Zauran (27 page)

“
You murdered your brother!” bellows from Venix to Darise.

Phoebe's wail cuts through my soul, it's so thick with the torture of grief. Fighting, wrestling, I battle my way out of the arms around me, scrambling across the floor to Phoebe, wrapping my arms around her and trying to save her from the loss.

I am hysterical with tears and sobbing, reliving the death of my brother on a bombed road.

Her pain is my pain, her tears are my tears... it's visceral. Trembling, I coo, smoothing her hair, sobbing in unison with my sister, knowing we are one in so many ways and I'd have done anything to save her from this kind of agony, rocking her and clinging as tightly to her as she bites fingers into me.

It's a grief so sharp it cuts your soul, shredding you into an ugly mass of emotional scars that nothing can heal. Jowendrhan releases her to me, and we cling to each other, bonded through the horror of this war, of this loss... death's stench makes me choke.

I'm blind with scalding tears, never wanting to relive tragedy again.

No more. Not ever.

God take me now, save Phoebe, save us from this unbearable curse of angry men and their fucking guns!

Curling into each other, hiding from the carnage, like barnacles closing against the storm and ready to weather the smash of ocean, I pray relentlessly with my heart so broken my nose is leaking and I am beyond caring.

Anguish is ugly, it's ungraceful and swollen with raw tears.

This is what death looks like to the living.

“
I'm sorry,” I stutter.

This is my fault. If I hadn't gone to Zauran none of this would have happened. None of it!

Babbling my mantra, I'm gurgling on choking snot, “I'm so sorry – sorry... sorry...”

Her wail reaches another shattering shriek and I hold her tighter, pouring the love I soaked from the starlit pond into my sister.

I owe her all of it.

This is my fault!

Tears slip unchecked over my cheeks, blinding me to everything but her quaking torment in my arms.

*

Zauran
:

She leaves me, fighting me to reach Phoebe, and I unclamp my hold, releasing her.

Letting her go; it's the hardest thing I've ever done, when I can hear her thoughts and feel her spirit shattering.

My own tears rise up at the sisters locked together like twins in a womb. Zaria is possessed to give comfort, to save, to staunch the pain she knows so well.

If anything could break Zaria, this is it. Right here, right now.

Snapping my focus to Darise, he's gone into shock with the realization of his actions.

Venix is blasting Ryan with healing, closing bullet wounds and extracting slugs from his body.

Aisyx and Jowendrhan both stand like guardians on either side of Božena. Sveta watches Ryan with a look of pure hatred.

Why?

Inhaling deeply, Zaria's emotions are beginning to overpower my calm, shaking my soul so it clatters my teeth.

Staring back at the woman I'd die for, I'm traumatized to see the compassionate Plyx bleeding out of her and entombing Phoebe, wrapping her in love's purest form.

I can't intervene.

This is the cruelest fate any man has endured, ever.

Anguish rips out of my chest at Zaria and my children giving their life to Phoebe... until her light winks out and she slumps, broken.

Like a bearskin rug before a sadist's fireplace her beauty graces the polished floor next to what remains of Seithe's corpse. He smokes, dissolving slowly now, disappearing and returning to its maker.

I warned her when I told her,
this also makes you part-neuri. You won't die, Zaria. Not until you
choose
to
.

She chose to die, for Phoebe.

A howl burns me to the quick, a pain so absolute the world cracks, lightning sears and booms the clear sky outside, and I am reduced to pure energy, double checking my love's light is truly gone.

My aqua vision burns and scorches with Venix's bright flare, but Zaria
is
gone.

All of her pink light is in Phoebe.

All
of it!

NO!

Chapter 26

Zauran
:

The aftermath is otherworldly.

I am numb.

It's with disbelief that I take my angel outside like a ragdoll draped over my arms.

Slumping weakly onto the lawn, I sit in the flash-flood shower that has amassed over
Dedinje, caught in my own wave of grief I smooth her hair away, cradling my petal.

Such a delicate flower, so resilient for so long, she gave it all away for love. She would do anything to save another from the pain she's endured.

She
did
.

She had to save her sister from the torment.

Bowing my head, I crush her body to my chest, sobbing in the veil of heavenly tears.

Heaven is crying for you Zaria.

Sobbing hysterically. Like me.

I rise out of the fog of trauma, slowly, uncaring.

Splintered severely, I fold her arms, close her eyes, and kiss her for the last time.

Heartbroken, I smooth every crease, fixating over her appearance; she must look perfect and adorable, even in death. This image I will remember forever and ever, as long as my blistered puss-filled life will last.

A crinkle from a wad in her pocket annoys me, and I feel the rage at the injustice rising up, bubbling like magma to annihilate the man who did this to her and Phoebe.

Impatient, angry, I yank the offensive object out, a key falling to the ground and casting a rainbow through the rain.

It's natural, we focus on the insignificant to cope. The deluge brushes her hair and glosses her cheeks when I rest her next to me, close.

Opening the letter, ink spiders across the page with every drop splattering the parchment.

Glancing over it, I catch the gist of it, wondering myself what the Slakax sentences mean.

Ryan must have given her the key.

Picking it up, thumbing it round and round in my fingers, I watch it prism light through the gloom. I haven't seen this key since I was a young boy. It represents the three of us. Our father had it forged so we'd always be united no matter how far apart we are.

Brothers in arms. We are each others strength. When one falls the next one rises to support him and lift him back up.

My brother...

Raising my face to the sky, baptized of my grief with the rainbow and rain, I realize what Ryan has done for me.

He kept her and the babies safe. He kept them all safe when we were under attack. And he gave her the greatest gift of all. A father's promise to his sons.

Hope lodges a thick lump in my throat and I swallow the choke, scraping my neck with the pain of it.

A hand grips my shoulder and squeezes hard.

“
Bring her.”

I grab and hold the wrist when he makes to move away. “Thank you,” I say, speaking to the view from Topčidersko Brdo.

Slowly he circles so he stands in front of me, staring at me with magenta pain dripping from his eyes, his veins protruding and his teeth sharp and long on his full lip.

“
She is your chosen. I love her like my own. I did what was necessary because this was a war. We were under attack and I didn't know who had you. I would have given my own life to save her.”

My jaw clenches, understanding what he's saying. He loves her and gave her the sovereign's protection. The protection of all of us.

This key is the key to our hearts, our blood, our divinity.

All we are is in this key, made stone by a man of magic.

“
It's not magic, Zauran,” says Venix in his unique voice behind me.

He comes to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ryan, in front of
me.

He loved her too. I knew it with the way he kissed her goodbye on my doorstep on another rainy day, before he absconded back to heaven to rise above the chaos of this planet.

Venix gives me his glowing stare, “Zauran, Love would never abandon a child of such pure light.”

He holds out his hands for Zaria.

Swallowing hard against the pain of releasing her to anyone, I bury my pride and lift my petal, placing the fragile flower of my Zaria in Venix's cradling embrace.

Ryan nods at me, taking the key away from me and placing it over her heart.

Venix glows so bright, bursting light through the key's stones, illuminating Zaria and capturing them in a prism, fracturing and splitting rainbows through the endless rain.

Like a swarm of fireflies, light specks mist in, billowing across Belgrade and up the mountainside, amassing into a glowing cloud above Venix, Ryan, and Zaria. Every neuri alive has just surrendered light to their king.

A tug in my chest burns when a piece of my Plyx is pulled out by the summons of the sovereign we serve. It filters out of my body to join the cloud of light above Ryan, and as one it funnels into Zaria, where the key lies over her heart.

Brilliance scorches the day like sheet lightning as Venix pulls the same summons from Spirit's source.

Together the men who love her, save her; resurrecting my angel. Her body begins to glow with a pink brilliance, so soft it's marshmallow-pink. Jade green pulsates in her belly, and my promise blinks back into life.

It hurts, they succeed where I will only fail.

Ryan looks to me, speaking with the voice of a legion of angels in full flight, “Zauran, you have not failed. You gave her to those who would do anything to protect her. It takes courage to trust those with strengths you lack. Your job is to love her and be
her
strength. One day you will be sovereign, and she will be the one to soothe your heart. My heart has been empty of that kind of light, until you forced me to take a Slakax under my wing. I've been isolated too long. Believe me when I say, you and Zaria have forced me to realize that without love, life is meaningless.”

Venix places Zaria across my legs, leaning her into my chest
and resting her head in the hollow of my shoulder.

“
Take her home, keep her safe. I'm watching you, and I'll make sure you do the loving thing, without an ego, every step of the way,” he says.

Immediately I recall the brutal beating at his hands, at the hands of men whose voices I recognize but can't place. Powerful angelic beings who are the only creatures who can best me.

They made me want to die. I revisited that grief again today. I stumbled when she was ripped from me so unexpectedly. She surrendered life, for love.

She's such a fierce defender of everything love represents, she's above the melee of life, and will forever be an angel in my eyes for what I witnessed today.

Spirit does indeed hide in women. None more so than my Slakax petal. Her courage is love. Courage isn't the power of a bomb or an army, courage is loving so much you'd do anything and everything in your power to ease suffering.

Even if it means giving everything you are to erase pain.

Struggling to stand, I hand her back.

“
I have something to do first,” I say to Ryan and Venix.

Walking away takes courage, strength, a spark of madness and a boat load of trust.

But it's time for me to prove I'm worthy of the neuri title.

Walking back into the entrance hall, I stride to Darise, casting aside tact I grab his head and change his mind.

I undo the trauma, undo the rage, undo the ego, giving him the wisdom of knowing that love nurtures, it
protects
. Like Zaria, it would die to save another from pain. It doesn't carry a gun to get its way. Its way is gentle and has no boundary.

Then I move to Phoebe, easing her mind, rearranging events so Darise doesn't have to carry the guilt of his rage for the rest of his mortal and short life.

Looking to Sveta and Aisyx, I silently order them to do the same to Božena and Jowendhran.

Enough pain. No more.

Turning my back, I check myself from running back outside.

Walking straight to Venix I reclaim Zaria, take the key from Ryan, and look at the view.

She chose of her own free will to keep the promise of new life inside her, that means the pregnancy won't harm her, or them.

I thank the angels and Spirit for giving me the most loving creature to cherish. She's going to make such an incredible mother.

Cuddling her closer, I hide emotion when I breathe in her butterfly exhalation.

I'm never letting you go again.