The Shattered Sylph

by L. J. McDonald

  A man with short blonde hair and long bangs lay on the down-filled mattress, his head tilted to one side. His breathing was soft, but it was so quiet now in the harem that she could hear it easily. He was pale, but other than a red-puckered brand on his bare chest that showed the number 703, he was just as she remembered. Lizzy found she was crying again. She hadn’t only been dreaming of him after all.

  She whimpered, dropping to her knees on the bed beside him and saying his name. He turned toward her in sleep, moving in the direction of her voice, and she bent over, pressing her forehead against his while cupping his cheeks with her hands.

  “Oh, Ril,” she said again, and started to sob.

  As the next day reached its hottest temperature, Leon felt confident at last that the Meridal battlers weren’t going to be able to track him and returned to the alley he’d found the previous night, where he tried to sleep. The stress of reaching the city, their capture, his escape—it had all served to drain him, with Ril’s feeding compounding his exhaustion. The intense heat only made that worse, until he was realistically afraid he would collapse. He couldn’t help Lizzy in this condition.

  He huddled in the uncomfortable alcove he’d staked out, his robe loosely wrapped around himself, and tried very hard not to think about leaving his battler lying on the ground in that arena, or of Justin, whom he’d also left behind. He tried not to think of anything, and to thereby keep his emotions controlled. There were still battlers out hunting him, he had no doubt about that.

  Physically, he could hide himself with relative ease. After so many years outdoors, his skin was leathery and dry and tanned easily, and thanks to the weeks of sea voyage it was dark enough that a little dirt could help him pass for one of the locals. And while the same sun made his hair blonder, soot stolen from the back of a bakery would work until he found something better. It was only his blue eyes that he couldn’t hide, so he kept his hood up and walked hunched over, pretending to be a much older, more subdued man, and no one paid him any attention, including the patrolling battle sylphs. He was careful to keep his emotions just as quiet.

  Honestly, the latter task was easy. Leon was so numb he could barely feel or think. Only blind determination made him rise when the afternoon cooled, wrap the too-warm robe around him despite the continued heat, and walk back out into the streets, his eyes downcast. He thought nothing at all about his lost friend and missing daughter, or of how many battlers he passed, all seeking him. He thought only, South, three miles, underground. South, three miles, underground. There his daughter would be, and there he would go. It didn’t matter how long it would take or what he would find. That was where he was going.

  He crossed the city, slowly working his way through the crowds until he reached a square that was bare save for a tiny building no larger than a shed, capped by a small dome with gilded openings shaped to resemble mouths. As he stood there, a battler erupted from one of the mouths, rising on the wind as a shimmering cloud. Humans came in and out of the door of the small building, always female, and he settled in a corner out of the way, legs crossed, to watch. Still, he felt nothing. He just watched and waited to see if there would be an opportunity.

  Lying in the arena and dying, Ril had never thought he’d wake again. He’d focused instead on saving his master’s life, and also on Lizzy.

  He’d loved her for so long—since the moment of her birth, in fact, though it hadn’t been until she was seven that he’d figured out how to shift the energy patterns inside himself and match them permanently to hers. It hadn’t been easy. She wasn’t a queen, and he hadn’t had any help. He’d had to do it himself, against all sanity, and he’d caused himself terrible pain in trying—enough that Leon became convinced that he was ill and deserted his duties so that he could rest. That had made it a little easier for Ril, as he’d nested in a bed of blankets Leon made for him in his daughter’s room, at her insistence and Ril’s own birdlike cries. He’d stayed by Lizzy’s side for weeks, resting and focusing and fighting, always fighting, trying to shift his pattern in ways that should never have been possible.

  He’d wanted it, though, wanted her to be his master instead of this man who’d always loved him so dearly and whom he couldn’t admit he loved in return. Leon had stayed with him throughout, sleeping in his daughter’s room as well, and he’d been there stroking Ril’s head as Ril used the last of his strength, still trying to force the change. Both he and Lizzy had been there, petting him and expecting him to die.

  “You should go,” he had told his daughter, looking from her to the nest of blankets, but she shook her head vigorously. She had one hand down by Ril’s feet, her fingers tucked in through his talons. He held her with his toes, afraid to let go. He felt too much like he were falling, even lying there.

  At Leon’s suggestion, his grip tightened. It was all he could do to move. He’d fallen over onto his side, his ragged wings spread loosely around him and his head lying crookedly on the nest. He breathed in rasps through his beak, and he could barely see through his half-closed eyes, but he forced himself to make a strangled sound of negation.

  Lizzy bit her lip and stroked his feathered neck, head, and the ridges over his eyes. “I’m not leaving,” she said.

  “Lizzy…”

  “I’m not leaving! He doesn’t want me to leave!”

  Ril made another groan of agreement, shuddering. He had focused on her with everything he was, and he felt as if he’d tear apart if she left him. He was about to tear apart anyway, even if she didn’t. He was so close…He could feel her essence just beyond his grasp, but he could also feel Leon so much more clearly. The man was in pain, grieving for him, but he didn’t want that. Ril wanted Lizzy, whom he tried to reach for one last time.

  He fell short. Making a pale little hissing sound, as though the life was escaping him like steam from a kettle, he shivered again, broken. Leon swallowed, his hand across Ril’s feathered back.

  Lizzy started to cry. She leaned over his body, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him against her. “Don’t go, don’t go, please don’t go!”

  And that was the difference. Her tears soaked his feathers, but more, her mind touched his, her desperate need for him to live leaving her essence wide open. Ril felt her unrestricted love, and he reached for it in desperation, bringing it inside him. In that moment, he realized his previous mistake: he needed her help to make the bond, her willing surrender. And in realizing, he felt something deep inside himself changing, realigning…and suddenly they were tied together. She was his master, his love. Ril shuddered again and pressed his beak against her, cooing. Lizzy started to cry even harder, and her father hugged them both. The worst was past.

  It took Ril weeks to fully recover, and he realized as he did that his connection to Leon was still intact. That one bond he could never break. But it didn’t matter. He had Lizzy, and he could feel her, and when she was kidnapped, he could track her. Leon had never asked him why that was so, or asked about what happened in those months when he’d thought his battler would die. Leon had always let him keep his secrets, including his hidden self-loathing that had made him turn away from his link to Lizzy and pretend he’d never loved her at all. Still, despite how it all turned out, Ril had succeeded at something impossible before Yanda the battler shattered his mantle, leaving him less than whole. If never again, for one moment in his life he had chosen his own destiny.

  Now he thought he’d chosen death—to save Leon and, through him, Lizzy. Instead he opened his eyes and looked upward at a gauze-covered ceiling. He could smell incense and hear women’s laughter. He could sense battlers as well, all bound, all queenless, from a dozen or more different hives but somehow content with each other against all natural rules. Of course, he thought dimly, they were with women. They didn’t need to fight each other with so many women around to make love to.

  There was a weight against his left shoulder, a woman’s breath tickling his neck. That had never happened before in all his long life, and Ril tur
ned his head, still dazed by his near death and the feeling of more energy saturating his form than he’d ever experienced before. Beside him lay Lizzy, asleep, her hair tumbling in ringlets across her face.

  It was the last thing he ever would have expected. He hadn’t seen this even during his wildest dreams in the slumber to which he was now forced. He was broken, shattered, inferior—not good enough for any female, let alone this one, whom he loved so much. He shuddered, and to both his delight and horror, her eyes opened.

  Slowly she lifted her head to stare at him. Ril stared right back. Tremulously, her lip started to curl, shaping into a smile, and then she was lying half across him, her arms tight around his neck.

  “Oh, Ril! You came!”

  Ril thought he’d lose his mind from the feel of her. Certainly he couldn’t breathe, but his own arms came up and around, hugging her hard against him. She was all right! She was alive, and safe, and here. He’d found her when instead he’d been expecting death.

  Lizzy giggled, embracing him tighter, and she pulled back to press her lips against his in a brief kiss that nearly turned out his insides. Then she pulled back again, still holding him but smiling.

  Her emotions were overwhelmingly happy. This close, he couldn’t help but feel them clearly. She was ecstatic, and he managed a trembling smile just for her. “You’re all right?” he whispered.

  She nodded. “I am. As well as I can be here. Are you? How did you get here?” A frown appeared on her face. “Where’s my father?”

  Ril hesitated, suddenly wondering that himself. Had Leon taken the escape route he’d made? He closed his eyes, focusing, and felt a flash—of pain, of regret, but also of freedom. He shook his head, still too stunned to interpret.

  “He’s alive,” he told her. “And free. I’m not sure where, though. I…need a few minutes.” Actually, he felt as if he needed days. Perhaps even years. This was all so surreal.

  Lizzy just laughed, hugging him again, and she sat up, tucking her hair behind her ear as she considered him with delight. Ril studied her in near bemusement. She was healthy, well fed, her emotions happy and real. Her hair was shiny and her blue eyes sparkled. Her dress was a shimmering green, cascading down her body but sheer enough to hide absolutely nothing.

  Ril’s eyes widened. He’d been hatched as a cloud filled with lightning, but he’d spent a very long time indeed around human women. “What in the…?”

  Lizzy looked down at herself and turned bright red, suddenly covering her body with her arms and hunching over on the soft bedding. “It’s not my fault!” she wailed. “This is all they give us to wear!”

  Ril shook his head and sat up. A faint twinge made him look down at himself to see a number branded on his chest. He read 703 in amazement and not a small amount of anger. “What is this?”

  “They do that to all the battlers,” Lizzy told him mournfully.

  “Not to me they don’t,” he snarled, and tried to change his chest. Just that part of him. He shimmered, and pain rushed through him, but to his horror, the mark didn’t fade. It remained clear and red.

  “Eapha says they use another battler to make the mark and it doesn’t go away.”

  That meant they’d carved it right into his mantle, which made it permanent like all of his other injuries. Ril swore and forced himself to his feet. “Come on, we’re not staying.”

  Lizzy rose willingly enough, but when he went to step outside the alcove, she grabbed his wrist with both hands and pulled him back. He eyed her again, puzzled.

  “You have to know about this place,” she told him. “There are rules we all follow, just to stay.”

  “You want to stay here?” he asked.

  “No, but there are worse places,” she explained, and with that she told him about the feeders and the concubines, and how they were all there to keep Meridal’s battlers happy.

  Ril’s anger surged at that—at the thought of sweet little Lizzy in the arms of anyone. Suddenly furious, he went to rush out, his hate already flaring in challenge, but she yanked on his arm again, as hard as she could.

  “None of them touched me!” she shouted. “They said I’m already mated, that I’m off limits!” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Why would they think that, Ril?”

  He stood frozen, his emotions so out of control he knew that she could feel them. He knew that Leon could feel them, too, wherever he was, and that the man was leaping to his feet, shouting in amazement, possibly giving himself away as he reached out for his battler with every paltry human sense he had.

  Leon! he sent, even as he stared down at this girl for whom he was useless.

  Not a girl, a woman. Pure woman. And she felt just as clearly what he did, clearer even than her father, for she was right here and she was his master, the one he’d made a conscious choice to obey. She reached out and put a hand on his chest below the scar. She was trembling, her relief at seeing him intense, her understanding of all the things he couldn’t hide from her after crossing half a world wonderful. Ril trembled as well, especially as she slipped his loosened shirt back over his shoulders, down and off, and pushed him onto the soft bed.

  “I didn’t ever think you were useless,” she whispered, and leaned down to kiss him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ril and Lizzy made love in the small alcove in the battlers’ harem. He couldn’t stop her—didn’t want to stop her—but he also needed her to instigate it and take control. He needed her to be the master.

  She pushed him down and lay atop him, her soft breasts pressed into his chest through the gauze of her dress, her lips moving gently against his own. Ril returned the kiss, his tongue sliding against hers. Then he moved his lips along her cheek as she worked her own lips toward his ear. Her hands stroked his sides, and he felt a burst of her pleasure as his mouth closed on her ear, so he nibbled it.

  Feeling her breath hitch as he touched her hips, he bunched her dress up enough to slip his hands underneath and place them on bare flesh. She sighed, exhaling gently against his ear. It was everything he’d ever dreamed of, everything he’d desired through hundreds of years of loneliness. It was every last thing for which he’d come through the gate and been denied. Now all of it was his in the form of this beautiful woman who was intent on giving herself to him.

  Ril sat up and brought Lizzy with him, her legs straddling his fabric-clad lap. He pulled her dress up along her body, and she raised her arms above her head, no longer shy. He tossed the gauzy thing into a corner. Then he laved her bared breasts with his tongue, leaving her gasping and arching her back, her hands digging through his hair and holding him close, encouraging him even if he hadn’t been empathic and known as a matter of course the very things that would please her.

  Barely, he kept this from Leon. Her father didn’t need to feel this. This was for the two of them alone, here in this place. Ril knew there were battlers outside, but they didn’t matter any more than the other women. His warning went out, though. Here he was with his master, loving her, and woe on any who would intrude.

  Lizzy drew Ril’s head up and kissed him frantically, pressing her breasts into his searching hands, weeks of the lowgrade lust that always filled the harem flowing through her, only now it felt right. She loved Ril, had always loved him, and could feel now how he’d loved her, too. The handlers could come at any time, could take her to be a feeder or him to be a slave, so she couldn’t dare waste time being shy. Not after two wasted years she might have had, if only she hadn’t been so foolish. In case she never got another chance, she would have him now…and it was glorious.

  “I want to feel you,” she whispered.

  He shifted under her, his kisses never slowing as he pushed his pants down and off, kicking them away. The warmth of him drove her further down the path of insanity, but as she settled against his erection, as she felt the length of it so hard against her folds, she was suddenly blushing again despite her resolution.

  Ril lay on the bed and stared up at her in amazement, his nor
mally cold, gray eyes filled with wonder. That helped banish her fear. Lizzy smiled and slid herself along him, coating him with her moisture until he cried out, shuddering. She knew his pleasure, which was shivering through her as surely as her own.

  “Why do I feel you like this?” she whispered, and stroked him again with her body. “You’re my father’s battler.”

  “I’m yours,” he corrected. “Yours for all your life.” He lifted up to kiss her. “You would have been my queen if Solie hadn’t ascended first.” He swallowed. “If I hadn’t been broken.”

  She laid a finger on his lips. “Shh. Never say to me that you’re broken, understand? Never even think it.”

  “Yes, Lizzy,” he agreed.

  She smiled, tracing the lines of his face and cheekbones. Ril closed his eyes, an unguarded smile on his lips, and so she reached down, watched his eyes fly wide as she grasped the proof of his devotion. She watched in fascination while he gasped, his mouth open and his head tilting back, but he didn’t otherwise move, leaving that control to her.

  His eyes never left hers. He needed her to take command, she guessed, to stop him from convincing himself that he wasn’t worthy. This made her feel powerful, and she lifted him, bringing his sex up between her legs and against her core. Taking a deep breath, she sat down, letting gravity push him in.

  For a brief moment it hurt, but then Ril was crying out and his pleasure was far more potent than her own swift pain. Lizzy arched back, wailing in joy to the ceiling no matter who might hear. He lifted against her, and a moment later they were moving in unison, flesh rubbing flesh, pleasure mingling with pleasure until neither was sure where one ended and the other began, whether in body or soul. Soon Ril held Lizzy to him, crying—only maybe it was her, or perhaps it was both of them—and they were grasping each other, moving, thrusting, dancing in a fire she hadn’t known she could feel and never wanted to feel again with anyone else. Ril was hers. He was her battler, her lover, and she was his bond to this world and the reason he’d come to it…and she was also why he’d survived and continued to stay. All for her, always for her—and their celebration of that was exquisite. It exploded through them, carrying them to something higher and greater than either would ever have been able to feel alone.