Against the Wind

22.2 || Corvin

The distant sounds folded in, too quiet. Corvin felt a sudden, searing longing for his flute, to send music ringing through these tunnels and drown out the voices and his thoughts. Raya had his flute, though, and Raya was now in danger. They all were.

He straightened, and his antlers thudded against the sandstone. The bolt of pain had a clarity to it. It still hurt, though. He hissed in a breath, re-tied his robe, and delved through the gap into open space.

Vipra was in his face the moment his torso was through to the other side. She wagged a thin, spindly finger, wings casting long shadows over the ground on which she crouched. "Nope," she said, with evident glee. "I'm under orders to stop you from leaving."

Dark sand smeared her nose and matted her fraying hair, blending her more or less neatly with the dull stone. Only the luminescence dripping from the flowers above brought out the eggshell blue in her wings' feathers and gave her away. It wouldn't have done much good either way; Vipra spat at the feet of stealth just as she did elegance, as if her inherent capacity for both made her all the more eager to defy. Kyril had called her a dainty, fair, pretty thing many times over, merely to delight in the marvels of irony as she snarled.

The memory gnawed at Corvin, forcing him to blink it away to anchor in the present. He had no desire to make Vipra angry. With a brief, uneasy smile, he wriggled his legs through the rest of the gap and tucked them close to himself. "From Kyril?"

A foolish question. Vipra's grin, wide enough to display her long fangs, conveyed as much.

Old instinct begged him to nod and obey. He swallowed and shoved that back. "I'm not listening to him. I need to follow."

He stood, but Vipra clapped his shoulder halfway up, pinning him at her height so she could bring their noses to almost touching. Her nails dug in enough to sting. He winced, but there was little remorse in her twinkling eyes.

"I said no." Her voice was light and airy and not at all playful. Head tipping on its side, she pitched it a note higher in mockery. "Can't have little Corvi getting hurt again." Her lower lip stuck out.

Corvin mustered a scowl. Giggling, Vipra prodded his chin with the tip of a claw before finally releasing him. He stumbled back, unsteady on his feet.

Her wing flashed out to block his path before he could dart around her. She jerked towards him, a growl rumbling up her throat, and he flinched, then instantly felt a heat creep into his cheeks when she dissolved into laughter. The shame ate away at his resolve. He glanced to the left and right of her, aiming to trace out an escape, though he itched to crawl into the shadow and shut his ears to her taunts. His legs had gone weak.

"You're so much fun." The affection in her voice was torn and sharp. She wiggled her long, crusted nails. "I need to thank you for luring those two humans here. Cleverer than I thought you were."

His focus shrank back to her instantly. "Humans," he breathed, his pulse spiking. "Who?"

She drew in a mock gasp, rocking on her toes. Her grin fell lopsided. "I knew you and Kyril weren't talking. He's been moody." She let out a low, incredulous whistle, eyes narrowed to slits. "Didn't think it was possible for you two to fight."

The tension practically crackled through Corvin's limbs, a shooting sensation that pulled his skin tight. He snatched a slow, steadying breath through his nose and tangled his hands behind his back, squeezing his wrist, biting his lip to overrule the slick pain running along each of his scars. He bent his head forward, the shifting light glinting off his antlers.

"We aren't fighting," he lied through his teeth. "Who are they? What do they look like?"

Vipra shrugged. The glance she shot him was sly and predatory, but she soon turned it on her held-up claws, counting off the longest of them. "Feisty, but horrible. A pup that Kyril said to kill and then said not to." She flashed her teeth in annoyance and moved to the second finger, and lingered upon it, tongue running over her fangs. "Weird," she decided, then shrugged again. "Wet eyes. Shiny... things." She traced two quick lines across her eyebrows.

Information didn't appear to be a skill of Vipra's either, but it was enough. Corvin stole a glance over her shoulder, though the passage beyond her was empty; even the tiny noises further in has faded to nothing by now. He couldn't confirm it, but he believed it, deep in his core. Raya was here.

Against it all, she'd followed him anyway, and he'd led her right to Kyril. Kyril, who had listened intently to his description of her and then swept aside the argument he tried to frame with her at its centre, curious only in a twisted sense that had made every word feel like a foul, bitter mistake. The scars on his back burned.

Like the pain was a prodding, fiery stick, it urged him forward. "What happened to them?"

Vipra opened her mouth, paused, then stuck out her tongue—as if they were both small again and she was refusing to share her corner of the nest. "You can work that out." She flicked her wings back, their lithe muscle billowing out limply before they settled against her back. Her nose wrinkled. "Not dead yet. I haven't killed them, anyway." She made no effort at all to hide her disappointment.

Relief sank through Corvin's chest. He wondered, briefly, if he should be ashamed of it: that instantaneous desire to protect people that weren't at all his, people that had rationally earned the retribution Kyril always claimed. The relief felt weak to hold, tender to the touch, but he kept it. He wanted to live, but not at that price.

He was sure Raya wanted the same thing, and that she couldn't be alone, and that was why he needed to find her. He moved forward again, eyes fixed on the faraway end of the cavern.

Evidently faster than he was, Vipra got in his way. Her wings spread out again as she prodded his chest, gaze still bright with its teasing glint. "Do I need to fight you?"

A beat passed. He held her stare, weighing up how to convince her against how easy it would be to shove past her and sprint.

He didn't get a chance to make that choice; her claws snared the front of his robe, and suddenly his legs were swept from under him, scooped up between her bony thighs as his spine slammed into the ground. Her breath wafted over his nose, her teeth gleaming inches from it. She weighed little, but it hardly mattered. She already had him by the throat.

"I will," she said, the glee in her voice cut through by a low, serrated hiss. "You were weak before, and you're weaker now." Her lips twisted, caught between a grimace and a snarl. "I'm not stupid. I can still taste her fresh stink on you."

It was no secret that Vipra liked to fight, but she wasn't playing now. Anger brewed behind her eyes, louder than Kyril's, straight and simple and blind. Her fangs were wet with spittle. She gave Corvin's throat a light, warning squeeze.

Panic floundered beneath his ribs. He could barely get his head to shake, but he clawed at her wrists instead, breathing hard and fast. "She saved my life." The words rushed into one another. "But I'm here. I—I have no loyalty to them. Vipra, please let go."

She laughed through her bared fangs. The sound was guttural—natural, not Kyril's new madness, reminiscent of Meag at her most furious. The look on her grey face resembled a desert haze.

"Vipra," he tried again.

"Make me."

He pulled harder at her wrists, his short, smooth nails sliding over her skin without consequence. He squirmed and she only gripped him tighter. They'd been friends once, of a sort, but Vipra was always twofold: protective and fierce, sweet and deadly. She could never have truly liked him.

Desperation overtook him. "Kyril won't like this," he shoved out. "He'll punish you for hurting me."

She shifted lower, her wings heavy where they draped over his shoulders, the ends of her soft hair spooling on his cheeks. "Do you really think—"

"Hey, freak!"

The voice that cut between them was brash and shrill; Corvin's ears curled in on themselves in instinctive response as it drove a knife deep into his skull. It took him a dragging moment to register that the voice was human, and another to pick out what it meant, and by then everything was happening around him at once.

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