Read Online The Battle Sylph by L. J. McDonald - Free Book Online Page B

ordered never to change shape. He’d never been told not to sing, though, and Leon didn’t know he could. He sang for the girls alone, when his master and his master’s wife were elsewhere.
    Ril had been insane when Lizzy was born, lost in the horrible memory of his master killing his queen while she stared up at him in terror, her round face covered in freckles. He’d still be insane now, if it hadn’t been for the child. He’d been overwhelmed by Betha’s birth pains and screams, hysterical in the hall he’d been left in, and he’d crashed into the birthing room before Leon even realized how upset he really was, ready to kill whoever was harming the only female in the house. He’d been just in time to see Lizzy’s birth.He saw the babe come through that fleshy gate into this world, like his own arrival through the gate, and he’d been lost to her. She’d saved him, and he’d not wanted to leave her or her sisters’ side since, and his master had been kind enough to let him see all their births and to let him be with them. Ril had to keep telling himself he still hated the man, remembering those freckles on a round face every time he was tempted to forgive Leon because of his daughters, but he was grateful for this.
    He sang to the girls, singing songs he remembered from his time before the gate, before he was trapped by the hope of a queen, and he sang of her, she who’d left him before he had time to do more than fall in love with her. Cara and Nali settled down sleepily, dozing off from his lullaby, and the baby slept as well, little Ralad in her crib. Only Lizzy stayed awake, her eyes soft.
    Once the other girls were asleep, she took the bonnet off Ril. “They’re poopheads,” she whispered, though he didn’t agree. Lifting him up, she carried him to the corner of the nursery she considered hers. Opening a trunk there, she dug out the box of lettered blocks that was their greatest secret. Cautiously looking around, she dumped the lot out on the carpet, careful not to wake her sisters.
    Ril stepped forward, looking the blocks over until he found the one he wanted and pulled it to him with his beak, rolling it so the correct side was pointing up. Grabbing the next, he laid it alongside, then followed with six others.
    Lizzy peered at them. “ ‘I…love…you,’ ” she read. “Aw, I love you, too!” She kissed his forehead and the battler ruffled his feathers. He reached for more blocks. This was their secret: that he could talk to her through the blocks, so long as her father never found out. Be my queen, he spelled out.
    “You always ask me that,” she laughed, grabbing his beak and waving it from side to side. “Of course I am!”
    Ril sighed, opening and closing his beak sharply to make a clapping sound. He knew he repeated the request too often, but he always wanted to hear the answer. Her father had killed his first queen, but Lizzy had been his from her birth. He’d asked her to be his queen since she first taught him the blocks, and she always said yes. One day, she would be his queen for real, and he would love her forever. All that had to happen first was for her father to die. Then they’d both be free.
    Airi soared high on the wind and back to her master, following her permanent awareness of where he was. It had been the longest she’d been away from Devon’s side since she was given to him, but she found him anyway, sitting in his quarters in the barracks used by single men with sylphs and sharpening his knife. She flowed in through the open window, and he lifted his head with a relieved smile.
    “Airi! You’re back!”
    Hello, she said into his mind, blowing around him and then forming into a face made of the loose dust balls he’d left on the floor. He never was much of a cleaner.
    “It’s good to see you,” he told her. “I was getting worried. What happened?”
    The battler took her to a valley of hot springs, and then to a village south of us. The one you were born