Evex_Warriors Of Ition

by Maia Starr

  Fenris stood, and the rest of the council stayed seated. He knew the room was largely against him after he’d taken a human lover, but he set his palms on the table in front of him as though he would vault forward at any second and said evenly, “Yes. And if they say there is another shuttle coming, there is another shuttle coming.” Then he turned to me sharply and whispered, “If that’s what they say.”

  It was clear he didn’t believe me, but he wasn’t willing to bring my father in on it. He didn’t want the Dendren to turn against the human alliance.

  I swallowed hard and looked back up at our father who had begun coughing harshly: the deep scratch of his throat was heard every time he tried to breathe in. At one-point Illox, who was standing next to Pash, moved toward him and put gentle hands on his shoulders to make sure he was alright.

  My father waved him off, still heaving blood-laced spit into his palms as he coughed.

  “Find me their diplomat,” my father wheezed between coughs before finally settling down. “We should have met before they were sent into the fields.”

  I nodded, still kneeling before him. “Of course.”

  “Let’s hear this out as soon as possible. We have a crisis on our hands,” my father said.

  I swallowed and made brief, uncomfortable eye-contact with Fenris.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, only to be waved off by my father.

  “Go find the rest of them and get me their scientists!” he shouted, obviously embarrassed. “Amlodesh is hurt. We need them to look into her!”

  My heart sank, and I rose to my feet. “What happened?”

  “By what else?” he said in a hurried explanation before bursting back into his horrible cough.

  The silence that followed was deafening. The plague. Whatever was doing away with our females had gotten hold of her too.

  “Will she live?” I asked, and the whole room went silent.

  My father didn’t give another word before he was helped out of the council chambers. I looked up at the vast, glass windows behind his raised council seat and watched as our three suns started to fall into night, filling the room with warm, amber hues.

  I stood there, lifeless, thinking about Amlodesh and how little I knew about the state of her. I had just seen her two days ago.

  The room cleared out as I stood by the bench, the area for those wishing to approach my father. It was just Pash, Fenris, and me left in the room.

  “What’s going on?” I asked desperately as Pash walked up to me.

  I wanted so badly to wrap her up in my arms and hold her, but I couldn’t. Not with Fenris here.

  “He’s worried,” Pash said, explaining my father’s sudden absence.

  “He’s sick,” Fenris snapped at her.

  I looked to Pash, and she didn’t deny it. My anxiety spiked again, and I said, “With what?”

  “They don’t know,” Fenris said, leaning against the council seating with one knee bent, foot against the wall. He crossed his arms and explained, “I suspect that’s the real reason why he made the deal for the doctors to come.”

  The knot I’d felt in my stomach was growing bigger and bigger now: swirling around like a darkness that was taking over my body. What would life be without Amlodesh?

  “Where are the breeders, Scashra?” Fenris said, arms cross and head tilted up to look at me.

  I met his eyes and set my jaw. “I don’t know,” I enunciated.

  He came at me, whipping his body forward with immense speed as he tackled me. Within seconds I was on the ground, gripping his arms as hard as I could as he beat his fists into my face.

  With a jolt of my hips I whipped him off me and began to shift, feeling the bones of my wings emerging with immense pain.

  Fenris began to follow suit until we were both half men, half dragon: raging wings coming out of human bodies.

  He flew toward me again, grabbing me by my neck and squeezing.

  This was his way of saying he didn’t believe me.

  “Fenris!” Pash screamed and held up a hand to him. Fenris was stupid, but he knew better than to attack her.

  He snarled at me and took several steps back, whipping his arms down and breathing heavily through his nose.

  “Go tend to your father,” Pash scolded, pointing toward the door.

  Like a child, Fenris obeyed, watching me all the way out the council door as if to say: we’re not done here.

  I looked to Pash with confusion and rubbed my hand over my swollen face, rubbing my forehead.

  “Now what?” I said to her, and she looked at me curiously.

  “Now… nothing?”

  “Pash,” I whispered and turned to face her. “My sister is dying.”

  She swallowed and gave a curt nod. “And we will find a way to fix her. Go! Get the scientists off the mainland.”

  “Alright,” I said with haste, unsure what they could do even if I brought them to her.

  “Are they…?” she began, wringing her hands together nervously as she walked up to me.

  “Dead?” I finished, and she nodded.

  I hadn’t intended on lying to her, but I couldn’t bear to displease her, either. Our deal hinged upon it, after all. I took her long fingers into my hand and said, “Of course.”

  “And you’ll tell your father they broke their word?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Then,” she said, pulling me close to her body but never moving to kiss me. “Everything is going to work out.”

  Chapter Five

  Chloe

  “Welcome back,” I said as Scashra entered into the complex me and the other girls had been staying in.

  For being captives, it sure didn’t feel like we were about to be under attack. In fact, if nothing else, it seemed like Scashra had taken something of an interest in me.

  An unreturned interest, of course. I hated him: his arrogance and the fact that he was keeping us here without explanation. Were we prisoners? Were we bait? Was he being honest and we would be returned to the science expedition any day now?

  All I knew was that I couldn’t afford to argue with him anymore. If he was planning something underhanded, it was only because of his strange interest in me that was keeping us safe.

  Or maybe I was just flattering myself.

  Either way, I couldn’t take the risk.

  “I need your help,” he said without any pretense. He splayed the door to my room open wide and waved me over.

  I sat on my bed, immovable.

  Looking up at him I cracked a smile and said, “Wait, seriously?”

  “Yes,” he said, and I could see the panic rising over his body. His square face was white as a ghost: sharp jaw set and nervous. “Come on.”

  I licked my lips and took a deep breath, knowing how I played out the rest of this conversation could have amazing, or dire, consequences.

  “I know I’m not in a great position here but… really?” I scoffed, crossing my arms.

  Scashra’s eyes went wide, and his black curls fell across his face. He brushed them away in a panic and walked over to me, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet.

  “It’s not a request,” he seethed, pulling me so my face went close to his.

  I raised my brows and tried to pull away. “Sounds like one to me,” I snapped.

  “My sister is sick,” he enunciated with such precision it sent a shiver down my spine. Then his resolve cracked and I could feel his whole body shaking. “There’s something wrong with her. Whatever’s killing our eniwan has got to her, and I need you to help her, please.”

  I swallowed and fought the urge to pull back or give in to him. I would need something from him.

  “And you expect me to do this without making a bargain?” I said, feeling awful as the words bubbled from my mouth.

  “Everybody wants something,” he said, letting go of my arm and pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance. “Of course.”

  “I want the breeders taken to the Dendren,” I
said unsurely, scraping my thumbnail against the pad of my index finger: a nervous habit of mine.

  He gritted his teeth and towered over me. “No,” he said quickly, but we both knew it wasn’t really a decline.

  I raised my brows dismissively and flung the thick, red locks of hair behind my shoulders. “Then no,” I said, mimicking his tone.

  “You would leave my sister to die?” he asked hotly, heaving his breaths.

  “That’s up to you,” I said, throwing the onus back on his conscience. “Let my people do what they came here to do, and I’ll look at her.”

  He licked his bottom lip and looked skyward, considering my offer and then with a deep sigh he said, “You’ll come now?”

  I nodded.

  Within an instant, he was sending out orders to get the girls to go meet the Parduss king. I felt a heavy burden lift off my shoulders, yet couldn’t stop thinking, if that was all it took to get him to release us… why was he hiding us in the first place? Had he gone rogue and kidnapped us to begin with?

  I watched as the girls were flown up not ten minutes to where the king was: the shifters transforming in an instant into their massive, terrifying dragon forms.

  Then I looked back to Scashra, suddenly nervous. I’d bargained with the devil, and now I would have to find someplace to please when, in truth, I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with these girls.

  Nobody did.

  He flew us to a remote station outside on one of the middle tier plenks. I held myself close to his body as we soared through the skies: the warm wind creating a cool breeze against my body. A momentary relief from Cadir’s heat.

  When we landed, Scashra brought me into a teleportation pod, and in the blink of an eye, we were brought to the top of an immense building hidden in behind one of the waterfalls.

  “We have actual doctors in our team,” I said, and Scashra nodded dismissively.

  “They’ve already looked,” he said, hurrying me down the hall.

  “Nice to know I was picked last,” I jeered.

  He gave me an unimpressed look and searched the digital nameplates outside of each room.

  “We have healers, too,” he said suddenly, as though it were a competition. “Nobody knows what’s wrong.”

  I felt my chest fall a little as the thought that this girl would die and he would blame me.

  “Then why ask me to come?” I said lowly.

  “You’re a biologist. That’s… studying living organisms, right? Creatures.”

  I nodded. “Right.”

  “Then maybe she isn’t sick the way a doctor can cure,” he reasoned.

  The purple lights from the outside of the building made the inside feel like it was glowing. We wandered through the many corridors until we found his sister’s room.

  Amlodesh’s room.

  I walked in nervously and saw a beautiful girl laying on a metal slab. Not quite a hospital bed.

  Amlodesh had porcelain-white skin with just a hint of blue in the shimmering scales that went in a stripe across her eyes. I had yet to see a shifter with such a bold pattern.

  Her dark eyes opened, and she looked up at me curiously.

  “Another one?” she coughed, looking up at Scashra with a sisterly scold.

  He neared her bedside and brushed her hair back. “I came as soon as I could,” he said urgently before turning to regard me briefly. “Well, mostly as soon as I could.”

  She laughed and looked over at me.

  “Amlodesh,” she said, and I gave an awkward smile.

  “Chloe,” I said, clearing my throat.

  “Nanodats over there,” she said, pointing weakly to a large desk on the other side of the bed. “It has my records on it.”

  I looked at Scashra curiously, and he shook his head. This prompted Amlodesh to laugh and exclaim, “Right! They don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” I asked, but nobody answered.

  “Go put into a reader then,” his sister said with a weak breath, and Scashra left the room.

  I scraped my teeth against my bottom lip awkwardly, and the white Parduss looked at me, neither judgmental nor particularly interested. She had a kind smile and beaming eyes, despite their dark irises.

  “I have to administer some tests, draw some samples for research,” I said, and she nodded, looking confident suddenly in my abilities.

  “I’m not a doctor,” I admitted uncomfortably.

  “Ah,” was all she said. “He was keeping you hidden, huh?” she said knowingly, closing her eyes. “I know my brother.”

  “Mm…” I mumbled dismissively, reaching for one of the backpacks Scashra had handed me before we left. “Something like that.”

  I drew two blood samples from her and set the vials into my kit before grabbing some swabs.

  “I’ll need you to open your mouth,” I said, and she did. I ran the instrument along the side of her mouth before sealing it in a bag and setting it on the table beside me.

  “Um,” I began nervously. “If I could get one from your…” I pointed back and forth between my eyes.

  “Scales?” she laughed. “Go right ahead.”

  Amlodesh closed her eyes, and I ran the swab along the shimmering scale, watching how it caught the beautiful light of the room.

  Her room sat on the edge of the mountain highrise hospital. A corner room with high-tech machinery pumping Amlodesh’s body alive and a small oval window next to her bed.

  Out the windows, all I could see was water; all I could hear was rain.

  How strange, I thought, to be brought somewhere just miles away from the island I was floating on and it have a completely different atmosphere. The island was so small that it was almost entirely enveloped by the rainfall.

  “That wasn’t the plan,” she said softly and touched my hand. “Keeping you girls hidden.”

  “Good to know,” I said. I stared down at her slender fingers and pat her hand twice before moving mine away. “He just works on his own then?”

  She scoffed. “Who knows. Probably something Pash put him up to. She…” she looked at me with a bashful smirk then and then shrugged. “She kind of hates humans.”

  “Huh… Well, you can tell her that I’m not crazy about being here, either,” I said, and she chuckled again.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she said sweetly.

  I let out a teasing laugh and said, “Yeah, I bet!”

  She smiled at that, and we both watched as Scashra came back into the room, slipping a tiny chip into the side of a tablet-like device. He set the device into my hands, and I began reading her file.

  She was, by all accounts, perfectly healthy.

  I set my jaw, wondering if Alecia would know what to do if she were here.

  “Well?” Scashra said impatiently, trying to read my expressions.

  “Well, what?” I said, and before I could get any other words, tell him I would have to study her samples before I could get anything conclusive out of her, we both twisted around at the sudden black liquid that was pooling out of her mouth.

  Amlodesh coughed and gagged on the liquid and Scashra began yelling for one of their healers.

  She grabbed onto Scashra’s hand and looked up, wide-eyed at him she choked and hissed against the liquid in her mouth. “Scashra,” the girl gurgled through the liquid in her throat and gripped onto his hands.

  Three healers raced into the room, and I took a step back, grabbing my samples and watching as they frantically rubbed ointments across her throat and belly to no avail.

  I’d read about this, before coming here. The problem with the females—the eniwan. This was how they went: died. A black darkness that seeped through their bodies until they were nothing.

  “It’s okay,” Scashra comforted her, his trembling voice betraying his brotherly instincts to protect her.

  She gripped his hands so firmly that his fingers turned white under the tips of her fingers. “Congratulations.” The word was gargled, but unmistakable.

 
; “What?” He said, on the verge of tears now. “On… for what?” he asked, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers with shaking hands.

  She looked puzzled and then shook her head with mock annoyance. She choked out the words with a smile: “The dragonling.”

  “The…” Scashra searched her eyes. He looked up at me as though I could solve the mystery of her sentence and then his eyes met his sister’s once more. “The baby?”

  She exhaled with effort, the black liquid spilling from her full lips. “T’amula,” she said: idiot. “Pash.”

  “Pash?” he repeated with narrowed brows.

  Scashra looked stricken, even more-so as Amlodesh weakly cheered, “I knew…” and then her words went to nothing. Her face falling limply in his hand: the veins under her skin flooding with blackness and glowing under her skin like a star.

  The navy-scaled shifter held his sister's face and stared forward numbly.

  “Stay with her,” he said, and with that, he was gone.

  Chapter Six

  Scashra

  The council room was as empty as I had ever seen it.

  But this time it wasn’t me slipping in, hoping for an audience with my ever-present father. This time it was just me. Waiting.

  The breaths were slipping in and out of my lungs like lightning, rapid and hot. My whole body was vibrating with sick. I stared out the immense windows at the fog that swept over Renden island, like somehow the world knew not to be cheerful: that she was gone.

  I didn’t turn, not even when my father stepped in behind me.

  He didn’t say a word: just watched me watching the clouds.

  We stayed like that for what felt like hours but must have only been a handful of minutes. Until Fenris entered the room in haste. I swallowed hard, and my breathing sped up once more as he walked up next to me, looking in between my father and myself.

  My eyes glistened with fury as he looked into them.

  The Dendren looked at me, finally, and said, “What’s the status of the breeders?”

  Not ‘how’s my daughter?’ and not a word about Pash.

  He was a coward, my father.

  “Recovered,” I said tersely, staring at the dark gray clouds that scored the sky.