forty-nine #2
Eyne slammed her hand on Sulim’s shoulder before looking out at the organized chaos of people inching forward while armed mercenaries barked at them where to go.
“Finish your job so you can get your happily ever after, princess.”
They embraced moments before Sulim assigned Eyne and Nem their own cruisers that were now ready in the docking bay.
The man in charge of the line ordered the next ten into the cruisers, and it was a mad stampede that required him and another man to hold everyone else back.
Somewhere… Sulim handed her clipboard to Olma, who came down to see how it was going.
There are people still in town, playing cards, cleaning, eating, and either convinced that nothing’s going to happen…
or that this is their moment to make peace with the Void.
“Where are you going?” Olma asked.
Sulim pointed upward. “I’m going to check in with Sonall. He was sweeping the fortress for any stragglers.”
“And you know where he is now?”
Sulim was already gone. She knows. Olma knew that Sulim had no intent of looking for Sonall, whose job could have changed in the past two hours for all Sulim knew.
They hadn’t been in contact since receiving their orders.
Instead, she was heading to the chief’s apartment, where she hoped to find Mira.
But Mira was not there. Sulim enjoyed a moment of peace before rushing through the bathroom and refocusing her attention on the matter at hand.
Where are we going when this is over? She stood with her back toward the door, contemplating the furniture along the wall.
Someone—maybe Olma, maybe not—had hung a tasteful painting of farmers in a field that reminded Sulim of her home on Qahrain.
I can’t imagine she would go there with me…
maybe we are going to Yahzen… if we can…
She pivoted on her foot, determined to check the chief’s office before heading back down to the chaotic scene at the hangar. I just wanted to see her for a moment. A hug. An embrace of strength. Mira was good for those things, be she chief or priestess.
Someone stood in the front of the room. It was not Mira.
“Ah—”
The words and wind were knocked right out of Sulim, who clutched her throat and struggled to breathe.
Gravity claimed her body, yet she couldn’t fall, for the man with long blond hair and a hand that moved to the tune of Sulim’s ragged breaths artificially propped her up.
All Sulim could move were the hands on her throat…
and even those threatened to fall away if she didn’t mind her concentration.
What concentration!
Perhaps this was it. One false step, one pull of fancy toward her beloved, and she was gone.
Those were the thoughts bombarding Sulim’s head as she realized a slight trickle of breath rippled down her throat, barely keeping her from turning blue as Nerilis Dunsman came closer, fingers itching to squeeze the air and therefore the last of Sulim’s breath from her lungs.
“You must be the one that has her smitten.” Nerilis was close enough to touch, but Sulim couldn’t hit him if she tried. “A human. Of course you are.”
A single sound squeaked from her throat. Sulim didn’t know what she was trying to say.
“Why hasn’t she escaped with you yet, then?”
Nerilis stared into Sulim’s widening eyes as she grasped her throat and gasped for air that would not come easier.
“The whole universe is hers. I’ve made it clear that I’m taking this place. Yet she persists in condemning her own soulmate to death.”
He released her, Sulim crying out in relief as she weakly crumpled to the floor and inhaled the deepest breaths she could collect. “Interesting.”
Sulim fought back the conditioned instinct to attack.
Even if this weren’t Mira’s father, nothing guaranteed suicide more than following in Hannu’s footsteps.
And I’m not a sorceress… Sulim had her firearm, but it would be useless against a man who could stop bullets with a flick of his wrist.
He could even turn them back on me. Was that before or after he slammed Sulim against the wall or disemboweled her with disinterest on his long face?
She knew, despite the panic welling within her, that the best chance at survival was staying still and not making eye contact. He’ll kill me the first chance he gets. Nerilis didn’t care that Sulim was his daughter’s soulmate. The man was hungry, and Sulim was on the menu.
“I suppose such stubbornness is to be expected from my own child.”
Was he speaking in Basic for Sulim’s benefit?
Or was it as natural to him as his native Julah?
Because Sulim could understand one, but not the other.
Not even after a few years of Mira trying to teach her. “Your necklace. I must have it.”
“Wha—”
Her life flashed before her eyes as Nerilis reached down and placed his hand right on Sulim’s chest. I’m dead. I’m fucking dead! Yet the formidable sorcerer was more interested in yanking Mira’s gift to her off her throat than caving in her chest and feasting on her heart.
“Thank you for keeping watch over the Third Piece,” he said. “I wonder if—”
“Nerilis!”
Both he and Sulim were distracted by Ramaron’s sudden appearance at the apartment entrance, his cane snatched between both hands.
As one sorcerer faced off against the other, Sulim used the opportunity to pull herself along the floor, hoping to avoid Nerilis’s detection as he was distracted by the only man who had a chance of going up against him.
“You must stop this madness!” Those words echoed over Sulim’s head as she slithered into the bedroom. The closet. I’ve got to get to the closet. The false wall in the back would protect her for now—she hoped. “Do you know what you’re doing? This isn’t what she—”
Sulim had made it all the way into the other room when she heard a loud thud against the floor. She held her breath, afraid to move in case it drew Nerilis’s attention back toward her.
“I’m sorry.” Heavy footsteps traipsed through the apartment. Just when Sulim thought he was gone, Nerilis said, “Perhaps things are going better in another world, asha.”
She waited a few minutes before peering around the doorway and realizing that Nerilis was gone. However, where there had been nowhere before, a body lay across a throw rug. Ramaron wasn’t breathing.
“Shit!” Sulim rushed forward, almost landing on her firearm when she flung herself onto the floor and checked Master Marlow’s vitals.
There remained a faint heartbeat, but she had no idea what Nerilis had done to him, let alone what kind of first aid might work on a julah manipulated into unconsciousness by someone more powerful than him.
The only sign of injury was what looked like a snakebite on his throat.
She moved his cane to the side and looked around the room, just in case there were still signs of Nerilis. She grabbed her communicator off her belt and held it up to her mouth.
I don’t know who to call.
Mira, Kema, and even Sonall flashed before her eyes, but each brought a serious problem of their own. It wasn’t until Sulim decided to hail Mira back to her apartment that Sulim saw the glittering blue nearby and almost dropped her communicator on top of Ramaron’s chest.
“Who are you!” she snapped, hand on firearm, ready to scuttle away.
The woman approaching was sorely out of place in her black gown trimmed in white and blue, dark, rivuleting tresses billowing over her shoulders as she clasped her hands before her and thought nothing of antagonizing Sulim with a small smile.
Sulim brandished her firearm at the woman. “Answer me!”
A delicate finger pointed downward. Sulim soon saw that a serpent-like line attached the woman’s feet to the man lying unconscious on the floor.
“He has taken the final piece necessary to bring ruin to this world.”
A voice as soft as silk and as heavy as the tremors in Sulim’s heart spilled from two thin lips.
“In trying to stop his soulmate, he has unknowingly released me.”
The woman with blindingly blue eyes turned toward Sulim.
She did not offer to help her up, but she was so non-threatening that even a mercenary like Sulim lowered her firearm.
“As part of Her plan. He doesn’t even know.”
“Who are you?” Sulim demanded again, albeit with a tickle in her throat.
A blue haze enveloped the woman who now stood by Ramaron’s body. “I am nobody you need to remember.” She knelt, skirt billowing outward and hair slipping off her arms. “Let me be free.”
She placed her palm against the serpent slithering between her and Ramaron.
At first, it thrashed against the floor, tongue lashing the air and glowing, golden eyes full of the same panic that Sulim had felt only a moment before.
Yet she could only watch on in wonder as the serpent was tamed, its blackened scales slithering up the woman’s arm until it rested around her throat. She ceased to be attached to Ramaron.
“I may be the first to ever Cross through millions of years and a whole reality,” she said. “There is only one way home for me now.” She glanced over her shoulder at Sulim. “We will meet at the End of All Thing soon. Let us hope that it is good tidings.”
Sulim swore that she didn’t blink, yet the woman was gone. All that was left in her wake was one tattered mercenary, and one unconscious julah who might never awaken again.
She still didn’t know who to call.