Ashfall: City of Shade (UNDER EDITING)

Chapter 52 | Allegiance

BROMMY

"By the gods, Adler, we should be searching the streets and the outer wall-"

"That is what Enoch's men are doing. While they search out there...we search in here."

I scoff while storming outside my room and into the hallway. From the entryway, I watch with growing impatience at his childish reactions to finding Greta's things in my home.

"She was not to live in your bed, Brommy. She was to live in your home, of which, has multiple rooms. Why yours, dear Brometheous?" he asks with a belly laugh.

His cackle makes me angry. He is full of it. He pretends to have no interest in her when it's convenient for him.

I clench my jaw seeing a layer of cloudy black stardust rise off of the ground around him. He can hide his anger from the guards, but he can't hide it from me.

Then, the black stardust travels to the columns in my room coated with her drawings. My heart sinks. He's going to destroy them.

"Do you know how easily any mongrel could just sneak into my home? Everything is open. There are no doors here. That was Enoch's law, by the way, not mine."

"My sweet certainly did not have any say in the matter!" Adler laughs, bitter. Is he serious? He doesn't care that much about her. He continues, "I'm sure, with you being of the same blood as myself, you believed you could just take your chance while you had it."

Ignoring his provoking, I watch as that haze of electrified stardust on the columned walls suddenly lights up in black angry flames of fire.

My guards pick up on his leaking temper. Cowards, all of them, shuffle outside into the hallway to avoid the sudden flames.

"Adler, if I may be blunt, I am of more use on the streets than in here waiting on you. You already know where she is, anyway, don't you?"

He's turned away from me looking over some drawings Greta made and hung on the column walls in here. It's what his stardust is coating now in a thick layer of burning black fire.

He clasps his hands together, with a wolfish grin, now that we are alone.

"Of course, I know where she fucking is."

"In the interest of time, Adler, may I ask why we are still here then?"

"Oh, I cannot answer that, Brometheous," he says while looking over my head at the fire on the walls. His movements are stiff as he folds his arms. "Only the gods know why we are still wasting our breath-"

"Where is Greta?"

"In my observatory. She's teaching a few people how to operate our light-"

"I know that is not true. I am your brother and I can tell when you are lying."

"Fine," he snaps sharply, "She is living outside the city in the shack she died in."

"She did not die, Adler. She was unconscious...probably due to over exposure from the planet's radiation. The light levels here are across the spectrum compared to Ashtium. You know that."

"She may as well be dead. I killed her long ago. I killed her in my own way. Don't you think so, Brommy?"

***

ENOCH

"...don't you think so, Brommy?"

"Am I interrupting something?" I look between the two gray-skinned desert demons. "Because the last time I checked, Adler, you were going to leave these walls and retrieve Greta from the village outside this commune city! Why in Ashtium's name are you still here? Both of you are useless. We have to put out the fire, now!"