Gods of the Flame Sea by Jean Johnson

Author:Jean Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-02-27T12:06:58+00:00

Chapter Six

Ban turned off his earring with a touch midfall. He did not need Jintaya distracted by his voice, or the sounds of the fight to come. “Sartorlagen!”

His clothes snapped from the black trousers and tunic he had worn for visiting the Efrijt, changing into his preferred fighting gear: war kilt and knee-high leather boots. Spreading his arms, he arched his body to guide it aerodynamically, eyes squinted against the dust in the air. It looked like he should land about ten lengths from Udrin. He didn’t worry about the balls of anima floating in from the cliffsides and rising up out of the ground; such things might get absorbed into a Fae that got too close, but they always simply traveled through him like a puff of tingly air.

A couple seconds before impact, he flipped his body and flexed his bull’s legs tattoo, slamming into the stone of the grand plaza feet first without damaging himself. Just the ground, which cracked and crumbled a little underfoot. Unfortunately, he overbalanced on his landing, his body still under the force of his rotation; Ban had to plant a palm on the ground to keep from tumbling forward. Not his best landing . . . but from the way Udrin startled and jerked around, the youth had not seen the fumble. Instead, he looked suitably impressed. Uncanny, even a touch eerie, but impressed.

Straightening, Ban faced the half-breed, who didn’t look entirely like he should. Those brassy red-gold curls looked the same, the skin as tanned as ever, and those eyes the same carnelian shade as the petals on a poppy flower. Poppies didn’t grow here naturally outside of planter boxes, since they grew in the savannahs to the northwest, far beyond the mountain range hosting Udrin’s kin. But it wasn’t his coloring that had changed. Instead, the youth looked like he had lost some of his lingering, pubescent baby fat.

Udrin’s shock did not last long. In fact, he switched from a gape to a grin, and even applauded in three loud claps. “Nice entrance! Very nicely done! Very intimidating. I suppose you’re here to scare me into behaving in constricted, el-fae ways?”

“You insult your mother’s kin?” Ban asked, curious. If this was an Efrijt thing, a treachery . . .

“What? No no no . . . well, yes.” Udrin corrected himself, first scrubbing the air with a hand, then twitching in a jerk and turning it into one of his characteristic, chaotic little dance moves. “They are as beneath me as the trees are to a soaring hawk.”

“So you side with your father’s kin?” Ban asked next.

“Oh, please,” Udrin scorned, wrinkling his nose and baring the hints of his tusks. The lower canines looked the same, at most half a fingernail’s length longer than human teeth. But when one of the clouds in the sky drifted its shadow across the valley floor, Ban realized the youth glowed. Skin only, not including his clothes, and only discernible in the deeper shadow of hems and cuffs.

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