“Is there anyone else in there?” Zenith eyed the door nervously.
“A Healer. Do you want me to ask her to leave?”
Zenith ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, then she jerked her head in a nod.
WingRidge looked at her. “I will be out here if you need me.”
Zenith nodded, unable to speak, her eyes full of unshed tears.
WingRidge opened the door, and motioned the Healer out.
It was cool and dim inside, and Zenith jumped when WingRidge clicked the door closed behind her.
Had it woken WolfStar?
No…
There was no movement, and only the sound of slow, deep breathing from a bed placed close to the
far wall.
The room reeked with the stench of infection.
Gods, Zenith thought, how ill is he?
She took a step forward, and then another when the sound of the breathing did not alter, and then
jerked her eyes about the room, orientating herself.
A fireplace in the wall to her left, the fire damped down to the glow of coals.
A table pushed against the same wall, laden with bowls, bandages and several bottles of soap and
unguents.
A pressed metal lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling, exuding only the faintest of glimmers
through the holes punched in its metal sides.
It sent strange, wobbling, hunching shadows chasing each other about the room.
A stool sat by the foot of the bed, another sat against the otherwise bare wall on her right.
And there was the bed itself, clad in snowy linens, patchwork quilts flung over its foot railing.
A form lay sprawled across the bed.
It was pale naked in the dim light, save for a towel draped over its hips, and the odd patch of
bandage. Its wings, a pale bronze in this light, falling over both edges of the bed and spilling over the
floor.
Arms: one flung so that it extended stiff and rigid, the other curled over the sleeper’s face.
WolfStar.
Zenith stood a very long time, terrified to even move should she wake him.
What she wanted was for WingRidge to miraculously realise that she wanted to leave (now, now,
now] and open the door and pull her out before WolfStar could wake to his senses and realise she’d
been here.
But the room remained still and silent, save for the sound of WolfStar’s breathing and Zenith’s
thudding heart.
The fire crackled (traitor fire!) and WolfStar stirred.
Zenith gasped, and WolfStar’s arm lifted from his face. “Who is there?”
Zenith opened her mouth, but could not speak. One hand she had clenched in the material of her
robe over her breast; the other was lost somewhere among the folds of material about her thigh.
WolfStar opened his eyes, and blinked. “Niah?”
“No! No!”
WolfStar stirred further, and half-raised himself on an elbow. He groaned, and lowered his face as
he fought the pain.
“No,” he finally said, his voice low and riddled with the agony coursing through his body. “It is not
Niah at all, is it? You are Zenith.”
She did not speak.
“Why are you here?”
Still she did not speak.
WolfStar raised his face and stared at her. “Girl, if there is one thing that I know about you, it is that
you do not lack courage. Why are you here?”
“I do not know.”
His mouth twisted. “Come to crow delight at my downfall, perhaps?”
She shook her head.
“No? Then I cannot think what else. I can scarce think that you have come to pass pleasantries with
me.”
He paused, and looked her in the eye. “Not you.”
He shifted slightly in the bed, and Zenith took a pace back.
“Oh, come now! I am hardly likely to harm you in this condition, Zenith. Sit down on that stool by
the far wall, if you like, but sit down and let me talk to you.”
WolfStar had never been one to miss a chance when he saw it… and he realised, the instant he knew
who his visitor was, that Zenith represented the most magnificent of chances. Here was DragonStar’s
remaining sibling, obviously upset and frightened. Deep inside, somewhere so dark that not a glimmer of
emotion reached the light of WolfStar’s face, the Enchanter gloated. Zenith could be used, and she could
be used to manipulate DragonStar. Niah had been a failure, but Zenith would be a victory. She would
bring him power.
Triumph roared through WolfStar’s being, but not a smile crossed his bland face, nor a sound passed
his carefully pain-thinned lips. His mind raced, constructing the trap.
Zenith stared at him, then looked at the stool against the wall (a safe, safe distance) before finally
sitting down on the stool at the foot of the bed.
WolfStar smiled, a careful expression that contained surprise, some satisfaction and a great deal of
pain. He relaxed back against the pillow. “Has anyone told you what has happened tome?”
“No.”
“The Demons raped me, Zenith. Each one took their pleasure — if that it can be called —
many times.”
Zenith froze. A tightness in her chest made her realise she’d also stopped breathing, and she jerked
in a shallow breath.
“Surprised?” he said, and laughed hollowly. “Yes, you are. And no doubt pleased.”
“Having experienced it myself,” she said, her voice surprising her with its eagerness, “I would not
wish it on anyone else.”
“I thought I lay with Niah.”
“She was there.”
“But you were, too?”
She nodded, and then, to her horror, began to cry with great gulping breaths.
“Zenith … Zenith …” WolfStar stirred as if his injuries made him totally unable to comfort Zenith.
“I only had mind for Niah,” he eventually said. “I thought that she would destroy you, and I thought
only to enjoy her strength.”
Zenith continued to sob, slightly louder now.
“But I was wrong. Ypw had the strength to defeat her, and I have ever admired strength and —”
“Oh, shut up!” Zenith slammed a fist down on the bed.
“Tell me why you are here,” he said quietly.
She turned her head away.
“Why did you come back to me, Zenith?”
She whipped her eyes back to him. “I came to see you so I could put some of my own demons to
rest!”
“And have you?”
She shook her head.
WolfStar extended his hand. “Please, take my hand, Zenith.”
She ignored him.
“Please … I think that you and I are alone in this night, and I think that you and I both need some
comfort.”
“Not from you!”
“Nevertheless,” he said, “I am all that shares this gloomy and pain-raddled night with you. Take my
hand.”
And eventually, she stretched out her own hand and took his.
Later, when she had gone, WolfStar lay on the bed, and allowed himself to laugh.
Chapter 27
Axis Resumes a Purpose
DragonStar looked at the group before him, and wondered at how he would tell them the worst of
possible news. They had trusted him, and he had not been able to provide for them.
Now he had to tell them that, in all likelihood, the entire struggle had been in vain. That Sanctuary
would fall. And if Sanctuary fell, then, in all likelihood, they would die.
“Well?” Axis said.
He stood belligerently before his son, hands on hips, dressed in his habitual, comfortable black
clothes, booted, armed, and prepared for war.
Azhure stood beside him, calmer, but DragonStar knew her well enough to know that Azhure’s
exterior calm was a face she’d cultivated over the years to provide an antidote to Axis’ tendency for
confrontation. Internally, she would be as angry, as frightened, and as unsure as everyone else in the
room.
DragonStar glanced behind his parents. Many were here: the four witches still in Sanctuary —
Faraday, with so many mental and emotional barriers in place she looked like a piece of fragile Corolean
glass; Leagh looking wan and exhausted; Zared, Herme and Theod, almost as belligerently anxious as
Axis; StarDrifter, looking distracted (and DragonStar wondered if it had anything to do with the fact
that Zenith wasn’t in her quarters and couldn’t, for the moment, be found); FreeFall and EvenSong,
looking as useless as DragonStar himself felt; several of the Avar Banes, and Sa’Domai, the Chief of the
Ravensbund. Sa’Domai looked, by far, the most collected person in the room, and DragonStar supposed
that anyone who spent much of their life
dodging collapsing icebergs and battling the storms of the Icebear Coast might possibly find interstellar
Demons a mild threat by comparison.
“I have no good news,” DragonStar said, unable to keep the bitter twist from his mouth. He gestured
helplessly. “I hope that Urbeth will do what she can to aid the Mother and the Sacred Groves, but I
cannot rely on her being able to stop the Demons. If the Demons manage to feast on the power of the
Sacred Groves, then — at the moment — I cannot think what might stop them.”