Gaffriel 47

I don’t know how long we lay there, but she had stirred first. My head laid in her lap, and she crouched over me defensively. Soft fingertips brushed my temples, petting me as her eyes stayed locked and focused on a door. Blood trailed from her lips, over her chin, and down her neck. Her eyes reflected solid black pools of emptiness.

“Ni.” My voice cracked, throat sore.

She glanced down, then back to the door. I could feel her mana charged over every inch of her, and it seemed to break her focus as her grip relaxed. She shook slightly, like a shiver that wouldn’t stop.

I loved her so much, and my thoughts spun, but the words just came to me. “En Amma Ti, man elt ik sooth,” I said. Those might be my last words, but I couldn’t die, not yet. I felt strange, like healing fire within me.

“En kira, val sin… Vaen soh skehnt ai.” She said quietly. A tear trailed her cheek. ‘I know. Me too—’ I recognized the first part.

‘Vaen soh skehnt ai.’ That last part I had to think about. “for in strange light,” She had said.

That phrase meant something… I couldn’t remember, and It tugged at my senses.

I wanted to sit up, to move, but everything exploded in a wash of pain, and she moved her hand over my shoulder.

“Little bird girl, I see your companion is awake?” A voice bleated out in cracking loud tones over a speaker.

She focused on something, her mana. It flowed into me, and she couldn’t break that concentration. Niala went stiff as I opened my eyes. Everything hazed out of focus. Blood smeared everywhere, my blood, human blood, everything smattered about the white and silver floor. I tasted blood on my lips, and it wasn’t mine.

“Little bird girl,” the man barked out.

“Niala,” She spoke shortly, and she looked up to a speaker in the wall. I could see calculations behind her eyes. Niala had never dealt with confinement well. Kiromir tried grounding her once over something she’d done… biting, I think. It started her nightmares up over again and took weeks to recover.

“I am called Niala,” She continued. She’d been speaking our tongue, I could tell. Her grammar stiffened after she switched back. I remembered her nightmares when she cried out in her language, and I had held her as she tried to force English back at me, apologizing.

“Right, so, I was curious, what did you use on William Syllivan?” The voice eked out.

“My hands.” Her voice had a hollow and depthless tone to it. It wasn’t a voice I’d heard her use before, and it seemed laced with her fires.

“We both know that’s not true, little bird girl,” the voice answered back.

My thoughts aligned. Colors looked right again, things straightening out. I knew what I needed to be doing and something just… Something clicked in my head. That slam had jarred things loose, but as I stared up at the humming lights above us, something different hummed within me…

I tried to speak, but English wouldn’t come to my lips. When words came into my mind, they burned. But, at least, I could find words in her tongue.

“Niala,” I whispered. “Acir hul, met ea.” ‘Acir words, good yes.’

Her eyes flicked from the speaker to me—surprise in her eyes.

I strained to sit up. My fingers felt over my face.

“Mirnah,” She mouthed our word for ‘hear,’ or listen.

“Why was I given to you?” She snapped at the voice.

“You’re in no position to negotiate.”

“Nah. I’d die for my secrets. I’d put the knife to my own throat to keep us safe.” Absolute conviction trembled in her voice, and it pained me.

“Yeah, but is your boyfriend there the kind of person that would let you die for a secret?”

A shrill whining noise started, and Niala jarred me, grabbing under my arms and lifting my body up for just a second as a horrible clicking noise spiked through the room. I could feel Niala jolting beneath me and crying out in pain. That animal scream came from her throat again. I didn’t know how such a screech came from that throat.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me. That was my negotiation,” Niala wheezed. Her hands clutched for me like I’d go somewhere. I wasn’t going anywhere.

I breathed to her, reaching a shaking weak hand out. “Nei spil.” She held tighter around me with her mana prickling her skin. I wanted to sleep, and my head swam in circles. ‘won’t go.’

“Same thing they took you for twelve years ago. Breeding,” he said simply.

The thought, my disorientation, the head injury, it overwhelmed me. My stomach heaved, and Niala had me on my side with her sitting over me as I gagged again. My mouth already tasted like vomit. Now it just tasted like more vomit. This was karma for all the bothering over the past year.

“Gaff, you idiot,” She breathed.

“We have surgical instruments that can cut with heat and light, lasers, do you know what lasers are?”

Niala glared up. “I’m not stupid.”

“Whatever you used, it cut more cleanly and more finely than anything I’ve ever seen, heard of, or even conspired of existing. It cut finer than a micron. We could line up cell walls with the precision of it.”

Niala looked at her hand.

“Ik sooth,” she said as she clenched her fist.

“It’s my fire.” She extended a hand and let the black flames dance over it. They already knew everything, so why hide it? Rolyn told them too much, and whatever we told them now ensured our survival as long as they asked the right questions.

Silence met her admission.

“We didn’t know a black fire existed. This is new.” His sudden interest gave me hope.

“Estah,” I breathed to her. ‘Stop.’ They didn’t know about it, and anything they didn’t know about could help us. I couldn’t speak English if I wanted to. So I reached for words that weren’t there, and every time I did so, part of my brain buzzed and sent nauseating feedback to me. I’d felt something like this before. I was so close to death.

Brain damage.

“It’s just my fires! This is my magic, my mana,” She continued on, holding it out, trembling.

“They’ll kill us both,” She whispered to me in English and switched to Anil, “We’ll plot escape once we’re healed.”

I saw no escape from the room. Solid inset doors and metal walls taunted us, and I felt no vibrations, just heard the barking chirp of the speaker.

I felt over myself, felt around me as I tried to quell my nausea. Something didn’t line up with my mind, the ground beneath us felt too solid, but I felt such vertigo that spun my head just like we were…. We were moving! Judging by the rise and fall, we floated on water. Bless whatever inner ear balance mechanism we had for flying, for I’d have never noticed it.

I felt in my pocket and over my form to find my phone. My hands shook. Every articulation made my stomach seize as I felt my phone. Kiromir had made sure that I didn’t get one of the cheap smartphones like most had. Instead, Niala and I had satellite, and we only used them when out on a mission or off base. Bless cargo pants!

“No signal in here,” The voice laughed. He could see the phone in my hand. The speaker clearly didn’t know the depth of wildling pockets when it came to a certain black-winged girl’s safety.

I looked at my phone. Barely a bar present by some grace of the creator. I grasped my hand as tight as I could, and I had limited time. I had muscle memory on my side, and though my lips couldn’t form words. Somehow, my thumb knew its job. Nausea and dysphoria shot through me. I knew I would vomit, but I had to try. This was the single most important message that I would ever send in my entire life. Then, my vision went weird again, warping.

I messaged Kiromir. I made it seem sloppy— and it was—hammering at the face of it with desperation as I tried to ‘make it work.’ Finally, a chuckle came from the speaker. He did that on purpose; I know he did because they had to hit a button every time he spoke—asshole.

“Rolyn with feds traitor. Niala alive. Will meet at your legend.” I slid my thumb and hit send. I glanced at the time. We’d only been gone four hours? Maybe a time zone change?

After a few shaking moments, I saw the message go through, but I put a mask of shaken devastation over me and smashed my phone in ‘anger.’ Niala gasped.

‘Vaen soh skehnt ai.’ Her words kept echoing through my mind. That strange phrase from earlier. ‘For in strange light.’

I stared at the remnants of my phone and felt my head growing dizzy again. My eyes rolled out of my control, my chest shuddered, and every mote of strength went out of me as I went limp over her lap once more.

“Is he going to live? You’re a breeding pair, and I’d like to keep it that way,” The voice said in menacing tones.

I felt the flowing upheaval within me, her turning my body. If I had anything left to spill, it came out as blindness took me in sharp acid waves. Then silence and peace overcame me.

She totally kissed me earlier.

I told her I loved her.

She said she did too.

‘Vaen soh skehnt ai.’ ‘In the weird way.’