“At the feet of the one, my child will fall,” Royden finished. “No wonder they have been hunting you since Trasdaak. They know Krea is their downfall.”
Jaydar joined the rest to stare at the spiral. “Unless they can control her. Then she is our downfall.”
Bri looked from Krea to Sorin. “Where will you go? You can’t bring Krea back into Shaylith. The whole council could be corrupt. Probably shouldn’t let the prince come back, either. Not for a while.”
“I pray your pardon!” Royden said.
Bri smiled. “Except for Royden, of course.”
“Elder Royden,” he corrected. “And they aren’t all bad. But she’s right. You need to stay away until we get things put to right.”
Yiryn, who had been watching the group in silence, reached out and brushed her fingers over the red lines of the spiral. “I just don’t understand how they got in to begin with. With the hold right there.”
Bri shrugged again. “I want to know the same thing.” She turned to Royden. “Are you coming back with me?”
He looked over at Sorin and nodded. “Take Krea and bed down in the Nayli, Sorin. We’ll find you when it’s safe.”
“No. I…we need to do what we were told to do in the first place. We need to go to the Kanadorak.”
“Told by who?”
“A drykir.”
Royden stepped back and crossed his arms. “A drykir came out in the open? Spoke to you? Told you to go to the Kanadorak, and you came to Shaylith instead?”
“I was angry.”
“Very angry,” Krea added.
“Stupid, is more of it.”
Rhin laughed. “You two fight more like brothers than friends. Come, Elder Royden; we need to go. Sorin, I will gather your belongings and bring them back to you tonight. It may not be until tomorrow before I get you the horses.”
“Can you manage His Majesty?” Royden asked.
“We’ll be fine,” Sorin assured him. “Just bring us our gear. But I won’t be leaving anytime soon.”
“Why?” Royden asked, pulling the makeshift rope out from under the prince. “When a drykir tells you to go do something, seems to me it needs to get done.”
“I’m not leaving Dane.”
The others looked at each other in confusion, but Royden gave Sorin’s shoulder a squeeze. “The boy made his choice, Sorin. We can’t force him to take our side in this.”
Sorin shook his head. “He saved us. You saw it. He saved us from Mishtryl. He hasn’t chosen a side. He’s just mad at me. And, to be fair, he has the right to be. I’ve turned this whole thing sideways because of my pride, and I have to see it fixed. I don’t leave until I have Dane. Krea can go ahead to the Kanadorak. It’s her who they want there anyhow.”
“I’m not going alone!” Krea said, glancing from one face to another. They all held mirrored expressions of confusion, but nobody jumped in to help argue her point.
Royden shook his head. “I saw what he did, but I can’t say he did it to save us.”
“He did it on purpose. He saved us. And now, it’s my turn to save him. Even if the little pelt doesn’t know he needs to be saved.”
Krea grinned.
“What?” Sorin said, staring at her.
“Just odd to hear you talk like one of us. One thing doesn’t fit, though.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t Mishtryl stop him?”
After a pause, Royden spoke up first. “If he did it on purpose, and I’m not saying he did, maybe Mishtryl didn’t know what he was about to do?”
Sorin shook his head. “She knew. I saw the look on her face. She knew.”
Krea shrugged.
“Or maybe she didn’t,” Royden said, running a hand through his still wet hair. “Maybe she doesn’t know what Krea can do. That she can shift back without a caller. “Maybe from her perspective Krea was just another lone shift, and that’s not worth losing an elemental wizard over.”
Soring considered that for a moment. “Her secret stays with us, then,” Sorin said, sounding like the leader of armies.
“Agreed,” Royden said, offering his arm.
One by one, they pledged their silence. Royden tried once more to talk Sorin out of his rescue mission, offering to retrieve Dane himself, but Sorin was having none of it. For once, Krea was thankful for the man’s stubbornness. Of course, she might change her mind when it came time to inform him that under no circumstances was she leaving for the Kanadorak on her own, but that was for another day.
After they watched them disappear over the trees, Krea and Sorin faced each other, both exhausted and both thankful to be there at all. Their group felt empty without the little pelt. “Dane knew. About me, I mean. I saw it when he looked at me.”
“Aye. I saw it, too.”
“You really are going to go get him, right?”
Sorin nodded. “As soon as we get our horses back. And my sword. This one is all but useless.”
“What about the prince?”
Sorin glanced over at the still unmoving man on the grass carpet. “I don’t know. He can’t go back to Shaylith. Not yet. Maybe I’ll bring him with me to the Kanadorak once I have Dane.”
“But we’ll be short a horse.”
“No, we’re not. One of us can fly. And you will be long on your way by then, anyhow.”
“Not alone. And I can’t fly. Not really. I almost killed Cricket.”
“You’ll learn.”
They stared out at the clearing in silence. Krea let the day soak in and finally let out a much needed sigh of relief.
Sorin squeezed her shoulder. “I couldn’t agree more. We need to get under the cover of the canopy and prepare to bed down.”
“Well, you know what I am going to do as soon as we’re done?”
Sorin shook his head.
“I am going to start adding those braids just like Arie told me to. A green one for the three forms of the sheema who risked her life to save me, a gold one for the three friends who helped me, and a black one for the three colors of this dagger.”
“Sounds right. They will match your new look.”
Krea’s free hand flew to her face. She had forgotten about that part. She was marked. “What do I look like?”
Sorin smiled and traced the lines on her face again. His fingers started between her brow. The right one brushed over her eyebrow, poked out a row of dots disappearing into her hairline, and then tapped all over her cheek below that eye. His left finger traced an intricate spiral along the right side of her forehead, then dipped back to her nose and made brushing motions all around her eye back toward her ear.
“Like feathers?” she asked.
He nodded. “Gold and tan and chestnut, just like your counter.”
“Does it look strange?”
“It looks beautiful.”
Krea grinned. She would save the fight about the Kanadorak for another day. Right now, all she wanted was to lie next to the sheema and sleep in a skin that, for the first time in her life, was really hers.
Author’s Notes
Thank you for reading Hand and Talon. I hope you loved it! Word of mouth is the best advertising an author can hope for, so if you enjoyed your time with Krea and Sorin, please take a moment to leave a positive review with the seller.
Also, if you would like to take an adventure into space, please check out my Drani series.
And don’t forget to visit my website at meloniepurcell.com where you can find information on upcoming books, sample chapters, maps and other fun stuff. You can sneak through the site ninja-style or drop in and chat.
A sample from Shield of Drani for you to enjoy
One planet rich in fuel
Two psychic talents are required to mine it
Three species seeking control
Tamar can save herself or she can save her planet, but she can’t do both
Too soon, the door beside her slid open and the seat restraints released. She jumped out and cleared the way for the
Dran and Arlele, who were still working to save the bleeding woman. A medical team met them in the huge bay and a sufficient amount of chaos ensued, allowing Taymar to slip unseen, behind the shuttle. The Dran didn’t even look back. Being a harmless telepath had its benefits.
What she wanted was one of those gray uniforms, but they weren’t exactly hanging around the walls on hooks. Taymar ducked behind a piece of machinery anchored to the floor, while a team of three Alliance people scurried around the shuttle with canisters and scanners and then hurried away to some other task. Where was the pilot? A quick pass for his thought patterns turned up nothing, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
Taymar slipped up the side of the shuttle. The small hatch over the pilot’s seat still stood open. That had to be good, right? If the pilot was sitting there ready to launch, wouldn’t the hatch be closed? Maybe he had made a dash for the waste room. Pilots had to eliminate, right? She hoped for the best, stuck her foot in the hole on the side of the shuttle, pulled herself up, and peered over the edge—into an empty seat. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.
Without another second’s delay, she jumped into the vacant seat and started tapping in codes. The cabin still reeked of blood and fear. Her heart raced a mile a minute, and when the side door slid shut she nearly jumped out of her spots. She couldn’t believe it when the seat restraints latched down and the shuttle lifted off the floor, ready to launch. Now the question occurred to her, ready to launch where?
Apparently operating in a preset pattern, the shuttle shot out of the Alliance ship and headed back for the surrendered Shreet vessel.
“No! No! No!” Taymar tapped just about every image on the vid the pilot had used until a voice interface finally screamed into the silence. “Input new destination.”
Well, that didn’t help. She didn’t know where she was; how could she possibly input the coordinates? Taymar thought of her model tree house back at Nevvis’s. “Travok. Take me to Travok.”
“Destination unobtainable with current shuttle specifications. Input new destination.”
She glanced over at the vid showing the shuttle’s location in relation to the two ships. Landing on that Shreet ship would not be good. In more ways than she could imagine, it would not be good. In fact, it would probably be the worst thing that she had ever done, and given her history, that was saying a lot. “Identify the nearest inhabited planets.”
“Ikor I. Ikor II. Daryus. Par Tun Hera. Par….”
“Ikor I. Destination Ikor I.”
“Destination locked. Course changes calculated. Course laid in.”
Taymar watched the vid as the two ships veered away. She had done it. The shuttle was heading off into space. Or so she thought.
“Shuttle Three, correct course. You have altered from the designated flight plan.”
Her heart stopped beating right there in the seat. She was sure of it. Taymar held her breath, hoping somehow it would help. It didn’t.
“Shuttle Three, correct course. I repeat. Correct course. You have veered from the flight plan. Correct course immediately.”
“This is where I die… probably… most likely.” She scrambled for something from the pilot’s thoughts that would help her, but nothing connected. Her panic didn’t help. “Definitely. Computer, terminate the connection with that Alliance ship.”
“Confirm request to override Parent ship controls.”
“Yes. Confirm. Override. Something. Anything.”
“Input authorization code for requested override.”
“Shuttle Three, return to the ship immediately, or you will be fired upon. I repeat…”
Taymar slid the volume control off. “I. Am. Going. To. Die!” A code. The pilot had to have a code. A series of symbols flashed into her mind, but she had no idea what they were associated with. At this point, she didn’t care. She slid the input panel screen across the vid and entered the symbols as they appeared in her head. For a moment, nothing happened.
“Authorization accepted. Parent controls terminated.”
“Then go! As fast as we can, go!”
“Achieving jump velocity will utilize eighty percent of available fuel. Do you still wish to activate tunnel drives?”
“Holy Creator of all that is great and mighty. Just go!”
A panel flashed on the wall. It looked like the parent ship was trying to reestablish control of the shuttle. They didn’t want to blow up one of their babies if they didn’t have to. At the very back of the ship, a low whine was starting to build.
“Prepare for jump.”
The panel went dark, and an ugly thought slipped through Taymar’s mind. They were still connected to the parent ship when she laid in the course to Ikor whatever. They knew where she was going. “Change course for Daryus, and jump.”
“Destination locked. Course changes calculated. Course laid in. Jumping.”
Taymar’s navel wrapped around her spine.
Hand and Talon (World of Kyrni Book 1) Page 40