Page 12 of An Empress of Air & Chaos

A command that had been given at tonight’s briefing from his father had been controversial. Before dawn, for the first time in Gideon’s existence, they were commanded to bring any humans that remained alive back to the tower. It was a command that not every hunter agreed with, but the instruction had come from the prime. And if the instruction was rolled out from the prime, then it was law. Final.

As they neared the hunting wagon, Kellen approached. “I killed four,” he said, his unusual eyes lighting up as he searched for a reaction from Torin.

In true warrior fashion, not much impressed Torin—maybe the occasional sparring fight, or an expensive bottle of rum. His mood could be...temperamental.

“That’s what you’re supposed to do, Kellen,” Torin huffed. “I would be worried if you had come here just to watch us do the work.” He placed the blonde girl into the wagon carefully, completely dismissing Kellen as he jumped back down and strolled past him.

The excitement on Kellen’s face fell and disappointment broke across his adolescent features.

Gideon placed the dark-haired girl into the wagon and called for some supplies and a healer to mend her arm as best as they could until he got her to the infirmary.

“Hey,” he shouted towards Kellen, who had turned his back to walk away. “Good job tonight.” He patted his little brother on the shoulder. “I knew you had it in you. It was great to see you out there, mirroring Marcus, on the hunt tonight. I bet he showed you a trick or two.” Gideon flashed a great smile. Marcus had trained him in combat and weaponry from a young age; he was well and truly part of the family, if only by oath. Blacksteel blood did not run through Marcus’ veins.

Kellen smiled in response to Gideon, but said nothing before making his way to the front of the wagon.

“Line up the dead!” Torin yelled from a few yards down the road.

Gideon could still smell burning wood from the pillaging the demons had done as he turned to face the second-in-command. “Bring anyone who is alive to the tower. That is a direct order from your commander. Tomorrow marks a change in everything we have ever known. It might seem out of the ordinary, but regardless of how we have done things before, this is the new protocol. Marcus, oversee that the dead are taken care of,” he finished, very matter-of-fact. Although Gideon knew that some part of Torin’s humanity would have struggled with the latter command.

Torin’s eyes met Gideon’s.

His brother would be commander one day, and when the time came, Gideon would fall underneath him. He would take direct orders from Torin, even if he didn’t agree. Even if it cost him his life, he would obey the commander of the clan, because that is what hunters did. That was part of their oath.

No one from the human world had ever been let into the tower, only ones of importance who came to talk politics with Viktir. However, as more and more humans died at the hands of the Dark King’s army on their mission for the Stones, something had to change.

And that was telling the humans the truth.

It was getting harder to cover up all the slaughtering’s. Only so many villages could burn before people started to talk, and the hunters had been covering up demon tracks for centuries.

But they were done doing it.

“Let’s move out,” Torin bellowed the command to the other hunters. “Let’s go. Round it up.”

Crunching gravel under heavy boots could be heard as the clan took instruction.

As Gideon looked up to the sky, smoke and death lingered in the air, but he could have sworn that the moon, with her bright glow and tinge of orange around the outside, winked at him.

He closed the door of the wagon with a shudder, shutting her out. He knew it wasn’t over. The Blood Moon hadn’t arrived yet.

It was only getting started…

Emara felt the heat on her face and smiled. It was over. She was on the other side. She was found worthy enough to be granted access to the other side, a spiritual realm her grandmother believed in. She would be able to see her mother again—possibly even her father.

Her heart stumbled a few beats.

Even though her grandmother never talked ill of her father, she hadn’t thought greatly of him when he was alive—otherwise there would have been more stories of him, or at least more to remember him by. Emara often felt a sinking feeling when she thought of him. She had no drawings or paintings of him other than the one she had stolen from her grandmother’s chest of drawers back when she was a child.

The painting wasn’t of great quality, but what the artist had captured was her father saying something to make her mother laugh so hard. She had always wondered what it might have been or what he might have said that had produced so much happiness. Sometimes she would lie in bed at night and think of phrases or memories that her father would have told her mother to make her laugh that way. Her mother’s beautiful smile had gleamed wide from one side of her face to the other. Her dad’s head was buried in her long, honey brown hair that was a couple of inches shorter than Emara’s. Her father’s hair, what she could see of it, was inky black, thick, and glossy. Just like hers.

Anytime Emara ever mentioned her father, her grandmother would either shut her downor not even respond at all. So after some time, Emara had stopped asking about him.

But she never stopped wondering.

Movement brought her back to this world and she tilted her head to the side, sluggishly blinking her eyes open. A large window fixed from ceiling to floor allowed daylight to flitter through the room. Blinded by the rays at first, she blinked again to adjust her eyes. Through the window, a vast hillside could be seen, imprinted with small houses the size of a fingernail in the distance and greenery extending right out across the land.

Where was she?

She twitched her legs, scrunching her toes and then her hands. This is not what she had pictured the spirit realm to look like. She’d visualised the other side, where souls went to rest, to be cloudy and mesmerising, illuminated by the light of the Gods. She hadn’t expected it to look like a town or city embedded within the trees of a forest. She was high above the landscape, that’s for sure.

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