Eron did so at the expense of grace, his haste rocking him on his feet in much the way it had after several glasses of what Kira referred to as ‘cat’s piss’. The captain hastened across the greater Orientation Room at a quick pace. Bel moved down the short flight of steps out of the shrine to meet their leader, the others close behind.
‘Captain.’ Bel pressed a balled fist to his left shoulder and bowed low enough to ensure that his head dipped below the captain’s heart line, as was protocol. Not a difficult task for Bel, considering his relatively short stature. For Eron, being taller than his captain, it was a more dramatic gesture. Eron bowed, stomach muscles engaging with the low tilt of his body.
‘Rise.’ Captain Nex always held a suggestion of robustness and coiled intensity. He was narrow of face and sharp of facial structure, and his nose and chin were equal in their cuspidate definition. The captain’s eyes were set beneath thick dark eyebrows, while silver-white hair hung in two bound separations framing his face, their lengths reaching midchest. ‘Pigtails’, Kira called the style. Something she found amusing for reasons Eron had never understood. Warmth filled his face. Truly he must be mad. To think of her in this moment.
‘There is an issue. One that requires a quick resolution.’ Captain Nex was not a demonstrative communicator. It was rare, if not impossible, to glean any sense of context through his tone, delivering good and bad news alike in an impassive way. ‘We have received word that the gallu . . . Azrael . . . has been removed from the Facility by the Lesser.’
Eron kept his gaze indirect, an expected protocol for anyone being addressed by the captain, but his thoughts were calamitous. Nex referred to Kira as the Lesser of the two sisters, ever begrudging the resources used to save the girl’s life.
‘How is that possible?’ Gren said.
Eron felt the pressure of his brothers’ gazes upon him, Seder’s the most pointed of all. Eron pulled back his shoulders, refusing to meet their accusatory stares. Aside from the brief encounter on level eleven a week ago, he’d not been in Kira’s company. And by the grace of Lahar, that encounter remained unknown to his brethren. He had no clue how Kira had actually removed Azrael, but if it had been similar to his own breach, she had simply driven him out the front gates. Her Telteriun body parts distracted the Lucentshield from the gallu’s energy signature, the same way they’d concealed that of his mea stone.
The captain’s eyes fixed on him with an intensity that could crack glass. Eron lowered his head.
‘Yet again I find myself regretting the day the Lesser was allowed to live,’ Nex growled. ‘But we have located the vehicle they are traveling in.’ The captain stopped in front of Eron. Heavy black boots, polished to perfection, reflected the emerald Waters. ‘You are to take assistance and retrieve Azrael.’
Eron continued to stare at his leader’s boots, fervently hoping it was not Seder who had received the order. His sullen-faced brother would not make things pleasant for Kira. So far as Seder was concerned, god-soldiers did not soil themselves with something as base as physical contact with humans. His disgust at Eron’s indiscretion ran deep, likely because Seder’s own irascible temperament rendered him so intensely unattractive. To any living being.
‘Eron.’
Eron jerked upright, a flush of heat filling his body. ‘Sir? I am to retrieve the gallu?’ He stuttered over the words, and the captain’s eyes narrowed.
‘It is our lord’s will.’ And Captain Nex sounded none too pleased about it. ‘Lahar bids me to send you.’ He tilted his head towards the shrine. Eron turned to find the Precon beast, Lahar’s totem, had shifted from its place inside the structure. Now the fanged and clawed creature’s image was cut into the glass wall nearest to Eron. One huge paw lifted, as though reaching for him. Eron fell to his knees, crossing his arms across his chest in supplication. A thrill rang through his body; nerve endings buzzed.
‘Lord Lahar, your spirit be ever uplifted.’ Eron touched his forehead to the coolness of the concrete. ‘I do your bidding. Evermore. Thank you for your generosity. Your forgiveness.’
By the time he’d settled back onto his haunches, the Precon glass etching had disappeared, returning to its place alongside Ereshkigal’s wolf inside the shrine. The wall in front of Eron was smooth again.
‘Do not disappoint, Eron. Lahar has given you an opportunity to redeem yourself and show your true commitment to our task. But do not overassume your importance. Your god-soldier brothers cannot be expended; their time to Bind with the Four fast approaches, and they cannot be sent on trivial missions such as this. A Syranian must be in attendance should the gallu attempt to protest recapture, and you are the only one I can spare. Return the gallu to his rightful place, and bring in the Lesser so that we might punish her, as she should have been punished before now.’
Eron fought to keep his expression neutral. The captain was Lahar’s Messenger, but Eron sensed this directive had not come from the god himself at all. Despite the spectacle of the Precon beast’s movement within the shrine, he suspected Lahar was busy with far greater complications than a once-disobedient god-soldier and a human girl who strove to drive people to distraction.
This was the captain’s own test. An offered opportunity for Eron to redeem himself fully in the eyes of his brethren. And, dare he imagine it, an opportunity to Bind with one of the Four?
‘Sir.’ Eron nodded. ‘Be assured, I will not fail. I will leave immediately.’
Twenty minutes later, eyes stinging and itchy with the contact lenses he wore, Eron was strapped into the helicopter and on his way to Lorhurst, the town Kira’s vehicle had
