CHAPTER 30
brAX
The Sundering
Amournful wail pierces the darkness, leaking bitterness and heart-rending agony into the night. The dense Braxian forest stills beneath the high stone tower of the keep, all manner of creatures shrinking from the wrath of the Vatruke inside its walls.
Vos’s hands tremor, hovering over the too-still form of a babe wrapped in swaddling cloth.
“No,” she whimpers, her blue eyes flowing with the fresh tears of her grief. “No.”
The child was born weak, it had come too early, been too frail to survive. But she is no mere mortal, not a creature destined to succumb to the will of the fates. She is feyn, ancient and powerful, like the ancients who came before.
They fought to bind the fading threads of the child’s life to Terr.
Fought and won, tethering that life to the life force of their world.
Just as its fading heartbeat began to thrum in time with the rhythm of the oceans, the veils were torn.
The sundering wrenched away the tender budding threads of life they had so carefully woven.
“No,” she whispers.
Her mate rocks her in his arms, his face drawn with sorrow. A vain attempt to soothe the raw, permanent ache of her broken heart.
“Let me take the child, mi’ajna,” he begs in a near silent whisper, his lips buried deep within the long black of her hair.
“No,” she pleads, rocking the child at her breast.
“Please, mi’dair’a,” he says, “The child is gone.”
“No!” A brutal wave of power tears out of the female when she screams, expelling her rage into the room.
Her mate is torn from her side, thrown and pinned against the large stone walls of the tower. Eyes wide, he groans, straining against the gift that holds him. Until her power ebbs and he crumples to the floor.
He brushes the dust from his arms and collects himself, dropping a loving kiss on top of her head as he cups her cheek. Her eyes remain glued to the tiny bundle in her arms as he says, “I’ll bring the others to see the child before I take it.”
Salty pools of her sorrow form on the stone floor as she dips her head in a shallow nod and Kezik slips out of the room, into the dark of the corridor beyond.
“How is she?”
He startles at the sound of Muri’s voice. There is a trembling grief in her tone and a heavy weight of concern in the slow and cautious cadence of the question.
The female steps out of the shadows, her bright blue eyes ringed with red, shadows marring her fair cheeks. It’s obvious she shares in their grief. Out of them all, she had always been the most tenderhearted.
Waiting for his reply, she brushes a long lock of black hair over her shoulder and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Broken.” How else could he describe the female he left inside.
But Muri already knew. She didn’t have to ask what it meant to lose a child. No amount of time—centuries nor millennia—would soothe the ache of her sister’s heart. Just as time failed to mend her own.
“Will you speak with her?” His voice is thick with pleading when he asks.
“Of course.” She takes a determined step toward the door, collecting her strength, pausing to look back as she tells him, “The others are waiting.”
He nods as she turns on her heel, disappearing into the chamber beyond.
Kezik departs from the mournful cries of his mate, weaving through the dark stone halls toward their gathering place. He rounds the corner and finds them unmoved, still waiting by the large fire where they had come to greet the child.
Four males stand at a thick dark wood mantle soft from centuries of wear. Every stone of the hearth carved to remind them of their history. Of a time when the feyn lived alongside the rest of the fea, deep within the forests of Brax.
He dips his head in greeting. The room seems larger tonight, absent the two females he left behind.
The males greet him in turn, one with white hair and three with black, all with the striking blue eyes of the feyn.
He looses a long breath, a small relief washing over him when he sees the sadness in their eyes. They already know.
Two females sit beside one another on a large and heavily cushioned chair, both wearing long, thick braids of pure white.
The low thrum of their voices fades when they see him, his own sorrow reflected back in their eyes.
The white-haired male, Durek, approaches him and holds Kezik’s forehead against his own.
“I’m sorry, Kezik,” Durek says, “Each of us feels your loss as keenly as if it were our own.” It is not the frailty of grief that punctuates the quiet when he speaks.
It is his anger, the pure and unrelenting hatred for the feyn who caused this.
The feyn that shattered the world. “We will fix this.”
“It’s too late.” Kezik’s voice breaks.
None raise a voice to argue. For what could they say? None of them yet know the extent of their diminished power. Vos had been the first to suffer for it, but each know that, with time, such suffering will be shared by them all.
A shrill and bloodcurdling scream breaks the quiet, and every head whips toward the hall. Mere moments pass before they’ve moved through the corridor and into the room where he’d left his mate to grieve.
Muri is on her knees before the child, held by a fist gripping her hair, a feynstone blade at her throat.
“Do it!” Vos demands through clenched teeth.
“I can’t,” Muri says, her bottom lip trembling.
“Let her go, Vos!” Durek yells over the fracturing crack of thunder, followed by a web of lightning that illuminates the sky.
“Tell your mate to do as I say, and I will release her!” Vos yells over the sudden deluge of rain brought by Durek’s power.
“Kezik,” Durek growls in warning, “Calm your mate, before I end her.”
Kezik approaches the females cautiously.
His eyes flick from those of his mate’s to the dagger she fists, sending rivulets of blood down Muri’s neck to pool on the white silk of her dress.
He kneels beside her, cooing soothing words that soften the female’s steel.
She relaxes her grip on Muri’s hair and releases the blade to fall clattering upon the floor.
Muri tears away from her, rushing into Durek’s arms with a wracking sob of fear. Kezik alone seems unaffected by his own mate’s wrath, as he bundles her into his arms, smoothing the hair on top of her head.
“You’re selfish!” Vos yells across the room, her voice hoarse and weary. “The fates gift you the power of Shivay and you won’t use it to save the innocent at my feet!”
“The gift is not without sacrifice, Vos. You know that,” Durek growls in defense of his mate.
“I will pay the price,” Vos says, hot tears streaming down her face. “I will pay it!”
“No,” Kezik growls, silencing her.
“All we can ever do is trust the fates,” Muri says weakly.
“Foc. The. Fates,” Vos spits, “And foc the feyn.”
The storm rages in the dead of night, thunder booming with a loud crack and flicker as the winds pick up, howling through the ancient forests of Brax.
When dawn breaks the horizon the next morning the Braxian rains finally begin to ebb.
It is a new day, and life on Terr will never be the same.
The ancients tore the veils to save the humans, leaving their own species to a miserable fate.
Their power had been stripped from them, only a fifth of what they had known for millennia remained.
Perhaps they could have learned to live with it—had it not already cost them so much.
Durek left the moment Muri began to dream beside him. Unable to find sleep himself, too troubled and plagued with sorrow. His eyes are heavy when he returns to the keep, his head clouded by the foggy haze of exhaustion. Exhaustion that taunts him with the soft ghostly echoes of a crying child.
No. These are no ghostly echoes sent to torment his mind.
His feet quicken beneath him as he rushes through the halls, through deep shadows and bright panels of light cast by the dawn. Sliding to a halt when he sees her, he gasps, wide-eyed, “How?”
Vos beams at the newborn babe nestled in her arms as she rocks it.
“Vos.” He raises his voice, repeating the question, “How?”
“Muri,” she coos, smiling at the child. “Muri brought the child back.”
For all the joy the new mother holds in her arms, he is racked with an equal weight of dread.
He rushes toward their room, breath caught in his chest, heart thundering.
What price would the fates ask of his mate for the life of the child?
What price would she have been willing to pay for her sister’s happiness?
Too much. He already knows, the price is too high.
He bursts into their chamber, collapsing onto the bed beside his mate, gripping her shoulders and shaking her forcefully.
“Muri. Wake up.”
She moans, and he puffs out a sigh of relief. She’s alive. He takes her hands in his own and asks, “What have you done?”
Her smile is weak. “Did you see?”
He nods, offering her a small smile in return. Not willing to admit that it was terror and not joy he felt when he’d seen the child cradled in Vos’s arms.
“What was the price for the child’s life?” he asks.
She turns toward the balcony, unable to meet his eyes, when she says, “Terr.”
His brow pinches as he tries to discern her meaning.
“Shivay is in the child now,” she says, her voice quavering.
“Muri h—”
“I know.” Her eyes well with tears. “How many will die for the life of just one child? But how could I not?”
She turns toward him, a tear falling to stain the pillow below her cheek. “She would have hated me. Just as I hate myself for letting our own child—”
“Stop,” he demands softly, wiping the salty trail from her cheek. “Don’t ever say that again.”
He brushes his lips against her forehead, whispering, “You are a bright light in all the darkness of this world. Your warm heart, a remnant of something I’d have forgotten long ago if you hadn’t been by my side.
” He sweeps his fingers across her cheeks.
“Let go of your regret, mi’ajna. There is no room in our lives for it. ”
She meets his lips with her own, a promise to let go of the past. One they both know she will never be able to keep, for neither time nor abundant joy can heal the wound in her heart.