Page 156 of Under the Iron Sky

Rolling his shoulders, Aeris turned and started checking the hangar. He wasn’t usually this irritable. His power was by no means drained but he was tired. Of this war. Of his wife being trapped beneath with the very thing that was slowly killing her. Of watching her deteriorate day by day, knowing there was no easy fix to ease her suffering.

He had to get her out—and with another piece of the Arch now in Ramapheal’s hand, they were one step closer.

He checked the empty weapons rack, then the metal cupboards for anyone that might be hiding inside. He quickly examined the destroyed Sentinel on the hangar floor, the large hole in its chest, though he couldn’t determine what weapon might’ve caused it.

He was just about to phase home, intent on running his lovely wife a bath and doting on her every need all night, when a strange noise pulled his attention away.

Aeris whipped his head toward it. It sounded like a voice but the owner of it clearly wasn’t here.

Commanding all the shadows in the room to curl at his sides, Aeris followed the voice through the wreckage in the room to a piece of rotting bluish-green metal. A bracer. Someone was trying to communicate through it.

“Hello?” the voice trapped in the metal said again. A man’s voice. “Raina, please, please answer me.” He sounded awfully distressed. Whoever this Raina was, she clearly meant a lot to this man.

“Sweetheart, please. Just tell me you got out. That Soraya didn’t …” A strangled sort of noise came from the bracer. “I’ll never forgive myself if she did. I’m going to be with you soon, okay? I’ll explain everything and we’ll—oh for the love of—” A pause, then, “What do you want?” The change in his tone suggested he was now speaking to someone else. Did he not realize the feed with this Raina was still live? Clearly not. Aeris quickly lost interest, until the human said the only thing that could make his heart lurch in his chest.

“I don’t have time for this, Ma’varea.”

Aeris’s entire world stopped spinning.

This human was talking to the very spy he’d been searching for.

Aeris listened to the human’s side of the conversation, hardly able to believe his luck.

“Yes, I know this is bad, but I can’t get around as quickly as you can,” the human snapped. A small pause, then a long sigh. “We’re just about to fly over Lumirel now. I’ll send someone to meet you at the monorail station near the old market. You know it?”

Though the question wasn’t meant for him, Aeris nodded. The light on the side of the bracer went dead without any goodbyes, the communication line finally severed.

Aeris smiled down at the thing, then went hunting.

He stood with his back pressed against the wall, completely hidden in shadow, and waited.

He couldn’t have been there for more than three minutes before the temperature suddenly dropped, and then boots were clicking against the metal floor.

Ma’varea stepped onto the platform, armored boots crunching on a mixture of broken glass and weeds. Slow and light. Like they had all the time in the world. Caging that part of him that so desperately wanted to break the traitor’s neck right there, Aeris shrank back into the shadows and watched him tap a foot against the floor, clearly agitated.

There was a roar in Aeris’s head. A scream in his blood.

If it wasn’t for this traitor, they would’ve won this war years ago. Ramapheal would’ve already had all the pieces of the Arch by now, he’d have completed the ritual and made the Dar’rak able to breathe clean air again, and Emelda … Her suffering would’ve ended long ago.

She wouldn’t be dying right now. At this very moment.

Any control Aeris had on himself snapped.

He let his power flare, let his body materialize as he pushed off the wall, flesh and bone once more, and sent all that rage flying across the platform.

Ma’varea tried to flee. He was fast, but not fast enough. With a wave of Aeris’s hand, shadows curled around the traitor’s limbs and tossed him into an old billboard with a resounding crunch.

Good. Aeris hoped it broke his fucking spine. It was no less than the vermin deserved.

It took a great deal of effort to contain himself after that, to wait until after he’d grabbed Ma’varea and phased back to Ikarus’s castle below before he thrust a shadowy hand into his helmet. He ripped it away, wanting to look into the traitor’s eyes while he reached that same hand into his chest and tore his heart right out.

The metal went careening across the room. It bounced off the stone floor, shattering into three pieces that Aeris imagined, in that split second, mirrored the fissures now cracking their way down his own heart.

Because he wasn’t just staring into the eyes of the traitor.

Not just the man who’d sold their secrets to the humans for years.

They were the eyes of his best friend.