Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(75)

“They were innocent people. No one was armed. You could have found another way.”

He pressed his wet hair back from his face. He blinked black eyes, droplets clinging to his lashes. “My way is death. There is no other way.”

“Crows are not only creatures of vengeance and the grave. They are loving, caring, nurturing. Is there not that in your making, too?”

“Once, perhaps.” He cupped his hand, running a finger over his palm as if tracing invisible lines. “But now?” He clenched his hand into a fist. “What do you want of me, beyond trying to make me something that I am not?”

Okoa hesitated. He had asked him to be a weapon for Carrion Crow, and now he was. He need only point him toward their enemies, and his dreams were in reach. Not only his dreams. His father’s dreams.

“I know where you can find the Sun Priest and all the matrons of the Sky Made. They are meeting—”

Benundah squawked loudly, and they both turned. Serapio tilted his head up, eyes on the open sky. “She says they’re coming.”

“Who’s coming?”

Before he could answer, Okoa felt the wind of giant wings and looked up to find Kutssah barreling toward them. He shouted and threw himself to the ground, sure that the giant meant to skewer them. But at the last moment, she pulled up, and something came hurtling off her back.

It was Chaiya, and he leaped from his mount to tackle Serapio.

They went down in a heap.

Chaiya had something in his hands, netting of some kind, and he threw it over the Odo Sedoh.

Serapio shouted, and the air around him vibrated. His form shifted, man to black bird and back to man, as he realized his crow form offered no escape.

His hand morphed into a talon, and he ripped through the netting. Chaiya reared back, narrowly avoiding the sharp claw, and then there was a black blade in his hand. He stabbed toward Serapio’s face.

Okoa cried a warning, to whom he wasn’t sure.

Serapio turned his head, avoiding the blow, but the blade sliced a line across his jaw. Blood welled, and Serapio did not hesitate. He called on the shadow, and it came. Black smoke laced the veins beneath his skin, crawling the pathways of his body like dark rivers, until shadow burst from his fingertips. He grasped Chaiya’s wrist, the hand that held the knife, and shouted words in a language Okoa did not know.

The shadow enveloped his cousin’s hand and slithered up his arm. The bigger man scrambled back, eyes wide in horror. His obsidian blade clattered to the ground, the hand that had been holding it half eaten away, the flesh melting into a pool of black rot halfway up his forearm.

“Seven hells,” Okoa breathed, horror shivering up his spine. He had to stop this, but how?

Chaiya weighed twice as much as Serapio, and vision, experience, and the element of surprise had given him the quick advantage. But Serapio had been honed for one purpose only, and he had shadow magic at his command, his very blood a weapon. Okoa feared his cousin would quickly become outmatched.

But not yet.

Serapio stumbled, the netting wrapping around his legs and catching his feet. Chaiya, even with half his arm withered, attacked. He dug a fisted hand into Serapio’s wound, the one on his side that had never healed, and Serapio’s whole body shuddered in agony. Chaiya staggered to his feet and slammed his boot into Serapio’s skull.

Serapio collapsed, insensible.

The crows in the aviary screamed, Kutssah the loudest.

Chaiya froze, foot raised for another blow.

“Kutssah?” Confusion twisted his features.

Okoa did not think, just moved. He tackled Chaiya, throwing him well off the stunned Serapio. “What are you doing?” he shouted.

Chaiya did not fight him but lay panting under his weight. His arm was a black ruin, and Okoa felt nauseated when he caught a glimpse of it. But the hardest things to see were the tears in his cousin’s eyes.

“She would choose him over me?” His voice sounded small, heartbroken.

Okoa understood all too well. It was his unspoken fear, that one day Benundah would choose the Odo Sedoh over him. There was no comfort for the irrational feeling of betrayal except to say, “He is her god, too.”

His words juddered through Chaiya like an earthquake.

“Do you believe?”

It was a simple question, and until that moment, Okoa had not had an answer. But now he did. “Yes.”

“That he can free Carrion Crow?”

He nodded.

Chaiya heaved, his body shaking. It was grief, but it was more than just the sorrow of Kutssah’s rejection. The fight had drained from him, and he motioned Okoa to let him up. Okoa stood, wary, putting his body between the two men. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Serapio’s chest move. He was stunned, but alive.

Chaiya fell to his knees before him. “There is something you must know.”

Okoa’s stomach dropped. All his instincts shouted at him that whatever Chaiya meant to confess, he did not want to know it. Tears streamed down his cousin’s face, the way they had when he had come to the war college and first brought news of his mother’s death.

Panic spiked his adrenaline. “No, Chaiya. I don’t need to know. Whatever it is, I forgive you.”

“It is about your mother, Yatliza.”

Okoa pressed his back against the wall. He had stumbled away from his cousin without even realizing it. He held his hand out, fingers splayed, as if he could hold off his words.