12. Leah #2
I try to keep it quick. Filippa was right to say that my best option is to keep it short when he’s out for blood like this.
His initial attack is quick and direct; after my fight with Larius, he has no reason to think he needs anything else.
But I’m much faster than I let on, certainly quicker than someone Keros’s size and density.
I sidestep and spin, staying low and grazing my sword across the bottom of his breastplate as I go.
“One,” I call out, making sure Keros knows he’s a strike down.
He stops for a second, as if he can’t quite process what just happened.
I don’t give him the luxury of time to figure it out, diving at him.
He blocks my first swing, kicking me in the knee so hard I nearly crumple to the ground—for real this time.
But as my leg rolls out with the force of his blow, I go with it, using the momentum to fall forward onto my other foot, spinning my sword around and driving it up and back.
Without Swiftwing, I doubt this strike would connect, but the sword does its job, tugging my hand into place at the right moment to slide past Keros’s defenses and jab him in the chest.
“Two,” I call, unable to keep the satisfaction from my voice.
Keros roars, rage possessing him as he grabs hold of my shoulder, yanking it back so I feel it groan in its socket. I arch in pain.
“That’s two strikes!” I scream again, lightning crackling into my palms. “Let me go or I swear I’ll blast you to Strata.”
Keros releases me, but not without calling over to Hasteed, who’s stationed near a different group.
“Captain! The nephilim’s trying to cheat!”
Hasteed looks over at us, her eyes shifting between Keros and me, calculating.
“No lightning, Fledgling Illidore. I said that at the start,” she calls, but the reprimand is relatively mild. I think she suspects Keros drove me to it.
I let the magic die in my hands and put several steps between myself and the blond brute. “Goddess, you’re a piece of shit, Keros,” I bite out.
His anger has stripped him of any smugness, and the hate on his face is raw. “You don’t belong here, runt. Why don’t you crawl back to whatever disgusting hole you came from?”
“And you just got beaten by a runt, so what does that say about you?” I point out. “Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t belong here.”
From the widening of his eyes, I can tell my barb has hit much deeper than I expected—striking right at the heart of whatever desperate insecurity makes him such a dick. I take the satisfaction of that with me as I turn to find my next sparring partner.
“Who was it?” Syrus says when he finds me alone in my room later that day and notices the throb in my shoulder. His touch feathers over my skin, exploring the injury. “Which pale-blood bastard hurt you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, sliding my hand under my shirt to massage the bruise Keros left. “It’s not like there’s anything you can do about it.”
My fingers brush against the other sore spot on my back—the edge of the ridges where the skin is stretched and tender. I sense Syrus’s attention sharpen.
“What are—” He stops, stiffening in my mind with realization. “You’re growing wings.”
“Yes,” I say, the word heavy with what we’re both not acknowledging. With every step forward into my ephilium identity, I’m a step farther away from him. “It’s a good thing. I’ll have a better chance of surviving the trials now.”
“Better, but still not guaranteed,” he says, his exasperation spiking in my mind. “And don’t think I didn’t hear what your grandfather said about the trials purging you of links to Infernum. That could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous because you wouldn’t be able to keep your hooks in me, you mean?” I throw back, the pain in my shoulder making me snappish.
“Because you have no idea what it involves,” he says witheringly. “I have Viz trying to find out what he can about this oracle, but the ephilium guard their secrets well.”
I hate that he’s right. The smart move would be for me to do research of my own. I’ve been distracted lately, between the argument with Filippa, my wings, and Syrus being impossible, but I should be gathering whatever information I can to help me prepare for the trials.
“I can ask around here. Maybe the fledglings are familiar with the oracle. I’ll have to be careful though; I don’t think I’m supposed to know that it’s involved in the trials,” I say.
“Just be careful in general,” he says, his voice softer now. “Please.”
I close my eyes as the word slides through my mind, the emotion in it startlingly painful.
Every time he sounds like he cares, it’s a slap in the face.
Because if he really cares for me, why did he do it?
Why was he controlling me, keeping me reined in on the path he chose when he knew it was the last thing I wanted?
I take a moment to harden my heart. Seeing as I can’t protect my mind, it’s the next best thing.
“I agreed to let you help me,” I begin, working to keep my voice neutral.
“Very generous of you,” Syrus cuts in.
“Yes, okay, I get something from it too. So selfish, accepting a favor to keep myself alive,” I reply.
Goddess, it’s easy to slip into bantering with him again. There’s a masochistic part of me that enjoys it even now. Still, I pull back the moment I realize what I’m doing, flattening my tone again.
“But that’s all, Syrus. I don’t want you barging into my mind whenever you like, and I don’t want to go over the past again. There’s no point. We stick to discussing the trials and my training. That’s all. Or I’ll have to try and get by without your help. Understood?”
Though I’m only speaking in my mind, my voice turns strained toward the end, wobbling pathetically. It says everything I can’t verbalize—that he’s making this too hard, and I can only do this if he’ll at least try to make it easier.
“All right,” he says after a long pause. He stops prowling around my mind, and I feel him settle in place. “But I have one condition.”
I grit my teeth, expecting the worst. “What?”
“I won’t possess you whenever I feel like it, but I will check in on you each evening, when you’re alone. It will be quick. We don’t even need to talk if we don’t have new information for each other. But I need to know you’re all right—alive, safe. Or safe enough, anyway. That’s my offer.”
It’s not terrible as compromises go. It’s better than worrying about him catching me out at all times of the day. And maybe I hear that hint of strain in his voice too. I need him to make things easier, and he needs this.
“Deal,” I say.
There’s a flare of emotion from him—vaguely like relief. “Then I will say goodnight for now.”
“Goodnight, Syrus,” I reply as his presence slips from my mind.
He keeps his word. Every night, usually when I’m already in bed, I feel a prickle up the back of my neck and he slides into my head.
He stays for a minute or two, during which time I can feel him scanning my body, searching for any injury or discomfort.
Then, when he’s satisfied that I’m not imminently dying, he leaves again.
Maybe it’s not easier, necessarily, being so close to him on a regular basis and anticipating his arrival with a mix of eagerness and dread. But at least it’s not for long—those few minutes only give the ache in my chest a little time to spike before it’s over.
Each day, the ridges on my back are a little more prominent, a little more uncomfortable.
Filippa says that’s normal—just growing pains—and I try to focus on our training, praying that they finish developing before the next trial.
Filippa is more stressed by the day, likely because our lessons are getting more complex, moving slowly onto things that seem new even to my fellow fledglings.
And though I feel for my cousin, it’s nice not to be the only one who has no idea what’s going on for a change.
At least, until we get to one particular lesson.
“Listen up, hatchlings!” Baxir says, striding across the field as we hurry to keep up with him—one of his giant strides is about three of mine. “We’ll be going over runic protections today, what they look like and how to neutralize them.”
He stops at a chaotic pile of metal and leather. When I get closer, my little scavenger heart leaps.
Demon loot. Masses of it. Armor and weapons and kelaryn harnesses and shadow shields. This haul would sell for enough coin to feed a family for a year, maybe longer. And every item has at least a handful of Cyrax runes etched into it.
Ephilium speak the common tongue, just like Stratans, though they’d say humans took it from them.
Everyone prefers to conveniently ignore the fact that the language everyone uses to open and close rifts is Cyrax.
Ephilium definitely don’t speak Cyrax, and as far as I can tell, the runes are the only way they’ll touch demon magic.
But then rift runes are kind of outliers.
They’ve been in use so long I don’t think anyone ever really associates them with Infernum anymore, and they’re different enough in style and shape that there’s little crossover with regular Cyrax.
Like I say, convenient.
But as much as that allows the ephilium to mentally separate out rift runes from the rest of demonic culture, they’re ultimately shooting themselves in the foot.
My pet theory is demons’ extra powers are tied up in Cyrax—their magic is more versatile than the ephilium’s, and one of the places that’s most evident is their use of it on their weapons.