Above when he could just as easily have disposed of us in The Below?
No, hurting us didn’t further Caius’ cause…
what was Caius’ cause? Why are you here, Caius?
My question echoes in my mind. His answer is always me. My head swims with the realization.
“I’ll be fine. Dom, get some rest. I’ll wake you when it’s time to change watch.”
The muscle in Caius’ jaw feathers. “Fine, I’ll do a perimeter check. Stay here.” He pins me with a stare, and as much as I want to challenge him, my body craves the comfort of sitting near the fire.
“Fine.” I plop down on the log nearest the flames.
The shadows cast by the fire crease in the worry lines on Dom’s face before he relents, settling down into his bedroll next to my now-empty one.
How I wish I were drifting off to sleep now.
Cressida has her bedroll pulled up over her head, and if she heard any of the exchange, she shows no sign of it.
Lulled by the rhythmic shifting of the flames, I startle when Caius returns.
“This is how you keep watch?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.
“Save it, Caius. This wasn’t my idea.”
I can feel Caius studying me, though I keep my eyes locked on the embers of the consumed log.
“You’re in my seat,” Caius finally says.
“Don’t be petty, Caius. You can sit over there.” I nod to the log across from me.
Caius sits down next to me, so close we are touching from knee to shoulder.
“Oh my gods, are you going to be a child this whole journey?” I shove against his shoulder, but he is an immovable boulder.
Caius grins. “As much joy as it brings me to see that my mere presence irks you, I need to sit here because if there is an attack, it will most likely come from the deep wooded area over there.” Caius tips his chin across the fire.
“The river is behind us here and acts as a natural barrier. It’s unlikely that anything will come from that direction, and as skilled as you may be with those hands, Master Tinkerer, I have not seen such skill displayed in your observations. ”
“Oh.” My cheeks heat and I’m grateful for the cover of darkness.
“Oh,” Caius mimics my words, smiling as his gaze rakes over me, and I’m certain he reads me like a book.
The fire burns down to glowing embers, and I jerk awake. I hadn’t even realized I had closed my eyes.
Caius sighs beside me. He pats his shoulder. “I won’t tell Dom if you don’t.”
“I can’t—”
“Oliviana, there is a long journey ahead. You are going to need your rest, or you are going to slow us down.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine, and I will wake you both at watch change, like Dom insisted.”
My gut twists at the thought of betraying Dom’s trust.
“He is going to have to learn to trust me again,” Caius says.
“Because it worked out so well for us the first time,” I snap.
I feel him stiffen beside me. While the words are true, I instantly feel guilty for saying them.
Caius turns slowly to face me. “I can’t change the past, Oliviana. Hate me if you must, Ilunahēi'àn knows I deserve it. But for the sake of every god in the pantheon, I need you to trust me in this. I will get you to the hatching grounds, or I will die trying. I swear to you, my life.”
A life for a life. He took away the most important person to me in The Below, and now he is offering me his in restitution. It’s too little, and yet what more can I ask of him?
I sigh and lean my head against his shoulder in answer. I feel Caius relax under me as I drift off to sleep.