CHP26

Briel’s eyes squinted closed as his chest hitched.

Zaien sat waiting expectantly for an answer.

“Where was I the night they brought this body in?” Briel said quietly.

“You were wandering around the courtyard gardens between the palace and the courts.” Zaien tented his fingers, hyper-focused. He desperately wanted to know why he did what he did.

“I saw a seraph child dead, and I had the opportunity. I wanted the body.” Briel sat up and folded his arms over his knees. Zaien recognized a lie when he heard one from Acryan. His truths were far more terrible and so often in the open.

“You were keeping it from Vrahe?” Zaien guessed.

Briel let loose a huff of laughter. “That’s a bonus.” He flexed his hand and squeezed his fist, admiring his new body. Memories and moments with Acryan and himself mixed, switching back and forth. He couldn’t tell who was who.

Zaien started to say something, but Briel interjected, closing his eyes as two thin streams of tears rolled over his cheeks. “Be quiet. Somewhere, she’s singing.”

Zaien closed his eyes too, in reverence as Briel reached to him. Briel placed his hand on Zaien’s temple and shared what he heard, the melodic voice lost in darkness humming the creator’s song. Zaien had heard Esca sing it before, a soft drone of her voice, a melody that played in her throat. It sounded different in this body, but he too teared up and filled with hope that indeed, Sai was there.

The stolen moment left all too soon when harried steps and a flash of white hair invaded their reverie. Shythe’s ice blue eyes stared down at them.

“They’re never going to let you take the crown if you keep embarrassing yourself like that,” Shythe spoke in a low, calm voice.

Briel looked Shythe up and down.

“They do not listen,” Briel said without the warlord, but sharing his confidence.

“It is not their job to listen to you. It is yours to listen to them! When that diadem sits on your head, you may take your liberties to speak.”

“Then next time I hear Sai calling out, I shall ignore her and sit through the meeting.” Briel steeled his jaw.

“If you can hear her, then why are you not after her? Why are you not bringing her back?” Shythe’s anger contorted over his face.

“I cannot see where she is. She is not ready yet.”

Shythe let his glance bounce between the two. “Is that why you two are sitting here crying?”

“We could hear her singing.” Zaien dabbed at the corner of his eye with his robe’s sleeve.

Shythe grew reproachful and nodded. “Perhaps you’d like to go have a drink, then?”

Briel clenched his teeth. “I’d much rather sit here listening to the song; though she is silent now, it’s still ringing in my mind.”

Shythe bowed his head, and Zaien wanted to say something, to call Shythe out. Zaien held bitterness for how Shythe treated Briel. Despite his complacency, Briel bore anger over it too, and the soul of Acryan grew seethed.

“I thought you’d like the company, Tuva-.”

“And now I’m worth your company? Now I’m worth it? Six weeks ago, I was a halfbreed not worth the luxury of a bed or home. I had my dinner tossed out on the ground seven weeks ago because you felt like I had spoken out of turn. So let’s not talk about some of the scars my tatsuli hides. And you have the audacity to call me Tuval, to call me friend?” Briel’s tail slid out and flit angrily. He had known nobody else his whole life with one, so he could only react viscerally and instinctually with it. They’d tried having Lyra, the queen of the Phoenix, work with him some, but the council kept him a guarded secret.

Briel was not allowed out outside of Shythe’s home, the grounds of the palace, the courts, and certain remote locations.

Shyth’s lip curled. “I’ll go find Revik, then.” He walked quickly away, his grey robes flitting behind him.

“You really wanted that drink, though, didn’t you?” Zaien glanced around for anyone listening in.

Briel sighed. “No.”

Zaien pursed his lips. “You’re really upset, aren’t you?”

Briel clenched and unclenched his fist. “I’m tall.”

“Probably one of the tallest men I’ve ever met.” Zaien’s grin stretched wide and proud before softening. “You liked how much taller she was than you.”

Briel nodded.

“You’re bound to be a head taller than her, at least.”

Briel wilted and buried his head between his knees, and sighed. “You didn’t have to say it out loud, you know.”

“Come on. Let’s go to the Court’s halls to look at old portraits of her. That’s been cheering you up lately,” Zaien offered.

“Honestly? I’d rather spar.” Briel stood suddenly and shrugged the sides of his dark blue sleeveless robe free to hang over his waist. The sun greeted him on his tawny skin like an old friend, and Zaien worried for him.

“Alright, but no weapons. I have no clue where Revik’s off to, and I like my arms as they are.”

“Want to know a secret?” Briel grinned conspiratorially, his tongue teasing at his teeth again.

Zaien inclined his head.

“I missed on purpose.” Briel’s wings lashed free with all the force he could muster, a gesture that set Zaien’s instincts off. His own wings burst free involuntarily.

In the distance, a few other people gave a bleat of shock as their wings burst free.

“I’ve never had this kind of power,” Briel laughed before darting skyward and spinning with Zaien in tow. Being stronger, Briel’s wings made other people’s wings lash in sympathy.

A few minutes’ flight had them well within the confines of the grounds of the courts, near the sparring field. The buildings they flew over sprawled out immensely, a few stories high.

They made up the courts, where the king and queen would dwell, and addressed all government affairs.

The amphitheater lay below, where they held ceremony and mourned their dead. The infants and elderly who had too little mana to burn their own bodies would be laid upon an altar there. Briel had a strange aversion to it.

A grand palace, not anywhere near the size of the courts, sat across a garden and courtyard. The palace of lovers. It boasted ten bedrooms, servants’ quarters, and a bath that Briel salivated over the thought of using one day. He wondered if he’d reside in the palace or the courts when he found Sai.

In their second incarnation, the courts had been built, and they built the palace for them in their third. Unfortunately, Sai and Acryan hadn’t lived long enough in their first and second incarnations. The first fallen all died within seventy years of their arrival in this world. Acryan had died of the wasting disease in the second. He resented Sai in some ways for how she captured him and had sought comfort in the arms of another woman. It had been his undoing, and the look of confusion when he dwindled away still haunted him when he remembered the look on her face.

Briel saw the academy buildings, their backlots, and practice arenas and swooped down. A thought seemed to be playing over his face as they withdrew their wings.

“Niala Lightwing,” Briel said quietly as Zaien landed at his side on perfectly poised legs.

“Your mother?”

Briel nodded. “Nobody has ever told me of my father other than that he was Acerrai, and it was something not to be talked about.”

Zaien stiffened. “But you already know now.”

Briel nodded. “I’ve twice the Seraph’s blood, do I not?”

Zaien shrugged. “Show me what your seraph’s blood can do.”

Their robes hit the ground in a flash, shoes kicked to the side as they posed before one another, their linens and loincloths all that they wore. They had wound bandages around their thighs and fitted cloth to cover anything ‘obscene.’ Their kind considered very little obscene.

Zaien took the first move in a flash. Briel had a lifetime of experience with Zaien; they had a bond. Their ages weren't too far apart, fourteen years or so, so they felt like brothers to one another.

And like all brothers, they fought.

Briel had been trained by the best, as had Zaien. The first move was a feint, Briel dodging on well-planted feet to strike down with the heel of his hand to divert Zaien’s thrust. Zaien slipped under Briel’s chest, using his strength against him as the diversion turned into an opening, and he pulled Briel over his back.

Briel was stronger than Zaien, larger, taller by about a hand, and broader in a way that neither Acerrai nor Anael men got. Anael men were thinner with wirier muscles that ran taut, like cords over their body. They could get broad in a sense as their powerful wing muscles tended to do for them.

The Anael were were creatures of brain and endurance. Acerrai men had the spirit of raw brute force that ran through them, lacking the endurance and agility of the Anael. Briel’s parents had made him the best of both of these worlds. He had the endurance of the Anael, the brute force of the Acerrai, and the raw power that combined both of these. He thrust his wings out from his back and used the strength to move his trajectory and protect him from Zaien’s strike.

Briel’s wings were another thing, not the broad expanse of an Anael wing or the sharp, swift pricks of the Acerrai. They were their own things, larger, wider. Briel was meant for soaring, diving, and all that entailed in battle. He swam through the air when he flew like a fish would water. He did not flap nor struggle. He leaped and caught the wind, taming it to his will.

Zaien dropped to the ground then, rolling to grapple to his feet. Briel’s tail snatched for his ankle and slung him across the pitch.

“Chakt Rea neh! I love this,” Briel said, distracted by his own tail.

Zaien stumbled to his feet. Then, noticing Briel’s lack of attention, he charged electricity over his arms.

“Really want to do this?” Briel let black fire cover his arms in swirling patterns. Briel twitched at the sight of it but tried to keep his gaze locked. The soul within wasn’t comfortable with them. Likewise, Briel wasn’t comfortable with his own fires. He was talented with them, but that small part of Acryan had always held issue with his fires since he got them. They had prayed his fires would be ice like his eyes, like his mother, hoped for it, but Briel manifested black fires, and they had forced him to hide it for months.

In the end, his fires had overwhelmed him, and fever took him until Shythe received the worst of Briel’s fires in an accidental release.

Zaien pressed his hands together and drew them apart, drawing an arc of electricity between them before he darted forward, taking Briel head-on. He used his tail first, just as anticipated, and Zaien’s fire-coated hand grasped at his tail and let the electricity arc through his body.

“FEATHERS KAH!” Briel wrenched his tail away from Zaien’s grasp.

The boy created an opening.

Briel showed his cards, and Zaien ducked, swiveled on his foot, and slammed his palm into Briel’s side.

Briel jerked his arm, muscles twitching as he grasped for Zaien’s wrist and twisted to bring him to his knees. Through gritted teeth, Briel jerked his knee forward and drove Zaien to the ground. Briel only had to use Brute strength. With Zaien on the ground, Briel Knelt down onto his back, knee digging into his friend’s ikris.

“Really?” Zaien shouted. He flexed his shoulders, grit his teeth, and let his ikris open. The flash of his wings shoved Briel’s knee off his back, and he didn’t even flinch. Instead, he stepped back, let Zaien gather himself up, and swung full-fisted for his face.

A satisfying crack rang out. Zaien’s face turned sideways, jaw shifting, and he staggered. The Anael man set his jaw and worked it for a moment before spitting red.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Zaien said as he braced himself and struck back. Briel’s hand came up, turned, and moved just enough to let his arm glide by. In that opening, Briel managed to land another quick jab to Zaien’s face. He staggered back; Briel lunged forward, and their hands made contact as they grappled. Zaien snarled, his fires running rampant.

“Chakt rel neh!” Briel swore, gathering his strength to push Zaien back.

“Use your fires!” Zaien laughed.

Briel wrenched his arms, breaking Zaien’s footing, and shoved him back a few stumbling steps.

“Want to just end it?” Briel asked.

“You can try.” Zaien bolstered forward, shoulder leading, and drove his elbow into Briel’s diaphragm.

The air flushed free of Briel’s lungs, and the next breath came with a hitch in his throat that cost him a moment of attention. A fist swung for his face. He moved to dodge and found knuckles glancing off his cheekbone.

“Easy! I may be finding her any day now, and I don’t want to be messed up.” Another fist made for his face, Its aim true, and Briel felt anger welling up over him.

He sprung forward like a tightly wound coil. His arm drew back, fist raised, and he drove it down into Zaien’s face once, twice, three times and rolled off of him with a huff.

Zaien didn’t move for a minute.

“Maybe f-finding her, but I go home to Liena tonight, and she will c-certainly see this.” Zaien’s breath wavered, and Briel shook his fist out.

“You done?”

“I’m done.” Zaien didn’t want to move. His mouth slowly dripped blood, and one of his eyes had swollen shut. Briel stumbled and sat on the ground next to him.

“Mind?” Zaien asked, gesturing over his face.

Briel lifted his hand, letting his black fire swirl over his hand before concentrating, letting it distill within him and focused on the intent of healing.

Zaien swore loudly as Briel ran his hand over his face. “Why does it hurt so bad when you heal me?”

“Hells if I know.” Briel’s shoulder shrugged. Acryan’s healing fires always came with their own sting.