Page 95 of Under the Iron Sky

Huh. She would’ve guessed a lot younger than that given the way he spoke—never mind his size. “Then why are you so small?”

The glowing red orbs of Golla’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Well why you so tall?”

“Oh, don’t get your stones in a knot, I was just curious. I’ve never met one like you before, that’s all.”

Golla turned and searched her face. Seeming to accept her response, he sat down and said, “Accident when Golla hatch. Stuck like this now.”

“What kind of accident?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Golla like being this small. Mean he can live in castle with Ikarus and Emelda and Malakai and Aeris. And Serone—although she not like Golla very much. Tries to eat him sometimes—but Golla don’t mind. She will like him eventually—just like human will too.”

Soraya didn’t quite know what to say to that—as was often the case whenever she was around this little thing. “I don’t not like you, Golla, it’s just …” That every one of his species she’d ever encountered had tried to squish her like a bothersome fly? That she’d spent the last fifteen years learning all the different ways she might kill something like him?

Golla gently patted her thigh, and for the first time, she didn’t recoil from his touch. “Golla understand. Golla thought humans were scary too until he met you. It hard to realize something not bad if spent whole life running from it. It okay—Golla can be patient.” He offered her a bright smile, only for it to fade when his eyes briefly flashed below.

Curious what could’ve caused such a change in what was usually an annoyingly positive creature, Soraya followed his line of sight to a group of moth-winged fairies bickering around the base of the Astro Temple.

Her blood ran cold at the leader of the group, a tall man with a curved blade sticking out of his right arm where a forearm should be. “Who is that?”

“Mortis,” Golla replied quietly. “He Morana second, and husband.” He picked up the tray and set it on her lap. “You know him?”

“Yes. I know him.”

“You’re quiet,” Ikarus said later that afternoon, pausing from where he was forcing a new door in her mind open to glance over a shoulder. He was wearing his armor today.

Soraya leaned against the wall at her back, crossing her ankles. “I’m thinking.”

“Well stop it.”

“Why? Does it make you nervous?”

Rather than reply, Ikarus turned back around and snapped his wrist. The door came away with a crunch, and thick steam as red as blood rushed out to spill into the hallway.

Okay … That was new.

Ikarus tossed Soraya another cold look over his shoulder, then disappeared into the vapor. She followed immediately.

Dimly lit flaming torches nailed into a sloping wall cut through the mist first, then a narrow rock walkway with a sheer drop on one side.

“Is this a checkpoint?” Ikarus asked.

Seeing as the practice had been abandoned years ago, it wasn’t damning for Ikarus to know this, but Soraya kept her mouth shut either way.

Early in the war, Command had decreed that new recruits were to be taken out as often as possible to get “real-life” experience on the field to familiarize themselves both with their enemy and with this new world that looked so much like their own but wasn’t anymore. The more experienced the cadet, the riskier the missions, but for the younger Vordellians, abandoned checkpoints like this one were a common starting place.

When Soraya leaned on the sloping cave wall, Ikarus came with her, and they watched side by side as her younger version stepped out of the vapor dressed wholly in black, her hair one long golden braid that swept from side to side with every tentative step she took.

“You’re a bit small to be out on the field, aren’t you?” It was only slight, but there was a tone of disbelief in Ikarus’s voice.

Again, Soraya ignored him. She watched her younger self creep across the checkpoint, green eyes narrowed in concentration and darting in every direction just like her mother had taught her.

She reached a spot where a white handkerchief bearing the Vordellian sunseal had been draped around an iron torch that held no flame. Drawing a deep breath, she raised a hand toward the bit of cloth—

Then stopped.

Young Soraya snatched her hand back, her round face contorting with panic, and squinted into the vapor she’d just walked through. The mist whirled, and she was just quick enough to duck out of the way before an armor-clad Theron swung a sunrifle toward her face.

Smiling, she leaped around him, then jerked his arm back when he reached for the same handkerchief she’d just been about to pull from the wall. “No!” she hissed, her voice strained with the effort of holding him back. “I was here first! Get your own!”