Page 38 of Joy Guardian
“Wake me up when you feel sleepy,” he said, closing his eyes.
Crossing my legs under me, I sat next to him, determined to stay awake. The soft flickering lights made it easier to do than being in the darkness. I swept the cave with my gaze, making sure nothing was moving to attack us. But the space seemed empty.
When I looked back at Kurai, he appeared to be deep asleep already. The pink and blue lights cast a pretty glow on his black shimmering skin. A peaceful expression relaxed his handsome features. His long eyelashes rested over his high cheekbones, making him look younger than both his actual fae age and his perceived human age of about thirty.
“…taking care of you feels like the one right thing I’ve ever done in my life,”he’d said.
And I cared for him too. I wished to protect and cherish him. Tenderness filled me, and maybe he sensed it through his tendrils in his sleep because he shifted closer. Wrapping an arm around my middle, he slid me toward him, then placed his head on my lap.
I ran my fingers over his hair in a soothing motion.
“Sleep, Kurai,” I whispered. “I’ll watch over you.”
Kurai didn’t sleep long. After a nap, he was ready to keep moving.
As pretty as this cave was, I was happy to leave it. After a while, the flickering lights made me feel uneasy. They created moving shadows that creeped me out, making it look likesomeone or something was sneaking up on us. I breathed with relief when we left the “party cave” behind us.
The tunnel behind the cave wasn’t entirely dark either. But the soft yellow glow from the rock of its walls was more subtle and steady than the pink-blue flicker in the cave.
This time, Kurai allowed me to walk on my own while he held my hand and carefully guided me over every obstacle in our way, mindful of my “fragile” bones.
I felt well, everything considered. Through his tendrils, the fae magic gave me the energy to stay awake and function when I really should be too weak to move from starvation by now.
As we turned around the bend in the passage, Kurai gripped my hand tighter. With his other hand, he slid one of his daggers out of its sheath.
Alarm pierced through my chest. “What is it?”
A large shape glistened with gold, reflecting the glow of the walls in the semi-darkness of the tunnel. The size of a large dog, it had the shape of a scorpion lying to the ground.
“It’s not alive,” Kurai exhaled with visible relief.
The scorpion must’ve been dead for a long time as only the black shell of its exoskeleton still remained. The shell looked almost translucent, with the legs gathered under it and the mandibles still in place.
“It's huge. Is it even real?” I wondered.
“It’s normal size for a scorpion,” he said. “Babies would be smaller. But this was a fully grown one.”
The scorpion’s tail arched over its body. The end of it, shaped like an arrow, pierced through the creature's back and was left deeply embedded in it.
“I thought scorpions didn’t sting themselves,” I said in a subdued voice.
“These ones do. They live in large colonies. To protect their home from an enemy, they would sacrifice themselves.”
He pointed at another skeleton that I hadn’t noticed before because unlike the scorpion, it was black and didn’t glow. Its long,pale spine looped on the floor around the scorpion. Its flat head was inserted through the shell of the scorpion’s skeleton deep into its chest.
“What happened here?”
“It looks like the sand centipede attacked the scorpion,” Kurai explained. “Normally, a scorpion would present a formidable enemy to a sand centipede. But the scorpion must’ve been in a vulnerable position this time. Maybe it had its young with it. Or maybe it tried to protect its colony from being discovered by the sand centipede and its ilk. Either way, it injected itself with poison on purpose. See?” He pointed at the arrow of the tail buried in the golden shell. “It did it just when the centipede bit into it, so the poison killed them both.”
I stared at the skeletons of the mortal enemies forever united in death.
“It’s a brutal world you live in, Kurai.”
“It is,” he agreed. “Life is ruthless in Alveari Kingdom, both on the surface and underground.”
“I never knew scorpions were this selfless. This one killed itself to protect its family.”
“The scorpion is just an animal driven by instinct. But for people, sacrificing one’s life for the greater good is the most noble act.”
