Page 97 of Glass Wings
“Which it will,” Reign said, sing-songy.
“Unleash yourself. Truly. You cannot hold back.” Arryn didn’t break eye contact with Djoser as he said it, though he knew he was ordering a death sentence for them all. Arryn was asking Djoser to explode like a nuclear bomb, and he would eliminate any structure, item, or person in this neighborhood if he did so.
“I have no interest in being eaten alive today,” Arryn added.
Djoser nodded his head once, showing he understood. It went against everything he was, everything he had worked his entire life to be, to become this symbol of destruction.
“Should we not be sneaking in through a window?” he asked the two others as Arryn lifted his hand to knock.
“We knock. We fight. We leave. And then I will have my answers,” Arryn said, his fist coming in contact with the door.
“Your answers?” Djoser asked.
“Of course, I’m here to discover what happened to Allienna.”
Reign shook her head, a scowl overcoming her small face in reaction to Arryn’s words. The lock in the door was audibly unlatched, and the door cracked before being pulled open.
“I knew it was you,” Reign said, staring at the sliver of a face peering behind the door. Amis took a moment, seizing them up before opening the door and stepping out of the way, inviting them in.
“He wouldn’t have let you take the girl. I had to get out of the way,” Amis explained as Reign, Arryn, and Djoser cautiously walked inside the foyer, standing near the table underneath the pentagram.
“That’s normal,” Djoser said, pointing up at it.
“It doesn’t mean anything. The boss bought the place and didn’t bother to get rid of its quirks,” Amis said, shrugging his shoulders.
“You are working for Vrae, now then, Amis?” Reign asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Care to share your side of the story before Djoser kills everyone in a twenty-square-mile radius?”
“First, I’d like to ask you to please not do that,” Amis asked Djoser nervously. “Second, we’ve been preparing for a greater battle. One that we all got way too close to accidentally starting twenty years ago.”
“That day with the Life Gifter? The day I was there to beg for the lives of Allienna and me? That didn’t seem to work too well. We both ended up dead at some point,” Reign said.
“Yes, that day,” Amis said. “I had only agreed to come along because of what I’ve been working on with Sheng since right after Tristan’s attack.
“I don’t care about any of this. I’m here for the girl,” Arryn interrupted.
“You mean your daughter,” Reign muttered to him. Arryn grunted in response.
Djoser snapped his head towards the eastern hallway, where he noticed something lurking in the shadows. He let the magic pool up at his fingers, small wisps of smoke emulating while he became on edge.
“Your daughter is meant to bring us together, to create the ultimate tool for all of our survival against a common enemy,” the figure hidden in the shadows said, stepping out into the foyer. He appeared human enough, but there was something in his eyes, a confidence of sorts, that suggested otherwise.
Djoser had never seen a Vrae that didn’t look like a demon. Hiding in plain sight among humans was such a disturbing concept that he immediately had to move past it.
“She and I have gotten married and will conceive children, creating a new species, starting an army to defend us against the most volatile thing on the planet: Ayurveda. I’m Sheng, the first of Ayurveda's children.” He turned, speaking next to the hallway. “Jenny, Saul, you may all enter.”
Djoser instinctually took a step back, and as he did so, a flood of royal blue cloaks buzzed out of the same hallway. Hooded figures, eyes blazing with the devil’s fire, stood behind this Sheng figure.
He looked into their faces. None seemed like a likely candidate for a daughter of Arryn’s. Was she even here, or was this a setup?
“She will blow up, jealous of the lives we have all successfully built here, while she is forced to sit in the Life Gifter’s shadow. When this happens, the Earth will plunge into darkness, and so will all of us. It would be too big of a catastrophe to stop, even for Kinnari.” Sheng smiled.
“Arryn can create a new sun,” Reign huffed and puffed.
“None of us would know it had happened until it’s too late. When we stare at the sun, we see it as it was eight minutes ago.” Sheng began pacing in front of them. “By the time the event reaches our eyes, the Earth will have already been lost.”
“What will teaming up accomplish?” Djoser asked. “It’s not like we can start a war to kill Ayurveda either, if that’s even possible. It would have the same outcome.”
“Our job is not to wage war,” Sheng said. “Our job is to distract. To keep my mommy happy. What is the greatest gift an adult child can give their parents? Would you even know?”
