Daivad had kept an eye on their newcomers throughout the day, when he wasn’t busy notifying the camp of the upcoming meeting and subsequently dodging the questions that immediately followed. It irked him to see how comfortable each of them seemed in his camp, and how comfortable his camp seemed with them.
Jac had taken to switching her attentions between Tobei and Ben at her pleasure, having a little too much fun watching them not-so-subtly trying to one-up each other in front of her. Ben would make her laugh, so Tobei would try to make her blush, so Ben would invite her to tour his gardens, so Tobei would bring up the fact that when they’d met Ben’s country accent had been so thick Tobei couldn’t understand him, which would embarrass Ben enough to bring the accent out, so Ben would reminisce about the time that Tobei had run into a glass door hard enough that it broke his nose, and so on. All while Jac tried to smother the grin on her face.
Meanwhile, Nyxabella had been all over—asking questions, offering help, and looking at everything she could. It would make him suspicious, thinking she was gathering information to report back to Aran, except that… Well, he didn’t have a good reason not to be suspicious other than the fact that she just seemed so earnest.
The guards he’d assigned to them were ornamental at best, he had to admit to himself. If either of them wanted to escape, or else damage any part of camp (more than they already had), one guard, armed or not, wasn’t going to stop them.
Around time for the change of the guard, Daivad picked out Nyxabella’s scent and followed it up toward the hanging gardens.
As always, there was a little bustle of activity at twilight as the villagers put out their lights, gathered their families, and checked on their neighbors to ensure everyone got into their homes safely. Though there were guards posted all around the village and on the forest floor, and they hadn’t had a monster-related injury within camp bounds in years, everyone knew better than to entice the nightbeasts of Silvax Forest with noise and light. The last few stragglers closed themselves up in their houses—and then silence fell over the village just as, out in the forest, a new kind of activity was waking. A monstrous kind.
Daivad was glad he’d decided to check on Nyxabella once more, because when he found her overlooking the gardens, there was a strange light behind her eyes. Like the monster in her was waking up as well. She held herself differently than before, a subtle shift he couldn’t name, and if he didn’t know better he might have thought at first glance that she was Inhuman.
Her glittering eyes snapped to him, still a few yards away, and his belly flipped. This time, he felt like she was actually looking at him, not his magic, and a strange thrill ran through him.
In a rough whisper, she asked, “Do you feel them?”
Next to her on the bench, Odelia snored softly.
“Them?” he asked, but he knew what she meant. Because he did feel them.
“A thousand nightbeasts, a hundred thousand,” she said and stood, turning those bright eyes to the forest around them, “all of them, great and small, stretching their many legs, shaking themselves awake, peeling back their lips, flexing their claws.”
Daivad’s skin was buzzing, goosebumps breaking out all over him.
“Do you feel the hunger in their bellies? Their excitement at what pleasures the night has to offer?”
He did, and he had to swallow down the eager purr that was building in his chest, had to resist the urge to let out his claws.
“Can I visit Clarix?” she asked, head snapping back around to look at him.
“Fine,” he said, and it came out rumbling. “But you stay with me. I’m not letting you free in the forest like that.”
“Like what?” she asked, breathless.
Daivad waved off the guard that came by to relieve Odelia, and together he and Nyxabella made their way back down through the village, toward the forest floor. Her steps were unnervingly quiet and light, like she’d already memorized which boards on the landings creaked or else knew instinctually how to avoid them.
Once they hit the forest floor, Daivad said, “I’d name your day Busy.”
“Very,” she agreed with a smile, already bouncing off in the direction of the clearing where she’d left her monster. “This place, its…” She took a greedy breath. “I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was for it. Starved. I don’t think I’d ever be able to eat my fill.”
Daivad glanced up toward the village above them and a bit of pride bloomed in his chest. It was free. And safe. No one could touch them here.
Except … maybe the Colonel. He would find them.
When he didn’t respond, Nyxabella glanced up at him and blinked, surprised. She stopped her bouncy steps for just a moment.
“Your hair.”
Daivad resisted the urge to touch his hair self-consciously. “What?”
“It grew.”
Bafflement kept him from finding a response for several seconds. “No, it didn’t.”
“It was always this long?” she asked, confused. “And curly at the ends?”
“Yes?”
They both stared, lost.
Finally, he said, “I had it tied back before.”
“Oh. Oh!” Then she snorted, giggling at herself. “Mother Dark, I need to pay more attention.”
Exasperated, he just started forward again.
“You know,” she bounced after him, “my eyes missed it before, too busy with your magics, but you and Tobei look alike. The black hair, the same shade of brown skin, similar pale eyes, though different colors. Both Inhuman. Both tall, though I’d name his height reasonable and yours Not. You both even share an aversion to shirts.” She gestured at his bare, scarred torso.
Daivad shot her a look. “I don’t like having anything around my neck.”
“You’re not related?”
“No.”
“Would you know?” she asked. “Since both of you grew up in an orphanage?”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“My parents,” it felt odd to even use the phrase since the concept was so foreign to him, “died when I was an infant. Tobei is two years younger than me.”
Nyxabella stared at him, head cocked, a slight frown on her face, so he shot her a look that never failed to make its recipient balk. Unless it was aimed at Tobei or, apparently, her.
“What?” he growled.
She blinked her way back to the present. “Just struggling to imagine you were ever an infant.”
“Funny,” he grumbled, and she snickered to herself. “We need to name you a place to sleep.”
“I like my stump cell,” she said, nearly skipping now. “I’ll replace the bars, if you want.”
Daivad chose his next sentence carefully, not wanting (he cursed himself at the realization) to steal that skip from her with any stray words. “No matter if Aran names you Useful, she’d never teach you Metalwork. Who taught you?”
“She didn’t teach me, but I learned from her,” Nyxabella said. “From Richard too. I listened to their magics—yours too, in the traces you left behind. I’m still a mile and a half away from skilled, but I can bust down a simple cell door.” She shrugged.
“That’s not possible.” Frustration edged his words, because he didn’t think she was lying, and that made no sense.
They reached the clearing, now awash in cool blue shadows, and Nyxabella turned to grin at him as she bounced ahead. “It’s amazing what you learn if only you listen, Dai.”
Before he could respond, her words warped, bubbling strange and bright from her lips. She bounded across the clearing and over the stream to where her monster was just poking its nose out from its hiding place. The language of monsters. Was that why the sounds tickled his mind like that? Or was it just…?
The beast’s head, then its bony shoulders appeared as it tried to untangle its spidery legs. The night had turned the beast’s eyes from the pale of this morning to brilliant, glittering yellow-green. The beast finally got all its feet underneath it and clambered out of its shelter just as Nyxabella threw her arm’s around its neck.
A wobbling mix between a whinny and a screech came out of the beast. If he had to guess, Daivad would name it awed surprise that Nyxabella had returned for her.
Daivad crossed the clearing and stepped over the stream, making the beast go rigid. Nyxabella wove those wicked words into the monster’s torn ear, and he caught his name mixed in there among them. Its bright eyes considered Daivad for a moment, but eventually it gave a gentle chirrup.
“She says hello!” Nyxabella translated, scratching beneath the creature’s neck.
They both watched him expectantly.
“You can’t actually talk to the thing,” but he said it almost like a question.
“Clarix,” she corrected. “Not thing. And yes I can. Not the way the language of man works—better, actually. How have you crossed all over the queendom and beyond and never once heard Xo? Even if you’d lived with your hands clamped over your ears before today, you’d have felt it.”
“What the fuck is Zoh?”
“Xo,” she said. “It’s an X sound. X.O. That’s how we’d spell it, anyway. It doesn’t really have a name, or even words, really.”
“A language without words?”
“Kinda,” she said, resuming scratching the monster as it nibbled her curls. “There’s no alphabet or even a set vocabulary. And it’s not limited just to sound and speech. Gesture, expression, tone—they all weigh just as much in Xo as whatever noises our tongues can craft. Xo—it’s not about details, or structure, or even clarity. It’s a language of emotion. Connection.”
“How can anyone learn a language with no words?”
Eyes glimmering like she’d been waiting for him to ask, she smiled and said, “You can’t. Xo isn’t learned. It’s unlearned. That’s what Uncle Daph always told me anyway.”
Daivad waited for her to continue, but once again she looked at him expectantly. “What?”
“Clarix said hello,” she said like it was obvious. “You’ve got no response to gift her with?”
“I do not talk to monsters,” Daivad growled.
Nyxabella scoffed in disbelief, then muttered something into Clarix’s torn ear that made the beast huff. Daivad narrowed his eyes at her, but he wouldn’t take the bait. So Nyxabella turned her attention to the beast fully, and began to speak soothingly and draw her hands along the beast’s rough skin and jutting joints.
Daivad shook his head, exasperated. “Mother Light…”
Finally, Nyxabella said something that made the beast snort and dance on the spot, eyes shining with excitement. It made Daivad tense.
“What are you doing?”
“I just asked if she was hungry,” Nyxabella explained, laughing at the monster’s eager dance. “Can we take her hunting? I’m worried she’s been captive so long she might’ve forgotten how. You know, maybe unlearned her freedom.”
“No,” he growled. The nightbeasts hadn’t yet strayed too close to camp, the Wolves’ territory, but Daivad could hear them only a few dozen yards off, chittering, growling, curious.
She argued, “I’m not afraid of a few wild nightbeasts. Are you?”
“There’s more than a few monsters out—” Daivad froze.
Nyxabella just grinned at him, that wild glint in her eye. She’d asked the question in Xo. How…?
As if nothing had happened, she continued in the language of man, “We were out in the forest last night.”
“I…” He was still trying to process what had just happened and failing. “We had numbers. And Wolves.”
“Does this face wear worry?”
“Doesn’t seem like it ever does.”
Almost to herself, she said, “Then you’re not looking close.” Then added in her normal tone, “Can I borrow one of the Wolves, then, if they’re willing?”
“Yeah, so you can ride Drauge back to the—?” He caught himself just in time.
Her eyebrows shot up, her eyes eager. He’d almost slipped up.
“Come with us, then, to ensure the Wolves don’t carry me out to all that ‘nothing’ you’re hiding in the forest. Clarix needs practice so she doesn’t have to rely on people for food when I leave.”
“Nyxabella.” This time his growl was serious, not one of the play growls like before, and Daivad saw a shiver run through her, and the beast as well. “If that monster comes into my camp searching for food—”
“If she can feed herself, she won’t have to.” She smooched the monster’s scabbed nose.
Daivad grit his teeth, willing himself to tell her no…
A few minutes later, Daivad was astride Maxea, ordering Nyxabella to stay close, no matter what her beast or any of the ones in the forest did. Max would take care of things. Nyxabella nodded along to humor him, and the beast by her side chirped at Maxea, whose only acknowledgement of it was a flick of her black ears.
He supposed he could see what Nyxabella meant about the beast as it wandered out into the dark forest looking lost and more than a little confused. She had to coach it a little bit, murmuring gentle encouragement and a few suggestions like the beast was newborn.
“What did your words mean—‘It’s not learned, it’s un—?”
“Shh!”
Clarix’s—the monster’s—one-and-a-half ears swiveled toward a scuttling from within a bush a few yards away.
He stared at Nyxabella. She had just shushed him.
The gangly, starved creature settled into a crouch with a fluidity and subtlety Daivad hadn’t thought possible of its awkward frame and crept forward on light (if mangled) paws. Its cracked nostrils flared eagerly and its bony hindquarters wiggled, cat-like.
Grinning, Nyxabella shot him a proud look with those still-bright eyes, as if to say, See?
The grin slipped just before the monster pounced … and immediately tripped over her—its—own feet, sending it flopping forward onto its face with an audible Oof.
“Oh!” Nyxabella darted forward and knelt beside the beast.
After a brief attempt and subsequent failure to get its feet back under it, the beast gave a little defeated whinny.
“Well done,” Daivad said dryly.
In a blink, Nyxabella had snatched up a small stone and chucked it at him.
“Ay!”
“Ignore him, sweet girl,” she crooned and patted the beast’s neck. “Come on, back on your feet. Let’s try again.”