Page 66 of Under the Iron Sky

“Never mind, it’s right here.” Footsteps from below, one accompanied by the quiet clack of a heel against stone, and then, “Oh, no.”

“What’s wrong?” The voice was sharper now. Closer.

“It’s not my shoe.” Emelda sounded on the verge of tears. “I could have sworn I lost it around here.”

Something crashed again, then the man with short black curls stepped into the courtyard, Emelda giggling hysterically in his arms and clutching an empty glass bottle in her hand. Definitely drunk, then.

The man put her down on the only bench with cushions below Soraya’s window. “Ikarus is going to kill you for breaking that statue.”

Emelda clicked her tongue. “Oh, he’ll be fine.” Laughing, she brought the bottle to her lips. She frowned, then tipped it upside down and squinted up the neck. “It’s all gone.” She dropped her arm, the bottle almost smacking her in the face. “Malakai, who drank all my wine?”

The man—Malakai—crouched down beside her bench. “You did, you bloody alcoholic.”

Emelda’s brows furrowed sluggishly. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

He cocked a brow. “No? Stand up and show me I’m wrong then.”

A lopsided grin on her face, Emelda braced a hand on the back of the bench and tried to stand, only for her legs to immediately give out, and she fell back onto the cushions with a faint giggle.

“Easy, darlin’,” Malakai said softly. “Don’t hurt yourself to prove a point.”

“I don’t feel hurt. I don’t feel anything.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Mmm-hmmmm. You’re a good friend, Mal,” she replied around a yawn. “It’s cold out here. Be a dear, would you?”

Soraya watched Malakai snap his fingers, and her blood ran cold as a large flame crackled to life in the sconce just behind the fairy. Not red, but a bright, brilliant dark blue that seemed to absorb every bit of darkness it touched. Only one Dar’rak commanded flames that color. A general with a brutal reputation almost as bloody as Ikarus’s.

Emelda’s eyelids started to flutter. “Thank you for tonight.” Her voice was thick with exhaustion. “Don’t … tell Aeris.” Sleep found her almost immediately.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied softly. A small, empty sort of smile spread across Malakai’s face as he watched the sadness slowly drain from Emelda’s features.

He reached out to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear, and stayed like that, just holding her cheek, his eyes fixed on the strands of dark blue hair caught in his fingers.

Was there something going on between them? Soraya had thought Emelda was with the dark-skinned man, but the way Malakai was looking at her …

It was a long time before he finally moved. Shaking his head, Malakai stood with a sigh and sank onto the nearest chair. He fumbled for something in his dark jacket for a moment, then popped an ash-stick into his mouth, and had just snapped his fingers to summon a flame between his thumb and index finger to light it when his head suddenly snapped to look at something to his right.

Soraya watched him stare, his expression instantly sharpening into something so cold her stomach flipped. Like a mask being pulled off, all the softness in his features was gone, leaving only a vicious predator in its wake.

The temperature plummeted several degrees, and there was no further warning before a pair of glowing golden eyes blinked open in the shadows like two burning stars. The Ethereal’s body appeared shortly after. He stepped forward, silent as death. He looked to Emelda, then Malakai, then back to Emelda.

Malakai noticed the Ethereal’s stare, the fury gathering in it like the tides pulling back before a tsunami that could tear villages apart struck. “Bollocks,” he muttered under his breath. “Aeris, look, mate—”

Aeris vanished with a violent crack and reappeared kneeling by Emelda’s side.

“She’s ice cold,” he hissed, frantically pushing hair out of her face. The muscles in his back twitched as he rapidly checked her over. “Mel? Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

Emelda didn’t open her eyes, but she groaned feebly and leaned out of his touch. “Don’t want … you here.”

Aeris stilled.

“You said you wouldn’t … leave me today, but you did …. Malakai didn’t.”

Malakai watched silently from his chair, the ash-stick in his mouth flaring as he took a deep drag.

Aeris seemed to steel himself enough to ask, “Have you taken something?” And there was a quiet terror in his voice that Soraya hadn’t expected from a creature as powerful as him.