Using her as a shield.
A youngling Slátra certainly won’t risk the well-being of, not even to strike …him.
She opens her maw. Lets Tyroth Vaegor see the roil of flame sitting onher tongue, lashing between her teeth. Feeds on the panickedwhumpof his heart that echoes like a roar to her sensitive hearing, wondering if he’ll do to her what he did to her Precious Little One.
If he’ll dare.
Perhaps he senses the brewing carnage he would release if he tried to prevent Slátra from reaching Elluin’s body, because his lips stay firmly shut.
Slátra turns her attention. Softly nudges Elluin’s side, sniffing the sharp piece of stone still protruding from her chest.
A low whine moves up her throat.
Gently, she slides Elluin off the shard. Broken and limp, too easily folding into the cup of Slátra’s large claw.
Her attention snaps back to the male clinging to the youngling that isn’t his while she pulls Elluin close to her chest, snarling again. Emitting a quiet promise that Tyroth’s time will come.
She’ll make it so.
She retreats more delicately than she came, tipping her head to the sky the moment she’s free of the den that smells too much like her Precious Little One’s end. Of her fiery spirit raging until her final breath.
The world needs her, but it’s not yet broken enough to realize it.
Slátra lifts her wings and drops her hold on the crumbling turret, launching into the sky—milky eyes cast toward her beautiful sleeping Allume, bound around Elluin’s perished kin.
And she flies. Up toward them in a way she’s imagined many times since she watched Allume curl into a ball and loosen herself from life. She just never imagined it would be like this. That she would ascend with such sadness in her heart, holding her Precious Little One … not so little anymore.
With a Precious Little One of her own.
She flies until the atmosphere grows cold and quiet—too far for Clode to dwell—and pulls her final breath before gravity loses its grip on her. She swoops close enough to paint her tail across Allume’s little wing, then tucks into herself.
Curling around Elluin like she’s cradling a most precious egg, she finds a quiet spot amongst her many beloved ancestors …
Except she doesn’t give herself to death.
Instead, she unbinds that silver ribbon tangled through the fibers of her soul, gently unwinds every loose thread, until it’s a restless spool surging with the very essence of existence. Then, she shifts it from behind her ribs.
Plants it deep in Elluin’s chest.
Though it disappears, swallowed by the terminal chasm within her Precious Little One, she finds quiet peace in the hope that it will take root. That it will grow and pulse with life so Elluin has the chance to come back to her own Precious Little One.
So she has the chance to tell her that she loves her.
With that hope blazing in her consciousness, Slátra releases her final icy exhale upon Elluin’s brow before her body turns to stone.
Iopen my eyes to find myself cupped within Slátra’s claw, shielded by her wing, her body bundled around me like a moon. A frosty embrace to battle the bloodlust slugging through me with thick, searing pulses.
Tyroth Vaegor murdered me. Ripped my newborn daughter from my breast. Planted the diadem on her brow—a burden that belonged tome.
There is not a force in this world that’s great enough for him to hide behind. I will have vengeance. For Kaan.
For Kyzari.
For Slátra.
And for my-fucking-self.
Sereme moves through the frigid smog, a beacon of poise and stature in the dull carnage of her surroundings, purple-tufted coat clinched against her frame. She pecks glances between a small metal contraption sitting in her gloved palm and the moon-sprinkled sky barely visible through the haze, mapping her location with each curt step through the snow.
