The sephear reached casually to their waist and drew a tiny little blade from a built-in holster, its metal flashing in the dim light of the alley.Another wave of panic surged in me and I tried to thrash beneath the paledrian's massive weight, the hand on my skull pushing harder and harder until I thought something mightactuallygive way.
Distantly, I remembered Tam saying I had a thick skull, and it was that thought – bright and sudden and nearly delirious – that made a startled laugh tear from my aching lungs.I'd been stupid, hadn't I?Here I was, alone in the shit-end of Radiant Ward, when I could have been safe by Araxis's side.Weeks of training for absolutelynothing– and all I wanted now, with a keen, desperate throb deep in my chest, was to kiss him one last time.I'd die thinking of him, like I thought I might on the sands – except this time, it was my own stupid fucking choices that put me here.
The sephear ignored my little breakdown – they couldn't know why my eyes had suddenly filled with tears, why my nose had started running as I fought to gasp for air, lost somewhere between laughing and crying – stepping forward with a hungry gleam in their massive eyes, drawing near to the wall where the paledrian had my right hand slammed hard into the soot-streaked metal, my wrist as good as held in a vise.I sucked in a breathy, startled gasp as they approached, the blade winking in the alley as they nudged the tip toward the juncture of my pinky finger.
The sephear tilted their yellow head, blinking at me thoughtfully.The tip of the blade touched my skin, cold as ice, and I felt the pinprick of pain as it pressed into my soft skin.
And then the pressure was gone, the sephear rocking back slightly to look at me."Will he be loud, do you think?"they asked mildly, sounding almost bored."We don't want to be interrupted by a curious passerby."Then they tapped something on their dark armour and the air shivered against my eardrums, a new pressure settling over me as I realized that, until this very moment, I could have just started screaming.Then again, who the fuck would come and help in the Graves?
You'd better get there first, Tam had said.But what if I wasn't first?What if none of it had worked and all I had was gritting my teeth and just accepting whatever came my way?I’d done that before on Seraphim.I knew how to fall into the nothingness and let everything justhappen.
But the problem, Tam had said, was my instincts.And he'd been right: at that exact moment, my instinct – as the sephear leaned in again, tracing the cold blade across the crease where my pinky met my palm, an almost loving caress – was to freeze, to placate, to try and talk my way out of whatever the fuck this was; to go pliant and cooperative.I could feel, even, the words starting to build in my throat, threatening to spill out from my lips.I could feel that I wanted to beg, to bargain, to plead –
Instead, as the sephear flashed their sharp, wet smile at me and the paledrian got a hungry look in his bright eyes, I did something that I'd been working on with Tam.A back-up, he'd called it.A way to put my shit instincts to good use through the art of surprise.
I went completely limp.
The sudden change startled the paledrian, who was using his bulk to press meagainstthe wall, not to keep me upright and on my feet – and despite the fact that people seemed to think that being a dancer had made me delicate, I was heavy and well-muscled, even before Tam's training.The paledrian slipped, grip failing him, and I fell to the ground.
It bought me all of two seconds, but I knew how to use those two seconds.I dropped, I slapped my wristband with my weak hand as white-hot pain splintered up my arm, and I hit the fancy emergency activation trigger that only the really expensive wristbands had but that ofcoursewas a feature in Silver Sea's hand-me-down.All at once, the lights on my wristband activated and the sephear snarled above me, while the paledrian wrenched back and then kicked forward with his massive, coiled muscles.
I grunted, a shockwave of pain radiating from where the blow had landed near my hip.The paledrian stomped hard on my forearm, pinning it down in a half-crouch while one of his hands wrenched the wristband off me, ripping a gouge into my arm in the process, before he snapped the band in two.The lights cut off, but it didn't matter: the message would have gone out.
As the paledrian leaned close, kneeling down and slamming his hands against my shoulders to pin me down, I spit on his fucking face."Go fuck yourself," I hissed even as one hand snapped to my throat to try and shut me up, "and you can tell whoever the fucksent youthat they can –"
The sephear half-turned from where they loomed above me, still clutching the tiny blade, their yellow skin glistening in the murky orange lights overhead."Well, shit," they said, reaching to grab another, larger blade from their side and shifting into a ready stance."Got another one."
The paledrian surged upwards, giving me another kick for good measure – one that made a hard, ragged cry tear from my throat, all the muscles in my core spasming with the sudden pulse of nauseating pain – and hauled another baton from a holster hidden along the edge of one massive thigh.But it didn't matter, because as the sephear squared off and the paledrian flicked the baton open, a figure came flying down the alley and launched into the fray.
For one dizzying moment as I lay there on the ground, curled instinctively inward to protect myself from further blows to the soft skin of my belly, I thought it was Araxis – the flash of white skin, the certainty of movement, there to save the day and save my life again.Impossible.I'djustcalled for help, and he wasn't eveninRadiant Ward.I'djust –
And then I realized, as I saw the flash of the abaya's face and the startling mismatched eyes, that it wasn't Araxis.It was Elethenn who was currently striking at the sephear and driving them back while the paledrian wound up with the baton.
A rush of shock and gratitude wiped away some of the pain throbbing in my body.And it didn't matter who it was.What mattered is that we dealt with these absolute fuckers.
I shoved the hot pain down into the dark corner of my body where I hid things away, Ifedit to the dark because I thought I might need whatever was lurking there, and I surged to my feet.I looked around frantically, searching for a weapon – and saw my dropped baton half-wedged into a piece of grating.I dashed over and grabbed it awkwardly with my left hand, blood from the cut in my forearm pattering violent red all over the metal underfoot.I whirled and swung upwards, catching the sephear under the chin with a sickening crack as Elethenn dodged the paledrian's many hands.
The sephear staggered, and I raised the baton high above my head before striking down in a massive, brutal arc that landed at the edge of one bright eye, which squelched with a sick sound and ruptured in a spray of green."I fuckingtold you," I snarled, all fury and anger, the bright lure of violence, the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears – war drums my body knew – and I cracked down again as the sephear screamed, wet and desperate.
I pivoted hard, heel skidding in the spray of their viscous blood, and threw myself at the paledrian, who was already staggering back as Elethenn jabbed hard at his vulnerable torso.The paledrian punched one hand out, catching Elethenn in the shoulder so that he slipped backwards for a breath, but before the paledrian could capitalize on that moment, I was on him.I slammed forward with my shoulder, punching my weight into the centre of his narrow chest so that he staggered back.And then, unrelenting, I whipped back and smashed the baton into the side of his head.
The paledrian lurched backwards, and Elethenn had caught his balance, sinking into a ready stance at my side.I couldn't hear anything outside of the sound shield that the sephear had called up, but I could see lights flashing at the end of the alleyway: emergency response, finally showing up.
I looked around wildly and saw the sephear had rolled, one hand clutching their face while they moaned, mandibles twitching.The little knife gleamed off to the side of the alley, forgotten.
Except I didn't forget.I couldn't.I dropped the baton; it clattered to the ground beneath me.Unthinking, I grabbed my dislocated elbow and wrenched it hard as I closed the distance between us, pain like a red tide rising in me higher and higher.And then I kicked the sephear, their body rolling forward with the force of the blow, until they fell onto their back, heaving in a gurgling gasp.
You'd better get there first, I heard Tam say.The problem is your instincts.You want to be kind.You don't want to hurt anyone.Wouldn’t you rather hide behind your prince's coat?
Pretty, Grigor had sneered, when what he'd meant wasweak.
A liability.Araxis.
Agreeable.
Soft.
Vulnerable.
