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With a deep, shuddering breath, she moved onward.
She arrived at the door of the eyrie’s private wing.
Resolve hardening the length of her jaw, she pushed open the massive oak door, revealing a dim-lit chamber filled with glowing crystals and rich draperies.
On a sumptuous divan at the centre of the room lay a woman deep in slumber.
Sana’a tracked with slow, ethereal deliberation to the foot of the bed, her hardened eyes fixed on the slumbering figure.
The sleeping woman stirred, her lips parting in a soft sigh.
Her dark hair spilled over the side of the pillow, and the white fur and feathers of her coverings.
Her face, once prepossessing, was twisted, and one wing was hidden under a wrap of bandages.
Sana’a gave a thin smile of satisfaction at the sight.
She stood for a moment, lost in her thoughts, until she spoke in a whisper, ‘This is the only way.’
Slipping two fingers into her suit’s small front waist pocket, she withdrew a slim, long, flat, transparent box made of SHärd glass.
Flicking it open with her forefinger, she pinched the air, and a slender crystal-like needle formed in her hands just as footsteps sounded, walking towards the chamber door.
With pursed lips, she flung her shroud back on over her head and disappeared into the ether just as the door pushed agape, and a vile face peeked in.
Kishan.
His eyes, squinted and reddened with drink, darted around, suspicious, as if sensing her presence.
She stood still, unmoving.
Convinced no one was in the shadows, he shrugged and withdrew.
The door closed in his wake with a soft thud.
The shikari threw back her hood and returned to her task.
Leaning over the woman in sleep, she reanimated the needle and extended it to the woman’s foot, to the curve above her heel.
Touching its precise and sharp end to the skin, she pushed it in with gentle force.
It infiltrated into the dermis and melted under the surface.
Her quarry shifted in bed and murmured.
Sana’a felt nothing but bitterness.
She had come so far, endured so much pain, all for this moment.
She hoped the SHärd sliver would complete the task she’d purposed for it.
With a deep, steadying breath, she slipped out of the room and left the slumbering woman behind.
The sab?r íkhara and fight arena was dark. Shadowed.
She flitted inside, inching along the edges in darkness.
Her heart stopped for an instant as a silhouette, burly and muscled, lumbered past, holding a light crystal to illuminate their way to the head.
