The last time I had sprinted through the palace, I had been in my early boyhood. The Elder of the time hosted an annual festival dedicated to second-born children and, as Venan was the older twin by mere minutes, that made me the second-born. Those of us honored were permitted to race through the palace on an exquisite scavenger hunt with prizes of rare speckled angui eggs.

As I ran through extravagant room after extravagant room, I felt transported back to the youthful thrill I had once felt, but there were no angui eggs at the end of this hunt. Instead, I was in pursuit of a diseased Novai who sounded as if he had gone out of his mind.

“How did he escape?” Venan snarled. He was just two steps ahead of me, but I heard him as clearly as if he were right beside me.

The guard who had fetched us was running with his spear tipped outward, prepared to strike at a moment’s notice. “He awoke on the stretcher and leaped up,” he furiously explained. “There was no warning to be had.”

“You thought it wise to leave him unrestrained?” I demanded in disbelief. My daggers were poised before me, one lifted to neck-level and the other hovering around my midsection. I, too, was prepared to attack if needed.

We ducked into the next room, a grand dining hall with a heavy table stretching nearly the entire length of the space. A mural was painted on the ceiling above to offer one the illusion of being outside, but the temperature within was quite comfortable rather than sultry, which marred the illusion slightly. I dodged a tall-backed chair that had been left turned from the table’s underside as the guard groaned, “He was asleep. We expected he would remain so.”

“Incompetent,” Venan hissed. For once, I was in agreement with my stiff-humored brother.

Then, just as ear-splitting as the first we had heard, another roar echoed throughout the entire home. I froze in place and tilted my head, hoping to decipher from whence the noise came, but Venan snagged my arm and yanked me forward.

“There is no time to stand idly by!” he scolded.

I tugged my arm from his grasp and glared. “I am not standing idly by. It seems more prudent to determine the Novai’s location by following his cries than to run about aimlessly, does it not?”

“The entire palace comes full-circle,” Venan argued. “We are certain to cross paths with him eventually.”

“Unless he manages to slip out, in which case you have unleashed an ill and dangerous Novai on all of Ka-lik’et.”

Venan paused, and I saw frustration curling his lips. “Fine,” he snapped. “We shall go about it your way, but it will be on your head if he harms anyone.”

The face of the beautiful flaxen-haired nurse flooded into my mind, followed by a terrible image of that lovely face lacerated and bloodied at the hands of the rogue Novai. I squared my shoulders and strode to the nearest load-bearing wall. As I pressed my ear to it, Venan made a noise of disgust in his throat, and the other guard furrowed his brow with incomprehension.

“You are useless,” Venan shot at me. “You are wasting time.”

“Have you forgotten the earliest days of your training already, brother?” I asked testily.

He stared at me, his cobalt skin flaring navy in his cheeks. “Of course I have not forgotten, and I certainly do not recall any part of training to include listening to walls in a crisis.”

“I am listening to the vibrations,” I contradicted. “A task that would be rather easier if you were to silence yourself for the briefest of moments, I might add.”

Venan’s mouth closed into a slim line, and he glared at me resentfully, but he quieted, and I closed my eyes to better hear. At the innermost part of the wall, I could hear gentle reverberations that shuddered throughout the construction. I took a slow step sideways without lifting my ear from the surface, and the vibrations deepened.

“East,” I affirmed, straightening up and turning to my two cohorts. “He is to the east.”

For the briefest of moments, Venan remained still and silent, squinting at me suspiciously. The guard beside him was in awe with his mouth hanging open by a fraction and his slanted eyes wide. I shook my head and repeated the very phrase Venan had spoken degradingly:

“There is no time to stand idly by.”

He scowled but twisted and began to run again, and I clipped closely behind him on his heels. We rounded through the dining hall and skipped the kitchens entirely, instead focusing on the receiving parlor. Just as we entered the room, which was significantly less colorful and quite a bit more traditional with its shades of tobacco and cream, we heard not a third roar but a screech. It speared through me like a blade, slicing my senses into paralysis and forcing my knees to bend against my will. It was the screech of the Novai, the cry with which I had grown familiar since their Albaterran colonization, but it was sharper, higher, distinctly more visceral.

“Wise One!” Venan bellowed, streaking forward like a bolt of lightning.

Over his blurred shoulder, I saw the group of nurses huddled into a corner and, locked in hand-to-hand combat with the Novai, was Kharid. As an Elder, Kharid was considered just, merciful, and exceedingly friendly. Most of the Dhal’atian population had never seen him in battle. I had witnessed it once, many years ago, and he had been an adept and able soldier. Now, however, he was nothing short of a lethal force. His teeth were bared, his eyes slit, and an aura of power emanated from him as tangibly as the robe he wore. The sleeves had fallen back into the crevices of his elbows to reveal flexed forearms, and his fingers had become as white as his hair as he squeezed the pulse from the Novai’s throat.

Somehow, however, the creature was stronger. Its talon-like nails dug deep into Kharid’s flesh, and my Elder’s grip around the beast’s throat was of little efficacy if any. It continued to shriek without interruption, and its bloody lips leered with unperturbed malice.

Venan lunged forward. The tip of his blade met the Novai’s spine, and I saw it disappear through the assailant’s tunic. Suddenly, my heart stopped. I moved so quickly I was unable to see anything on either side of me, my vision becoming tunneled solely on my twin and my Elder.

“No!” I shouted. “You will kill Kharid, too!”

As the last syllable fell from my lips, however, Venan shoved the sword in as deeply as he could. It soared clean through the Novai, bursting forth from his chest, and burrowed into Kharid’s chest. Time stopped. Life stopped. I watched in horror as the beloved Elder of Dhal’at gasped, gurgled, and dropped to his knees.