Journey onto the Storm (BOOK 2)

Chapter 42

YUVEN

'I killed him! Isn't that what you wanted?

Ridiculous, how could he say that? I didn't want him to kill that draugr — his father to release him from that horrible existence. I could've done it, but no. He never learns. He never learns and he never tells me anything. Yuven dug his fingers into his palm at Fenrer's disappearing shape when he scrambled through the underbrush with a quick furious whack at the leaves with his crescent blade before he went out of sight and the leaves he sliced scattered their fallen pieces along the grass. No, of course not, not for you, Fenrer Pyren. You, who would sooner see yourself burn for others. You, who would make yourself bleed to make others happy — though you turn your nose up at blood magick, claiming it taboo against your faith. I do not see how this is different. You still bleed. Words sharpened into notes, but it never left his tongue as he ground his jaw into his teeth as the golden ashes shimmered into the darkness of the moonlit shadows. You're foolish. It cracked against his neck and he lowered it to release the tension. But I truly am... no better.

"Yuven."

Her voice set his own song of wrath alight — she, the change in the air and brought the force out of Fenrer Pyren. "I do not want to talk, Sazaka." He slipped his tongue underneath the guillotine of his fangs. "I do not want to hear a word unless you intend to tell me what you said to him in the tomb."

"I didn't say anything," she argued.

"You must have!" Yuven whipped around to her, lost in the inferno. "I cannot see why he would do something like this unless you said something to him that made him think that this was a wise idea! We should have left!" He tossed his hands to the distant hills. "We should have kept on our route to Sivaport." Arms folded, he huffed through the remainder of the cold. "I cannot understand why he continues to push me away, his Oathbound, only to turn around and seemingly talk to you more than he will talk to me." Ice bit behind his eyes as he tried to shake out the image of a small Hanekan boy, reaching his hand out to him with a smile of understanding on his face. Why do you do that to me, Fenrer? Why do you never tell me anything? Why do things have to change now that she's here? He eyed her, and she scowled at him.

"From what I see and have heard," Adara hissed. "It's you pushing him away most of the time. Can you blame him for being a little hesitant when you lash out over the simplest things?" Adara stomped for him, unafraid. "I'm not going to let you blame me when clearly this has been a problem before I met you two. No, Traye, I said nothing to him." Her fingers curled against her palm. "He wanted to come here to check on something he referred to as special to his family — and you know what, maybe it's good we came here." She gulped. "Maybe it's good that we were here to release that draugr — Yuven, that's his father, how could you lash out about that?" Dampness crawled down her cheeks, but he struggled to figure out if it was the mist, or her own tears. "How could he have known? Can't you understand how he must feel?"

Cold. Towers broke with horrible, crimson tendrils given form by ripping distortion. A soft lullaby. Yuven shook out his feathers and released his tongue from death, and his fury wasted into ice-water. Fenrer, who reached his hand out and took his with the fervent prayer.

'You're not a monster.'

"I don't understand because we grew up together, taken in by Neven Lotayrin when we were boys," he hissed. "He should know better than to hide things from me. We have known each other for thirteen turns. If it is not you, then..." He stepped back from her until his back hit the post Fenrer trapped Soren Pyren against, and he sat down. "I have always hurt Fenrer in little ways. We became Oathbound because he wouldn't leave me alone about it." He drove his fingers into his accursed white hair. "Look at where his determination got him, Sazaka." He slumped deeper to rest against the stairs. "I told you not everyone will want to be your friend."