Page 159 of Under the Iron Sky

Malakai was Ma’varea. It was like trying to fit the pieces of two completely different puzzles together. Soraya was missing something.

Ikarus finally a good distance away from Malakai, Aeris seethed, “This doesn’t make any sense! You’ve fought for us. You’ve killed so many Vordellians you’ve practically made it a sport. How could you do that if you were on their side?”

Malakai scoffed. “I’m not on their side. I’m not on anyone’s side. I don’t care who wins this war. I just want Ramapheal dead—and if I couldn’t do it myself, then I was going to make damn sure the humans could.”

Ikarus was bristling with so much anger all the furniture in the room was beginning to shake. Aeris clapped a hand on his shoulder, trying to push some semblance of calm into him. “Shall I take him to the Ancient One?”

Ikarus’s nostrils flared. “I don’t know,” he whispered eventually.

Clearing his throat, Malakai leaned forward as far as his restraints allowed. “Um, hello?” he called in a sing-songy voice. “Can we please use our outside voices so the filthy traitor can at least hear all the ways you plan on gutting him? Thank you.”

The rage in Ikarus’s eyes could’ve peeled paint off the walls. “If I were you, I would be very, very fucking quiet right now. You do realize the Ancient One will have all our heads for this, don’t you?”

Malakai tutted, rolling his eyes. “You make it all sound so terribly medieval when you say it like that.”

The doors suddenly burst open, and in strode a barefooted Emelda, her dark blue hair frizzy and sticking up in every direction as though she’d been tossing in bed all night and hadn’t thought to brush it before storming here. “Why is everyone shouting?”

She blinked, frozen on the threshold. She looked at Ikarus, then Aeris, Soraya, then finally Malakai, her pale lips, free of any of the bright paints she usually wore, slightly open with shock. “Why is Mal tied up?” Despite not being able to phase, Emelda was across the room impossibly quick, the long sloping sleeves of her midnight-blue silk nightgown flowing behind her like rolling waves. She was so much shorter without her heels. And quicker.

Aeris stepped into her path just before she could reach Malakai.

“What are you doing?” Emelda tried to step around him, but Aeris matched her step for step.

“Go upstairs.” It was the first time Soraya had ever heard him raise his voice, but that wasn’t anger lacing every word, only panic.

“Not until you’ve told me why Malakai is tied to a chair like a mutt!” Again, she tried to step around him and again, Aeris blocked her path. “This is ridiculous. He’s our family!”

“Leave, Emelda,” Ikarus said. A command, not a request. “The less you know about this, the better.”

Aeris reached for Emelda, his expression pleading as though he wanted nothing more than to phase her upstairs and away from this madness, but she stepped out of his reach. “Please, Mel. Just go upstairs. I don’t want you involved in this.”

“I’m already involved, you idiots!” Emelda dropped her arms, growling toward the ceiling in a way that made her look so much like Ikarus. “Oh, for goodness’ sake—he isn’t doing this alone! I’m Ma’varea too!”

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Soraya had never known silence could be so suffocating.

It felt like a wraith had swept into the room, stealing all the sound and color and air until only this empty husk remained. Even Ikarus seemed to have stopped breathing, as though this moment, those few little words, had cut this place off from the rest of the world and created this weightless, still moment, suspended by an invisible thread that no one—not even the Demon himself—would dare break.

He isn’t doing this alone! I’m Ma’varea too!

Soraya hardly knew these people, and yet even she could feel the weight of those words like fingers squeezing into her throat.

“Say something.” Emelda’s voice, stripped of all its usual calm and sweetness, sounded so much louder in the tension choking the room.

Soraya dared a glance at Ikarus, who’d gone a deathly shade of white, Aeris beside him wearing an equally horrified expression.

“Don’t just stand there—say something,” Emelda repeated, wings snapping together in irritation.

The sound seemed to pull Ikarus out of whatever trance he’d been stuck in. He stared at Emelda, the liquid gold in his eye hardening. “No.” He shook his head, looking at Aeris. “She’s lying to protect him. How can she be the bloody spy when the Bane makes her too weak to get out of bed most days?”

“I am not lying,” Emelda hissed. She ducked around her husband, carving a path to Malakai, and dropped into a crouch behind him.

“Leave it, Mel,” Malakai hissed.

Her fingers were trembling as she began to unfasten his restraints.

“Oh, shut up.” Emelda’s face, pinched in concentration, was bleached of its usual rosy tint.