Page 126 of Under the Iron Sky

“Any desire to rip my wings off and use them to make curtains?”

Soraya made a displeased face. “People do that?”

Emelda shrugged, the movement making the red crystals in her hair clink against one another. “That’s what my father said your kind did to us.”

“I’m fine for curtains, thanks.”

Emelda gave a tight smile. “Then I think we’re all right for tonight.” She glided into the room, wings brushing against Soraya’s front as if daring her to try and rip them off.

Soraya followed her, struggling to keep her frown at bay as Emelda sat on the bed just like their last session and patted the space beside her.

Soraya made herself watch Emelda place each one of her tools on the bed and not look toward the balcony. All this time, not one person had come to visit her, and now she was about to escape or be broken out—if Soraya believed in Gods, she would’ve put good money on them all sitting around a sphere laughing at her right now. Pricks, the lot of them. Obviously men, because who else could have such terrible timing?

She had to get Emelda to leave before the attack began.

Soraya watched her work in silence, noting how shallow her breathing seemed to be as she added a few drops of liquid onto a long tear-shaped purple leaf. “Hold still please,” Emelda said, placing the leaf against Soraya’s neck. She barely felt the sting.

“I like your dress—does Malakai have another fight tonight?” Soraya asked, hoping if she reminded the fairy of wherever she needed to be, it might prompt her to go a little faster.

“Yes. I like to go and cheer him on, even if Aeris and Ikarus don’t care to.”

“Ikarus doesn’t like Malakai fighting?” That seemed absurd, considering the pyromancer’s gruesome reputation as Ramapheal’s most talented and creative torturer. Every Vordellian knew and feared the sight of those blue flames.

“No,” Emelda replied, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “Ikarus has tried to put a stop to it more than once, but after all Malakai has been through, all he’s lost … He needs an outlet. The Pitt gives him that.”

Don’t ask. The words clanged through Soraya’s mind like a wrench dropped into a well. These people weren’t her friends. Their problems were not hers.

Emelda removed the first leaf and slipped it into her satchel. As she worked, Soraya’s eyes drifted to her hand, to the opal ring on her thumb. Noticing Soraya’s stare, Emelda held up her hand for what Soraya could only presume was further adoration. It was subtle, but her fingers were stained with a mixture of red and purple pollen. “Do you like it? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Soraya pretended to be interested, regretting looking at the thing now if it was going to slow Emelda down. “It is. It’s similar to one I’ve seen Ikarus wear.” Seen, because it’d been missing last night. Had this fairy stolen it?

“It’s the same one. It belonged to my sister, Varena. It’s all we have left of her, so I suppose you could say it’s become a bit of a stress reliever. We share it between us: Ikarus, Malakai, Aeris, and I pass it on to whoever needs it the most that day. Silly, I know, but when we’re having a bad day, it makes us feel like she’s here with us.”

Something in Soraya’s chest tightened at that. Not her people. Not her friends.

“Were they close before her execution?” Soraya asked. “Varena and Ikarus?”

Emelda went slightly rigid. “Ikarus told you about that?”

Shit. Why had she asked that?

Soraya forced herself to keep Emelda’s wary gaze. The fairy was staring at her expectantly, and showed no signs of continuing with her treatment until she’d gotten an answer.

Soraya scrambled for something convincing that wouldn’t trap her in a lie. She pulled up the brief flashes she’d seen in the metal graveyard, when she’d been trying to resuscitate him. “Only that it happened a very long time ago. That he’d held you while it happened.”

And she must’ve been down here for too long, because why did it feel so wrong to lie to Emelda?

The fairy stared at her for a long moment, then cast her eyes down to the ring, staring at it as if consulting the dead fairy it’d once belonged to. An uncomfortable sort of silence fell again. One Emelda seemed to have no need or desire to fill.

Soraya was just starting to think she’d made a grave mistake in asking, but then Emelda dabbed the second leaf onto her neck. It stung a little, but not as much as it had on her last visit.

When Emelda looked at her ring again, Soraya dared a discreet glance at the balcony. She couldn’t see the Astro Temple from here, but she swore she could feel it watching her, the shields slowly pulsing like the ticking of a clock, as if to say, You do know your friends are coming for you any minute, don’t you? Get her out!

“They weren’t involved, you know,” Emelda said suddenly. “Ikarus and my sister.”

“No?” Soraya asked, not sure why Emelda had felt the need to tell her.

“They were best friends,” Emelda continued, still pressing the leaf against Soraya’s neck. “Closer I think than she and I ever were. When my mother was pregnant with Varena, we lost our home in a fire. Ikarus’s mother offered to let them stay at the castle—I think she was lonely, you know? She was pregnant with Ikarus too, and his father was always off training new recruits and—” She shook her head. “Not important. What I’m trying to say is that she offered them jobs in the castle, they accepted, and they never left. Then she took Aeris in when his parents perished, same with Malakai. We used to say that she foresaw that Ikarus was going to be so terrible at making friends when he was older that she took it upon herself to collect them for him.”