The sensation of flying and seeing the world in such an exciting way was nearly all-consuming, but one thought dominated: The Brothers of the Crimson Shield would escape, if they kept on toward the sea. The Alon’mahk’lar bands were disorganized and spread too thin to catch them.
Sooner than he wanted, Zera descended to a low dune of pure white sand, and gently set his feet back where they belonged. Once released, she flew a few paces and landed gracefully. As she turned, her misty shape, the embodiment of a shadowy dream, quickly shrank and solidified. He saw before him the face he knew well. Her eyes shone with the same green, bottomless radiance as ever. A shy smile quirked her lips, as if she had not just revealed a monstrous secret, but a wondrous gift. He stared open-mouthed, trying to understand.
“I could not tell you before,” she said, sounding abashed.
“Ba’Sel said you were like a daughter to him.” As he spoke, misery and rage filled him up. “Did you betray him as easily as you did me?”
“Do you not see?” Zera countered, holding her hands out to him. “I did it for you … for us … for what we share. It pains me more than you can ever know to have deceived Ba’Sel. For you and your love, I not only turned against him, I turned on my own kind.”
She drifted closer as she spoke, until stood before him. Leitos looked into her eyes, felt himself falling into them, into her. Madness, he thought, even as their lips met, tentatively at first, then with passion. In that moment, he nearly forgot all that had happened from the time he fled the mines to now … nearly.
He broke away from her with a strangled cry. “Alon’mahk’lar, Mahk’lar, Na’mihn’teghul,” he said angrily. “Whatever you call yourself, you are demon-born-and demons love only the slaughter!”
“Even I believed that … until I met you,” Zera said softly, trying to take him in her arms again.
Leitos jerked away. The sorrow in her eyes fell on him like a hammer blow, but he refused to surrender to his remorse. He wrapped himself in disgust and outrage. She was the progeny of the Fallen, born of atrocities. Her demonic race, under the reign of the Faceless One, had subjugated him, his people, all humankind, reduced them to animals with only despair and death to wish upon.
“I am sorry, Leitos,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “You must believe me.”
He had never seen her weep. Though it pained him further, he felt sure it was a trick conjured in the blackest chambers of her mind. “As am I,” he answered heavily. The trusting part of him did not want to believe that the woman before him was the very face of evil. Unspeakable grief soured his tongue, filled his soul with emptiness. “How could you have possibly believed, knowing what you are and what I am, that we could ever be more than enemies?”
“We do not have to be pitted against each other,” Zera said. “You and I, the love we share, the first of its kind, can bridge the gap between the children of the Fallen and humankind. Please, Leitos, I am willing to try, if you are….”
Despite his anger and sadness, he wanted with all his heart to escape with her, to live out their lives away from the reach of the Faceless One, and even his own kind. But it would be easier for the air he breathed and the sand he trod underfoot to become one and the same, than for them to shape any kind of life together.
“I can take us away,” Zera said in a desperate rush, as if she sensed the turning of his mind. “We can build a new creation … a blending of the best parts of each of our kind. One day our children can stand against those who oppose us now.”
“Those who oppose us?” Leitos said, stunned by her willful blindness. “The Faceless One and his allies stand against humanity. They have hunted my kind until only a few remain, and those living few are chained, made into starving, hopeless beasts for no other reason than that we exist. The best of your kind have ground to dust the bones of a hundred different peoples. Other than our existence, Zera, what have men done to oppose your kind?”
“Given the freedom to reap the slaughter, humankind would kill and destroy as eagerly as have the Alon’mahk’lar,” Zera protested.
Leitos shook his head in dismay. “Even a rat will gnaw the stick jammed against its throat in the hope of holding to its life, but that does not mean it is at fault. No less can be expected from any living creature, including humans. After suffering for three lifetimes of men, can you expect anything other than a spirit of vengeance to have grown within the hearts of my people? We did not ask to be conquered, we did not grovel at the feet of the Faceless One for the chance to be bound in chains the whole of our lives.” When he continued, his words rolled into the night, propelled by the force of his shouts.
“You speak as though it is wickedness if my kind were ever given the chance to seek justice against their torturers. Is that where you stand, Zera? With the demon-spawn who ravished our women in order to create abominations that would be used to further oppress men and women and children, whose only crime was trying to survive in a world laid to waste after the Upheaval?”
Zera stared at him. “I do love you, if you would only see it. Please come away with me. I have no other purpose, Leitos,” Zera said, her chin trembling. “Not anymore.”
Those words caught like a hook in his mind. “You used me to lead you back to the Brothers of the Crimson Shield, but in the Sanctuary, you said you wanted me. Why?”
“Because I love-”
“Stop saying that!” Leitos shouted. “It was not for love, could not have been! You wanted me because your master set you on this path, the same way he set you on the path to betray the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Why me, Zera,” he said through gritted teeth, “why am I needed?”
In the silence that held between them, Leitos thought he heard a sound just below the whispering wind, a rhythmic drumming.
“You are the last direct descendant of the Valara line,” Zera whispered.
“You said the same in the Sanctuary. That name means nothing to me.”
Her puzzled expression faded as quickly as it appeared. “In order to protect you, for fear of the slavemasters learning your secret, of course your father would not have spoken of your shared heritage.”
“I never knew my father,” Leitos said bitterly, “or my mother, or anyone from my family except my grandfather. Alon’mahk’lar took us when I was an infant. We were brought to Geldain to dig and scratch away our lives away as punishment for resisting the will of the Faceless One. That is who you serve … that is who you are.”
“No, Leitos. No longer. Please, I beg you, believe me. Trust the quiet voice in your heart. Come away with me, and I will tell you all I know.”
“Tell me now,” he demanded, but she held quiet.
Leitos stood mere feet from her, but a chasm seemed to gape before them. From all directions, death stalked the desert, wearing the terrible faces of his lifelong oppressors, the slavemasters, the Sons of the Fallen. Facing that, the darkness grew wider. On the other side waited Zera, made all too human in her sorrow and professed love. Could such a creature know love, could she take it from him and return it in kind?
“Why can you not tell me now?” he whispered, voice cracking.
Zera spread empty hands and shook her head. The wind tugged her dark hair, and a few strands caught in the wetness on her cheeks.
Frustration wracked him, broke something deep in his soul.