Gaffriel 68

Niala’s cheeks stayed flushed and pink. They’d been that way for a while, and I wanted to help her more than anything. Her fever must have felt bad. So, distracting ourselves, we flew through the trees, used the rough light, and practiced as best we could. Though I’d had practice doing it before, I had only done small distances and short things. I knew the risk and danger of what we did, but Niala had an escape if she needed it.

I shouldered up against her and took her arm around my neck for support, and I couldn’t breathe for her invading my senses, but she accepted my help. I thought for a moment about using the rough light to get back to the hotel room, but the thought came and went because we had nothing left to give, and Niala looked so bedraggled. If she felt anything like I had, in conjunction with her new fires and molt, I felt so sorry for her. So we made our way out of the woods and back towards the main road, stumbling alongside one another. For a moment, I thought about offering to carry her, but I knew she wouldn't like that, even piggyback. On the other hand, though, seeing how she reacted to me the past few days… she just might.

“Oblivion,” I said in a sharp bark of command, and I felt the aura rising immediately. She raised it in a strong slam of sensation, and I had to gather my thoughts to shrug it off. Either my resistance to her had worn thin, or she had gotten stronger.

I needed to pay the front desk for another night. I subconsciously checked the bundle of money in my pocket because I didn’t trust anything left behind in the hotel room save for our food. As we walked, cars passed us as we made our way into town at a bedraggled pace. Finally, Niala started to feel a little better, walking stronger, and I let her slip off my arm to walk on her own. She gave me an exhausted smile.

“Gaff?” She asked, breaking me from a stupor.

“Hmm?” I kept myself distracted by keeping an eye out and focused on not forgetting her since her aura felt so much stronger than normal.

“I promised to let you…um… I promised to let you ault my wings.” She said it in a quick splurt of words.

“You did.” I wanted to be reserved and cautious about it, but my inner demons started having a party, and I started having thoughts I really shouldn’t have been. I shook my head to dispel them. Those thoughts made me feel anxious and squirmy. But my reverie snapped as a car drove by us with three men inside that looked suddenly very aloof and misty-eyed. Watching them carefully, they caught my attention because you usually never saw people that tall—

“Shit.” Niala’s eyes went bright, and her posture stiff. She’d smelled it before I noticed it, just another reminder of how far behind her I was.

“Sentinel stink?” I asked.

“Weak mana and piss.” She shook her head free of it and eyed all around us. I wondered how she smelled mana, as I’d never noticed it had a smell. Instinctively, she wanted to run, but my first instinct had been to take rough light. In warning, it sparked at my fingers.

I grabbed her hand and dove off the beaten path where the dusty roads were lined on either side by a thin veil of trees with fields beyond. Then, we bolted through the line and made our way behind it, sneaking closer into town.

“Isn’t it a bad idea to go the same way that the bad guys are going?” She asked me, stumbling with my hand still in hers.

“I want to see if we can catch ault on the museum and see what they’re doing,” I said, hyperfocused on a goal.

Her expression narrowed, but we skirted through the underbrush and reached the edge of town all the same. The quietness of the town worked against us, but we managed to skirt behind buildings unnoticed. Businesses on either side of a slender road stretched out in sighed, with a hotel at the end, making the town seem narrow. It appeared dead now since the place only came to life around the fair season. Niala stood out like a sore thumb. Sleepy little towns like this never saw girls like her often, so strikingly pretty and fierce. It may have been the race she looked like, but I liked my thoughts better.

She stumbled with me, crouching low. I could feel mana tingling over my skin and her own roiling within her, charged up and ready at a word.

Feathers! She was strong.

We made it to the edge of the museum among the buildings and saw through the back windows, watching the dusty abandoned store with motes of evening light fading through. Quietly, Niala jostled the back door and found it unlocked by some miracle, so we slipped inside and skirted through old boxes and spiderwebs over dusty floors, making our way in a low crawl to the front. She peered around the edge of the window cautiously, eyes darting about for trouble, then signaled me. We opened the front of the door and sniffed outside cautiously. Nothing. Just her own tinny ault. A sharp ring of sound cracked. A window shattered nearby.

“What the hell do they think a bullet is going to do?” I rolled my eyes as we ducked back in.

“I don’t know. The sentinels have never been on my long list of smart people.” Niala’s hackles twitched, and I could feel her wanting to spike up.

“Do we let them live or send a message?” Her voice had that hollow quality to it again.

“Flock first, then family. Like it or not, they’re not our flock, but they’re Wildling. I’d rather not have to explain myself on why I killed someone or other’s high blood son or whatnot.” The whole station, lowborn, highborn, and blood thing made me boil. Niala never paid attention to it, but they considered her something different, apart, and glued to the hips of the highborn ranks just because of her attachment to Kiromir.

“Fair,” She grumbled and grabbed my hand tighter. I felt mana charging over my skin from her, and she sent mana into me subconsciously.

“Where do you plan on going?” Her dark eyes set on me, and I took a deep breath. Niala, conferring to me? Why did it feel so… good? I ran a few things through my mind in thought about oddity museums and different locations. Of course, if they knew about this museum, it might be compromised. But I had an idea.