Drothiker

“Please, please, please …”

Brother Adlae was sobbing in the lounge; orange light was venturing from there. She knew … knew it was her brother’s fire becoming hysterical again. Mama did not seem to be there with him.

But there was someone else. Two people, divulged by the shadows outstretching to the dark hallway she was walking down, her heart thundering.

“You want the sword to be in force, take me, I’m an Alpenstride, it—it might answer to me. Please, don’t hurt my family,” Brother Adlae pled.

A male voice crooned, “If it was meant to, it would have.” A shadow shortened as someone crouched before her brother. “Tell us where Ondes’ sword is and we’ll consider amnestying your family.”

“I don’t know,” Brother cried. His firelight on the wall beckoned for her to leave, to turn back. “I’m not anointed the protector yet, I don’t know.”

“Then that just makes you useless, doesn’t it?”

There was a slash sound, and her brother fell wholly silent.

Then there was a thud.

Fire vanished.

And as the flowing of liquid sounded, terror—cunning and livid—seized each beat of her heart. A scream began surging to her throat, but was thwarted by a soaking hand that came casing her mouth, pressing her back against a warm body.

Her eyes burned and sight blurred, tears slithered down her cheeks, but her horrors were silenced by the callused hand she knew too well. Her mother’s hand. She looked up; Mama’s finger was at her mouth, soundlessly shushing. Her face drizzly with tears.

The hand was caked in red liquid. Clothes too. And as she turned, she perceived the wounds on her mother’s belly. The blood on her neck.

Those shadows began speaking as Mama’s callused hand stretched to her own tiny one. Then she was being hauled away from the ones in the lounge, away from the horrors and Brother Adlae.

She was at the back door of her house, looking at the dark night overhead, listening to her brother’s ghostly pleas, and the thud marked in her very soul. But her mother did not pause there, tugged her to the garden outside their home.

Mama perched on folded legs before her, unsheathed the blood-coated sword at her side, her hands unfaltering. But her shoulders shook as if an unseen burden weighed them down.

Her tiny hands wiped her mother’s seeping tears, her own ceased by the dread in each inch of her. “We’re strong.”

Mama’s lips thinned in a tight line, eyebrows twitching up towards each other, and she nodded, even more tears oozing. Then Mama stretched Windsong towards her. “I’m sorry.” That never-faltering voice guttered. “I’m so sorry, my Flarespirit.”

Her mother’s shoulders shook so violently that she found her hand reaching for one. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Mama.”

She shook her head. “This is too soon, I know, and I loathe otsatyas for it.” Her mother had never been a religious person. “I can do nothing but hope you will understand someday. But, Syrene, I need you to promise me that you will guard this sword with your soul.” The blood-coated hand stretched to her cheek. “Can you do that for me? For your brother?”

Seeing the plea in Mother’s eyes, the desperation, the words rolled out her tongue, “I promise.”

“Then,” voice was steady again, “with the stars to witness in this quiet night, I declare you Protector of Windsong, young Alpenstride.” The next words lingered, struck her like a thrashing bolt of lightning. “You do not surrender.” Echoed in her very flesh.

Her mother leaned in and kissed her brow, that blood-smeared callused hand wiping at her tears. The words a plea. “You do not surrender, Flarespirit.”

“I will not surrender.” Her voice cracked.

As she clutched the sword from her mother’s hands, the words that were meant for fierce, powerful Brother Adlae, were uttered to a ten-year-old girl who knew nothing of anything. “Whether you crumple mountains, or rip past worlds; stars may burst to sprinkles, sand may forge clouds; with that lightning in your heart, let this bolt of Windsong guide you home, Flarespirit.”

There was a quite roaring in her, her heart agitated, fidgety. Terror oiled her gut at her mother’s final command. “Run.”

She sobbed, well conscious of the blood damp on her mother’s hand, the stomach wound a gateway to the river of blood, the pain Mama sheathed too well. “No.”

“Run, Syrene. You need to protect the sword; Ianov depends on it.”

“Mama …” The word a push of air from her mouth. She barely heard it over the roaring in her ears, her bones. Windsong a heavy weight in her hand, as if the planet itself urged her to conform, poured its weight in the sword.

Mama’s hand swept her hair off her eyebrow. “Go, my Flarespirit. World awaits you. Hold your heart sturdy, your will unyielding, and you shall see the power in trembling the cores.”

And then she was moving, Windsong leaning in her grip.

The last she perceived was her mother’s wobbling smile before she never looked back and turned into a spark in the dark night.

➣

Syrene jerked awake, gasping and drenched in sweat, in a dark chamber. Candles still burned, suggesting it was still night.

She rubbed at her chest, willing her heart to calm, willing the pain to eddy away, memories to repress themselves back in. Shaking her head did not help with the roaring in her ears, the bellowing in her body to run, fight.

But there was nothing to run to, nothing to fight. Not at the moment. Only these bulging memories.

Seeing Vendrik Evenflame burn as the way Brother Adlae often did prompted the past, pressed on her very mind to harken back to the night Brother was beheaded, and she had done nothing. To the night she'd not once gazed back to her mother, couldn’t muster enough strength to perceive her fall.

And she had run until her body had begun pleading her to pause, until the barking in her legs had dwindled that last fraction of strength.

Hold your heart sturdy, your will unyielding, and you shall see the power in trembling the cores.

As if the ghostly whisper a spell, her heart settled. Yet there seemed to be a numb sort of trembling in her. Something urging her to keep moving—

There was a sound … so familiar. Syrene found her hand reaching for the sword—

But Abyss damn her, she only found empty space beneath her pillow. The prince had clutched the sword back.

She did not have a chamber mate, the prince had informed her when slaves had been dining in the crypt—

It was so familiar, the sound so akin to buzzing of a fly …

“Oh, Rene!”

Syrene shifted in the lean bed, sweat beading to her brow. “Who is it.”

A shriek began rushing to her throat when a Tiny Moon slid out from beneath the grey sheet, but Syrene covered her mouth to silence it. She ground out, taking her thundering heart in check, “Saqa, Starflame!” She swallowed the tightness in her throat.

Starflame’s tiny wings indeed shined like a star on fire, so bright that all the candles seemed like a mere spark. Starflame had been the first name that had popped into Syrene’s mind when she had seen the faerie that night after running her legs to near-dysfunction, and had only halted when she had perceived something like a bright star trailing her from the corner of her eye.

“Where have you been, Rene, Levsenn and I were so worried about you.” Starflame’s tiny forehead wrinkled in concern.

But Syrene seethed, “Don’t tell me the Abyss-damned siren is here.” The Tiny Moon only looked from beneath her lashes. “Starflame.”

“We were looking for you! You said to hide that night and we did.” She scowled. “You never said you will disappear.”

Syrene bared her teeth. “Where is Levsenn?”

Starflame flew to Syrene’s shoulder. “I’m so tired, let’s sleep.”

Syrene grabbed the little devil by her tiny pointed ear and hauled her before herself. Starflame shrieked lowly. And scowled. “I forgot how you can be so cruel, Rene—”

“Where is Levsenn?”

“It was her decision to stay in this crypt as a Grestel—”

She slid out of the lean bed. “Ablaze Kosas, Starflame. Are you two on a death mission?”

The Tiny Moon rose to Syrene’s height and shushed. “There are scary men outside guarding your room.”

“There are scary men everywhere here. And Levsenn might very well get killed, do you realize that?”

Sirens were not welcomed on land, and neither were terrestrial in water, given the threat they were to each other. Sirens feasted on terrestrial, were unnervingly alluring. They could not rein their desire, the starvation, allured beings to themselves to dine on them later. And given how terrestrial dealt with what was deemed harmful, sirens were anything but unharmed on land.

And a siren shifter … Ablaze Kosas. Levsenn will be tortured, experimented if caught in wrong hands, seen by wrong eyes. She needed to plunge in water at least once a day if she wanted to live, and once in water … Levsenn was nothing but a feral, lethal beast who wanted to feed on terrestrial flesh, who even reckoned Syrene as feast.

When they’d lived in forests with tribes, Starflame and Levsenn a secret of Syrene, Levsenn dived in water every night, and returned in her human form before dawn. How she had been shifting in this fortress …

“She is fine,” Starflame stated. “With her alluring skillset, these sentries would do anything a woman that beautiful would ask.” She fawned, “Kind of romantic, wouldn’t you say?”

Syrene was shaking her head. Romantic her ass. “You two need to get out of here.”

Starflame frowned. “We are not leaving you again, Rene.”

“Your kind went extinct, Starflame.” Syrene returned in her bed. “If these men saw you, scary will be the last word you will describe them as.”

The Tiny Moon went silent for a long minute. Odd—too odd for the noisy, chatty faerie to fall silent. Then, “I’m sorry about Deisn, Rene.”

Syrene’s voice steered cold. “Weren’t you tired?” Syrene threw herself back, closing her eyes, closing herself from the world. Everyone could go to Saqa. “Dim your wings, I have training tomorrow.”

“Training?” Whorls of faint light behind her lids had Syrene’s eyes opening, just to find Starflame hovering there, batting her lashes. “With that handsome prince?”

“Talk to him once and you’ll see how handsome he is, Starflame.” Syrene drew the grey sheet over her head. “When I wake up tomorrow, I want you and Levsenn gone.”

And then Syrene shoved herself deep in the darkness.