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Keita shakes his head. “She jumped away right before Ixa went through the gate.”
“What?” Nevra blinks, her eyes devastated. “No…,” she whispers. “No, no, no…” Then she looks up at Keita, bewildered. “Why didn’t you stop her? Why didn’t you do anything?”
Keita wearily shakes his head again. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Not everyone wants to be saved.”
“But she was a child,” I return, dismay rising inside me. How did I not notice? How did I not see her? I turn back to Keita. “Children don’t know what they want.”
“This one did,” a voice says from behind me. Belcalis’s. “You could see it in her eyes….”
“Which is why we snatched her right before we went through the gate,” Lamin says bluntly, tossing an enraged Palitz from his gryph.
Nevra is back on her feet in a heartbeat. “Palitz!” she gasps. “You’re alive!” She runs over and embraces her friend so tightly, there’s barely any air between them. Then she shakes her. “Why did you do that? Why did you do that?”
Palitz bursts into tears. “I just wanted to save everyone,” she sobs. “I wanted to be of use. All I had to do was sacrifice myself.” She pushes Nevra away and advances on the other girls, enraged. “That’s all we had to do—sacrifice ourselves, and everyone else would be saved. Our entire village. The gods would grant us peace in the Blissful Lands, and everything would be healed. Otera would be whole again.”
Nevra shakes her head at her. “You saw those things, Palitz. Those weren’t gods; those were demons.”
“But the priests promised.” Her friend’s reply is a broken whisper. “They promised me. They said if I was faithful, everyone would be safe.”
Her words are almost identical to the lies I was fed once my blood ran gold. I turn to Britta, who’s shaking her head sadly.
Beside her, Belcalis is grim. “It never ends,” she says with a sigh. “Every time we try to beat them, they create a new lie.”
“And they always tell the girls to sacrifice themselves for it,” I say, saddened.
I’m so tired now, so overwhelmed, I don’t even notice the tingles prickling across my shoulders. The tingles that mark the arrival of a descendant of the gods. By the time I turn in the direction they’re coming from, a sinister flapping is sounding, as if some great winged creature is rising into the air.
“That is the way of the male gods,” an unnervingly low voice says.
Everything inside me goes cold. There, just beyond the cliff, is a familiar winged figure—one I was certain I killed just three months ago.
“Melanis,” I say, grim.
6
The last time I saw Melanis, she was falling into the abyss underneath the Temple of the Gilded Ones, her legendary glow overshadowed by the fires exploding around her, her gold-tipped wings broken and torn. She was defeated, utterly and completely.
That was then.
Now, Melanis is suddenly here, and she’s changed so drastically, she barely looks like the glowing, beautiful alaki I once knew. Her wings, once lush with pure white feathers tipped with gold, are now leathery, bat-like monstrosities. Her skin has paled from a healthy golden brown to a sickly whitish-gray that evokes dark, musky places—places like caverns and tunnels and all the other hidden realms where light has lost its way. Most alarming of all are her eyes, once a warm, welcoming brown but now almost completely white, except for the tiny black pinpricks of her pupils.
Melanis the Light is gone, and in her place is a frightening creature I scarcely recognize, a monstrosity of the gods that’s not quite an alaki and not quite a deathshriek but something squarely in between. It’s the same with the twenty or so women following her, who surround the cliff completely, their wings flapping in unison in the warm, dark night. Once, I would have called them Firstborn alaki, the ancient daughters of the Gilded Ones, but they’re all as wizened as Melanis now, their leathery, gaunt bodies bleached of color. Their eyes have turned white as well, and some of them have transformed even further: noses so completely flattened, they’re barely slits; ears enlarged and pointed at the tips.
Hunters, I name them immediately.
High-pitched shrieks echo between them, a sound similar to those of deathshrieks, except it’s higher, almost inaudible at times.
As the children scuttle together, trying to find safety in numbers, I remain where I am, mentally preparing for battle once again.
“Deka,” Melanis calls out in that unnerving voice, which somehow manages to be both low and high-pitched at the same time. “How fortunate I am to find you here today.”
“Fortunate?” I huff out a bitter laugh. “That’s not a word I’d ever use with you. Especially not now. Corrupted, perhaps. Evil? Certainly. But fortunate…?” I tsk, all the while glancing to my side, where both Belcalis and Keita remain, their eyes watchful.
Be ready to move, I tell them silently.
Neither makes an overt response, but I can see Keita’s eyes, as well as Belcalis’s, surveying the cliff, searching out any escape routes, any weaknesses. They’re the other tacticians in our group, always searching for the best way to approach a battle. If I don’t find something, they will. I just have to have faith in them. In us.
Melanis doesn’t seem to notice our silent exchange, or perhaps she’s just pretending not to. Either way, she flaps closer, seeming amused. “There’s that spirit I so enjoyed from you, Nuru.”
