Jotaha knew that trying to convince Kevos that Sarah was not evil would be a waste of breath. There was no time for him to explain. He had to appeal to the twisted honor of the sentil. “You were not given the right of judgement, Kevos. I am taking my drahi to the temple to meet with the elders. If they decide that Seta Zul has made a mistake, then I will bow to the wisdom of their judgement.”
He would not, but that was not something Kevos needed to know. If the elders decided Sarah would not be accepted, then he would leave and take her with him. He would go as far away as he needed to, to keep her safe. Even if that meant taking her back over the boundary to her own world.
This argument seemed to hold more sway with Kevos. For the first time since he’d stepped into the light, he looked uncertain, his head spines dipping slightly as his lips fell into a frown.
Jotaha knew he would need to push the point home, or Kevos might decide that even the elders themselves were somehow corrupted in their judgement. “They stand atop the mighty skull of the Wise One, and you would place your own will above them?” He shook his head. “This is not coming from a place of honor and sacrifice, Kevos. It is coming from a place of pride and ignorance. Your hubris will not find you a home among the Ajda in the Inferno.”
“Ha’tah!” Kevos’ expression shifted from determination and hatred towards the helpless female Jotaha would do anything to protect to one of frustration.
“Do not use that name,” Jotaha snarled, angry that Kevos would try to use his nest-name to call upon the friendship they had once shared. Their past closeness would not serve to change his mind, and given Kevos’ hostility, recalling a name Jotaha had given up for his title was a sign of disrespect, whether intentional or not.
Kevos flinched at the censure in his tone, his shoulders rolling forward and his spines flattening in submission. He had gone too far in disrespecting Jotaha, though threatening his drahi should have been far enough. In the sentil’s mind, it would not be because she was a nixir, but losing all honor by disrespecting the Guardian of the Dark Paths was enough to cut through his hatred.
Jotaha didn’t bother to say anything in parting as Kevos melted back into the shadows, keeping his gaze away from Sarah. Even though he felt Kevos’ departure and the retreat of the others who had followed him here, he did not relax until he heard the distant call of the horn, calling off the hunt.
Sarah would be safe, for now. He didn’t think Kevos would try again, and the other sentils would scatter, leaving his territory now that he had dismissed the hunt. Still, his unexpected enmity towards Sarah, and the fact that he had been able to rally other sentils to perpetuate this blasphemous murder attempt, meant Jotaha had vastly misjudged the reaction other yan-kanat would have to Sarah. It had been a long time since a shataz had lived among his people. Several generations, in fact, but the records were there. Not one of those records had spoken of open hostility between the yan-kanat and the nixir females claimed as mates.
Had the situation grown so strained that even a soft, seemingly harmless nixir female would no longer be tolerated?
He would speak to the elders about Kevos’ behavior, but suspected the sentil would not suffer much punishment, given his motivations. The guardians and the sentinels were trained to hunt all threats to the safety and security of the yan-kanat, and the nixirs had always been the biggest of those threats. They all knew the nixirs continued to build their world of weapons and nightmarish machines beyond the boundary, and they also knew the nixirs would relish claiming Theia and the magic of the Ajda as their own. Only the urvaka kept their unstoppable armies from invading in force.
He settled back onto his fur, his gaze returning to Sarah, who had slept through the whole confrontation, much to his relief. Her silence and apparent helplessness would challenge the murderous intent of even the most hardened of the sentils. However, if she had woken up in the middle of their stand off and had behaved in a manner the sentils found threatening, they might have made a rash move against her.
As the sandfalls passed, his relief at her slumber changed to concern. He finally awakened her after several more sandfalls passed than he had intended to rest, and she was groggy and out of sorts. Her eyes looked unfocused, and given the way she clutched her stomach with a cry, he feared it was because of pain.
She curled up on her side with her knees pulled to her chest, whimpering as her hands gripped her stomach. When his panicked attempts to communicate with her failed, he tried to pick her up in his arms, determined to run the entire way back to the skilev and the healers if he had to. One of them would have to know how to help her. He feared something had happened to her hon-gree. Perhaps they were dying inside her. Maybe the lack of their growling sounds hadn’t meant they were sated, but that they were weakened.
She struggled, fighting against his hold, punching with weak fists against his head and chest. It wasn’t her physical attacks that made him release her, but her own panicked shouts. As soon as his hands left her, she turned onto her hands and knees and crawled a short distance away to vomit nothing but fluid onto the hard-packed dirt.
Some of that fluid was red, like blood.
23
Sarah was being carried, cradled in the inhumanly strong arms of a sexy, barbarian alien male. The only problem was that she couldn’t really enjoy the experience, because she felt like she was dying. Her stomach ached like she had the worst kind of stomach flu. She wanted to vomit as each step Jotaha took jostled her unavoidably. She felt like her belly was bloated like a balloon.
She had no idea how long he carried her, but his body was glowing the entire time. His tone had shifted from panicked to soothing as he carried her rapidly towards some destination. She hoped it was a pharmacy with a really good selection of dietary fiber. Perhaps she should have been a bit more concerned about her constipation.
Despite his attempts to keep his voice soft and rhythmic in a calming manner, he was practically running while he carried her. If she felt better, she would have been impressed by his stamina and endurance. A human man could barely even pick her up, much less carry her for what felt like miles upon miles at a jogging pace. She just hoped she didn’t repay him for the ride by vomiting all over his pretty armor.
His pace finally slowed after what seemed like hours, though her perception of time was all off, given that she had dozed off several times, only to be jostled awake again when he passed over a particularly uneven patch of ground. She knew a significant amount of time had passed because night had given way to daylight, and the alien sun in its leaden cradle moved across the sky even as they moved over the ground.
She jerked awake the final time when Jotaha’s steps sped up into a full run, opening her eyes to a sight that stole her breath. They had apparently arrived at their destination, and Jotaha was heading towards a sky lift-type vehicle that looked like it would carry them up strong cables to a structure at the top of a massive hill. Much of the hill looked like it was covered in bones. Not small animal bones, but gigantic, monstrous bones, some so large that she could see even from the bottom of the hill that they had been hollowed out to form dwellings.
The most striking aspect of the hill was near the top, where two huge structures cast long shadows that stretched down even to the base of the hill of bones. These structures were made of bones arranged in the form of outspread wings. They had been braced by something that looked a bit like scaffolding all along their height and breadth, and more buildings or dwellings had been built along those scaffolds like suspended apartments.