THE EXTRA ONE

Shayne Lyro and the Nightmare that Wouldn’t Cease

Here he was again. Cold rain drenched his shoulders, turning his white hair glassy and warping his vision to melted colours as he blinked back downpour, blood, and sweat. Shayne’s grip on his fairsaber was slick. He lifted his weapon and looked at his reflection in the blade, hardly recognizing himself with his bothered face and no smile.

Yet, it was him. Here, at the House of Lyro, outside its eight-tiered pagoda of the sky deities, fighting the one person who had taken everything from his childling hands, then cast him out, and now dragged him back.

“Raise your sword at me, Brother.” That painfully familiar accent sailed through the thunderstorm. “Let me ascend in peace.”

Shayne lowered his blade, setting his reflection aside. For the first time in months since Kahn-Der had dreamslipped into his mind and filled him with nightmares, Shayne looked up and met his brother’s gaze. He’d been avoiding this bloodbath. He’d been frightened of it, even—not because he was scared to fight, but because he was afraid to lose all the simple things he had gained, all to this heartless fool who had never cared for another fairy a single day in his faeborn life.

Shayne raised his fairsaber.

He took in his long, last free breath.

He did it all knowing that for his brother to ascend to the highest chair in the House of Lyro, Shayne would have to die. And Shayne could not smile about that.

For, all good things come to an end. That included the legacy of once-smiling fairies.