Chapter 27

27

A mis | Sacramento, CA | Early 2000s

The girl thrashed and kicked in his arms, screaming and crying into his shirt as she went through waves of rage, grief, and terror. Her wings felt like tissue paper as they scraped against his skin, his cheek.

His wings were an extension of his skin, thick but soft. The girl's wings felt too delicate, like they wouldn't hold her weight.

Amis walked her into the kitchen, knowing that the only real time she had ever looked happy or relaxed was when a meal was in front of her.

He was exhausted and wondered if this was all a mistake. He sat the girl down, awkwardly propping her legs up and around the barstool so she wouldn't slump off it. It didn't seem likely that she could hold her weight.

As he suspected, she immediately laid her upper body on the table, her back convulsing with every sob.

He wasn't much of a cook, but doing something simple with his hands felt cathartic. He pulled open the fridge, pulled out butter and a block of expensive cheddar cheese, and laid the ingredients out on the steel countertop. He pulled the bread out of the bread box and turned to the stove, the path to a grilled cheese sandwich in front of him.

The butter sizzled in the ceramic pan, drowning out the faint sound of Hadley's cries, melting Amis' stress away as if he were in the pan himself.

Several minutes later, he had two beautiful yet simple plates in his hands and walked over to Hadley to serve them. He sat beside her, picked up his sandwich, and took a large bite. The bread crunched, and the cheese oozed; he understood why this seemed to bring her some small amount of bliss.

"For you," Amis said as he pushed Hadley's plate closer to her. She hadn't moved when he sat beside her, her head buried in her folded arms across the counter. He watched her back tense after he had spoken to her until finally, she raised her head to peer out at him and, of course, the sandwich.

"How do you expect me to eat when I just watched someone be eaten?" she asked in a hushed voice.

Fair point .

She didn't break eye contact, hers red from crying.

"What did I do to deserve this? I just wanted to go home," she continued. "How can you work for a monster like him? What do you gain from all of this?"

Amis was aware of another presence in the background, Sheng likely hovering in the hallway, listening.

Hadley sat up a little more, pulling the plate in towards her.

"That's my girl," Amis smirked at her, trying his best to be kind. According to Sheng, all of their lives were in this child's hands. He didn't like it, but he would take care of her.

"I belong to no one," she whispered.

He watched her, frowning at the sandwich, contemplating. More tears fell freely, decorating the plate. Her eyes gazed out the window, life draining from them. A harder shell formed, a new sense of numbness, right before his very eyes.

She pulled the sandwich apart and took a bite from each side's middle section.

"Should I be scared?" she asked, licking the remaining butter off her fingers once the last bit of crust was eaten.

"I've been scared for most of my life," he answered. "I don't see that stopping anytime soon."

With the girl sleeping off her grief in her bed, door locked from the outside, Amis already felt regret for what he was now expected to do. Confronting Arryn about this, about Reign's fate and his daughter in wedlock, sounded like his own death sentence.

I hate my life.

He did the best he could to block out the sounds and visuals of the Kinnari woman being chewed on, her voiceless scream reaching no one. Truthfully, it brought him back to that horrible day, the day that decided the rest of his life, the day that Tristan was attacked.

Amis left the house, passing several Vrae in their human form, hooded cloaks down and revealing their faces, all the more beautiful and relaxed after Reign's slaughter.

He couldn't count on his fingers how often they stared at him like a roasted leg of lamb. His blood chilled whenever he was surrounded by them all in the ceremony room—which was far more often than he would have liked.

Now, however, they ignored him. They were satiated, and it made his stomach turn.

Amis walked out to the backyard and stripped off his shirt, letting his wings bloom from his back. He mentally prepared for the long, grueling flight to his childhood home, to the temple that he had not been back to since, praying that they would leave their creator's realm with their lives .

The Kinnari male took flight, taking no precautions against being spotted, yet quickly disappearing into his ascent.

The next time he landed, his shoes were heavily soaked as they plunged into deep, powdery snow. His hands showed signs of frostbite, blue and black in the fingers, as if he were a corpse.

Amis cursed the fact that his wings made it so impractical to dress for inclement weather.

"Would it be too much to ask to be comfortable?" he muttered under his breath while looking at the mountains of snow before him, trying to decipher exactly which spot covered the door.

With all his misery, Amis found himself sticking his hands into the snow piles, feeling the temple's solidness but not the entrance's etching. Finally, after going elbow-deep, he felt the latch and began to dig in that spot.

Should he knock? He didn't live here. What was the protocol?

Amis used his shoes, as his hands might have fallen off if he were too much rougher with them to pound on the stone. After impatiently waiting for an entire three or four seconds, he gave up and lifted the latch, again using his right foot, balancing rather poorly on his left, considering he was supposed to be a divine, graceful creature.

"This is just so impractical, Arryn," he muttered, as if any of them had a choice of where their consciousness began. Arryn did have a choice to move to a tropical beach, though, and if he were Allienna, Amis would have probably left this hellish snowscape, too.

Amis walked into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. His body tensed up in preparation for the conflict ahead of him. It was always the middleman who took the brunt of things. It was an overrated role. He wouldn't recommend it.

He thought of the girl's friend, the tall, blond human boy that accompanied her. Now, there was someone who piqued his interest. He couldn't place his finger on it, but Amis knew he wanted to get to know Hector better .

The torch lights lining the hall were not lit, and it took Amis a few seconds to realize that it was quite dark in the temple, not simply the contrast from the exterior to the interior playing tricks on his eyes.

"Is anyone here? It's Amis," he announced as he continued to walk forward, the end of the hall just feet from him.

What time was it? Could Arryn be sleeping?

A low, rumbling, breathy sound filled the shallow walls surrounding Amis. His arm hair stood on end, recognizing that the sound was soft, but the creature that made it was big.

Amis gulped, taking a few more steps forward, and wondered if the temple had been infiltrated by Vrae. Had he been set up, told to come here so he, too, could be attacked privately? Was Arryn bleeding out, unconscious in the great room?

As much as he didn't want to know the answers to these questions, he knew very well he couldn't turn around now. He stepped into the room. The space felt dusty as if no one had been there for weeks. Dim light hit the floor from the high windows that were not entirely covered by snow. Amis did not immediately notice anything horrific. He did not notice any life.

The Kinnari stood in the middle of the room, his wings tucking in and moving back inside his skin. The sound of his bones cracking filled the deafening silence. It was the type of silence that confirmed that something was wrong. The kind of silence that made your heart skip beats at a time. A silence that was broken by the deep exhale of a beast.

Amis turned his head towards the stove and noticed an empty plate and bowl flipped upside down on the floor. His eyes flickered up, a shift in movement in the deeper shadows of the room pulling his focus.

Once his eyes adjusted, he saw the outline of scales. The creature sitting in the dark opened its eyes, large and filled with rage, filled with hunger, as it noticed Amis for the first time.

Amis jumped back as the creature shook its head and lifted a large clawed foot, propping itself up off the floor and giving Amis a view of how big it was .

The animal stood over fourteen feet off of the floor while on all four legs. It seemed like it had difficulty moving its even longer body as it slammed into walls, the stove, and furniture. Its wings, even tucked, brushed the ceiling.

It opened its mouth and chuffed at him.

"Good little dragon," Amis said as calmly as possible, hoping the creature couldn't hear how loud his heart was beating.

Amis took a few small steps back towards the hallway, not seeing a Kinnari anywhere in the temple.

"Well, it looks like Arryn isn't here. Please tell him I stopped by." He tried to smile at the dragon, hoping his voice was gentle enough to soothe it.

The dragon chuffed again before it turned into a growl.

No, his voice would not do, Amis thought as he dove toward the hallway. A blast of fire nearly missed him, incinerating the furniture behind him.

This dragon probably wouldn't kill him, he hoped, but it would still hurt to be caught in those flames.

A roar erupted that was so loud that Amis clapped his hands over his ears, rolling ungracefully from his dive and bending his left wing back too far, hearing an unfamiliar snap. Throbbing overcame that side of his body while adrenaline kept him moving toward the front door, the creature on his tail.

Amis threw open the door as the dragon struggled to get through the hallway, its cry of frustration reminding him of all the songs sailors attributed to sirens all those years ago.

He reached the door just as a long fire trail burst from the dragon's open mouth, engulfing the hallway with nowhere else to go. He yelled out from the embers eating away at his back, his wings and legs jumping into the snow outside, his skin sizzling.

The dragon let out a thunderous roar as more flames followed out the door. Amis watched in disbelief. There was a dragon in the temple. Judging by its size, it is a neglected, pissed-off teenage dragon.

Just his luck.

Stone started to crumble, making the very ground underneath Amis's body feel like it was shaking. Amis looked up to see the pile of mountainous snow on the temple's exterior begin to shake off, white clouds billowing into the air.

Of course. Of course, this would happen.

Following the snow, the newly revealed temple walls, which Amis admittedly had never seen uncovered, began to dislodge. Solid slabs of stone cracked and violently shot out five or six feet, followed by a thrashing dragon body trying to escape its confines.

The dragon let out a cry, loud and high-pitched, splitting Amis' ears. It backed its rear out of the exposed stone slab, jerking and looking for its best option. With another cry, it kicked at the stone slabs again, dislodging enough material so that it could emerge into the snow, its wings stretching wide to reveal their true length of thirty or forty feet.

Looking up to the sky, the dragon opened its mouth and let out another cry as Amis backed up on his hands and knees, hoping not to be noticed. A large burst of fire was shot into the sky as it stood on its hind legs, the earth trembling as it came back down.

A moment later, the dragon was airborne, the gust of wind from the movement of its wings feeling like one of Arryn's familiar storms of power.

Amis scrambled to his feet, shaking and wet from the snow and adrenaline rush.

I'm not explaining this to anyone.

It would probably be better for his mental health just to ignore that this ever happened.