head. “It was the way he spoke to me and… the questions he asked.”
You were choosing your words carefully. I laid my hand on your arm and waited for your gaze to meet mine.
“What does Azrael want?” I asked.
You sighed miserably and tore at your hair. “Your power.” My breath caught as you continued, “He said he’d let you go free, if I delivered him your eyes.”
Lucian seemed about to interrupt, so I raised my hand to silence him. I was getting my shot at you first.
“Did you consider it?” I asked as fury flooded my veins. That lying, cheating bastard had you enslaved like a puppet.
“Yes.”
“And what did you decide?”
“Azrael seeks to weaken you. I’d never allow it.”
At last, you were seeing that angel for the monster he truly was.
“What should we do now?” I asked. I figured you must have some thoughts about it already.
“We must ready ourselves for battle,” you said grimly.
I nodded and looked to Lucian for his input, but for once, he was silent.
“I’ll prepare Mother for the journey.”
It was decided that Mater would be harnessed in a sling across Lucian’s chest, so that he could monitor her vitals along the way. You wanted your hands free in order to defend us, and Ashur was allowed more length on his chain for the same reason. None of us knew how soon the Imperium would arrive or if they were already in position, waiting just outside the mine to ambush us.
We set off with the last of the blood from Ashur’s stores, but we couldn’t go very fast because of Mater’s delicate condition, and we had to make frequent stops so that Lucian could tend to her. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it seemed like we hadn’t made much progress before we were all exhausted by the journey. You wanted us to keep going, but you were outvoted. If Mater didn’t rest, we risked losing all of her progress, and then all of this was for nothing.
“I’ll keep watch,” you said, even though I wanted you to sleep as well. I laid my head on your lap, and you woke me a few hours later. We needed to feed and get moving, you said. But when you went to retrieve blood bags for the both of us, there was only one left.
“Lucian,” you rumbled. He’d been in charge of rationing our blood.
“I gave them to Mother,” he said defensively. “It’s imperative to her recovery.”
I worried a fight might break out between the two of you, but you weren’t yet at a boil. You insisted I finish the last of the blood, and we continued on until we reached the near-vertical tunnel where I’d first scaled down the old ladder. My stomach growled with hunger. Mine wasn’t the only one.
It was a long and arduous process to get all of us, including Maxwell and Ashur, up the ladder. Ashur needed a lot of coaxing. Maybe the Shade Vale was playing tricks on him, or he was afraid of Azrael’s wrath. Personally, I was too angry to be afraid.
At the end of the climb, we took another rest. Lucian tapped his own vein to feed Mater, and I watched, hungry for a bloodmeal of my own. I glanced over and met your hooded eyes, dull as mud without their usual flecks of gold. When was the last time you’d fed?
Even Ashur seemed sluggish. Outside the Shade Vale, he no longer presented as a bull, but an extremely muscular, hairy man with a thick, black beard and long, matted hair. Dark, brooding eyes that looked more than a little feral. Judging from the bulge in his leather loincloth, that bit of his anatomy had remained consistent.
Ashur assessed me in a similar way. I assumed I no longer looked like a fierce, lion-faced god, just your average scrawny teenager, still wearing his weird-ass tunic, which was not all that flattering.
“Not as impressed now, are you?” I said to him.
He grunted. His horns and snout may be gone, but he was just as bullish and untalkative.
“This is our last stop.” You glanced at Lucian and our mother, your gaze sweeping over Ashur, ignoring Maxwell completely, and finally landing on me. I gathered from your expression we were less than ideal battle companions. “Let us rest here for a few hours and regain our strength,” you said. You were having trouble catching your breath, another symptom of blood deprivation.