Page 109 of Under the Iron Sky

“Yeah,” Theron answered. “Worked like a charm.”

“Good. Now wait for my message.” The line went dead. Prick.

Theron had just slipped the communication device back into a pocket on his armored jacket when a gray-haired soldier stepped through the blackness. “Everything’s in position, Alpha,” Mython said. It was strange to hear himself called that. Stranger that it came from a man almost twice his age. “What happens now?”

Theron leaned against the wall. “Now, we wait.” And pray they hadn’t walked right into a trap.

36

Acold presence lingered at the side of Soraya’s bed.

Her eyes flew open, fingers blindly scrambling through the darkness for a weapon that was not there, before an oily hand clamped over her mouth, muffling her snarl. She blinked, her heart galloping in her chest, and there was just enough time for Soraya’s eyes to adjust and see that Ikarus was not sleeping in his chair, to glance up at the liquid gold eyes hovering mere inches above her face, before the dark room disappeared entirely.

There was a howling in her head, cold air slicing across her face. The world was spinning and flipping, too fast for her to catch it. A blink, and she slammed against a cold stone floor.

Pain exploded across her back. Soraya didn’t let herself focus on it. Quickly flipping onto her front, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, ignoring the rough stone beneath cutting her palms and the icy fingers of fear that were beginning to walk their way up her throat, and went to that place deep within, that crater she’d carved into her own chest years ago, darker than anything or anyone down here. The one she’d needed to create just to survive.

She rose into a low crouch, her arms strong as steel despite the ringing in her head. Her eyes swept through the darkness, cold and clinical, assessing.

She’d been phased into a large, vaguely circular-shaped room. A tavern, maybe? Still in Illieck, given the thorny vines and shriveled roots stretching across the floor, walls, and ceiling.

It was dark, despite the four candle-filled iron chandeliers dangling from black chains on the cave-like ceiling. Long wooden benches and tables were strewn all around the room with no uniformity and littered with plates and cups and candles and decorative serving trays full of food.

Weapons too. Four, five, six daggers still in their sheaths just left carelessly across the table next to her, ripe for the picking.

Soraya cast her eyes around the room, marking the men and women with wings and without. A mixture of fairy and Dar’rak, then. Twenty-four in total.

Emelda sat in the lap of a large, moth-winged man in the far corner, wearing a sleeveless gown made of deep red diamonds that barely covered her cleavage. Four others sat around the table, all of them men.

Emelda’s eyes widened slightly when they locked with Soraya’s across the room, smoke from the ash-sticks all four of the men with her held curling around her lovely wings. Her pink-painted lips pressed into a tight line, but she didn’t remove her arms from around the man’s neck.

Heels clipped against stone, and then Morana stepped into the room.

The band, made up of six fairies with thin, dragonfly-like wings, stopped playing their wooden instruments the moment her silhouette stained the doorway, as though all sources of joy in the world had no place in her presence.

Soraya made sure her face remained as stony as ever, her own sort of battle mask, but terror welled like a storm inside of her as she beheld Morana, at the sight of those massive gray wings, far bigger than any of the others’ here, torn and shredded from suns only knew how many battles. As far as fairies went, Morana was terrifying.

“Hello, human,” Morana said. She flashed a cruel smile, revealing teeth that’d been filed into sharp serated points like those of a fishing spear. Had she always had those?

Soraya’s mask must not have been as impassive as she thought it was, because Morana added, an almost serpentine lilt creeping into her voice, “Oh, these things?” She ran her tongue over those gleaming fangs. “They’re new. I had them filed this way just for you.”

Morana took a slow step forward, uncurling the whip at her side. Soraya didn’t realize it was one single strip of thorny vines until Morana cracked the thing inches from Soraya’s knees.

The thorns left smoking divots in the floor. Was that acid dripping from the red spikes? Soraya didn’t want to find out.

“You took something from me,” Morana hissed. “I aim to make us even.”

Soraya bared her teeth. “Come and get it.” She lunged for the dagger on the closest table, but someone grabbed her wrists just before she could reach it and slammed her into the ground.

Soraya jerked to free herself, but whoever it was pressed their knee into her spine, pinning her to the stone with the weight of their body.

She thrashed, a snarl—not of fear or pain but pure rage—tearing its way out of her throat.

A dark, rancid-smelling chuckle blasted the side of Soraya’s face. “I’ve always wondered what the God Killer would taste like,” said a horrid, male voice. “Let’s see if you bleed sunlight, shall we?”

Pain sliced into the side of her neck, razor-sharp teeth sinking in.

Soraya inhaled again, again, ice-cold vapor burning her nose, her chest. She would not scream.