Chapter 5
Inkiri
Vergis’s expression was that of someone who’d been dealt a great shock when he came back, his eyes wide, his pupils wider, and his mouth a thin line.
“They’re all dead.” He spoke in English. He blinked, eyes going to the corpse. “I mean, not all of them are dead, but…the magic did something different here than it did back on Aer. A lot of them died.”
Lissir cocked his head. “I’m not sure I understand correctly.”
“He says all the humans are dead? Or most of them. Vergis, are you joking?”
He looked at me, his mouth working as if he had the words but couldn’t say them out loud. “No, I… This isn’t a joke. It’s like the magic just killed them. I don’t know why, but…there are newscasts about it. Of course, some survived, but no one knows what’s going on and…I don’t understand.”
Fellisse put a hand on his shoulder, clicked, and spoke in soothing, familial Lugarran. “If you need to rest, we can do that. May I ask, is your family well?”
Vergis looked at him. “Oh. Yeah. They’re—” He switched to Lugarra. “Yes. They’re well.”
Lissir came closer to me. “You still feel the mate call?”
“I do.”
He looked at the dead beast. “That’s good, but maybe we should find your mate quickly?”
“Yes.”
I was full of worry then, but I knew my mate was still out there. I thought it would be very easy to find him and make sure he was safe before anything else. At the time, I had no idea how long that would take.
Earth was strange, as I had expected, but the fear in the few people we met made it all the stranger. We offered to help where we could, of course. We were still protectors, whether we were on Aer or not. But more often than not, the survivors just ran when they saw us.
“Most humans are assholes,” Vergis said when that happened. It was something he would remind us of near constantly. “They see horns and blue skin, and they freak out, call you names, or throw shit at you.”
I tried to ignore this particular opinion of his and focus on the mate call, which pulled me, but not like I had expected.
I quickly found myself enormously grateful for the presence of my sentenmen and their willingness to stay and support me, especially since I couldn’t seem to find my mate, at all.
I knew he was somewhere close—somewhere in Ireland.
It was an island, but still large, and every day that I went out and searched but found nothing, I was all the gladder to come home to my sentenmen.
In between all of that, we did what we could for the humans we met, those who would accept our help.
Whatever had happened on Earth in seemingly the blink of an eye, it had changed everything about that world, everything I had once hoped I would get to see and understand better.
The humans called it the apocalypse sometimes.
It was not a word that translated well, but it meant loss, in so many ways.
It also meant worry for the mate I only knew was alive because I felt him.
Two years I spent searching and desperately hoping that my mate was safe, that he was well. That I would find him soon, and that he would want me. Or that he would allow me to see him to safety even if he didn’t want me.
Two years that were rewarded in the end.
While I searched, the others made a home of sorts.
It was good thinking, and clearer thinking than I had been capable of, given the single-minded focus I had, my mind longing to know him, my skin aching to feel him.
Vergis had been the one to find the house and get us to move in, saying most of the buildings were no good since our horns made us taller than the average human.
He also complained about the utter simplicity of standard human bathrooms. We didn’t argue with his choice.
The house was an unfinished place stuck partway through construction, with all the people tasked with building it gone or needing to spend their efforts elsewhere.
It wasn’t as big as a Raiken, more like a normal home in a city, but it had some land around it, a garden that had not been shaped into anything but heaps of earth, and a hole for a pool.
One morning, after returning from another trip to search for my mate, I saw Vergis in the garden. He was busy setting down wards, and I walked over to join him.
“Vergis.”
He looked up from carving ko symbols into the walls of the house with his knife. The symbols had turned out more precise than I would have thought possible with a blade not made for the purpose.
“Do you need anything urgently? I’d like to get done with these. I don’t know what those beasts are, but I don’t want to end up having to wipe their guts off the windows when they get so close I have to blow their brains out.”
The small Earth animals he had snared for the magic had an idea of what was coming, judging by the twitching of their overlong ears. They were rabbits, or bunnies, although as far as I knew, you called them bunnies only when they were full white.
Since we had come here, we’d all switched mostly to English by silent agreement. If my mate was in Ireland, it was reasonable to assume he spoke English. We’d all be able to welcome him in his own tongue, or at least in one he understood.
English did however mean that I couldn’t as easily express what I was about to say, but I tried.
“Nothing like that. I hope all is well in your House, Vergis? After what we have seen and heard here, I have wondered.”
Vergis jerked his shoulders. “Thanks, but everyone’s fine. That all you wanted?”
It wasn’t, not quite. “If you are certain you are not needed there, we’re happy to keep you with us.
” I struggled to find the right words. Vergis shouldn’t feel obligated to be here and help me when I had nothing left to give him in return, nothing but the love I owed every other member of the sentenmen.
Nothing like what he truly wanted from me.
He sighed. “Look, I don’t have anywhere to be right now, and you need someone to keep Nokim from raiding every tea shop in a twenty-mile radius. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
“Okay.”
I rolled the word around in my mouth. Depending on context and inflection, it could mean so many things, and all those times Vergis had said he was okay, I had never been sure whether he really was.
After two years, I had entertained many fantasies about my mate. We had all seen shows and movies together here on Earth, and since I’d had so much access to human books and lots of time, my reading speed had much improved.
It was even easier to think in English now, and since we’d met Donna, I’d forced myself to think of my mate not as “he” but “they.” I hoped they would let me prove myself, would not run, but listen instead.
I no longer remembered the number of conversations I’d mapped out in my own head, and in doing so, I had ended up asking Vergis for words and concepts I didn’t know.
When I did meet him, the day I finally found him and saw his face for the first time, it was his eyes that surprised me.
They were green, and for all the things I had imagined, I’d never imagined that.
I knew that the coloring occurred in humans, but it was rare, unlikely.
Then came his hair, an equally surprising coppery color.
The first few words we exchanged were nothing like what I’d imagined and practiced.
My sweet mate had been so very afraid then, and he’d been so close to getting hurt.
On our way home, excitement to introduce him to the others boiling in my belly, he’d watched me feed the magpies who had befriended me.
“You’ve come here to make friends with birds?” the small, fragile human who was my mate asked. Rory. His name was Rory, and like him, the name was strange and beautiful.
“No.” I have come here to find you, I thought, but kept the words to myself.
I didn’t want to overwhelm Rory and risk rejection because he thought me in any way unsuitable or too greedy.
As far as I could tell, he was a hangu. He smelled like a hangu.
A hangu you wished to get to know better and wanted to impress demanded careful attention and would want to set his own pace.
All of that was fine. All of this was better than anything I had imagined because it was real. One way or the other, my heart was his already.
Rory back then was not the same as he is now. Rory then wouldn’t have run toward danger like he was about to now.
Now, my mate had learned to use his magic, and he had decided to use it in order to save Kinnek. He was powerful, and to those who wished him or his dear ones harm, he would be frightening, I could see that, even if he couldn’t, even if he wasn’t trying to scare anyone.
He and Vergis grasped hands in the ko circle of Kinnek’s House, and while they prepared to do magic, I centered myself, my left hand resting on my swords.
I had trained to be a protector for most of my life, but my true purpose was to be Rory’s protector so he could focus on wielding his powerful magic. I would not fail him.
“I will protect you, sadir,” I said, and my mate looked at me with his beautiful eyes, their green as familiar as my own heartbeat.
He smiled, and my heart soared. Yes, our love lived in the mind and in our skin, and I knew my mate’s taste, salt, and musk, his desire rising to meet mine and vice versa.
I knew what the mate call was now, and more than that, I knew that the love that grew from it was something else entirely. The mate call was but a seed, and what we had, my Rory and I, it was a flower, ever-growing and constantly blooming. I would protect him with my life.