Growing Pains: Chapter 8

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When Icarus’s eyelids were too heavy to stay open any longer, Mijhael closed the laptop and set it aside. He stayed in the nest with the exhausted kainu, his hand stroking softly over the beautiful coat that covered lean muscle. When first Mijhael had seen the kainu, he’d thought him half-starved. But as he came to know Icarus, he realized what an active lifestyle the other drakiri led. Travelling the continent on a whim required a certain degree of preparedness, and being fit enough to do so was important. 

He felt guilt burn low in his body, somewhere among his belly he thought, though guilt was an unfamiliar emotion still. All his life he had been sure of himself and his place in the world, confident that he was exactly where he ought to be. But events had led him to this place, to this nest, to sit beside this drakiri and look down at his pelt and feel an emotion he was never meant to feel. He had undervalued Icarus’s coat significantly, knowing that the harvesting would be more rigorous if he had valued it truly to his initial assessment. It had been one of the two conditions that allowed him to green light the removal of children from their father and what amounted to the torture of such a pure heart. 

His hand stilled on Icarus’s flank, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest with each sleeping breath he took. Beyond that, Mijhael felt the drumming, slow beat of the kainu’s heart, watched his nostrils twitch in his sleep. Were his dreams wonderful? Filled with life and light and the things Icarus had seen and done in his waking world? Or were they fraught with fear and darkness, feeding the creature who lurked in the shadows? 

“I will not let them harm you,” he said, finally realizing that he meant the words this time. He’d said it before, years ago, in a different lifetime, in a different world it seemed sometimes. He had said those words, and he had held them true. But in the end, death always comes, and he cannot keep promises that laugh in the face of death. 

Mijhael glanced at the clock that hung on his wall before he stroked the backs of his fingers against Icarus’s cheek to rouse him. The kainu’s eyes opened and he jerked back with a start before his pupils contracted and focused. 

“What’s wrong?” he mumbled, clearly still half asleep. 

“Your escort will return any minute,” Mijhael said quietly. “I wanted to give you time to fully wake before they take you.” 

The kainu’s expression tightened, but that was as far as it went. It was clear to Mijhael that Icarus was scared, but neither of them could have stopped what had to come next. Icarus had one more harvest, one more and then he could go. Mijhael would ensure it. 

He helped Icarus to his hooves and held the kainu’s face for a short while longer, stroking his ears and letting him lean against him for support. There was only so much Mijhael could do for now. Helplessness was not a feeling that sat well with him, and he was going to do something about it. 

When the drakiri returned to escort Icarus away, Mijhael waited and watched as they walked together down the long hallway toward the main warehouse. He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Then he closed his office door and followed the same hall. Instead of turning left to reach the warehouse, he turned right and descended a flight of steps swiftly, his paws hardly touching the cold, unforgiving concrete before he lighted on the floor far beneath. 

This level of the factory looked much the same as the one above, except there were no lights whatsoever. He could peer through the darkness as if his eyes themselves were his lights. He had taken perhaps three steps forward before he saw a lithe form slink from one room to another father ahead, a lithe form with a flowing mane, slender limbs, and fur as pink as the petals of a spring rose. 

“Have you finally come to your senses?” Esperanza asked, a honeyed purr in her voice as she reappeared in the doorway of the room. “You haven’t come down into my quarters since I nearly caught you on my snare all those years ago. You must have changed your mind…” 

“I didn’t hear you prattling on upstairs with the dracus, so I assumed I would find you here,” Mijhael said, his voice short but not impolite. “I have come to speak with you, nothing more.” 

As she prowled closer, her steps soft and almost dainty against the floor as she moved with dramatized ease. She was trying to show off the sleekness of her body, her impressive mane, even going so far as to flick her short, fluffy tail as what must have seemed like an invitation for further exploration to any other drakiri who wandered into her quarters. Mijhael had seen it all before, and though he had been briefly intrigued, her ambition had quickly extinguished that. 

“Talking is so boring,” she sighed, her shoulders sagging as she realized she wasn’t getting anywhere with him. She frowned and narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “You’re certain I can’t even tempt you?” 

“Quite,” Mijhael said curtly. “I’m here to talk about Icarus.” 

“Of course you are,” Esperanza said with a dramatic roll of her eyes. She turned away from him, her gait snappier now as she strode away and turned into a room. It remained dark as Mijhael followed her in, but he didn’t mind. He couldn’t imagine how unnerving this must have been for any drakiri who lacked the ability to see in the dark. 

“You’ve seen him recently enough, did he not answer your questions?” the dracus asked, turning sharply to face him. The room was entirely empty except for a mass of blankets that must have served as a nest. It was not to Mijhael’s tastes. 

“He requested an audience with me, considering my role as the guardian of his children,” Mijhael replied coolly. “That is entirely acceptable.” 

“I did not start this business to cater to what is *entirely acceptable,*” Esperanza sneered. “I did it for money and power. The more time you spend with lost little kainu who can’t stand being away from their children for a few months, the less time you spend appraising pelts and assessing risks.” 

His frustration with Esperanza edged closer to outright disgust—how could she say such things about Icarus? About anyone, for that matter? How many mothers and fathers had she already stolen away from their families? She had killed drakiri in the past who did not submit and could not be controlled, she’d told him as much. How many had been children, just growing out of their baby fat and downy fur? 

“I agreed to work for you for ten years, I did not agree to rip families apart and watch them suffer,” Mijhael said, watching as Esperanza moved to stand in the center of the mound of blankets and pawed at them, her claws tearing the fabric each time she lifted her hand. 

“You agreed to work for me, that means you do what I say, when I say it and how I instruct you to do it,” she retorted. “If I tell you to isolate that kainu from every other living creature, you will do it. If I tell you to gut him from nose to balls with a butter knife, you’ll do it because I tell you to and you don’t get to complain about it—” 

“No.” 

Esperanza froze and looked up at him. Her blue eyes stared as she met his gaze, and Mijhael did not look away. 

“I will no longer turn the other cheek,” he said. “You have your fun with the sapphire dracus, his pelt is worth only the color it bears, the same with his scales, you can tear into him and get whatever it is out that you need to so you have a clear head. But I will no longer bend to you. Icarus and his children will be released as soon as he is healed after this harvest.” 

Esperanza remained still for a moment longer, then she padded toward him, each step deliberately placed. She didn’t stop until her nose was practically touching his, and Mijhael saw something peculiar in her eyes—burning mint green shot through the blue like a cobalt vein through ocean waters. 

“Or what?” she asked, baring her teeth as she spoke. “What are you going to do if I take his squealing daughter and rip her throat out in front of him? Will you stop me if I tear that puny kainu’s skin off myself and wear it as a hat?” 

The thought alone chilled Mijhael, and he clenched his teeth to still his tongue. He’d had enough. There was no reason for him to stay. His contract still had three years, but a contract was worthless if the one who held it was dead. 

“As I thought,” Esperanza hissed, her honey-sweet breath saturating the air around him so it was the only thing he smelled. “Go. Do as I bid. Or I will find someone else who will.” 

He left that floor and returned to his room, pacing and thinking until he could do neither any longer. But he still found no respite when he laid in his nest for the night. Icarus’s scent lingered there, like the bright citrus of northern pines and the earthy musk of a freshly churned field, ready for planting. Thoughts of Icarus filled his mind, and he clutched the pillow to his chest, bending his neck to press his nose into it. Anything to escape that thick, saccharine sweetness that lingered in his nostrils. 

He must have fallen asleep at some point, though he couldn’t have said when. Perhaps it was between the thoughts of burning the warehouse to the ground to end the suffering he had helped cause and letting himself burn with it, but eventually he became aware of the dream around him. He was no longer in his bed, he found himself in a place he did not recognize. A dark, dank cave where he heard water dripping in the distance. Cold gravel rolled under his feet as he padded forward, looking around in confusion. Had he seen this place before? He must have, for he could see even insects roaming across the ground beneath his feet. This amount of detail, he surely must have at least read about a place such as this. 

Mijhael stepped forward toward a pond that shimmered with the barest amount of light. It had a color, though he could not have said what it was, as it seemed to cascade through the entire visible spectrum as he peered into it from the shore. His eyes narrowed as he saw the light grow brighter farther into the murky water—if he could only look closer, he might be able to make out its source. 

Motion caught his eye on the surface of the water and Mijhael’s head jerked up. His maw opened and he hissed, teeth clicking together as he leaped away from the water’s edge. Across the pond, hovering twenty feet off the ground, was a pair of vibrant, mint-green eyes. Their slitted pupils watched him as a low, rumbling growl echoed in the cave, vibrating along the water until the surface jumped in spikes and ripples. 

“You will submit.” The voice came from the rocks themselves, from the very darkness that surrounded him. 

“And if I don’t?” he challenged, meeting the eyes with his own stubborn gaze. 

The eyes moved, and as they approached the weak, colorful light from the pond, Mijhael realized with a start that they were set in the skull of the largest drakiri he had ever seen in his life. The fur was pitch black except for a band of pale color around its throat and mane, but even that was lost in the darkness that surrounded it. 

“I will take what you hold dear,” the voice rumbled. 

Mijhael’s claws curled into the ground at the threat and his lip curled in disgust. Even in his dreams he could not escape these threats. 

“I hold nothing dear,” he all but spat. 

The eyes blinked slowly, and an impossibly low laugh shook the gravel beneath him. Then the voice said as the light from the cave faded, throwing him into darkness, “Very well.”