Page 111 of Under the Iron Sky

Soraya made to stand and had barely pushed to her knees when an otherworldly darkness skittered across her bones and she was shoved back down. She did not need to look to know that the gloved hand now curled around her shoulder was Aeris’s, only his head and shoulders fully corporeal beneath a thinly veiled body of shadows and crackling power. There went her chance at escape, then.

Fairies shot forward to avenge their fallen kin, vines and roots from everywhere coming alive like angry snakes preparing to strike.

One look from the Demon was enough to send those vines screeching to a halt. He cocked his head, barely a movement at all, and those same vines turned to wrap around their previous masters like coiling springs and squeezed.

Ikarus stared at Morana, his eyes almost glowing in the torchlight. No. Now that Soraya was looking closer, they were glowing, reflecting like living pools of silver and gold.

One more move, that look seemed to say, and he’d command those vines to squeeze until they cracked bone, until the thorns shredded the delicate membrane of every pair of wings in this room to ribbons.

And Morana knew it. “Enough.”

Her guards immediately backed away. Ikarus did not lower the vines.

“She killed Mortis,” Morana spat. The words were clearly directed at Ikarus, but her eyes did not stray from Soraya. “There is a debt owed to me.”

Ikarus’s voice was as stony as his expression. “One that you can attempt to claim after the war is done and the Ancient One has no further use for her. Unless you’d like to tell him how you almost destroyed his most valuable source of information. You know why he needs her.”

Morana snarled. “Is this about the Hex? We don’t need her for that—I’ll kill all the Vordellians without it!”

Soraya’s spine straightened. Why did they need her for this weapon? Were they building it from the things Ikarus had seen in her memories? The thought alone made her want to be sick.

A muscle ticked in Ikarus’s jaw, apparently not at all pleased that she’d mentioned it. “Your revenge will have to wait, Morana.”

“That’s not good enough!” Morana made to move forward, claws reaching for the whip once again strapped to her side—

Knives and folded red wings blocked Soraya’s vision. Ikarus didn’t say a word, but Soraya peered around him in time to see Morana backing away, her eyes darting between whatever expression Ikarus was wearing and the faceless fairy lying on the floor.

Ikarus addressed those still standing. “Let me be clear,” he said, his voice like liquid death. “The God Killer is mine. She is my assignment. My project. My cross to bear. And if anyone thinks about interfering with what is mine again, well—” He chuckled. Teeth shining in a sinister smile, he gestured to the body sprawled by his boots. “Ask your friend.”

He strode across the tavern and took Soraya by the waist. “I assume I can trust you to tidy things up here?” he asked of Aeris, who nodded, releasing his hold on Soraya, while Malakai’s hands swept into the air in an am I invisible to you? motion.

And with that, they vanished.

Soraya clutched her head as that now all-too-familiar nausea roiled through her. Did this phasing thing ever get any easier? It seemed the floor was intent on torturing her too, given how it was swaying.

She made her way to the bed, reaching for one of the wooden posters to steady herself, but Ikarus pulled her back.

Cold hands were on either side of her face. “Human.” He was standing so close she felt the word on her skin, so why did his voice sound so far away? “I need you to listen to me very carefully. Was your neck the only place you were bitten?”

She stilled a little at the sharpness in his voice. Not anger, she quickly realized, but fear. “What?” Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that was not in the top five.

Grip tightening, he dragged her closer until they were chest to chest. His eyes looked like shimmering opals in the low candlelight. Was this Ikarus she was talking to? Not the Demon?

“Was your neck the only place you were bitten?” he asked again, enunciating each word.

“Yes. I … Why are you asking me this?”

She saw his mouth move, but there was no sound. She opened her own to ask why, but darkness took her before she could utter a word.

37

Soraya was being skinned alive.

The pain came in searing waves, like she was being sliced apart with a thousand blades that’d been torn straight from a roaring fire. There was no end, and each time she was sure she couldn’t endure another moment, the agony would just roll on and on, finding new pieces of her to devour, and she was screaming anew.

She prayed for death more than she prayed for the pain to stop.

For a long time, the reprieves were short and few, barely a blip long enough for her to draw a breath before she was pulled under again. Their increase was gradual, lengthening in the tiniest increments that allowed the world to slowly bleed back into existance around her. First the soft mattress beneath her back. Then the dark room and open balcony.