When he tripped on the rope trailing behind him, he snagged sections of the loose rope as he ran. He sprang out from a small alley and landed in the middle of the battlefield—a battlefield that encompassed the main street of the village. Skye scoured the fighters until his eyes set upon three Pyrannis and the petite paka. In the undulating firelight, Skye watched as one of the warriors swung a thick club against her shoulder. On impact, the paka’s chest cavity was thrown sideways before her entire body hit the ground with a sickening double thud. Her small, feline head collided with the ground so hard it bounced once before it lay unmoving.
No! They couldn’t kill her.
In that one moment in time, he didn’t question the thought. He simply reacted. With complete disregard to the fact that he was intent on killing men from his own kingdom, he gave an ear-splitting, ululating war cry and launched himself across the street. Not seeing anything but the four in his approach, Skye met any resistance with a silent but ruthless attack that was unmatched in its ferocity in all of his training. With an abruptness he took advantage of, he found himself behind one of the men.
Before any of the three Pyranni warriors had time to react to his appearance, he broke the first man’s leg with a sharp kick right below the kneecap, making the man collapse with an anguished shout. He flipped another man onto his back with a hard, side swipe with his other leg and a two-armed blow to the chest. The warrior’s chest armor rang with the hit.
In one single, flowing movement, he reached down and grabbed the dropped club. But before he could kill the man who had hit the paka, a sword stopped him in a glancing blow along his right forearm. Skye snarled in single-minded intent, turning to meet his foe. He didn’t immediately recognize his own name spoken from the lips of his opponent. But he did notice the other man drop his sword to the guard position while holding the torch with his other.
When Skye’s name was spoken again, he focused on the man’s face. Vague recognition shuffled through his mind. With his thoughts infused with battle lust, it took Skye a moment to place him.
Talon’s company. His need to kill faded.
They were not his enemy.
He fell to his knees with those five words buzzing through his head. The forgotten club dropped to the cobbled street and came to a stop a short distance away.
Skye didn’t hear anything as he stared at the blood-soaked paka. She was lying where she fell only moments before.
Eiren. Skye whispered her name in despair, his voice breaking the sound barrier between him and his environment with a pop. Sounds came streaming in. The sounds of people yelling and dying and the sharp clamor of swords meeting weapons struck him. Skye heard the three men sitting and standing around him asking a barrage of questions. Where had he been? How had he been captured? Why was he in the village? A short distance away he heard the now recognizable furious roar of the white paka.
He ignored it.
None of it mattered.
Eiren never moved. Skye leaned closer in the hopes he was wrong, hovering over her head.
She wasn’t breathing. He had already lost her once. She could not—would not—die now. Not when he had tried to save her. Eiren.
Skye felt a flicker of awareness from her. He curled his large frame forward, unconsciously thinking the closer he was the more aware she would become.
Eiren.
This time he heard her. Skye? He felt her weakened state. She was so close to death.
Without thinking he spoke out loud at the same time he spoke to her mentally. “You must fight to live. Do not give up now. Don’t die.”
I am so tired. The pain is too much.
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“No. Fight to live,” he demanded. Though he sensed her fatigue and wish for death, he watched her ribcage rise with her first shaky breath.
The warrior, who Skye had tossed onto his back, stepped up to his shoulder and said in amused disbelief, “Why did you attack us, greenie? Have you been so long underground you forget which side of the battle you are on?”
When Skye brushed away the heavy hand on his shoulder, the warrior with the broken leg asked in suspicion, “What are you doing kneeling by that feline? Let one of us finish the beast.” He offered his hand to help Skye up. “Stand up and let me cut your bindings. We are in a disadvantageous position standing here in the open. Come, we must join the others and tell them the good news.”
In seeming agreement, Skye allowed himself to be pulled up. The bindings were cut at last, freeing him. Numb for the past several days, pain lanced through his shoulders and arms as he rotated his limbs and the blood started circulating. Throughout it all, he kept his connection to the small paka as she valiantly endured the pain at his command.
When one of the men moved around Skye and angled his sword for the killing blow, he yelled, “No,” at the same time he jumped to block the strike.
Startled, the man stepped back. “What happened to you?”
Feeling a tingle of fear come from Eiren, he dropped to his knees again and reached out to comfort her. Before he could tell her he’d keep her safe, something emanated outward from within.
He felt his most integral, most personal piece of himself tunnel through his bones, radiating out to his muscles. In awe, Skye learned his soul was like that of a finely made sword, strong as steel but with an intricacy that belied its sharper edges. In that moment, he understood his entire essence—what made him who he was. It had the capacity to withstand great adversity, much like an old blade forged with a new edge.
His soul made contact with Eiren’s gentler, spiritual essence. The strand of her soul was reminiscent of a deeply rooted elgewood tree that could shift its limbs in the wind and never break. It had the ability to withstand the tides of change and hardship with beauty and elegance. Their souls were those of born fighters. Their strength of will would see them through everything life sent their way.
Their essences—Skye’s a deep red and Eiren’s a deep green—spilled out from their skin and twisted around them like vines, entwining them in its length. It pulled them closer together until both strands merged into one thick, living band of light the color of the elgewood’s bark. The deep brown strand hung motionless for a second before splitting into two identical but smaller strands. The strands hung in suspension and then struck each of them on the forehead like lightning.
He fell like a ton of rocks, shouting from the pain where the strand of magic entered his forehead. Uselessly pushing at the intangible force with his hands, Skye locked his jaws to keep from screaming or crying aloud. His body turned into a solid mass of tensed muscles and nerves, silently screaming for relief. At the moment Skye reached his breaking point, the excruciating pain relinquished its grip and dissipated on the gentle wave of a cool breeze.
He lay there panting, trying to relearn how to move his limbs when he felt something inside him. Attuning to the substance, he followed it to its end and found Eiren. He was bound physically, mentally, and spiritually with the paka. Skye repeated the words to himself in disbelief. He was now magically bound to the paka. Shock jolted through his body at the discovery.
In a faint, tentative voice, Eiren asked, My Lord?
With eyes still unfocused from the magical attack, Skye didn’t see the blade coming toward him until he felt blood trickle from a minute slice along his vulnerable throat. He froze, lifting his eyes where they collided with the man’s. What he found in the man’s expression pierced him, body and soul.
Skye knew what the look meant. He was no longer viewed as one of them, a Pyranni warrior. With the spectacular magic still making the Pyranni warriors blind moments later, their expressions showed their abhorrence, their fear, and their hostility.
He’d become one of the enemy.
They didn’t understand. When he opened his mouth to explain, the sword point cut deeper in warning. He pleaded with his eyes, anything for them to understand. But his plea did no good. All three men stared at him with varying measures of revulsion and betrayal.
“We should kill you here and now, traitor. But you were once one of us, albeit for a brief time. I will let you live. You are hereby an outcast of the kingdom Pyran. Entering its borders will lead to your dismemberment and death.” In a more informal but deadly tone, the man continued, “If you decide to fight against us on the battlefield as the ultimate betrayal, our next meeting will end altogether differently.
In their frozen tableau, they heard the battle horn calling for retreat. The Pyranni warriors were falling back, vacating the battlefield and their dead. He watched as fear crept into the man’s eyes before threatening Skye, “Dare to attack us with your magic, and you will die in agony for your betrayal.” All three men spat on him, completing the ritual for proclaiming him an outcast, before retreating to join Talon.
He lay there in bewilderment and loss. His mind kept replaying the ritual until he could no longer deny what had happened.
It was true.
He hadn’t been rescued as he’d hoped. He’d been declared a traitor, banished from his own land. The ritual was complete. All of Gharra would hear the news of his heresy of the true faith. He’d brought disgrace to his family’s name.
More importantly, he had brought disgrace to his family’s honor.