Page 59 of Under the Iron Sky

How the fuck was that even possible?

Soraya chased after the third healer. If she was right, she likely had mere minutes before Ikarus found her, and she refused to leave here without learning something about the man who’d held her captive for weeks.

She followed the healer into a large master suite with crimson curtains and carved wooden furniture that looked like it belonged in a museum.

The smell of rotting flesh hit first, then dried blood.

A fire roared in the large hearth on the back wall, dark logs fizzling and crackling, but even that did nothing to ward off the chill that took root in Soraya’s bones the moment she crossed the threshold into the room.

All magic left a chill in the air, but she’d never experienced anything like this. She wrapped her arms around herself, her breath a gray cloud in front of her.

Six healers hurriedly darted around the room, faces covered in black shrouds, some with baskets filled with deep purple herbs, some holding small silver devices speckled with blood. Only one stood by the large four-poster bed in the center of the room.

The man lying on that bed wasn’t just dying—no, it looked like death had been nipping at his heels for a long, long time. His skin was gray and peeling around his mouth and eyes, and his nose was almost completely rotted off. Angry black veins as thick as fingers protruded against the back of his wrist and hand, and only a few wiry black hairs remained on his head.

A silver-haired child stood beside that bed. Ikarus. Eight years old, Soraya guessed by the size of him.

He said something to the healer examining the man, and they ran a hand over the patient’s chest, then shook their head.

The woman who emerged from a shadowed corner had to be Ikarus’s mother. She wore a thick black floor-length gown with long sleeves, the collar and buttons that ran down the middle decorated with scarlet embellishments, and her long silver hair was straight as an arrow, running all the way down to her hips like a stream of shiny, freshly melted steel, such a stark contrast to her eyes. Not brown or bronze, but pure, burning gold, like looking into the heart of a roaring kiln.

Only one breed of monster had eyes like that.

Ikarus’s mother was an Ethereal. Soraya had thought that might be the case. That explained why he was able to phase when no other Dar’rak could.

There’d been whispers about programs within Ramapheal’s armies to create crossbreeds so gifts might be shared among the species. Their intelligence said the babies born from those programs never manifested any extraordinary gifts, but apparently Ikarus was the exception.

A Dar’rak father and an Ethereal mother. No wonder he’d climbed the ranks of Ramapheal’s army as quickly as he had.

His mother came to stand beside the healer. She said something in Dar’rak, and the healer promptly fled from the room.

“Breathe deep, my lady,” the healer said just before she stepped back into the hallway.

Ikarus’s mother barely glanced their way as she responded, “Breathe deep, my friend.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, running a pale hand over the man’s sweating forehead. “Oh, Cadoc, I hoped we’d have more time together,” she said softly, smiling down at that rotting face as though it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “But it seems we’ve been cut short in this life. Perhaps we’ll get luckier in the next.”

On the other side of the bed, young Ikarus’s eyes were swimming with unshed tears. “Is there truly nothing we can do?”

“No.” No pain laced his mother’s words. Only cold, unfeeling truth. “If the vapor has decided that it is his time, then it is to be.”

Coughing, Cadoc tried to sit upright despite the pain it so clearly caused him. “This is … their fault …”

“Shhhh.” Ikarus’s mother took his hand and gently guided him back down. “Careful, my love. Let’s not waste what little time you have left on them.” The words were smooth but clipped, clearly a woman with no time for nonsense or pretenses.

When Cadoc coughed again, the rattling sound deep within his chest had Soraya creeping closer.

At this stage in the war, Soraya knew death rattles as intimately as she knew her own heartbeat, but this … She didn’t know this sound. It was too loud. Too clunky. Like two stones being scraped against one another. What the hell was wrong with this man?

Cadoc heaved in the bed, that godsawful noise getting louder and louder until Soraya was glad when it finally stopped. That was, until young Ikarus gasped and placed a hand on the man’s chest. The room waited in deathly silence—then Ikarus began screaming.

He leaped onto the bed, his small fingers shaking as he grasped the man’s shoulders and shook him. Cadoc’s head wobbled back and forth like a doll’s, but he did not wake.

“No! No! No! Wake up! Please, Father, wake up!”

Father. Enemy or not, the word pierced Soraya’s chest like a blade.

Crawling to his father’s side, Ikarus locked his hands on Cadoc’s chest and shot forward as though about to do compressions—