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I stiffen. Twice in one day now, I’ve been assaulted by that word.
I heft my atikas, breathing when I feel the long swords’ reassuring weight in my palms. “If you value your life, you will never again call me that.”
“If I value my life?” Melanis laughs as she slowly lands on the grass. “How presumptuous you are, Bringer of Chaos.” She leans conspiratorially closer. “Did you know that’s what the humans are calling you now, the Bringer of Chaos? They blame you for everything that’s happening. Well, they blame the gods as well, but mainly you.”
When she nears me, her gait lurching and unsteady, my eyes dart to her legs, then back up. Melanis’s legs are now strangely bowed, and her toes, which are now exposed since she no longer wears the golden sandals she once used to, are more like claws.
“You’ve changed,” I observe dryly.
“This from the girl who looks like a poorly pieced-together mosaic.”
“I’m told that’s beautiful in some cultures.”
“Deka,” Britta whispers from beside me—a warning. Melanis is too close now. She’ll be within striking distance soon.
The winged Firstborn’s eyes snap toward her. “You will shut your mouth, Britta of Golma, else I will slice your lips from your face and hand them to you while your skull still bleeds.”
Britta takes a step back, intimidated despite herself. Even when Melanis was beautiful, she was frightening, but now, a strange, evil sort of frenzy animates her every movement.
I breathe, trying to still my racing thoughts, trying to get myself to a place of calm. Think, Deka, think, I command myself.
I glance at Belcalis and Keita, but both shake their heads: they have nothing yet. No way for us to escape this cliff, much less Melanis and her minions, who are all still circling.
“There’s no way out, Deka,” the Firstborn confirms, wagging a bony, claw-tipped finger at me when I glance back at her. “I know you’re trying to find one, but there is none. My hunters are spread out all across the jungle. Listen.” She opens her mouth as if to shriek, except no sound comes out.
A tingle rushes over me, one that’s amplified when shrieks suddenly ring out from the trees behind us. The muscles in my body string even tighter: Melanis is now capable of making sounds inaudible to even alaki ears. I absorb this information swiftly as I return my attention to her.
“There are more of us hidden in the trees beneath this cliff,” she explains. “You’re surrounded, as are the humans.” She smirks pointedly at the children, who hurriedly step back, frightened, at the sight of her new needle-sharp white teeth. “Delightful little sacrifices, all of you,” she finishes.
The children shrink even closer together, huddling at the edge of the trees now.
Satisfied, Melanis turns back to me and my friends. “I’d rather not kill them just yet, but understand this, Deka: all you have to do is make one false move, and they all die. And as for you…” Her milky-white eyes gleam eerily in the moonlight as she says this.
I shudder.
One or more of the Gilded Ones is watching me through them. I can feel it, a frenetic energy in the air. Melanis has always been their preferred instrument for spying.
“You,” the Firstborn continues, her voice layered with the power of the goddesses, “I will bring back to the mothers, so that they can drain your kelai one drop at a time.”
By now my heart is pounding so hard, it’s like a drum in my chest. I force myself to meet her gaze. “And how do they intend to do that?” I ask—a desperate attempt to buy more time. I’m completely out of escape ideas, but Belcalis and Keita are still there, still thinking…. “I’m not connected to my kelai anymore. I’m just a shell now, an empty vessel.”
“Stalling for time, Deka?” The goddesses immediately see through my ruse. They tsk. “Must be the children’s presence. Humans always do that—make you forget yourself.”
“Is that what happened to you lot? Forgot everything you are as you transformed into hateful caricatures of yourselves?” I reply, my eyes surreptitiously sliding to the others. Get ready, I say silently. Then I turn back to Melanis and the goddesses, my body already slipping into the combat state. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to remind you of just who you are and where you belong.”
“And how will you do that?”
My thighs squeeze Ixa’s midsection in response. All right, Ixa, let’s go—
All I hear is a flapping sound, then Melanis is on me, her clawed hands ripping brutally into my throat. Gold pours out—so much of it, it splashes all over me and Ixa, turning everything slick and liquid. I can’t breathe now, can’t even scream, there’s so much of it. My throat is on fire, every movement I make searing the burning deeper into me.
The more desperately I try to pull away, the deeper Melanis’s claws go. The aura of power has disappeared from her, the goddesses having retreated so she can fight me with all her raw ferocity. “You won’t die from this, Deka,” she snarls. “Not quite yet. There’s life in you still.”
Ixa wriggles out from under me to snap at her, his teeth biting through her arm, but she hurls him away with such force, he smashes into a nearby tree with an audible crack.
The moment he’s gone, pain slams into me like a hammer, all the injuries I’ve acquired bearing down on me with full force. I’m in so much agony now, everything is a blur. Distantly, I hear screams, the sound of fighting, but I can’t move, can’t even so much as turn my neck, which is still bleeding profusely.
All the while, Melanis flaps over me, her face contorted in a mask of fury.
