CHP19

Seneya sat with her knees to her chest, staring out at the lands she’d called home with Kael for the past month and a half.

Noonday sun rose high in the sky. The heat felt good on her wings, and she could smell the scent of autumn approaching in the air.

Rusting forest cornered them on all sides, giving her a modest glade with which to practice her flight and fires in.

The one thing she hadn’t anticipated, though, was sparring. Her new culture, it would seem, was a very war-centric one, and if she couldn’t hold her own, she wouldn’t fit in well.

Her wings cocked up on her back, swaying raggedly in the breeze. She’d gotten her ault to start working a few weeks prior, but her feathers started molting by then, and the new ones jutted out around the fluff.

And despite how happy her new life made her, a prickly depression settled over her, one that Kael chuckled away, calling it the ‘molting blues.’

She stretched her wings and gave them a good shake, watching dead feathers cast off in the breeze, their red flecks and light grey were brittle and washed out. Her new feathers grew slightly darker, sleeker, and rounded, not sharp like Kael’s. The illustrations she’d seen in some of Kael’s books showed many examples, but they weren’t like any she’d seen. She saw traits of the Phoenix within her, but certain things felt off when she looked at others.

Kael left not too long ago to do their daily shopping, and the whole ‘eating once or twice a day’ thing seemed to be more Kael’s preference and lifestyle than her own. Nevertheless, she wanted more and waited patiently for him to return.

Not too much later, he strolled out into the glade and looked around, no bag in hand, and she narrowed her eyes.

He doesn’t see me… Seneya tensed and moved into position.

“Ready or not,” She breathed to herself before standing and leaping from the roof. Her tail flit behind her in the breeze.

Her wings carried her at a full glide. The wind between her feathers felt like a gentle hand’s caress, more pleasurable than anything she’d ever felt, and it was all she could do not to sigh with bliss.

Her hands caught him full in the chest, and she yelped when she felt him fall backward. Kael was a steel rod at the worst of times, an immovable force at best. He never stumbled and fell back! The eyes that bit back at her glinted not the cornflower blue of Kael’s but a silvery blue so light they appeared grey.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG! WRONG! Her mind screamed at her as she straddled the waist of a stranger.

A narrower face, slimmer eyes, fuller lips, and more manicured brows glared back at her. He wore strange robes, much unlike what Kael wore. She froze for a moment as they looked at one another, him bleating in shock that turned into anger as black fire swarmed his hands.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Her mind wouldn’t silence, and her fires swarmed her own arms as well. Green fire met black as their hands grappled, and he forced Seneya off of him.

She expected the sting of his fire or to see the strange scabbing rot when she used her fire the opposite way. It didn’t come.

The feeling of wrongness became a wash of tingling, like the starlight in his black fire coursed through her veins. A flush crept over her cheeks, his hands tightening to hers, but he made no more move away from her.

He looked at their joined hands with wide eyes and saw her fire shifted, no longer green, nor any single color as it rushed up her arms in flashes of white, red, blue, green, and yellow before crashing against his flickering black.

He jerked away from her, stood to his feet, and took a step back.

She scrambled back on thin legs and arms. A quick glance over her told him a lot –malnourished, weak, and growing stronger, but her new fires and molting feathers told him more.

The green of her eyes lit with life, and her aura emanated confusion. She too could feel his own aura, one of longing, and had she not been working to fight against Kael’s anxiety for so long, she’d have been consumed by the ‘want’ that she felt, amplified now as he stared from his hands to hers. But, then, his eyes laid upon her tail and froze in sunken horror.

“What fire have you?” He asked in shaken Anael.

“Make heal,” she said in her broken tongue, then apologized. “I speak not Anael well. Better for Acerrai.”

He took a shaken breath. He spoke Kael’s language, his familiar accent a comfort over his higher-pitched voice. “So, you speak Acerrai better than Anael, strange for one of your pallor.”

She shrugged, “It was important I learn Acerrai. It was not important I learn Anael.”

“So, you are a healer, then? Why were your fires so… Why did they do that?” He asked, staring from his hands to hers once more.

She shrugged.

He knelt before her once more and held out his hands, supplicative with his fires small and pooling in his cupped palms as if he offered her starlight itself. Like before, she drew from her green fire, reached for his, and the second they made contact, her own began to crawl over her hand and wrists in that rainbow shift.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” He breathed. “Who are you? What are you?”

She slipped her hands from his, the fires still going over her hands in that rolling array of colors as she stared down at it. Then, her eyes lifted, and her face morphed into something less playful and youthful than it had been.

“You know me.” Her voice went quiet, breathy, and sharp.

“I assure you, I do not-.” He started, then paused as her fire-laden hands shifted, one hand lifting to put a single finger to his temple.

“You know me, Vrahe, Vrahiel,” Seneya spoke quietly.

He jumped back from her, on his feet in a scramble, and wretched emotions tore through him as her fires died down. She stared up at him, suddenly blank and impassive.

“I assure you, I do not,” he said, but as soon as he heard those words come from his lips, he knew it was a lie.

He approached her once more, though, hands outstretched. His longing aura spiked hard as his fires flared. She reached for them once more, her eyes trained on his, and for but a moment, he could taste all the colors of fire coursing through him, warm, tingling, pleasant static and the pure wavering bliss created by a healing fire.

“What is this?” Seneya asked, her fires shifting back to green as her face lost the sternness.

“Melding,” he breathed.

Green fires were a high-risk, high reward fire. It was pleasurable to taste one another like so to the right person, connected in the right way. If they did not meld, did not connect, it caused discord and pain.

“It feels good,” she said, the breathiness in her voice suggesting that he should stop. He couldn’t make himself, though. Instead, he enjoyed watching her mesmerized by it, her heart fluttering as a harsh blush crept across her cheeks.

“Why were your fires changing colors?” he asked.

She looked at her hands and furrowed her brow. “They’re just a healer’s green.”

“Right,” he said, tensing as a wave of anxiety overcame him. Kael… He jerked his hands back and looked around wildly.

Kael came to land not a few feet beyond them, his feet denting the soil.

“Father,” the man said, looking up to Kael before rising to his feet and brushing himself off.

“Go back to the cabin, little starling. The royal ass and I need to have words.” Kael handed the bag over to her and didn’t look her in the eyes.

“I didn’t just see you doing what I thought you did, Sael.” Kael glared as Seneya skirted away, rather certain she had done something wrong.

“She- I-” the man, Sael, stuttered, buckling under Kael’s gaze.

“I was not expecting her or something like her. She startled me, and we grappled, and the fire, it just melded,” he said with stunned awe as Kael saw the lingering confusion in him.

“Her aura caught you off guard, so I won’t hold you too hard to it. I think it’s caused her a fair number of problems already,” Kael said as his eyes went dark.

“Is that your starling you told me of in your letter?” Sael watched as she bounded back off towards the cabin.

“Yeah.” Kael rolled his eyes.

“I have the things you asked for back there,” Sael said, jerking his head over his shoulder.

“Good. She’s had the same clothes for six weeks, and they’re falling apart,” Kael grimaced.

“She looks feral.” Sael frowned.

“Looks like she’s having fun to me,” Kael said coldly.

“Why are you keeping her? Also, you didn’t tell me she’s chakt seraph!” Sael lashed his wings out in a shudder and unfurled a tail just like Kael’s.

Where Kael had solid black wings, his were shot with a dark grey on his inner wing in a band at his secondary flight feathers. His tail bore a similar underside band.

“Didn’t feel it was necessary. Also, I never know if our communication is being read. Last thing I need is the whore finding out and causing chaos or worse, Lyra.”

“So, she’s Felice’s child?” Sael asked.

“Looks like it,” Kael mumbled.

“So, how did you find her scion?”

“She was gelded. Her phoenix spirit guided her out this way, and a few Enai ended up dumping her in my lap,” Kael said as he gestured for Sael to take a seat.

“Who is she to be gelded? Why would anyone geld her?” Sael asked with alarm.

“Either her grandmother or Whitewind. I know I didn’t, and with how hard Lyra is searching, I’d not be quick to say it was Lyra.” Kael’s mood grew darker.

“When was she gelded?” Sael moved to sit next to his father, sprawling his legs out. He propped himself up on his elbows and stared up at the sky.

“That’s her first molt,” Kael said, nodding to strewn feathers.

Sael choked and looked over to him with alarm.

“How many turns is she?”

“Sixteen or seventeen, somewhere in there,” Kael mused.

Sael looked at his hands with a little unease.

“Yeah…” Kael gave Sael a dirty look before shifting in his spot and kicking his side with quite less than his full strength. Sael rubbed over his side and stared at the mud now on his robes.

“Gah!”

“She’s halfbreed, isn’t she?” Sael said, musing, rubbing over his chin in contemplation, spreading dirt on his face.

“Mind out of the gutter, boy. I’m a prime example of chasing women outside my tribe, and look at where that landed me?” Kael laughed.

Sael wilted slightly. He blinked away something in his eyes before taking a deep breath. Kael just grew more stern-looking.

“You were different. You two were perfect, just the wrong time and wrong place. She was more Acerrai than most Acerrai women I know. Mom was- Niala was… she was so…” Sael went quiet.

“You still call her mom?” Kael pinched back a smile.

“She was more to me than Erythmia ever was,” Sael said, his teeth glinting as his lips curled.

“Go ahead and find yourself a bondmate while you’re young.” Kael looked at his hands. “Find your own Niala before they force an Erythmia on you.”

“But not her; she’s meant for someone else,” Sael said with a sigh and crooked smile.

Kael froze stock still and cut his eyes, “She’ll find who she finds. I’m glad her first melding was pleasant. It often isn’t with healer’s fires.”

“And your plans for her?” Sael stood to stretch. He rubbed his eyes to pass away the burgeoning tears.

“Teach her to fly, to use her fires, put some education in her. Then, once she’s of age, I’ll let Lyra meet her, and from then, she can go whatever way she wants or stay; I don’t mind the company.”

Sael nodded and headed off towards the woods, and Kael followed in tow.

A pile of things sat in a small clearing, a rucksack of clothes and undergarments, leather bands for her, small wooden boxes with things that rattled inside, and a case of books with dusty covers.

“When you said for me to get everything you’d need for you to take on salvie for a young one, I was thinking much younger than her,” Sael admitted.

“I told you a size for her,” Kael grumbled.

“And she’s nowhere near the healthy size for a woman her height. I expected a child, not a young woman. I had no idea who she was.” Sael hoisted heavy books over his shoulder as Kael gathered the rucksack and a few odds and ends he could carry.

Kael hummed in response, following in tow with the rest of the things. “She’s a mess, Sael. Nothing’s been done right for her. She’s been gelded since she was a fledgling, and I’m struggling with her damned Phoenix spirit.”

Sael froze.

“Phoenix spirit? She’s got a guardian?” Anxiety twisted in Sael’s gut. Of course, she’d have one; of course, she’d be protected in the line of the Esanye, of the family Southwind, the hailed queens of the Phoenix. What even that damnable spirit wouldn’t be able to tell is where the soul of Vrahe went to or flash fires like she did.

Usually, after the heralding of Acryan and Sai’s death, they announced his rebirth into the world and wait for Sai. But, this incarnation—they only announced that he had been found, and they had not made him public. As for Sai, there had been no herald. The Anael loved Sai and made great festivities over her rebirth. But, there had been no such thing. Nobody called or heralded the reincarnations, and Sael did the kind of math that only kings and their court did when things didn’t add up.

He had questions he needed answers.

His nose curled, and he sighed when he prepared to enter the cabin. He remembered how filthy his father was, having never learned to clean on his own. It always took a degree of mental preparation to look around and politely suggest that he take a trip for a few days while he sent people to clean the place.

When he looked in, Seneya sat at the table, head resting on her arms in wait for Kael to return. He stepped over a nearly spotless floor, noticing walls scrubbed, kitchen gleaming like new, and every stitch of cloth in the place out of sight. The odor of dankness and squalor had been aired out to a respectable ‘old cabin’ mustiness. Sael knew it must have been her doing and smiled.

Sael looked her over and saw all the things he had overlooked, the ill shape of her wings, the colors she presented, the tail she had so little control over, and her molting wings. Her eyes sparkled, strangely green, a color he’d not seen in their people, who possessed eyes of violet, blue, amber, and silver.

She yawned, and her stomach heralded its hungered call.

“Why were you waiting for me to eat?” Kael laughed as she looked up at him.

She shrugged. “I didn’t know which one was yours.”

Sael watched as Kael doled out his usual rations, tough raw meat, fruit, and vegetables. There were a few carrots in the bag and what looked to be an already-bitten head of broccoli.

She pulled free an apple and opened her mouth to bite when she saw Sael watching her curiously. Her lips closed and jaw snapped shut in an instant. He grinned at her, showing off his sharp teeth, and her eyes averted.

Kael leaned against a doorframe. “My little starling is sparse with her words.”

“May she speak more when I know her better,” Sael said as he pulled a box from the things he had brought for her and sat it on the table. “Kael said you needed it, and I can agree.” Sael caught her attention and pulled her face into his hand. She looked up at him, surprised and cautious.

She had reservations, but his fires enticed her and left her shivering.

“Smile for me,” Sael rumbled in a dark and warm voice like sugared spice. His blue eyes captured her.

She did, weakly spreading her lips as he clucked his tongue. Her teeth weren’t too bad, just pronounced and blunted at the ends. They needed to be sharper at least, whittled down a bit at best.

“I’ll clip, and father can share his dinner with me. We’ll eat together. I’m starving as well,” Sael said. A deep and dark shadow of something familiar flickered within Sael’s eyes, and she couldn’t look away, transfixed.

“Hah, she’d not let you touch her teeth for love or money,” Kael laughed as Sael plucked tools out of the box and propped her teeth apart with a gently hooked thumb. Kael lifted an eyebrow. “Okay. Let’s see where this goes.”