Star Side

Chapter 20

Whatever venom the divine beings had injected into Gilrack's body made him heavy and the world spin. He kept his eyes on the maiden to ground himself, as she never left his side. Though, at one point, she got up to adjust the white stone arms and the color-changing plaque, she didn't leave the room.

He fought sleep, but something strange had come over his stiffening body. His back felt like fire, and the memory of the lances of fire the black-eyed male had thrown at him left his blood vibrating with primal instincts. Move, they told him. Hide. Nest. Mark. Kill. Danger.

But he couldn't find the strength to respond.

The closer he fell towards unconsciousness, the louder his instincts became. He tasted blood in his mouth from his ever lengthening fangs. Enough claiming venom had dripped down his throat to make him sick.

But above all that was the white-hot pain of his back.

He came to on his side, a pool of drool, claiming venom, and blood sticking to his cheek. The white slab they had lane him on had taken his heat, but the rest of him shivered in the cold air. He hated heaven. This cold, barren, open place.

But then that delicious smell broke through the pale of his pain and instincts.

Her.

She was there, standing in front of him, speaking that noisy, clunky language with her hands on his side. Her soft hands felt cool against his heat. So unbelievably soft. Perfect for handling delicate, freshly hatched young.

Thoughtlessly, blinded by pain and the screaming need to hide away and nest, he lunged at her, fangs wide—to claim, to take---

Only for a crack of thunder to split his world in agony.

His female shrieked and stepped back. She kept jabbering. The dark figure of the male appeared in his blurring vision, wrestling the strange weapon that spat fire with her. His voice was much lower than the maidens, and his dark eyes unnerved Gilrack. Black eyes was a sign of the dead.

He hunched into a ball, groaning. He'd never been in such pain before. He couldn't comprehend—couldn't think—and all the while venom kept leaking down his throat until he could no longer hold it back and vomited across the white plain of the heavenly slab. It always hurt, throwing up, and it momentarily sucked him back into the black.

For an indefinite amount of time, he rocked between an agonizing hell filled with the scent of his divine maiden and into blips of darkness. Every time he came to he could feel his bones had hardened even more, chilling his heart. How would he be able to tunnel or even move? No, there would be no surviving this. He was dying, fossilizing on the toxic air of the sky. He shouldn't have let himself believe that he had somehow adapted to what they all knew was only death.

And then he was awake as though all the pain had been but a dream. His vomit had vanished. His fangs had finally retracted. The cold sweat had been wiped away and his body, though aching still, responded to his need to stretch.

But something else along his backed stretched with him. Something that fed back feeling to him, air, hard surfaces, going on and on and on---

He jolted up, ignoring his stick like bones to twist about.

What could only be wings hung from his back by bone, skin, and leathery membrane. Each stretched out the membrane in long, bony fingers, though the moment he tried to spread them to see their true span the hit of cold air hit the skin like a raw wound and forced his wings back closed.

Then he wondered why none of the divine beings had reacted to his sudden movement and looked around to see none other than the maiden asleep once more in a chair, her head resting on her hands, her dark hair tied in a messy knot on her head.

Then his eyes met the dead black of the male being, still holding his stick.

The dead divine being held his gaze. A familiar thrum of malice drifted towards Gilrack's mind. Just as it had been the first time Gilrack had laid eyes on him, the divine being's violent mind emissions came to him like smoke, sour and cloying, thick and intentional. The taste alone told Gilrack this one had practice in violence, but unlike a warrior the sour tinge meant it was anything but honorable. The divine male didn't see Gilrack as a foe or enemy soldier. He saw him as a dangerous pest, a predator out to kill his young.

It made Gilrack wonder if he had mistaken the virginal smell on the divine maiden and that she was, in fact, this dead-eyed one's mate.

But even as they stared each other down, Gilrack took a deep, although tentative taste of the air. What came to him through the mind-melting pleasure of the female was a male just past his prime. Though that didn't mean the male wasn't still potent or able, it gave Gilrack hope. Surely, a divine maiden of her caliber would want for something more...virile.

He sent out a tendril of his mind's touch to the divine male.

Unlike with the female, the divine male's response was in no way timid. A flood of violent alarm came bursting back to Gilrack, as though his single tendril had been a needle to a full bladder.

The male stood. At full height he only came to Gilrack's shoulder.

Still, Gilrack braced himself. His claws dug deep into the white shelf.

The fire-stick rose.

"Levi."

The soft voice of the female shook her scent in the air. He could almost feel it sprinkle like rain across his skin.

Both he and his foe looked to her on her chair, now upright and rubbing at her eyes. Her beautiful, earthen eyes.

He fought back the sting of his fangs and the claiming venom. Now was not the time to be out of control of his body, no matter how much it had become a stranger to him.

But it got impossibly harder when those lash-lined eyes fell on him. His claws instinctually retracted as he felt a brush of her mind's touch. It wasn't even directed towards him, it was just out and about like an untrained child's. But oh, the sweetness.