These are the words spoken by

The One They Misplaced

Before the Emperor of Napix

And all ears he deemed worthy

Prejudice and discrimination

Defined the Napix Empire

So deeply rooted

To pull them out would cause collapse

Or so it was thought

By those blinded

Not to their existence

But to their injustice

And by those who could see

But who lacked audacity and power

Change is inevitable

A Protector serves his district well

An Aylata both like the people and not

He catches cowardly thieves

Keeps things in their place

Heart nourished by expectation of grandeur

The Emperor is dead

His sons meet the same fate

One was warned of the Ravida’s intentions

But he would not heed the words of a stranger

And so he fell into a Mind Aylata’s gaze

Eyes never to reopen

The Protector is summoned to Aylata Tower

Where a new emperor

Introduces him to change

Its vastness camouflaged

Because the Protector does not understand

Does not yet believe in it

He embodies defiance

But he goes

Lost, curious, nervous

To a region called the Alliance

Where Aylata have no place

In the hearts of the people

Yet

There is one who is regret

Beauty and Talent compose her

But even in such potent combination

They could not save the one she loved

She is not invincible

And she no longer believes she is

She finds the Protector

Welcomes him though she shouldn’t

She serves a similar role

A protector of the cities here

Called an Adjuvant though she is unique among them

Adjuvants share an ancient heritage with Aylata

Aylata are Magni and Napix

Adjuvants are Magni and one of a variety of worlds

This one is Magni and two

A contradiction of herself

A work of art that should not be

She is rightly wary

The Protector’s mission

Is to rescue a lost crew

And abduct one such as her

But she is like an elitbeast

Guarding the pack that guards her

She is strong

And the Protector is learning to think

He wants her smile

Not her glare

Her friendship

Not her surrender

He will not capture her

His thoughts distract him

And he crashes his borrowed transport

She brings him to his rescued ship and crew

Farewells exchange amid reminders

Of how much impact one person can have

One person can always make a difference

That is the motto of his home

He believes it now

More than ever

He will be that one person

Halting quarrels before they start

She is trapped on board

He will set her free

He is attacked by his own

She is chased down

A final message sent

Desperation carrying it to those she left behind

The contradiction is given to the emperor

She awakens in the Tower

To medical scents and sounds

She is clever and escapes one room

But not the Tower

The computer that guards all

She is lost in a never ending maze

The Protector comes for her

Promises to see her home

But doubts and betrayal weigh his hands

Tangible weapons for the right Talents

Items the emperor uses as poison

The Protector runs

Finds her, the contradiction

Flees further

To the home of a friend

Where lies meant to protect

Sow more betrayal

They abscond again

Parting ways

She to recover her transport

Refusing to further involve him

To turn him against his own

To shatter his future here

An ambush awaits

She is injured and limping

Overwhelmed and outnumbered

With no one watching her back

The Protector returns

To fight alongside her

There are no winners

The Protector alone stands

Choices shining down on him

Too bright, too searing

He cannot turn away

He cannot remain idle

He carries her

Listless in his arms

Dying and spilling secrets

He begs her to hang on

Just a little further

He brings her home

Where he is not welcome

She awakens

He is gone

She will find him

Offer him a home

Convince him to stay

Because one person can always make a difference

___

Alliance

Papers rustle as he sets them down

On a dusty desk

And sighs like it is his last breath

I do not look

Lost in my own thoughts

Though I return the sigh

Any Love Lost

Is A Nightmare

Constantly Enduring

What is confidence

Except a belief that drives one forward

Amidst impossible odds?

Confidence in one’s allies is imperative

And yet sometimes

They are not enough

Love is not invincible

As I stare out the window of this reclaimed ruin

Everything I see once belonged

To a place called the Alliance

And I cannot help but think

Of how it was

Of those who wanted to protect or claim it

Twi, who is danger’s obsession

Ject, who is determined to set things right

Revel, who pulls the strings

Xlack, who must choose a side

‘Wait’ I tell the one who has found me

’And I will continue their story

But pay careful attention

History altering changes are not made once

But day by day

So as not to be undone’

He quotes the first Emperor of Napix

’A choice is a powerful weapon

You claim a new duty

One you have chosen

But the one you inherited remains

In your blood

Did you think you could escape it?’

I smile

And say

’Do you not believe in me?

For I believe in you’

—The One They Misplaced

Collector of Memories

Teller of Tales

Aalee Sirvette clung to the last of her courage, chin held level as she pretended to stare out a wall of windows in an unfinished room high in the new Aylata Tower. In ten years of life, she had never been more offended or terrified. It was an odd mix, and she didn’t like it.

At least it wasn’t the only stench assaulting her Mental senses.

“You worry,” she told her kidnapper. When he whirled toward her, she fought not to turn in kind, but she couldn’t hold back a small hop, hands grasping one another in front of her chest. “No offense. I was only stating facts.”

“Keep your under-researched facts to yourself.” He grunted and rolled his attention back to scrolling through his datapad.

He was scared, though. Aalee’s Mental senses were as keen as a mykuro’s eyes, and she was rarely wrong once she had latched onto a particular emotion, even if she didn’t know what had caused it.

Perhaps the meanie had a secret. The Second Ravi had ordered her kidnapping, and he was known to be an excellent discoverer of things one wished to keep buried.

Now the same shade of fear flashed through Aalee, and she ran through her own secrets. She had a crush on Xlack Ekymé, but everyone already knew that.

About two years ago when she had, against her mother’s wishes, practiced applying mascara, she had found her mother’s stash of sweets and still regularly snitched some. Surely, a Ravi illegally turned emperor had more important things to worry about.

Once on vacation, her friend had convinced her to sneak from their rooms at midnight and meet in a glorious game of war in the training room. They had great fun with the mock weapons, or what they thought were mock weapons. She had believed the kanaber’s blade holographic, but it had sliced a wide gash in her friend’s arm. They blamed it on the pet.

For the protection of the High Defender’s daughter, the pet had spent the rest of her week-long visit locked in a crate. Despite the inevitable scar, her friend had forgiven her. The pet had not.

“What’s that look for?” her kidnapper asked, and she let her face fall into her hands, fingers smoothing her eyebrows before curling in front of her mouth. Fear made it easy to tear up, and she usually got her way when tears were involved.

“Let me go, please. I won’t be any use to you.”

“Useful can be defined in many ways.”

Whoever said Yakru Aylata were the most handsome clearly didn’t have this Lorm Spycykle in mind. His broad features and sunken eyes added to the cruel set of his mouth. So did his wild hair, dull as dry charcoal and jagged as if he had tried to cut it with his own Ier.

Would someone’s Ier cut their own hair? It wouldn’t cut their skin, but she wasn’t sure about their hair.

The smallest of smiles cracked his face, and a dangerous glint danced in his leaden gaze. He stepped toward her.

She scrambled back, but there wasn’t much room on this stage-like platform in the corner, and a still-draped desk and chairs took up most of the space. What kind of Defender did he think he was, threatening a Lady? Why did he have so many legion symbols scribbled all over his jacket and no cape defining his exact rank? Her father would not have approved.

Her shoulders hit something warm, and he was behind her when she was certain he had been across the platform before she blinked. She reversed, eyes wide and determined not to close again. “You’re insane!”

“I’m offended, Lady Aalee. My inhibitions might seem different, but I’m far from insane.” His Ier unfolded in his hand, dull tendrils appearing more solid than luminous against the rays that streamed through the window.

She drew a deep breath, but the scream she intended would not come. Fingers wrapped her throat, stiff as stone and fever warm, but no one stood near her. She allowed her eyes to close, and the Ier’s static hum filled her ears. It sounded so close. Its heat picked at her arms.

She backpedaled, and the invisible hand released her into a topple. The carpet had yet to be set, rolled and piled in a corner, and the metal floor rang hard and hollow.

Terror was venom edging her voice. “My father will come for me!”

“I am more interested in your oldest brother, Lady Aalee.”

She opened her eyes, and from this vantage point on the floor of the raised corner, her face was level with that of Revel K’alaqk, Second Ravi and disputed ruler of this empire. He knelt on the stairs. Spycykle had completely vanished, Ier and all.

“Ravi Sirvette hides from the world, but I intend to find him.”

“He won’t come for me.” The scene blurred behind a veil of tears. “He hates me.”

“Why do you believe so?” Ravi K’alaqk seemed so kind, brows drooping beneath the weight of genuine concern. Why? He had ordered her abduction. He controlled Spycykle’s meanness. This illegal emperor was not as she had pictured, and he was very handsome.

“He told me he hated me. He whispered it, suggested it.” She gathered herself and sat, legs tucked beneath her like a proper lady. “I doubt he’s really my brother. He looks nothing like us, and I was only repeating Father. If he’s a Ravi so outranking the rest of us, then he should at least have chrysolite eyes, like you and the other Ravi.”

“Do you question his heritage or his Ravi status?”

She nervously collected her hair over one shoulder and combed her fingers through its coarse strands. A stubborn curve made every layer painfully apparent, just like a filthy rebalo’s, another brother claimed. Ject was the only one of seven children to inherit their mother’s dark hair. They had no idea where the dark eyes came from. Her five other brothers were Defenders or Messengers. There were no Ravi in the Sirvette family line. So, either he wasn’t one or he wasn’t really her father’s son.

Everyone thought that. Just, no one but her had been silly enough to say it where Ject could hear.

She wiped her eyes. “He told me if I was going to have such warped opinions, I wouldn’t be allowed to keep his company. That was a year ago, the last I spoke to him. Now he’s dead. Father still searches, and we haven’t had an Honoring, but we know he is.”

Ravi K’alaqk rose. “Lady Aalee, you have yet to ask an important question.”

“I’m not supposed to ask questions.”

He reached the top of the stairs, head shaking, and his piked bangs waved with the movement. “One does not learn what one does not ask. So, what question is foremost in your mind?”

She sniffed. “Why am I here?”

“The answer to that depends on you.” He extended a hand, but she didn’t accept it. No matter how the metal floor’s seam dug into her knees, she wouldn’t give in to half answers like that.

He turned. “Spycykle, you seem ready to burst. You have something to report?”

Aalee swiveled in the same direction and squinted at the furthest, darkest corner.

Barely visible, the deranged Defender lounged atop crates of construction supplies. “Threnian Station is one of the best guarded places in the empire. It wasn’t easy to get in.”

Ravi K’laqk sighed. “Do not make this a long-winded point.”

“I only slipped in because of a distraction. A pair of foreign Oha had a run-in with those useless auto-patrollers.”

“They outmatched the auto-patrollers, I presume?”

Despite a veneer of patience, amusement glistened in the air. This shouldn’t have been amusing news. The auto-patrollers were supposed to protect Napix and Zalerit. The media praised them almost as often as it reminded everyone that without Aylata, monsters from Tradafin would invade and eat everyone.

Spycykle snorted. “They landed on Zalerit.”

“And?”

“And disappeared.”

Ravi K’alaqk tapped the stiff, square Ier sheath on his right hip. How odd a thing to see attached to an emperor’s belt. She supposed it reminded everyone that he was also Aylata.

“Imura District.”

“How do you know that’s where he went?” Spycykle demanded, but Ravi K’alaqk already pivoted back to Aalee.

“Would you like to prove yourself worthy of your Sereh title?”

She gulped. “Not by dying.”

“Of course not.” His amusement glistened brighter, like rain kissed by the daystar’s strongest rays. “I have a task for you.”

“But I’m not on your side.”

“Think not about on whose side you stand or whose words you heed. Instead, think of how you want this empire to be and what you can do to make it happen.”

She scrunched up her face. “I’m just a little girl. I can’t make that big of a difference.”

“Change starts small. Big change is smaller changes fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle.”

That sounded very wise, and she gave it a slow nod. “Can I ask another question?”

“Of course.”

She lowered her hands to her lap, fingers curling beneath the hem of her shorts. “The esteemed, highly honorable, most recent Ravida, he was your father.” She added extra favorable adjectives for good measure. Her mother often warned it was a grievous offense to not show proper respect for the dead. “Did you cry for his loss?”

“Yes.” Truth. Even if her Mind Talents hadn’t said so, a soft mist glazed his eyes.

She huffed. “Aylata are not supposed to cry, and if they fail in that, they are not supposed to admit it.” Or so her mother always said.

The seriousness in his gaze had the scent of an oven full of pies, all about to burn. “Yet, you would have thought ill of me had I said no.”

That was true, too, though she wouldn’t have guessed so before he said it. If she truly believed in her mother’s rules, it should have been the other way around. Yet, the image of a stoic son did not make her think him honorable. It marked him as either distant or deceitful, flawed either way. Whereas the thought of tears drew up her sympathy.

“I do not speak lies, Lady Aalee. I shed tears for the loss of my father, though I barely knew him. Perhaps because of that fact.”

This time when he offered her his hand, she took it and let him pull her to her feet. “What can I do?”

He turned back to Spycykle. “Go to Imura District on Zalerit. Bring me Ekymé. Twi, too. Kill the others. Take Lady Aalee with you.”

“What was that last part?” He slid off the crates, and Aalee nearly echoed him, but Ravi K’alaqk faced her again.

“Lady Aalee, separate Xlack Ekymé from his group.”

She returned her hands to her hair, eyes on her toes. “You won’t hurt him, will you?”

He held up a finger. “Like your answer depended on you, that answer depends on him, but if you fail, Lady Aalee, he will be hurt. You can prevent that.”

She could save him? These others Xlack was with, were they somehow holding him hostage? Impossible. He was invincible. But so was Ject, and he had gotten blown up, probably.

If she saved Xlack Ekymé, he would have to recognize her, praise her. She rocked back and forth. Ravi K’alaqk might not be so bad, but Spycykle was a madman with the emperor’s blessing and a ship he’d stolen from the Tsira fleet.

Why did choices have to be so hard? Rare was the occasion where she decided for herself. Could she change that by choosing to obey one more time?

***

“Obedience is the lifeblood of society. On the battlefield, it’s the difference between sleeping in a bed or a grave.” Defender Nyoki paced in front of the row of trainees, each one standing straight, arms rigid at their sides. “So, if I order you to jump, Nine-One-Three-Two-Five-Eight-Three-Seven, what do you do?”

“Jump, Sir,” Trickshot replied.

Nyoki stopped in front of him, voice almost too low for Neezon in the back row to hear. “And when I tell you to stand absolutely still?”

“Stand still, Sir.”

“Explain, then, why you broke formation the moment my attention diverted.”

Neezon let out a slow breath. After demonstrating how to stand so still not even a Sensory Aylata could hear one’s heart, the Defender had left them in this blank room with the command to hold that motionless state until he returned. After eleven hours, most figured they had been forgotten. Some had sagged against the walls or sat, grumbling about their empty bellies. Trickshot had started a game of ‘who can punch Neezon the hardest.’

Trickshot lifted his chin. “You said we would learn to defeat a Watcher, but so far, you’ve only—”

He flew across the room and crumpled against the back wall. Defender Nyoki’s kick had been too swift for Neezon’s eyes, but his foot returned to the ground at a more reasonable pace.

“I said you would be transferred to my legion. What does that mean, Nine-One-Three-Two-Five-Eight-Three-Eight?”

To the right of Trickshot’s empty place, Scan saluted. “We obey you as if our lives depend on it whether we understand why or not, Sir.”

“No ‘as if.’ Your lives do depend on it.” Nyoki tucked his hands behind his back, dark gaze sliding over the group until it landed on Neezon. “You are sacrifices. Expendable. Designated acceptable loss. That is why they call you Unwanted.”

Neezon lowered his head in the barest of nods. The others were Unwanted born without permits, but he wasn’t. Even if the famine that had made those birth-restrictions necessary so many centuries ago had still been a concern, his family had the means to buy whatever they wanted, and they had wanted him.

Holding his side, Trickshot slowly got to his feet, voice strained. “Emperor Gera Kys knew every one of our names, even us trainees. He called us his right arm.”

“An arm must still obey the head. All of you sit except Trickshot and the nobleman’s boy.”

As the others complied, Trickshot limped back to his place, a grin attempting to hide his wince. “You do know our names, then.”

“Yet you deliberately omit mine,” Neezon added through a clenched jaw.

Nyoki tilted his head. “I assumed you did not want to be called after a mykuro’s rear.”

Heat flooded Neezon’s face, but before he could object, a door in the back wall slid open to admit a Messenger.

“Sir, I’m here to escort One-O-One-Two-Nine-Seven-Seven-Five-O-Three to heed the emperor’s summons.”

Nyoki’s charcoal eyes found Neezon again, narrowed on the line between laughter and question. “Does he need a babysitter?”

“The Tower’s still unfinished. We’d rather he didn’t wander into any construction zones.”

“Fair. Follow your guide, Mykuro Cheeks. I doubt these thick skulls will have progressed too much before you get back.”

That last sentence cut off any snickers, and a determined silence fell over the troop as Neezon walked out. His sore heels and stiff knees protested the Messenger’s hurried pace, but he locked his jaw and kept up. What irony to be in Aylata Tower but not as a noble guard. He and his friends had talked about it as a goal, picturing themselves in the fur-lined jackets of official service. He had thought it would be cool to be around so many Aylata all the time.

A tiny part of him still thought that.

Only once they had left the first corridor did the Messenger slow, spiked hair billowing as he looked back and forth a few times before choosing the path to the right.

“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Neezon asked, fingers running along the inside of his itchy collar. If he failed to show before the emperor, they would track him down. He could rightly pin it on the Messenger, so why did the thought of following him to the wrong destination fill him with unease?

The Messenger flung his pale scarf over one shoulder. “Did the former emperor really know all their names?”

Neezon shrugged. “Seems impossible, but they say he had an infallible memory.”

“You didn’t meet him?” He stopped just long enough to throw Neezon a dubious glance. “Weren’t you a nobleman?”

The walkway spiraled up the edges of a wide rotunda. With the next door several dozen paces ahead, Neezon stepped alongside the Messenger, nose in the air. “I met the third prince and saw his older brothers.”

“What were they like?”

Left-handed and backward, and his gut had told him not to trust them any more than he trusted stinky cheese not to give him indigestion, but those weren’t things to say about the dead.

“Chipper.”

The Messenger stopped again, lips pursed as he nodded. His features had a feral, almost feline sharpness, skin fair, hair dark, and slim build slightly taller than Neezon. “Do you find it ironic that Ravida Sen Aznir’s ploy in creating the concept of Unwanted backfired on him?”

Neezon jumped through mental hoops, trying to recall how far back Ravida Aznir had been. Before Ravida Ski, who had been before Ravida K’alaqk.

“He didn’t create the Unwanted. Emperor Gera Kys did.”

The Messenger chuckled and shook his head in a way that seemed too familiar. “The Great Famine was his conspiracy, and he pressured Gera Kys’ predecessor into setting the strict regulations we know today. Those born without a permit back then were killed, though, even Aylata.”

Neezon had heard something like that, though when he had gone over this in school, he hadn’t thought any of it would ever matter to him. The details were fuzzy. “The Aylata of Tsira revolted when a newborn Menagerie was killed?”

“There can’t ever be two of them that have all the Aylata Talents, right? They fight until there’s only one. Ravida Aznir was a Menagerie, too.” Tsking, the Messenger darted through a door.

Neezon followed him into an even larger room with an unfinished floor. Scaffolding littered the space, and welding sparks flashed from every direction. “You’re saying he did all that just to kill that baby?”

The Messenger shrugged. “He quelled the revolt easily enough, labeling the Tradafin Empire as the bad guys. And while the Aylata were distracted, many Napix children were born in secret and raised with the identities of deceased relatives. There were enough of them to form an army, which is exactly what a very discerning Sereh suggested to a newly-crowned Emperor Gera Kys when he wanted to get rid of Ravida Aznir.”

“So, essentially, his conspiracy created the army that overthrew him.” Neezon liked the idea. It had a nice roundness to it. It was probably treason to be talking about this, though.

“Now one of the Ravida’s heirs has become emperor. Any comment on that?”

That would definitely veer into treasonous territory, but something in how the Messenger looked at him askance made Neezon feel his thoughts were on full display anyway.

He knew what was so familiar about this Messenger.

“Are you related to Crao?” he whispered.

The Messenger grinned. “Took you forever to recognize me.”

Neezon furrowed his brow. Though the two Aylata greatly resembled one another, they weren’t identical. He blinked, trying to reconcile the face here with the one from his memory, and the features in question snapped into focus. This was Crao, exactly the same as before: large eyes glistening with chrysolite, nose slanted to the right, perfect smile, narrow chin.

“I thought you died!”

Crao shushed him. “Such little confidence. Don’t underestimate Aylata if you want to live.” He glanced back and forth, then clapped a hand on Neezon’s shoulder. “Learn anything useful from Nyoki yet?”

“Just how to stand absolutely still.”

Crao’s face crumpled. “He thinks that’ll defeat a Watcher?”

Neezon nodded half-heartedly. Watchers were commanders, strategists, spies, and assassins. It would be awesome to defeat one, but having one for an enemy wouldn’t be a good idea.

“Have you ever fought a Watcher, Crao?”

His, “Yes,” came reluctantly, hand retreating to his side, but Neezon pressed on.

“How did you survive falling over the rail? What’s your Talent?”

All façade of friendliness vanished. “Be quiet, Neezon.”

Neezon crossed his arms and spoke louder. “Does it embarrass you?”

“I said quiet.”

His throat seized up. He could barely breathe, and even his stomp back to catch his balance refused to hit the floor with any force. He couldn’t make a sound.

He knew this feeling. Six months ago, Emperor K’alaqk had used a suggestion on him, and his limbs had become those of a puppet. Deeper than that, any choice other than obedience had flown to the darkest corners of his mind, compliance the only thing left to him.

“Mind Talents,” he mouthed.

An Ier’s endpoints flashed past his nose, ripping through air where Crao had been.

Hands on Neezon’s shoulders, the Messenger soared over him. He caught a glimpse of the Skaelao crest on the attacker’s collar before Crao shoved him aside. Neezon hit a column, hugged it to stay upright, and looked back as Crao fired a small shooter.

Atok Quanko dodged the shot, and his Ier’s chrome tendrils vaporized Crao’s weapon. The Messenger dove over a second swipe and pounced. Quanko spun around all his kicks, but Crao caught his arm, slid over his shoulder, and landed behind him.

Why would Watcher Quanko attack an innocent Messenger, and where was Crao’s Ier? Did this have anything to do with why Defender Nyoki was training them? Neezon wasn’t ready yet.

He wasn’t supposed to carry any weapons, but one transferred to the Unwanted could never be too careful. He pulled a mini-kanaber from his boot.

Watcher Quanko’s eyes narrowed in a grimace. “Still.”

Right, it was safer to be still. The Watcher would handle it. If he moved, it would hurt.

Somewhere deep inside, another part of him screamed, but he couldn’t understand it.

Quanko’s Ier twisted behind him in pursuit of Crao. What a beautiful dance. A bright flash. A net ran between Crao’s gloved hands, burning even brighter than the Ier. What was that? How could such a pretty thing exist without him having heard of it?

The web of energy draped across Quanko’s shoulders like a cape and seeped into him. His grimace twisted, then faded, eyes squeezing closed as he dropped.

The screaming in Neezon’s head grew louder. He couldn’t stand here. He had to move, to help his friend. Turn on the kanaber and—

Chrysolite tendrils ripped through Crao’s chest and slashed down, exiting his side. He fell alongside the downed Watcher. The emperor stood behind him, Ier pulsing.

Neezon had grown up around these laser staves and seen their testing often, even on life-like dummies. He thought they were awesome. He had never seen one used on a living thing. A person. A friend.

He dropped his tiny weapon and scrambled back, eyes wide no matter how much he told them to close, heart pounding.

Crao didn’t stay down. He rolled to his feet, steaming and slow, but not dead.

Rising to his knees, Watcher Quanko swung at him, but he dodged, falling, rolling over the edge of the unfinished floor.

Neezon raced to the artificial precipice but found no trace of his friend. His eyes still wouldn’t close. Behind him, the pair of Watchers spoke, words bouncing over his head, barely making sense. They were Ravi or almost Ravi, so far above a lowly Messenger. Why should Crao have even mattered to them?

Crao had almost won. He had taken down one Watcher.

He caught one sentence, and it burned all the way from his ears to his heart. “Please tell me it disturbs you how far that creature infiltrated this Tower before anyone noticed it.”

Neezon whirled, the scene a blur behind his tears. “He was my friend! My only friend.”

“That was a gremlin of the Tradafin,” Quanko corrected, “not a friend.”

Blinking, Neezon stood and looked from the Watchers to the hole in the floor and back. “No, he used a suggestion. He’s a Mind Aylata, and you attacked and killed him for no reason.”

“He will likely be fine,” the emperor said.

“Your Ier went right through him!”

The emperor’s brows lowered, silver eyes as sharp as the endpoints of his Ier. “Neezon, why are you here?”

“You summoned me.”

“I did not.” He looked at Watcher Quanko. They probably communicated in whispers.

Neezon stomped toward them. He wasn’t sure what he intended, but his hands clenched in sweaty fists, and his breaths came in ragged gasps. They were both Mind Aylata. They knew exactly how he felt even if he didn’t have the words to express it. He didn’t want to express it in words. He wanted to scream and tell them with his fists. More than that, he wanted an Ier and the training Nyoki had promised.

“Return to your troop,” the emperor commanded, and Neezon’s feet changed course before he realized why. Yes, he needed to get away from these scheming, evil Watchers. His back was already turned before the second half of the order reached him. “If this individual finds you again, report it immediately.”

Neezon hoped Crao would find him again, and when next they met, he had no intention of telling anyone.

Continued in Chapter 24: Between Truth and Falsehood

Thank you for reading!

One to defeat ten thousand

Two to best a million

Three to destroy a kingdom

Four to conquer the world

Five would see the end

Painted in vermillion

Bid farewell to your freedom

The wise always surrender

Before an Aylata’s fingers unfurl*

This last verse of the ancient folksong rang in Rogii’s mind. What ridiculous ratios, hyperbole emphasizing how unwise it would be to challenge Aylata. Was it exaggeration though? Considering what he had witnessed, four Aylata alone might be enough to conquer a world.

Fear and awe grappled over the foremost seat within him while envy sat second. Why slink in shadows when one had the potential for so much more? He wanted his Aberrant to be like these legendary beings. He would grasp any steppingstones they left, learn from them, surpass them. Songs would be written in warning of Aberrant, claiming things like ‘two to conquer a galaxy.’ If he played the game right. If they survived.

As of late, Aberrant corpses turned up in every shadow. One of these had held a message for Rogii. Aylata would meet him within the Aberrant capitol, Moshee Spire, to hear his official proposal of alliance.

However, only those invited by the high boss could enter the Spire without penalty of death. Even heirs were not exempt.

This rule’s only flexible point concerned the shymgo matches held far below the main structure. Anyone who wished to compose the audience was welcome, as long as they paid.

Rogii had entered Per’nyé in the current game, and irony laughed at that, knowing how much he despised the sport. Here he was of his own volition, standing in the second grandest sponsor box while his amaraq competed within the spherical field. The game’s terrain was currently ice, her least favorite. Swirling, fat snowflakes contrasted her fiery coloring.

Reinforced glass walls subdued the sound of lesser viewers. The most luxurious six chairs in this quadrant lounged behind him, a buffet arrayed behind them. But he didn’t eat, didn’t sit, didn’t watch, staring into the middle-distance as the folksong played on repeat in his mind, now in the second verse.

One challenges ten thousand

“Rogii,” Sarana warned, resplendent in a dress of tiny, platinum chains, sleeves scarlet as always, “your father watches.”

Rogii’s gaze slid to the sponsor box in the most-desired southern quadrant. “So he does.”

Here in the western quadrant, Rogii was as much a spectacle as the contenders, bedecked in his formal best. His freshly bleached hair showed no hint of its natural ebony, instead white tinged with cerulean. The matching silk of his high-collared suit dipped into a triangular hem, sleeves embroidered with indigo brambles to echo his battoo. The ever-present half-glove on his left hand displayed the same dark blue.

“Your father knows you hate shymgo. He suspects you’re up to something.”

“I’m an heir. I’m supposed to be up to something. People tend to forget that because I don’t have siblings to compete with.”

Dress rattling, she leaned forward. “You’re sure he would balk at your plans?”

“It’s my project.”

A twofold answer. His Aberrant would surpass the Aylata, and he didn’t want his stagnant father stealing credit. Also, Thanar Moshee often crushed his son’s ideas simply because.

After a pause, gaze gliding to her, he continued, “Plus, any involvement with the governments of the Alliance is treason.”

Again, twofold: part grudge, as the Alliance authorities had so mistreated Magni hybrids, and part precaution. Traitorous Aberrant had conspired with the Knalcal queen to form the backward Adjuvants.

“I’ve had Per’nyé playing with those politicians like shymgo pawns. He would kill her if he knew.”

The crowd roared, and Rogii frowned, attention jumping to his partner. She kept Narkom close while Mikana ventured across the sphere, scrounging up tracers. Four other pawns surrounded Per’nyé, their movements too coordinated to have multiple Controllers. At least two had been stolen.

Narkom’s spinning kick plowed through the first two that approached. One crumbled under his massive weight. The other flew as if shot from a cannon, caught the edge of a frozen platform, and swung onto its slick surface. Despite the indigo stain spreading across his loose shirt, he hastened to rejoin the fray.

He wasn’t the only one. Six more scrambled from every direction. Rogii glanced at the status display projected on the left wall. Four of the seven Controllers had already been killed.

Narkom engaged the closest two pawns, and the crowd erupted as his shirt was torn away, a dripping, red slash across his back. Rogii’s eyes widened. All Lettaplexal/Magni were limber and resilient, quick to heal. Some were also small, swift, and extremely perceptive. Others were colossal, strong, and incredibly thick-skinned. His teammate Len was the former, Narkom the latter. For him to bleed so profusely, it must have been a very deep gash.

“She’s never lost a match,” he assured himself, hands on the back of Sarana’s chair. They trembled, but he told himself it wasn’t fear. Since the battle with the Aylata Messenger, he saw little more than blurred shapes. His balance was skewed, and when Sarana formed microscopic messages, he couldn’t read them.

“She hasn’t,” Sarana concurred, “yet she has also never been matched against Kontiki. He’s known for leaving only one opponent alive each match, usually a pawn, and he’s the one the high boss sponsored today.”

An unspoken warning: Thanar Moshee hated it when his champions lost.

“He also adores Per’nyé, and Kontiki would be stupid not to consider that. She doesn’t have to win. She just has to put on a good show.”

However, as he had said, she had never lost a match, and it would take more humility than she possessed to ruin that record.

“Keep watching,” he told his Truth, “as if your silent support can grant Narkom the strength to keep moving.”

Sarana knew better than to ask the same of him. His attention had already fallen to the fringes of the crowd. Standing directly behind their sponsor box in an arch that led to the catacombs beneath the Spire, a man devoid of color watched him. Their gazes locked. The stranger nodded, then slipped into the tunnel’s shadow.

The Aylata’s message scrawled through Rogii’s mind again.

If you mean to propose an alliance or surrender, meet us in Moshee Spire, and we will hear you.

They invited him to his own turf and walked about with the nonchalance of a carnivore surrounded by flowers.

Rogii chased him, soon winded in the long corridors, cursing whatever never-ending drug that Messenger’s minions had used on him. His head pounded, stomach roiling, breaths burning, but still he ran. Up spiraling ramps, darting through doorways and vaulting over rails. The stranger remained just ahead, plotting this crazy course, and though Rogii could barely perceive the signature of anything in this state, he kept close enough to confirm this foreigner was Aylata.

He dashed through yet another twisted arch and entered a decagonal hall of glass and steel. There was a lot more of the former than the latter, and glass was the bane of ’netic Talents. It had the slow signature of an inanimate solid, but like it did with light, glass reflected and distorted everything. Here, Rogii not only saw his reflection in the walls, he felt it hundredfold.

He had lost the Aylata. Each of the room’s ten walls boasted an identical twisted arch, decorative tables and perfume-filled vases between them. Rogii stopped in the center of the hall, panting, a giant, rusty swirl embedded in the glass beneath his shoes.

“Oitat.” A proper Knalcal greeting.

He whirled. The Aylata leaned against the arch Rogii had come through. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Sorpme,” Rogii returned. A proper Napix greeting. “I am…” He gulped another breath. “I am Rogii Moshee.”

“Messenger Nond,” the Aylata replied, shoulder shoving off the wall. Skin the color of a cloudy day covered his thick build, and a jagged edge cut his dark hair. An off-white scarf trailed over the black Adapt material of his simple jacket.

Rogii cleared his throat and stood straighter. “I understand your custom. Now that we’ve exchanged names, we must truthfully answer each other’s first seven questions.”

A dormant kanaber handle slid from the Messenger’s sleeve, and he pointed it at Rogii with a shrug. “That is a Tsira tradition. I’m Yakru, but if you insist, why not? Seven’s a lot, though. Let’s cut it to three, and I’ll start.” Nond’s lip curled as his gaze rolled over the hall. His irises were eerily lighter than his sclera. “Why the overabundance of glass?”

“Old tradition,” Rogii said with a Knalcal bow. “The first Knalcal/Magni believed its reflective surface to be a window into another dimension and one’s reflections to be one’s guardians. My turn?”

The Messenger nodded.

“Are you alone? Forgive my presumptuousness, but Messenger is the lowest rank of Aylata. I should be negotiating with your Ravida, a Refraction Leader, or at least a High Defender.”

A smirk crawled onto Nond’s angular visage. “You couldn’t handle more, and you might not be the one we should negotiate with either.”

Rogii’s heart skipped, but he made every effort not to show it. “If you think that because I’m an heir instead of high boss, I assure you, a sizable portion of the Aberrant compose my Loyalists. Do you have any real power, Messenger? Can you accept an alliance and enforce it?”

Nond’s ghostly eyes flashed. “I’m a liaison. Defender Nyoki will hear you, and if he doesn’t like your proposal, I’ll put you out of your misery.” He snapped on the kanaber.

Rogii extended a hand toward him, ’netics tugging on the weapon, but his reflexes were too languid, cells too slow. He couldn’t hold it, and the kanaber clattered to the floor, laser blade gouging the glass. At a gesture from Nond, it jumped back to its master’s palm.

“Impressive,” he drawled through a feigned yawn. “Speak what message you have for my Defender.”

“No, I will not tolerate—”

The kanaber flew, and Rogii just managed to harden the air to deflect it. As it bounced, the Messenger swooped in and snatched it. Now he stood much too close. Rogii retreated a step.

I’m here alone. I’m an idiot.

Yet, this was Moshee Spire, never vacant of Aberrant—Rogii’s allies, not this Aylata’s. Help waited just around the corner, a group of approaching life-signatures. In this sorry state, he couldn’t identify them, but that didn’t matter. He was the Aberrant heir, and he would not flee from a lowly Messenger.

He planted his feet and slid into a widened stance, calling to the air with the weakest of ’netic voices. “I spared that other Messenger in good faith. Don’t think I’ll make the same mistake twice.”

Laughing, Nond flipped the kanaber. “I’m sure that lazy Vlokem is immensely grateful for your lack of good judgement. Now, is that all there is to this proposal: Let’s be allies? No details?”

“Not until you present me with someone worth my time.”

The Messenger rolled his eyes. “Such over-exaggerated self-worth. You aren’t even the only heir.”

Rogii blinked. “The others are dead.”

“Wrong.”

No, that couldn’t be. Rogii had attended his siblings’ funerals, seen their broken bodies dipped in molten glass and interred here in this very Spire. This was a lie. A trap.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Your belief doesn’t make the difference between truth and falsehood. There are two living Aberrant heirs, for now.”

A new voice trilled through one of the arches. “Can ya name this other heir, hm?”

Rogii’s heart sank to his heels and drowned in dread as three Aberrant joined them in the hall: a Tala, a Knalcal, and a Lettaplexal, all adorned with crimson battoos and white robes with red stripes. Absolutes, the highest order of Truths.

The Lettaplexal carried an unconscious Sarana.

“What have you done to her?”

The short Tala in the lead tilted her head and warbled with the winy tone and clipped accent of all Absolutes. “That is no concern of yers. Now, this stranger has declared a serious revelation, and I insist he clarify and verify.”

“And I require you answer me.” He didn’t outrank Truths, especially Absolutes, but he wouldn’t have these pompous tattle-tales show him up in front of this Aylata.

They stared. No one budged.

Rogii lunged for the Lettaplexal. A ’netic shove on his clothes pushed him back, but he secured a hold on his Truth. He hit the glass wall hard, Sarana in his arms. Her eyes fluttered.

Rogii’s ears rang. The faster his heart pounded, the more he fed the drug hiding in his veins. His vision swam as he got to his feet, clutching Sarana to his chest.

The Knalcal Truth plodded closer. “Are they your lies she tells? Your secrets she keeps?”

“I look forward to discovering them,” the Tala cackled as she approached from a steeper angle. “We asked the girl why ya left the match, and she negligently did not know. We asked her why ya are here at all, and she lied. Ya know a lying Truth cannot be permitted to live.”

It clicked. The rusted swirl decorating the floor was the same as the crimson stripes on their robes. He was in the Truths’ portion of the Spire. They had brought Sarana here to wring out his secrets before destroying her. None of his Loyalists would be coming.

He threw out a hand, and the air, his most loyal pawn, raced at his foes. A mere breeze ruffled their heavy robes.

His team was falling apart: Azin dead. Rrosh, Len, and Lyten not answering when called. Per’nyé attacked by Aylata and now struggling in a lethal game with Narkom and Mikana. It would be his fault if she lost. Now Absolutes would steal Sarana as an Aylata watched on.

The Knalcal snatched at him. Rogii scrambled back, attempting to reverse the pull on his collar.

The Lettaplexal approached from behind, and Rogii whirled, cursing whoever forbade the carrying of weapons in the Spire. Those with guard-like duties were exempt, of course. Too many heirs had killed past high bosses to qualify.

He wasn’t sure what he aimed at the Lettaplexal—another slight breeze, a ’netic tsunami, a chop to the shoulder? Regardless, it never hit him. A wall of air smacked Rogii from behind, and he crashed onto a table between the arches. Its fragile glass shattered. Rogii, Sarana, and an antique, Magni-inscribed vase met the floor. The container ruptured, and sweet-smelling perfume drenched them.

Choking, Rogii wiped his stinging eyes. His sleeve came away with indigo paint.

No.

Forgetting even to breathe, he tried to hold the ink on his face. How smeared was his fake battoo? His ’netic senses should have been able to tell, but the details overwhelmed his crumpled nerves. He couldn’t fix it instantly as he always had, and it was plain on his face for everyone to see.

Before he could blink, he was pinned against the wall’s warm pane, Sarana fallen at his feet and a burly Knalcal arm pressing against his neck. He couldn’t push it away by either ’netic or conventional means. He couldn’t breathe.

The Tala Truth ran her hand along his cheek, and dark paint stained her fingers. “Quite the intriguing secret.”

He tried to turn away, but she caught his chin, her scarlet nails digging into his jaw. She captured his gaze, and despite the tricks Per’nyé had taught him, he couldn’t keep this Tala from invading his mind. His own frustration formed a whip in her hand.

Her voice gained an echoic quality. “Why does the Aberrant heir have a fake battoo?”

Not this. Anything else he could explain away. His head burned. She was a flame boiling his brain until the scene she wanted floated to the surface. She dove into it, resurrecting the worry, the fear, the frustration of long ago. They were new in this moment. He was a preteen again.

A battoo! Such a deceptively simple solution, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. Everyone squashed his ideas as stupid or trivial, but with this symbol of Aberrant adulthood, they wouldn’t see the face of an eleven-year-old. They would have to respect him as the heir he was, a force not to be trifled with.

Lyten was a genius for suggesting it, and Rogii conscripted him to make it happen. With her Truth curiosity as a cover, Sarana discovered exactly what the battoo process entailed. Sweet-faced Per’nyé put their handlers to sleep so the team could sneak out and gather the necessities.

It went off without a hitch, and Rogii’s hrausq, his most trusted companions, gathered in his room. Per’nyé swabbed his face clean, and Azin picked up a paintbrush. Rogii had drawn out the pattern for the battoo, and Azin would copy it onto his face because he was methodical and skilled with such things.

He dipped the brush in the concoction of herbs from a variety of worlds, and Rogii closed his eyes, shaking with anticipation as the bristles caressed the bridge of his nose, both soft and wiry. He flinched, and the bowl on his lap tipped. Some of its contents splashed on his left hand between his thumb and forefinger. It tingled just like his face. He tried so hard to sit still, but a million worms burrowed into his skin.

Finally, Azin announced he was done, and Narkom brought the lamp. It would shine bright like a star, triggering the concoction to burn the mask on his face, so Rogii closed his eyes again, eager and anxious and tired of sitting still.

Narkom tried to hurry, turning the lamp on too early and tripping over Len. Bored and distracted, the smaller Lettaplexal practiced being invisible in the middle of the walkway.

The lamp fell in Rogii’s lap, shining full and close on his tingling hand. Per’nyé snatched it and switched it off.

“Did it apply the battoo to your hand?” she asked, petite features scrunched in concern.

Rogii inspected it. His skin looked dry and no different than before.

“It didn’t hurt. I don’t think it worked.”

“Did it stop tingling?” Sarana added, and once she mentioned it, he noticed that it had. “If it stopped tingling, that means it worked.”

“Thanks a lot, Narkom. I don’t want a blob battooed on my hand.”

“Wait, I’m starting to see it!” Per’nyé grabbed his hand and brought it to the end of her nose. “We can call it amoeba-shaped if it makes you feel better.”

“No, it doesn’t make me feel better. Hurry up and shine the lamp on my face. This stuff really itches.”

Tentatively, Sarana approached, pretty face drawn with worry. “You should wait and see how this one turns out.”

He listened to her because one should always listen to a Truth, despite how his face felt like it was turning inside out. Though he really wanted a battoo, he let Per’nyé wipe the herbs away, and he waited like Sarana said. Truths were wise in all things, and he had recently begun to notice how very pretty this one was.

Within half an hour, his hand burned, waves of heat rolling up his arm, and the first layers of the battoo peeled. Dark gray waited beneath. No one said what everyone thought: The first layers were always a lighter version of the final color.

No one besides a Truth knew what color they would get. Without their Red Serum, a battoo’s hue was the product of the individual’s genetic reaction. Anyone whose battoo turned black was one chosen to destroy all they valued. To bring an end no one could accept.

Black was the color of loss, the color of empty space that had stolen their ancestors. Black was the color forbidden to Aberrant. Those with black battoos were killed, no matter rank or heritage. A sacrifice to the longevity of the system.

Surely, with the first layers such a dark gray, Rogii’s battoo would be black.

Panic, sharp and fierce, gripped him, and Per’nyé took charge, sitting everyone in a circle and talking it out. None would tell of this.

Everyone’s eyes swiveled to Sarana. She was a Truth. Her superiors would ask for her report of the night’s activities, and she could not lie. She said nothing, lavender eyes asking Rogii to trust her.

Days passed, and his terror grew. His battoo was black. He hid it under a glove, but what if it had been his face? What of when it would be his face, when he was recognized as an adult and expected to bear a battoo?

The scene faded, and Rogii’s innermost self shoved at the Tala to keep her from leaping into the next one. She didn’t need to see how he had pulled off his official battoo ceremony. She had seen too much already.

Resignation brought a strange calm. His mind fell silent, leaving nothing for the Tala to hold. She scrambled for purchase, but everything bounced like reflections on smooth glass.

He willingly stared into her eyes. “You shouldn’t stand so close.”

With a gasp, she stumbled back, and her kanaber in Rogii’s hand ripped free of her waist. As she collapsed, the Knalcal Absolute called a larger laser knife from his boot and aimed it at Rogii’s middle.

Rogii pushed it upward just enough to send it into the arm that trapped him. He spun free, foot slamming into the Knalcal’s ribs. The Absolute bowed, lessening the blow as his arm wrapped Rogii’s waist, lifted him, and flipped him. Upside-down, Rogii slashed with the bloodied kanaber but only hit walls of hardened air.

Darkness. Distance. Every cell called out, isolated, receiving no answer. Rogii pushed further, forcing those calls to ring louder, stronger, faster. He found the larger kanaber pointed at him and mustered just enough focus to stop it, equaling his foe’s pull. The weapon hovered, wobbling as they battled. With every shift of angles, Rogii struggled to keep track of it.

The third Absolute joined in, a needle in each hand. Rogii slashed at him, was deflected by a needle, and launched a series of kicks. The Lettaplexal dodged, dancing closer to the hovering kanaber.

The Knalcal lunged, and Rogii evaded, advancing on the Lettaplexal. Two more sidesteps brought the Lettaplexal’s spine close enough for the dagger’s blade to singe the back of his robe. Unable to override Rogii’s pull from this distance, the Knalcal switched his hold to his comrade’s clothes and threw him.

Rogii spun under the Knalcal’s next attack. His foe rotated with him, eyes widening as he realized his mistake. A forcefield blocked the weapon in Rogii’s hand, and the Knalcal slowed the kanaber coming at him from behind, but Rogii shouldered into him. The Knalcal Absolute toppled backward into the dagger’s laser point. Spine severed, lung punctured—life left him before he hit the floor.

Rogii leapt over him. The last Absolute swung a needle-armed fist. Airborne, Rogii caught his wrist and used it to curve his landing, feet flying at his enemy’s gut. At the last moment, they veered around another defending needle-fist and hit nothing.

Dropping full-length on the ground, Rogii scrambled back. He wanted to steal those pointy sticks and plunge them into their owner, but just holding that kanaber aloft had been too much. His ’netic muscles screamed. Hammers beat the inside of his skull. The room dimmed and doubled. It seemed he faced not one foe, but a dozen, all moving similarly and within close range. He couldn’t tell which was real.

Was the Messenger still here?

To kill a Truth was a crime worthy of a horrid death. He had just killed two, and he had to kill the third. The Absolute knew what he shouldn’t, and even if Per’nyé reworked his memory, not knowing might kill him anyway. He would seek answers until he found them.

Rogii slashed with the small knife in his weaker left hand. Again, a needle-fist blocked it, but his right hand curled around one of those sticks. His ’netic command could barely be called that. It was a cry, a sob, and it tore the needle in two. Half fell to the floor with a soft ping.

The other half turned between its master’s fingers and jabbed into the back of Rogii’s left hand. The Lettaplexal moved like water. They were back to back, then another needle stabbed Rogii’s right elbow—a clean in and out.

With a yelp, Rogii jerked, but the Absolute held his left hand in a crushing grip. His right arm went numb, responding sluggishly, if at all. Yanked in a circle, he tripped over Sarana and hit the wall again.

Knocked from her ear, Sarana’s sys switched to public mode, broadcasting the commentary on Per’nyé’s match.

A needle raced toward Rogii’s heart, a massive palm holding his shoulder in place. Teeth gritted, he caught the Absolute’s fist, and with his final mote of strength, he extended his arm toward his foe’s face. The movement was languid but stern, uncoordinated but resolute, and with it, he invoked his greatest ally.

The Absolute’s breath fled, and so did Rogii’s vision. He moved on instinct, pushing the pain to the back of his mind. Blood ran down his face. The longer he held the air, the harder the Lettaplexal swung, but Rogii clung to him, blocking what he could. Punctures littered his arms and legs, their sting like stars speckling the heavens.

As the last Absolute sank, the shymgo announcer with his twangy accent heralded on, painting the scene in the spherical stadium far below. Narkom lay unconscious in a pool of blood. Injured but heeding her Controller’s every command Mikana defended Per’nyé from three opponents, and more neared.

The Absolute fell on his back, skin cold, sticky. Rogii landed on him, shoving a needle between the man’s ribs.

He no longer felt a life-signature from any of the Absolutes, but his ’netic senses weren’t reporting much of anything. He didn’t have time to rest here. Per’nyé losing? He had to do something.

He crawled to Sarana’s side, tried to lift her, and failed. He glanced at each of the archways, dizzy and lost, searching for the Messenger.

“I’ll put you out of your misery,” the Aylata had said.

“Don’t give up yet, folks,” the announcer went on. “We all know victory is sweeter when the moment seems bleak.”

Rogii barely heard him. Nothing made sense, not the blurred blotches of color, the torture brought on by each breath, or the disjointed throbbing in his ears. He had saved his Truth, but at what cost?

He tried to hold her to him, but for all he knew, he was a puddle, a smear on the glass floor.

Continued in Chapter 25

Thank you for reading!

*A version of the complete, three-verse ballad can be read here: https://theprose.com/post/327334/ratio

With two whacks of a wooden spoon, a swarm of flying insects became a puddle dripping down the cloth wall of a soup booth. The stall keeper, an elderly Zalerit woman, stirred in the gelatinous remains, ladled out four steaming bowls, and placed them before her guests.

She peeked sideways at Xlack. “No charge, even for the added protein.”

He scooped up his bowl and tiny spoon in silence, not looking at her directly either. Recognition fizzled around the Zalerit, narrowing her four eyes. In sunlight, Adapt material had a leaden appearance, and whether she knew exactly who he was or not, she associated this group with the only ones allowed to wear it. She wouldn’t expect Aylata to pay. They dealt in law, not money, and the law said to compensate these guardians with whatever they needed.

Rifo dropped a few small silver nuggets on the counter. In lieu of official currency, the Adjuvants had brought precious material to trade. “We can’t just take yer food.”

After a brief hesitation and another glance at Xlack, she swept the silver into her apron pocket and busied herself stirring.

Rifo leaned forward on his tall stool. “Understand, we’re buying yer silence with that, too.”

She stilled, then spoke slowly. “How likely is it someone will ask me if I met a young man with hair so red, I first thought he was on fire?”

Rifo pulled his cowl further forward. Hooded ponchos were popular fashion in Tsira and a lot less conspicuous than this foursome.

Challenge prowled in Twi’s grin. “It seems like the kind of thing to gossip about unprompted.”

“Could be,” she crooned. “Yes, a boy with eyes the hue of a muddy lake and a girl with golden-silver hair. Not Aylata but wearing a colorful version of their garb.”

Xlack’s spoon paused. Twi had passed for his kind in Lakol six months ago. It hadn’t occurred to him that Zalerits here would notice his party’s colors.

The woman’s curiosity sparked like a dry summer storm too wild to be held back by her caution. “I wouldn’t have to speculate in gossip if you plied my wonder.”

With a nod at Rifo and Lanox, Twi inclined over the counter and spoke softer than the breeze. “We are followers of Vozin.”

Xlack choked on his soup.

As the woman whirled, Twi rushed on. “He fled beyond the Zakernii nebula, to our homeworlds. There are many of us.”

“You are Magni,” the woman breathed. “The chrysolite in you says so.”

To see that unique color when most Zalerits couldn’t, she must have had a generous amount of Magni heritage herself. Unease coiled in Xlack’s toes as he studied her wiry arms, the wrinkles under her chin, her feathery brow line—anywhere a shadow might fight with her glow. Lightcurvers could not produce light of their own.

It was sunny, though, with a stifling warmth for so late in autumn. The trees had already begun to curl in upon themselves and burrow into the ground to escape the coming winter, offering less shade. If she could glow, there wasn’t much reason for her to.

“Have you come to liberate Zalerit?” She waved her spoon in a wild gesture, filling the air with the oddly mixed scents of sugar and toe jam.

Xlack lost his appetite.

Twi folded her hands. “You see the need for your silence.”

“Are you the girl that Ravi Ekymé stole from Aylata Tower?” The woman glanced at Xlack again, and triumph and concern peeled a coy smile. “Missing for six months, then turns up at my stand with legends from across the nebula. What beautiful monsters you turned out to be.” Clearing her throat, she adjusted her grip on her spoon and pointed it at them. “Why are none of you eating your soup?”

Lanox scrunched her nose, her slit nostrils flaring wide. “Ya don’t know where those bugs have been.”

“Who has time to track them? Some kooky scientist? They’d tell you the same thing I would: Their good protein will put meat on your bones and muscles in your…well, they give you good muscles.” She poked Lanox’s arm with the end of her ladle.

Rifo guffawed. “Meat on our bones? It sounds like ya are prepping us to be sliced up and cooked.”

The woman set a filled, pungent cup alongside his bowl. “Either you’re the eater or you’re the eaten. Are you going to eat the soup?”

Rifo warily lifted his bowl and took a cautious slurp. A swallow led to a smile, then a bigger gulp and a bigger grin. Then the spice set in. Eyes wide, Rifo panted and scrambled for the cup.

“Wait!” Xlack warned, but his amaraq had already downed the drink and choked. Before he could grab the new cup in front of Lanox, Xlack caught his arm. “Strong alcohol. Little sips.”

He nodded, and Xlack released him. It was amusing to see them out of their element as he had been for the past half year, a nice change of pace. It would have been nicer had he not worried this would all come crashing down around him any moment.

This worry kept his laugh shallow. It kept him alert, kept his senses scouring their surroundings. When a Messenger approached the gate of the orchard behind them, eyes scanning the crowds, Xlack stood with a gesture for his teammates to stay put.

He crossed the street and approached a crinkled tree. “Lady Aliara.”

A tall girl ducked out of the tree’s sparse shadow, brows drawn over crescent eyes, high cheekbones, and lips glossed in obsidian. “Ravi Ekymé? Can you sense the magnitude of my relief? You didn’t sign your cryptic message telling me to come here.”

He shrugged. “You can’t resist a mystery, Cousin.”

“Great Uncle will be—”

“You can’t tell my father.”

She fixed him with a narrowed stare. “Can’t? Or shouldn’t?”

“Please don’t, Aliara.”

Her fog-like eyes ran over him, cataloging his differences. His attire was the most obvious: long, gray jacket concealing the absence of a clan pattern on his thigh. “You have not returned to us.”

“I need information.”

Thrill boiled within her, and the air swirled at her change in temperature. Her incredibly fine tresses were ever ready to dance at the slightest suggestion of a draft. “I don’t give away secrets. I exchange them.”

“An answer for an answer? Seems fair.” Some part of him had hoped she would blurt out all he needed, but that was unrealistic. He knew Aliara Yayin better than that.

She looped an arm through his. “Walk with me through the orchard. We’re a conspicuous pair standing here.”

Nodding, he allowed her to lead him along the cobblestone path between the trees as he formulated his question. Her Messenger escort fell into step behind them, as demure as she was a spectacle. Clear beads hung from her waist-scarf, sleeves, and hair, chiming with her every movement.

He decided to make his question as broad as possible. “What is Revel K’alaqk up to?”

“You must think me omniscient.”

He stretched out a grin. “You’ve collected more pieces of the mystery than anyone.”

“You flatter me, Great Cousin.” Heat flashed in her eyes, and she spoke through a tight sigh. “He has moved the capital from Kobolast to Reiceilako, where he builds a new Aylata Tower.”

Xlack’s forced smile fell. Reiceilako had been Drin Nar’s capital. As the only two emperors with Aylata heritage, it was already too easy to draw comparisons between that tyrant and Revel K’alaqk.

The pavers gave way to fine gravel, crunching beneath their slow steps as Aliara continued, “He has turned his wife into an icon and the Refraction Leaders into villains.”

“Dangerous propaganda.” Nothing remained of Xlack’s smile. Aylata were meant to be heroes. They protected the empire from outside threats like the Tradafin and unscrupulous miscreants that would destroy it from within. If people started believing they were the bad guys, it would make a Protector’s job that much harder. Cooperation would die. Rebellion would grow like a wildfire.

Why would K’alaqk want that?

“I’m sure you have a theory that fits it all together.”

She tsked, beads ringing as she shook her head. “My incomplete speculations aren’t for trade, especially as I know you would treat them as fact and rush off into a trap.”

“We’re not twelve anymore.”

“No, we aren’t. My turn to ask a question.” Her voice was the winter wind, her gaze just as cutting, and he looked away as a Mind Aylata should, eyes on his boots and Aliara’s sandals. Her feet stopped, and so did his. “Where have you been?”

“Tala mostly.” He shrugged, peeking at her. “Knalz. Have you heard what’s happening there? About Messengers killing off the native Magni hybrids? Abducting children?”

About Ject, he wanted to say, but the sentence wouldn’t form. Instead, he saw Ject leaping off the gala balcony. He heard Mystis saying Ject had nearly succeeded in killing Twi, Izeko saying Ject had been injured. The troopers had left him behind.

They wouldn’t have.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it. You’ve been involved in that?”

“I want to stop it.”

“So badly that you came here secretly.” Heat swirled around her again, and the tiniest of flames danced across her lashes, their reflections flickering in her eyes. “So badly that you’ll throw the cause away even after abandoning Rell for it.”

Smoke coiled up from her sleeves. The air reeked of the brine of her Talent, but it couldn’t penetrate the empty, howling cold that filled him. Rell would have just turned a year old. How big was he now?

“Beastlings die when you leave them like that,” she went on.

The cold grew into an ache, a blade of ice between his ribs. “I left him in Dr. Kitza’s care.”

“Doesn’t matter. His mother gave him to you. He won’t take food from anyone else unless you’re there to approve it.”

Xlack closed his eyes, jaw locked and twitching. He knew that. It was on every test required before one could approach a mother elitbeast to see if she would offer one of her children. Yet, he had hoped hunger would override that instinct or that Rell would follow the example of Kitza’s adult elitbeast.

“Is he…” Lips shaking, he couldn’t finish the question.

“A week after you disappeared, Dr. Kitza brought him to his mother here, but she shunned him.”

Xlack opened his eyes, but a sheen of tears turned everything to gray smudges. Though clouds choked the sky, it was too bright, too stifling, too still. “He starved? Or did your father…”

High Defender Yayin was a practical man who wasted nothing. He would have seen a quick end as kind and efficient.

“I taught Rell to hunt. Rodents at first, then small prey native to Zalerit like his ancestors would have taught him. He’s become a nuisance on the base, taking whatever he wants, even if that happens to be the troopers’ highly trained animals.”

Xlack barked out a laugh and rubbed a sleeve over his face. “Thank you. You’re amazing, Aliara.”

“You’re a mess.” She caught his arm and pressed a palm to his cheek, thumb swiping an escaped tear. “Six months. What have they asked of you, Ravi Ekymé? I know you stole a prisoner from Aylata Tower and brought her to Lakol. You were pursued.” She bit her lip. “Ravi Sirvette was killed.”

“Ject lives. I’ve seen him, briefly, on Knalz. He saved me.”

Her eyes widened, and her hand fell away. “Of course he did.” She put on a wan smile. “That’s not the question I asked, though.”

He breathed out slowly, weighing his answer. He had stayed with the Adjuvants because he believed home would announce his treason and condemn him, but apparently Aliara didn’t know he had betrayed the empire. She thought he rescued Twi under orders and that the same mandate sent him to the Alliance to murder Adjuvants.

People knew what he had done but not why he had done it. If authorities allowed the narrative to be spun that way, did it mean the door was still open for him to return? Or was it only to save face? The First Ravi’s defiance looked bad, especially with the Second now an illegal emperor, the Third killed, and the Fourth missing. Xlack should have been publicly punished to make a statement, but he had disappeared. Instead of allowing him to renege and get away, the Refraction Leaders wanted people to imagine he was still under their control.

Hiding in their lies wouldn’t get him the truth, though.

“I freed Navaria Twi because it was the right thing to do. No one told me to.”

K’alaqk had told him not to. Dr. Kitza had advised he forget her.

Hands behind his back, he resumed their trek, timing his words with the rhythmic crunch of gravel beneath his toes. “Her people took me in. Now they’re being murdered, and I don’t know if that’s my fault, but I have to stop it. I can’t let them kill her.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“You know I hate that line, Aliara.”

Looping her arm through his again, she chuckled. “It’s ironic.”

He shot her a look, but her delight only swelled, cloying like the warmth of a late summer evening.

“You gave me a free answer, so I’ll give you one. Your mother was about to announce a lady of interest for you when you disappeared, and some think you took off because you didn’t like her choice. She’s been quite beside herself.”

“My mother or…”

“Your mother is always beside herself when it comes to you.” Aliara smiled, and her resemblance to the Ekymé family line—strong jaw, bold angles, and the faintest sheen of chrysolite in her hair—was never more apparent. Hard to believe her grandmother’s grandmother had been the last to bear the name.

He grunted in agreement.

Aliara’s eyes sparked. “Rumor also has it that this lady of interest went to Lakol in hopes of finding some trace of you and tracking you down.”

A twisted grin pulled onto his face. The rumor had to be exaggerated. No Sereh’s family would let her go to the place where two Ravi had disappeared. Still, the idea of it tugged at his curiosity. Who was she? Did Aliara know? Or was she saying all this to get him to spill that detail?

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll return to Knalz once this is settled.”

“That’s precisely the irony. People say you left because you weren’t happy with your mother’s choice, and in the slimmest sense, it’s true. You left because you have another lady of interest.”

He stopped, but she towed him onward. They had made a small loop within the orchard, and the gate waited ahead. Across the street, his teammates still sat at the soup stand, their backs turned in his direction as they bantered, and his sharp ears picked up the fringes of their conversation. Lanox teased Rifo about his muddy-lake colored eyes. He called her eyes the color of fungus. The Zalerit termed them dirty aqua, which sounded synonymous to ‘muddy lake’ in Xlack’s opinion. He would probably never understand how colors worked. Twi laughed, and it was his favorite sound in the universe.

Aliara tugged back his attention. “Navaria Twi, the girl with the silver marks, I want to meet her.”

He held in his surprise. Of course Aliara had seen that Twi was with him. Of course she would connect her with the girl who had been seen in Lakol after he rescued her. And of course she would jump at the opportunity to meet someone with fresh intel.

‘You three want to meet my relative?’ he broadcast.

His teammates straightened, gazes swiveling to him.

Twi nodded. ‘She’s a Sereh, like I was believed to be?’

‘Yes. She’s the great great granddaughter of my father’s older sister. Her father is a High Defender.’

‘Sounds fancy,’ Lanox said, in the lead as they passed the gate.

Rifo stuck close to Twi’s side. ‘Any kind of greeting we should know so we don’t offend her?’ he asked.

Aliara rushed past Lanox and grabbed Twi’s hands. “Such innate grace, despite that limp.”

Rocking back, Twi freed her hands. “Thank you?”

“Oh, Great Cousin, you didn’t mention that her eyes are raveshna.” Aliara glanced coyly at Xlack, voice deep and teasing.

His face warmed. Aliara’s liked to say that fire made everything better, but he doubted that would be true in this case.

Those shining silver eyes of Twi’s narrowed, perfectly balanced between light and dark. “How do you mean?”

Aliara’s smile stretched wider than a mykuro’s behind. “You know the meaning of raveshna?”

“In the ancient Magni sense, yes. They were promised to the heir apparent, but you use that heir’s title, Ravida, differently, so…”

Aliara’s head bobbed in a series of nods. “The Raveshna is the wife of the Ravida, but it’s also the shade of your eyes.” She looked meaningfully at Xlack. “It’s a good omen for the Ravida’s wife to have raveshna shaded eyes.”

“One of many silly Atetu superstitions,” he shot back, but he would be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed. Twi’s eyes were more than their shade, though. He liked to wander their depths, even when they were dizzying, defiant, challenging. Just one glance made his heart pound faster.

From behind him, the Messenger cut in, “Your teasing is likely the real reason Ravi Ekymé left, Lady Aliara. What are these?” He held the closed discs of three Aqkashi fanned in one hand and a fourth in front of his nose.

The Adjuvants checked their pockets. They were empty. Unease filled the air like sweet smoke.

Rattling sleeve covering a smirk, Aliara explained, “Messenger Vinva is skilled at collecting information from one’s pockets.”

The distance between Twi, Lanox, and Rifo shrunk in a defensive, back-to-back formation, but their movement was subtle. Fingers twitched over secondary weapons, jaws tightened, and eyes swept the scene, but they would make no move that could be interpreted as antagonistic. They were the foreigners here. They wouldn’t risk attacking and having the whole world attack back.

Twi’s gaze cut to Xlack with a silent question.

As he reached for the Messenger, the rebuke on his tongue gave way to a piercing scream.

***

Topeca gasped for breath, blinking into the night as panic’s tight fist suffocated her. Zalerit’s rings glittered high above, though the planet had already set, leaving little illumination to filter through the skylight above her bed.

With lumiflies fluttering in her stomach, she rolled to her right, where Revel should have been. His place was empty, sheets unruffled except where she had untucked a corner of the mattress. Had he been there at all, he would have fixed it.

What had awoken her? Why this terrible foreboding?

With as little movement as possible, she scanned the room again. The morphometal floor and walls pretended to be pale stone, their mural of a mountainous vista all but lost in this dimness. Her dressing screen stood sentinel alongside the darkened hollow of a door. No movement in that direction.

Beyond the foot of the bed, chairs flanked an empty fireplace, and beyond them stood the entrance to an unfinished indoor balcony. Nothing lurked there either.

Her gaze tracked upward, where a shapeless shadow too faint to focus on loitered above the skylight. Despite the distracting morphometal, her Kinetic senses confirmed multiple life-signatures.

“Computer,” she whispered.

Thunder replied as a dark object dropped onto the skylight.

She shot to her feet, blankets flying, and she just managed to stop herself from flinging a forcefield. Breaking the window was the last thing she wanted to do. The slithering sensation across her skin said she wasn’t the only one who considered that a possibility, however.

When Topeca had first seen the skylight and gushed over its view, Attuacca had informed her that it was as strong as the hulls of their latest spacefaring ships. Yet, now at the mercy of someone’s Kinetics, it cracked, then shattered with the sound of a thousand crashing bells.

Shielding herself with a pillow twice her size, she hugged her night robes closer.

With a wet crunch, an object plopped on the soft rug at the foot of the bed. Noble guards spilled through both doors. Weapons at the ready, the six men bellowed orders and confirmations, scanning everything, but she couldn’t hear them over her own pulse.

“Messenger Xryit!” She shoved past the guards and fell alongside the motionless body they surrounded. She ignored their warnings, heedless of the glittering shards of clear metal and her bare feet. Xryit had been her escort throughout her childhood. He had transferred households when she married, mandated by her father to continue watching over her. Revel had tasked him with teaching her to use her Talent. Now he lay unmoving, facedown and covered in blood.

Her trembling hand alighted on his shoulder and gently shook him. No response. She tugged harder, trying to flip him onto his back.

He grabbed her wrist.

She squealed, and she was across the room, hidden behind Defender Lioden Nyoki. She tried to rush back to her Messenger, but Nyoki shifted to block her.

She shoved at him. “Out of my way!”

He remained an obstacle. “Attuacca, take the Messenger to the med-center.”

“I cannot.” The computer’s hologram appeared kneeling alongside Xryit. “Safety protocols do not permit one so near death to be teleported. He would not survive.”

“Then bring Dr. Zrisl.”

“Quickly,” Topeca added as all heat drained from her. Where was the threshold? How close to death did that mean he was?

A moment later, Dr. Zrisl appeared—a grizzled, angular man wrapped in a doctor’s back robe and platinum beads. Gripping his emergency satchel, he stooped next to his patient and hastened through a rote series of checks.

Topeca held her breath, overanalyzing every move the doctor made. He was a renowned physician. Surely, he could fix this. He could fix anything. Or perhaps this was only a nightmare, a manifestation of a guilty conscience for not following her ancestors’ superstitions strictly enough.

The doctor stuck an injector patch on Xryit’s neck. “Attuacca, get me a gurney.”

A hoverbed appeared, flat on the ground and awaiting a passenger.

“Help me get him on it.”

The guards looked at Nyoki, who nodded. “Approach the Messenger cautiously.”

They obeyed, three keeping their shooters trained on Xryit as two slunk forward and scooped him up. Topeca gasped. Bruises shaded every visible patch of skin, hashed with darker lines of blood as if someone had cut a trail between each of his freckles.

“I’ll go with him.”

Nyoki continued to block her way, midnight gaze jumping to her with a soundless response: No.

She stepped back, fists and jaw clenched. She was not a helpless buffoon to be shoved in a corner and excluded.

As Xryit had taught her, she widened her stand, hauled in a slow, deep breath, and sunk into a moment of stillness before exploding into motion. She threw herself in the air, legs lashing at her target, though he was beyond the range of her feet. Kicking him was not her goal. Her movements spun a mobile forcefield, its appearance like lightning trapped in fluidic gauze.

It slammed into Nyoki, and he stumbled, then turned to her, not quite glowering.

“Lady K’alaqk.”

She landed, a half twirl expending her momentum as she barely managed not to fall on her behind. Her gaze darted beyond Nyoki to the one who had spoken her name.

Cradled between the gurney’s rising rails, Xryit stared back. He wheezed, voice like stones scratching against one another. “You’re covered in shards.”

Pieces of the broken window had caught in the gossamer fabric of her nightdress and the silk-braided tresses piled atop her head, but they were nothing compared to how awful he sounded.

She put on an imperious tone to hide the worry worming through her heart. “Is there something wrong with the front entrance, or do you prefer scaring me to death?”

“It wasn’t my idea to be thrown through the window.”

“Thrown?” She slid a small kanaber from a secret sheath in her sleeve as her eyes jumped to the skylight. Nyoki’s did the same, though the sixth guard was already there and Topeca’s senses assured her no one else was. “What happened?”

“I said too much. They made me say too much.” His words drowned in moist, rattling coughs.

“Who, Xryit? You’re not making any sense.”

Nyoki caught her sleeve, onyx gaze on the doctor. “Hurry to the med-center. Lady K’alaqk, you and I will follow, but please stay behind me and try to remember I’m on your side.”

“So is Xryit,” she huffed as they plodded into the hallway.

“He also just admitted to succumbing to suggestions, which often force ones to do things they would rather not.” Malice and sympathy wove the words, draping a fresh blanket of fear over Topeca.

“We should call Revel, then.”

“You think I haven’t already?”

Of course he had. Nyoki was very dependable and fiercely loyal to Revel.

“Defender, do you know who cast these alleged suggestions?”

Nyoki’s jaw tightened, and barely visible through his mane of dark hair, a vein on his temple pulsed. “He was sent to tell the Refraction Leaders we suspect foul play regarding the Ravida’s death. Ravi K’alaqk thought he was the best one to go since he had ties in your father’s household, but…”

No. No, her father could not have done this. Refraction Leader Donrul Quanko might have, but her father would not have consented to be in the same room as that evil man. That must have been what happened. Quanko captured Xryit first, tortured him, used suggestions on him.

Nyoki’s pace had subtly slowed so the distance between them and Xryit grew. Kicking herself for not noticing sooner, Topeca broke into a jog. Nyoki remained just ahead of her, too close at times, as if he could suddenly become a wall for her to crash into. As if he herded her.

Her lips twisted. She was not a lyoko to be tamed and guided about.

She doubled her pace and called loud to her Messenger. “What exactly did they make you say?”

His eyes found her, glassy and filled with guilt. “I told them about Attuacca.”

“Surely they already knew about her? She was in my broadcast yesterday.”

“They knew of her. Now they know about her, everything I knew about her,” he confessed, too weak to fully convey the fervor those words were meant to hold.

Dr. Zrisl’s rapid fingers flew against his datapad, preparing to print another injector patch.

Topeca reached for the Messenger, and Nyoki stopped. She crashed into his back with a vexed squeal.

After a moment, he strode on but maintained a considerable distance from Xryit. “Messenger, you believe they could use the information they wrung from you to invade the Tower and turn the computer against us?”

Xryit didn’t appear to see or hear anything aside from Topeca, as if his gaze were a solid line tethering them.

“It’ll be alright,” she soothed, imbuing her tone with a calm she did not feel. “We are not the children they think we are.”

Tears ran races down his lacerated cheeks. “They dove into my mind, rifled through every memory, every thought, held nothing sacred.”

“They’ll know this place, our schedules, habits, and weaknesses as well as you do,” Nyoki interpreted.

“Who?” she breathed, though she knew. Though each Refraction Leader had Mind Aylata under their command, only Quanko had the ability to personally delve into another’s mind, and none were as cunning, cruel, or proficient. She didn’t need Xryit to say it. She shouldn’t have wanted him to.

“They were united in their message.” His voice was less than a breath, and she could only hope it was just an effect of the sedative in one of the now many patches stuck to him. “The Refraction Leaders will not tolerate Revel K’alaqk continuing to play emperor. They will name a new Ravida, and they will decide what happens within these borders. If Revel K’alaqk values the lives of this empire, he will come to them at Enari Station.”

“They’d kill him.” Her stomach was a tangle of knots.

The gurney burst into the med-center, quickly buried in a frenzy of med-aides and medical code she barely heard and wouldn’t have understood regardless. In the chaos, she managed to draw close enough to brush her fingers along Xryit’s limp hand. His skin was so cold, his life-signature as faint as a distant star.

He still saw only her, soft chrysolite eyes gleaming with remorse. “Am I a traitor?”

They whisked him away before she could find the right words. She didn’t follow. They would heal him, and she would use the time to formulate a response. It would be a quote for the ages.

Beside her, Nyoki muttered, “Yes, Messenger, our weaknesses betray us all.”

Continued in chapter 26

Thank you for reading!

Betrayal had a unique stench. Heat prickled its sharp tang, glazing over a bitter undertone, and like clouds gathering for a storm, it huddled around Aalee Sirvette as she shrieked. She sat in a crook of thick branches two stories above Xlack’s head.

As soon as she had the group’s attention, she cried, “Somebody, please help! I’m stuck up here.”

Xlack folded his arms. “How did you get up there?”

“Oh, Ravi Ekymé!” She giggled. “I’m so glad it’s you who came to rescue me.”

“Not going to answer the question?”

“A monster threw me in this tree, but you’re my hero, Ravi Ekymé.” She smiled brighter, but it had a jagged edge. Fear eddied in her clouds of betrayal, cold and stinging.

It stood Xlack’s hair on end. This was not the annoyingly sweet little girl he remembered. She never had to convince herself that she was beyond excited to see him, always teasing that they were destined to be together though she knew it would never happen. Their mothers had promised Xlack’s future daughter to Ject’s future son, so the mother of that daughter could not be Ject’s sister.

The Aalee he knew was ten, trying to grow up too fast, full of baseless dreams, and afraid of nothing.

She swung her feet, harsh glare on Messenger Vinva as he climbed the tree. “I said Ravi Ekymé is my hero.” Her sandals rained, and the Messenger jumped away, dismissing her with a shrug of his eyebrows. He was much more interested in the fact that, as he fell, Twi had Kinetically stolen back her weapon.

Rifo raised a hand. “I vote we leave her in the tree.”

“Aren’t ya heartless!” Lanox slapped Rifo’s shoulder and approached the twisted trunk. “I’ll help ya, little girl, like any decent person should.”

As she climbed, the would-be rescuee scooted further along the branch. By the time Lanox reached her, Aalee had wiggled into a lunge poorly disguised as a fall. Xlack’s Kinetics pushed on her belt to slow and direct her away from himself.

One set of toes alighted on the ground, then the other, her voice wheezy. “Thank you. Oh, thank you!” The back of one hand pressed against her forehead, and the other rose, bent like the neck of some posing bird. Then she threw both arms around his middle. “Oh, Ravi Ekymé, I saw my too-short life flash before my eyes!”

“You’d have lived,” he muttered.

This was more like Aalee—overdramatic and always trying to cling on him. Yet, the clouds and eddies remained. Were they his fault? Aliara had not known of his treachery, but Ject did. Had he told his sister? Now she feared and resented him.

“Where is your escort, Lady Aalee?” Aliara questioned, datapad in hand.

Aalee moved just enough to glare at her from the corner of her eye. “Messengers are so annoying. They’re not allowed to be fathers, but they act like paranoid parents.”

“Give us his name so we can call him.”

She buried her face in the front of Xlack’s jacket and pretended to bawl. “Oh, I was so terrified!”

Aliara stepped closer and stage whispered, “You should erase her memory.”

Aalee’s sobs vanished, and her glower pounced on the other Sereh. “Why?”

“Because he doesn’t want others to know he’s here, and you cannot keep a secret.”

“I can too keep a secret.” Aalee stomped with the beat of her words.

Aliara waved the claim aside. “Forgive me, but you have a reputation for spilling everything.”

Aalee’s clouds darkened, thickened, and bittered enough that Xlack couldn’t hold back a grimace.

She threw her nose in the air. “I spill just enough to make them think I tell them everything.”

“How you inspire confidence in your trustworthiness.” Aliara’s smirk was like a sunrise—thin but hinting at the brilliance of her amusement.

“Release me, Lady Aalee,” Xlack said, and when she didn’t, he met her gaze and repeated it as a suggestion.

Her arms fell limp at her sides, but she kept her chin against his stomach. Hands on her shoulders, he pushed her back and knelt to her height. Faith wallowed in her eyes, but despite it, she flinched, and fear sparked. It pinched his heart.

“Why are you here, really?”

She ducked her head, eyes fluttering and lips squeezed together.

“I’ll use another suggestion if I have to.”

She gasped, shoulders rising, and she stilled, breath held for several moments. Fear swirled faster, but her pretenses cracked. Slowly, they crumbled and fell away.

Her eyes jumped back to his face. “Ravi K’alaqk wants you to come to him.”

“You’re helping him? Why?”

She gave the smallest of shrugs. “He’s different. And he’s the emperor, and you’re supposed to do what the emperor wants. It sounds like a trap, but he won’t hurt you. He promised, and he doesn’t want to hurt you. I can tell.”

Doubt wormed within Xlack. Sereh were not taught to use their Talents as Aylata did, but nor were they uneducated. Fire Sereh had to learn how not to burn themselves, others, or the furniture. Mind Sereh like Aalee were taught to discern the desires of those around them. Had his mother said she sensed that K’alaqk didn’t want to hurt him, he would have believed her, but Aalee was so young, and K’alaqk was very skilled in deception.

“He said what he wants with us?”

“Us?” She peered around him at his foreign teammates, eyes narrowing and the corner of her mouth dropping sharply. “Is she really your lady of interest?”

He glanced at Twi. The Messenger had returned their weapons and now interrogated her about her proficiency with Kinetics.

Xlack grinned. “Not officially, but she’s amazing.”

Aalee huffed. “K’alaqk wants her, too. He told Defender Spycykle to kill the others, but you’re here now. You can take me back to my dad.”

He could, and he should. She was a lost, defenseless child, and he wanted to speak to her father anyway. It didn’t matter if the blabbermouth told her family he was there if he told them himself. In the meantime, she could spill what secrets she had learned from K’alaqk.

He stood and patted her on the head. “Alright, we’ll take you home to Threnian Station.”

The older Sereh cleared her throat, arms crossed and beads chiming as she cocked her hips. “Do you expect High Defender Sirvette to also keep your presence a secret?”

He hesitated. High Defenders reported directly to Refraction Leaders. Aliara Yayin would have to go out of her way to tell his father she had seen him, but High Defender Sirvette would have to deliberately omit that information.

With a mirthless smile, she waved at his thoughts. Her beads sounded like shattering glass. “Nothing good awaits you there, but we must all make our own choices.” She produced a tiny, clear cube from her pocket. “I received this in a package this morning with instructions to pass it to you should I see you. I thought it was a posthumous testament sort of thing, but since you said Ravi Sirvette lives…”

A message from Ject. Xlack reached for it, but Rifo snatched it first.

“What is it?” He stepped between Xlack and Aliara, rolling the esoteric box in his palm.

Aalee gaped up at him. “You’re the tallest person I’ve ever seen. What do you even eat?”

“Little girls who ask the wrong questions, probably.” He smirked, and while the sight of his teeth wasn’t as intimidating as Stevalok’s, the disconcerting flare of his slit nostrils was enough to send Aalee ducking behind Xlack. “Is no one going to explain what this is?”

Xlack called the box to his hand, but as he opened his mouth, Twi spoke the words he meant to say.

“It holds a message intended for a specific audience.” Regardless of her limp, she moved with feline grace as she, too, planted herself between them, trusting Rifo at her back. “Except for its size, it’s identical to one Sirvette left for me at a murder scene on Cinos.”

The syllables slipped from her tongue with a deceptive weightlessness, and Xlack swallowed.

He had already warned her, Mystis said in the med-center. He promised her revenge, then he nearly succeeded in killing her.

“That message played as soon as I touched the box. If this one is intended for you, and you hold it, why does it remain silent?”

“Maybe I’m not the trigger.” He tried to shrug, to exude the same nonchalance, but he might as well have been made of stone. Ject lived, but Xlack had only seen him for the briefest of moments, and doubt’s thorny rope coiled around his deepest self. He wanted the box to open—he wanted to see his friend—yet he didn’t. He didn’t want to see his friend threaten someone he loved.

He didn’t move as Twi took the cube, bare fingertips against its smooth surface. Nothing happened. She wasn’t the trigger either. His eyes narrowed in their crooked squint.

Twi turned the box over and gently probed its sides. “An engraving.” She handed it back. “What’s it say?”

Xlack pressed a thumb over the spot she indicated and found a shallow string of Nayatilix characters. The stone within him crumbled away, leaving a hollow, hungry pit. “Last words.”

“A suicide note?” Lanox guessed.

With great effort, he shook his head and turned to her. “No, it’s a clue.”

“Because he told ya long ago what his last words would be?”

“That would be weird, Lanox.”

“Weird is a good word to describe all of this.”

“It’s a funeral tradition.” Aliara stepped around Rifo, her Messenger at her side, ready the instant she needed a shield. “One speaks or inscribes the last profound thing the deceased said to them.”

Aalee’s arms wrapped around Xlack again, this time from behind. “Whose last words are we looking for?”

“Twi.” Xlack held the cube out to her, and she frowned. “What was the last thing you said to him?”

Aalee huffed, hands on hips. “She’s clearly not dead.”

“This is Ject’s way of saying she will be. Twi?”

She drew a shaky breath. “I intended to ask what he wanted, but I’m not sure I actually said anything. I wasn’t very lucid by the time he showed up.”

The pit within Xlack deepened, oozing a chill that dripped down his limbs. “Before we left Napix, then. Before I found you in the tunnels beneath the research facility. It doesn’t have to be the last thing you said, just words that would have stuck with him. Words he would remember you by.”

Twi looked away, and a hand rose to her brow as if to keep it from throbbing. Her eyes closed, lashes a dark fan against her pale cheeks—the shades of night and moonlight graced her despite the afternoon sun filtering through the orchard’s brittle foliage.

Her whisper wafted like a lullaby. “I told him my secrets are my own.”

The box lit up.

Xlack’s breath caught as Ject appeared. His hair was longer than he usually kept it, and exhaustion lent a puffiness to the bold lines that normally drew him, but he lived, and moved, and spoke.

“Secrets when guarded offer protection, for yourself and others. I understand that.”

Dust swirled in a soft breeze, pelting Xlack’s cheeks. It glittered as it passed through the image—proof that it was merely a hologram. He knew it was, but some part of him still wanted to grab his friend’s shoulders and shake sense into him.

“I cannot fault you for looking out for your own first. In fact, I’d find it odd if you didn’t. But you don’t need Xlack Ekymé, not like the Napix Empire does. So, just this once, I offer a trade: Come to the capitol building in the center of Kaitaetha District and bring him with you. Undo your brainwashing, and I will return all those taken from the Alliance. End.”

The hologram faded, but a negative of the image remained branded on Xlack’s eyes, still moving, still talking, asking the things Ject should have. There was no brainwashing to undo, and he didn’t need ransomed. If Ject had custody of those abducted, he should return them because they didn’t belong here.

By that merit, Xlack didn’t belong with the Adjuvants, and Ject would use that counterargument.

Aalee reached toward the phantom image. “Ravi K’alaqk spoke as if my brother was alive, but I thought he was just being philosophical.”

Xlack closed his fist around the cube, searching for what to say to her. She had believed Ject dead, and this wasn’t a great way to find out otherwise. But if her brother hadn’t told her of Xlack’s renegade status, who had? How had she ended up helping K’alaqk?

Twi’s voice, soft but determined, broke his reverie. “We’re going to this capitol he mentioned.”

“What? No!”

“I feel similarly,” Rifo said, an arm held in front of Xlack, “but Twi doesn’t do things without reason.” He settled a heavy look on her.

She acknowledged it with a nod. “We came here to recover our people and prevent future attacks, and that is precisely what he is offering. He wants to help you, Ekymé. You just have to tell him how.”

“Then I’ll meet him alone.”

“While we do what?”

He didn’t have another proposition, and she was right. They shouldn’t split up.

“We didn’t come here to prove our cowardice.” Touching her ear, she activated one of the two syses he had converted to work with the local networks. Rifo wore the other. “Let’s plot a route.”

Xlack still hesitated. “I want to hear what the High Defender has to say first, and that way, we don’t get Lady Aalee involved in whatever happens at Kaitaetha.”

“I can return Aalee to her father,” Aliara said, hands on the younger girl’s shoulders, “or keep her safe here.”

Aalee’s lips twisted in a sideways pucker, her pale brows nearly hiding in her eyelashes.

Twi sighed, silver eyes on him like chains. Like a harpoon. “Is meeting with this High Defender really any safer?”

For her, maybe. High Defender Sirvette hadn’t said he would kill her. The man was a follower, though, and fond of detailed rules. His reaction would depend on what Xlack’s father had already expressed on the matter.

Xlack had come to Aliara first to test out what they thought of him now—if there was any part of his reputation still salvageable. Apparently, there was. With it, he could ask for the High Defender’s support. He could request memory flashes of current affairs, and from there decide if he would go to his father, if he could rely on the strength of the Refraction Leaders.

Ject, on the other hand, seemed to be on the other side of the brewing civil war.

Aalee tore free and dashed toward the hills at the back of the orchard. “If we’re going to Kaitaetha, we have to take the tunnel train!”

The route was logical. Imura District’s islands connected to Zalerit’s smallest continent through natural tunnels that ran deep beneath the ocean. Several of them had speedy trains. But even if they were going, Aalee wasn’t going with them.

“Wait!” Xlack called, but she paid no heed.

They didn’t chase her. She would come back when she realized they wouldn’t follow.

But she didn’t. She faded into the deep shadows between the hills at the back of the orchard, and when she ducked into a small cave, even her life-signature vanished.

Xlack lurched forward, her name on his lips. Aalee was fond of jokes. That was all this was. Any moment now, she would jump out and laugh.

Seconds ticked by, and he stood in front of the rocky crack in the hillside. Even his sharp eyes picked up nothing but darkness within. His Kinetics concurred. Nothing waited beyond the entrance, not even dirt or warmth.

“It’s too odd,” Twi said, an arm barring his path.

He ducked beneath it and through the fissure. His senses had not lied. There was nothing, not even ground to stand on. He caught the ledge, but it crumbled between his fingers.

Twi’s hands wrapped his, delaying his fall, but with the connection, whatever had caused his touch to destroy the land traveled through her. The path beneath her turned to powder and poured into the void. He willed it to solidify, to form handholds, anything that could stop their plunge, but his influence was a whisper amid an unfamiliar roar.

***

Zalerit, the home of Sažka’s ancestors—the ones she looked like, anyway—was at once alien and familiar. She had never met someone so purely Zalerit that their hair grew in split rachis like feathers. Nor had she known anyone whose secondary eyes, while still smaller, were near in size to their first set and not practically blind. She had never seen a glow so bright.

These things were normal here, and she was still the foreigner.

Ject Sirvette wanted to avoid questions, so instead of staying in a city, they sheltered in a cave. Steaming, reedy pools dotted the floor, and water dripped from the ceiling. In here, one could forget the fat, fluffy snowflakes outside. Ateki slept soundly, curled next to one of the springs, but Sažka kept her eyes on the Aylata.

He stood in the mouth of the cave, the threshold of warm and cold, stare bouncing between his silent datapad and the city glistening in the valley below. He could have tracked down his friend, but he wanted Ekymé and the Adjuvants to come to him instead, on his chosen battleground. Sirvette had sent a message and expressed confidence they would come.

Sažka hoped they wouldn’t. In the meantime, she had to escape. Then she would have to avoid Kaitaetha’s Protector, a former classmate of her captor’s. Protector Fali Zundi was under suggestion to report to Sirvette, not that he knew it. He supposedly didn’t even remember he had met with them. She couldn’t shake the sight of the Protector’s glazed eyes as the suggestion took, of the too smooth way he had moved, how he had looked right through her when she wasn’t even invisible, all because Sirvette said she didn’t exist.

Ject Sirvette’s prowess was terrifying. If all Aylata were like him, she understood how Zalerit lost so long ago.

And here I am, an idiot he mistakes for a teammate.

She sat on a bumpy rock, trying to keep awake, though at least a full day had passed since she slept. With every blink, the insides of her eyelids displayed Teree’s betrayed look.

I’m telling, he had called.

What had he told their superiors? Would they believe she had truly betrayed them? Would Izeko? Would he do something stupid?

“Why?” Sirvette’s low voice slipped between her heartbeats, almost lost to the winter wind rushing past the entrance. “Why would she keep him?”

“Are you asking me?” Sažka looked up. His back was to her, as it had been for some time. Perhaps she could rush him from behind and…

Then what?

“It makes sense Twi would use Xlack to get away from here, but why keep him in Alliance Space? She might view him as a prize, but it’s stupid. She must realize we won’t let you have him.”

“Aylata don’t belong in Alliance Space.” She scowled. “Just like Aylata don’t belong on Zalerit.”

Sirvette turned toward her with the leanest of grins. “Aylata have been on Zalerit for a long time.”

She stood, fists clenched. “Centuries later, will you say the same of Alliance Space?”

“I see.” His lightless eyes slimmed. “You think Xlack is there as a forerunner, a spy, and that Aylata plan to take Alliance worlds like we did with Zalerit.”

“It fits. Why else would you hunt down those with the best chance of fighting back?”

“Because you stole the First Ravi.” He clipped the last syllable as if he debated finishing that sentence. As if there was something else he decided not to say.

Like an insect attracted to the light, she stepped toward him. “You don’t believe that’s the reason.”

The muscles along his jaw worked, and he drew a deep breath. “You think Xlack’s mission was to save Twi to gain her confidence and infiltrate her home?”

Though the question had a combative edge, it sounded genuine, as if Sirvette considered this a possibility. Denying herself another step forward, Sažka returned to her uncomfortable boulder. Ekymé was a spy, but he couldn’t have saved Twi merely as part of a ruse. He cared for her. He couldn’t have faked that for so long around so many Talented Tala.

Could it be like when Mystis played with her pawns? Ekymé could have been a piece in someone else’s plan and not even realized it.

“He helped Twi because he wanted to.” She weighed empty air in either hand. “He also takes advantage of the position he is in. How else would your troopers know exactly where to strike?”

Sirvette batted the notion down, shoulders against the uneven wall. “Defender Spycykle’s intel. He’s good at trudging up stuff like that. Besides, if Xlack was in on it, would he have let them get near Twi?”

She supposed not.

Spine sliding along the wall, he sat and produced a pair of rounded triangular cases from a pocket. He pulled the lid off one, releasing the scent of edibles, and Sažka’s stomach growled. She crossed her arms over her torso and glared at it. Even if he were to offer to share, she wouldn’t take any of the pinky-toe-sized meal gummies.

That’s what they are, she convinced herself, disgusting toes.

Her empty stomach didn’t believe her.

Seeking distraction, she spoke over its complaints. “Your Talent comes so easy to you, you can’t imagine what it’s like not to be able to work someone’s mind like a puppet master, but Twi is unskilled with her Mind Talents. She’s not capable of doing what you say she has.”

“You want me to believe Xlack willingly threw everything away for a stranger.” He faced the cave entrance, voice distorted by the slowly dissolving gummy bulging his cheek.

“What if he did?”

“I have to bring him back.” He sat so stiff. He could have been a tree watching the landscape shift, roots desperately holding his own patch of ground to an ancient standard. “I’ll return him, even if he hates me for it.”

Sažka looked away. Among the batch of weeds growing along the edge of the nearest pond lurked a short, soft-cased reed known to cause disorientation and lethargy. If only she could get this Aylata to eat it.

Sirvette popped another gummy into his mouth, and she imagined shoving the reed in with it, throwing all subterfuge aside and relying on brute strength.

Well, that’s not going to work.

He couldn’t expect her to be his ally, but this would be easier if he believed he was winning her over. She just had to make him feel that she understood and shared his goals.

“I get it.” She wrung the leafy reed between her fingers. “I would do the same for Izeko.”

Sirvette looked back at her, eyes wide at first, then narrowed. His mouth was an unchanging, thin line. “Don’t play with that plant. It’s a hallucinogen.”

She let the reed drop. Of course he recognized it.

She slouched, slid off the rock, and leaned her back against it. Steam curled above her face, the heat of the pond enticing. Maybe a tunnel hid in its depths, some swimmable passage that led out of this cave. She could dive into the pool.

And drown looking for something that only might exist.

Why did she dream up only the most ridiculous escape plans? The right way out of this loomed just beyond her fingertips. If only she could reach a little further, but the more she thought about it, the more the word ‘impossible’ scribbled itself across her mind.

Continued in chapter 27

Thank you for reading!

Impossible. Rogii ordered his hand to move, and it refused. Movement was impossible, and so was the refusal. So was how heavy the world had grown. Where was he, the surface of a star? That would explain the burning and maybe the headache.

After a hundred commands and pleas, his fingers twitched. Movement was possible, if sparing. Those fingers reported a surface nearly as soft and smooth as liquid.

The last place he remembered was the decagonal hall within the Truths’ portion of Moshee Spire. An Aylata Messenger had taunted and threatened him, then watched as Rogii fought off Absolutes. Rogii had collapsed on the glass floor, those secret-grabbing villains dead, his battoo smeared, a fraud for all to see.

Glass still surrounded him, echoic and overwhelming. Still in the Spire.

Sterile and metallic scents registered, followed by delicate beeping and low murmurs. Machines everywhere.

A med-center.

His eyes snapped open. The intense lights blinked off at his command. At least that worked. A modicum of relief soothed the tight sting in his core. How was his battoo?

His ’netics reported fresh paint, lines crisp in a way that no mere brush could attain. Someone with ’netics had reapplied it, someone so familiar with the pattern, they had done it almost perfectly.

As he adjusted the few thorns that were a cell short, long, or narrow, slender fingers entwined with his, accompanied by Sarana’s life-signature. The tightest coils in his chest loosened, and a sigh escaped.

Lyten sat somewhere beyond the foot of the med-bed, in the most ’netically convoluted spot in the room, per usual. “What happened?”

Rogii sat up just enough to see him cradled by a hovering lounge chair, feet propped on a panicking monitor and arms crossed. Haggard edges showed through his typical sly nonchalance. Why did he wear the brown, red, and gold armor of the Cinosal royal guard? If not for that, Rogii might not have seen him in the dimness.

“Relax,” Lyten said. He remained oddly still, as if it hurt to sit properly or move. “I fixed your battoo before I called the meds. Per’nyé changed you into the med-clothes so they wouldn’t see your real battoo.”

Acknowledging this with a slow blink, Rogii looked at his left hand—bandage-wrapped and numb. The stretchy gauze concealed both the battoo and the wound from the Absolute’s broken needle. A similar strap enveloped his right elbow.

He pictured Per’nyé hurriedly swathing his hand, deft fingers keeping the shadowed blob between his thumb and forefinger hidden from the wrong eyes. She was good under pressure, but he doubted she had barred all panic from her movements. Rogii’s death was her most acute and chronic fear.

“She is unharmed.” Not a question. Never a question. Of course she was unharmed, despite the last he had heard of her match. Even if he doubted, he would never voice it.

Lyten shrugged. “Still undefeated. She took over all the pawns when they got too close and won like usual. Narkom’s badly hurt, though, and will take time to recover.” He huffed. “If she’s to continue in the tournament, she needs a new teammate. The audience voted.”

Predictable. For years, blood-lusting spectators had clamored to see Rogii in the shymgo sphere alongside his amaraq.

“My father overruled them.”

“He’s undecided.” Lyten’s grin lacked any mirth. “Per’nyé’s with him now.”

Rogii scowled. She knew he hated the sport. She also wanted him in the sphere—a power trip, he’d chided her, with him blinded and relying completely on her. He would have to let her into his mind on a level that he did not want.

Lyten gave another shrug. “Look on the bright side: If you die in that sphere, your father might ban shymgo.”

“That bright side is grim.”

“Says the black-battooed heir who killed two Truths and mortally wounded a third. I don’t see a bright side in that one.”

Rogii didn’t either, breath catching. Two Truths dead. The other would testify against him. Why wasn’t he surrounded by waiting executioners?

Lyten chuckled, but darkness lurked in the sound. “They don’t know what happened. I was the first to stumble across you.”

“Those Absolutes would have killed us, Rogii,” Sarana said, standing at his side, voice as soft as quicksand. A bruise sullied her cheek, indigo against her russet skin and crimson battoo. Had she acquired that when he dropped her? As he held her? Sarana belonged on a pedestal, no one but Rogii allowed to touch her. “After it was over, the Aylata knelt alongside you, wiped at the paint on your face, and laughed.”

“He looked directly at the recorder and claimed your skirmish was entertaining.” Lyten spoke through his teeth. “He said you’ve got audacity, and they’ll work with you if you can prove yourself. They want you to give them a planet.”

“A planet?” Gravity abandoned Rogii. Or, since he didn’t move, perhaps it was just his senses. “A desolate space rock or one with citizens?”

“I’d give them a star and throw them in its depths.”

Though stiff and sluggish, Rogii pushed himself into a full sit. His vision swam, breaths too heavy. “Show me the footage.”

“I deleted it.”

Rogii’s scowl deepened. “Way to encourage the curious.”

“Not if you spin the right tale.”

Sarana’s fingers tightened around Rogii’s. “So, what do I say happened?”

Rogii forced another sigh as if that could clear the fog within him. Fragments of ideas lay scattered like a broken mirror, sharp edges winking, calling to their lost mates. He fit them together anew—a facsimile of truth.

“Which of the Absolutes survived?”

“The Tala,” Lyten answered.

The one who knew the most. The one who had violated his mind.

Sarana added, “They rushed her into surgery. She has yet to awaken.”

“She never will.” Rogii looked pointedly at Lyten, whose knife-like grin grew.

“Gives me a chance to try something.” Lyten’s feet found the floor, and he stood, lithe as a whip.

“Nothing stupid,” Rogii called to his back.

Lyten turned in the doorway, head tilted. “If I pull off a death suggestion, no one will dare call it stupid.”

No, but the chances of him succeeding were next to nil. So few Tala had ever accomplished this horrid trick that if Per’nyé had not proven she could kill with a thought—with side effects—Rogii would have believed the other accounts were overrated myth. Lyten was Cinosal—a mongrel whose Mind Talents came from a little Tala ancestry.

Reading Rogii’s disapproval, Lyten sneered. “I’ll master it, and I’ll turn it into a shout suggestion so when I track down the Aylata who killed Azin, they won’t stand a chance.”

“A shout suggestion is liable to kill the user.”

“Like I care.” A glare, fierce and heavy. Though Lyten’s Mind Talents were slight compared to Per’nyé’s, they were not to be discounted or underestimated. “I’m alive. My amaraq isn’t.”

“Why the costume? It’s torn and bloodied. Where were you?”

For a long moment, it seemed Lyten would not answer. Then, his gaze dropped, and he leaned like a broken crutch against the doorframe, staring into the middle distance. “The Adjuvants had Azin’s body. I recovered him.” Bitterness carried the words, a stone-faced pallbearer.

Silent strength stood as an answer from Rogii—not indifferent, but confident, as if all one’s hopes could be poured in and a panacea would pour out.

“He’s what saved you.” Lyten’s jaw worked, his fists clenching. “The Aylata used the same poison on Azin in a larger quantity. From that purer sample, our doctors formulated an antidote for you.”

Echoes of every cell’s isolation shivered through Rogii. How much worse had it been for Azin?

“That fails to explain your need to resemble a Cinosal royal guard.”

“When I set out, I didn’t know of the Aylata’s involvement. While Len and Rrosh led an attack on the main Adjuvant base, I suggested a Cinosal rep lure the Adjuvant leaders out and hid myself in the entourage. I was captured. I escaped, retrieved Azin, and rescued Len and Rrosh, who are still unconscious. When I learned Per’nyé was in another tournament, I came here.”

Only to find his hrausq leader nearly dead at the center of a most egregious scene.

Rogii rubbed a hand down the lower half of his face. “Do what you must, Lyten, but live.”

With a grunt, Lyten shoved off the doorframe and disappeared.

Sarana tugged on Rogii’s hand. “And me?”

“Come here.” He pulled her palm to his heart, and she followed willingly, legs folding over the side of the mattress. The kiss began before she landed, delicate as it was hungry, his other hand brushing her collarbone, neck, tangling in the pouf of curls on the back of her head.

“Kisses before lies,” she murmured against his lips as her arms wrapped over his shoulders, sleeves red like Tala blood. “You’re trembling, Rogii.”

He hated Truths, hated that their red touched her and was between them. He drew her closer so he couldn’t see it. “You’ll say we were attacked by Napix invaders right here in the Spire. Not even my father can ignore that.”

Aberrant had to keep up with the march of change or be trampled, and they couldn’t do that without acknowledging the Aylata were real and they were here.

Sarana withdrew, slender brows drawn over periwinkle eyes that glittered with what little light this small room possessed. “It will paint you as a hero, clever and merciful, attacked but setting aside resentment for the greater good.”

“A proper Knalcal, right?” He allowed a smirk, and she wiped it away with another kiss.

She still looked troubled. “How much does being high boss mean to you?”

He buried his face in the crook of her neck. “It’s priceless, being change’s agent.” His hands slid up those horribly stained sleeves. This wasn’t the first time he had considered ripping them. Sometimes he acted on that consideration. “There are so many reasons I should be dead, but I’m not, and I’d like to believe that’s for a reason, too.”

She cupped his jaw, long fingers curling behind his ears as she pushed him back and looked him in the eye. “Do you believe what the Aylata said about there being another heir?”

“He said there were two, Sarana. A specific number.”

“What changes if it’s truth?” She leaned her forehead against his. “Do we alert the heir hunter?”

Rogii closed his eyes, but that didn’t stop the flash of images—firsthand accounts collected by Tala Truths, stolen by Per’nyé, and given to him in pursuit of understanding. Heirs were rivals, but his siblings, nieces, and nephews had been massacred, twenty-eight of them and their hrausqs lured to one location and ambushed by Adjuvants. He had been eleven, too young to venture beyond the Spire’s walls without his mother’s approval.

Afterward, a survivor systematically slew the high boss’ remaining descendants in age order. Rogii, the youngest, had assumed himself the final target for years now.

He drew in a shaky breath. “The hunter knows. The other must be older than me. Likely well-guarded.”

Or at least more cautious than Rogii. Some stupid but loud part of him wanted an encounter with the heir hunter, to prove he could beat the man his siblings could not.

A familiar unease trickled from his core to the tips of his fingers, and he gripped Sarana tighter. She had described him once in this state as a fabric of plans and ambition, a castle of sand and salt built at the very edge of the tide. An heir could not ascend to high boss if others remained to challenge their claim. Tracking down someone who did not exist was an impossible feat, and Rogii would not have his future depend on its completion.

“We’ll tell no one. I want to know who and where this other heir is and how he survived before I release rumors that will devour me.”

“The curse of being so delicious.” She laughed, and he allowed her to push him down against the mattress as he stole another kiss. Her arms caged his ribs as she leaned over him. “Do you think your father knows? Perhaps his favorite survived.”

“Saká died before the massacre.” The only other child of his mother, his only full sibling.

Sarana’s eyes narrowed. “She disappeared before the massacre.”

“Three years old and eaten by pooffs, her emblem in one of the creatures’ bellies, her blood on their fur. Her amaraq, also very dead, was only partially consumed and easily identified.”

“You saw none of this evidence yourself. You weren’t born yet.”

He traced a thumb over Sarana’s platinum birthmarks, following the swirls entwined with her red battoo. “The database is curated by Truths.”

“Lies are not poison if we do not know they are lies.”

“I wish that were true.” He rolled, lips tracing a line up the side of her neck, but nothing else touched, a hairsbreadth hovering between them. The nearness, the desire, and the control filled him with an icy breed of heat, the kind that whispered of power. “If it is Saká, not even she can compete with the paradigm of her in Father’s mind.” He aligned his face with Sarana’s, drinking in the contrast of her skin against the pale sheets.

A line formed between her brows. “What if the Aylata deny the attack?”

“Too many questions, Sarana. Let them say whatever they want.” His forehead dropped to the hollow of her throat. “That’s why I have you.”

Her fingers slid through his hair, and she drew him back to her. There was no more talk of grand schemes.

* * *

Schemes were exhausting, Sažka concluded, whether a person was tangled in the plans of others or trying to come up with their own. She didn’t know how long she slept on the floor of the cavern, cocooned in humid warmth while snow blanketed the landscape outside. Light filtered through thick clouds at an evening angle as if bending down to peer into her refuge.

At some point, Ateki had curled up at her feet, and she gently extracted her calf from his embrace.

Ject Sirvette still sat in the entrance, rigid spine against the uneven wall and legs folded in front of him. If not for how his chin slumped against his chest, she might have thought him a statue, posture perfect even in sleep.

She stood, caution swathing every muscle.

No one else moved.

She trod softly across the slick slope of the cave floor.

Still no response besides her own accelerating pulse. It seemed too convenient, and she hesitated, chewing her lip as she contemplated the narrow path between Sirvette’s knees and the wall.

After a large breath for courage, she tiptoed past him, wincing with every footfall, sure its echo would be the sound of an Ier snapping open. He did not awaken, and she stepped safely into the fresh, frigid air of Kaitaetha Valley.

Now what?

To fly home, she would need a transport and the skills to pilot it. Unfortunately, she lacked the former and possessed only a paltry excuse for the latter. She was stuck on this planet, unless...

She hurried down the rocky hillside. The stupid snow—thigh high in some spots—would make her trail easy to follow, but Sirvette expected the traitor Aylata and Twi’s team to show up at Kaitaetha’s capitol building. Sažka would have to find them first.

She had plenty of ground to cover and panicked over every noise from behind as she trudged through a shriveled forest. Eight times out of ten, it was just a bird curious of her presence. Once, it was still a bird but one large enough to have carried her off. Fortunately, dinner already hung in its talons. The other time, it was nothing, and she second-guessed herself in an endless cycle. Too sensitive. Not observant enough. There really was nothing. But what if there was?

The only thoughts weighty enough to stop that spiral weren’t much better. Sažka had spent much of her young life in the Library at Mumir, and she preferred her inner landscape be as orderly. Everything had its proper filing: Aylata were evil villains. They killed Zalerit/Magni. They represented the opposite of freedom.

Ject Sirvette had kidnapped—not killed—her. He wasn’t good, but he didn’t fit on the shelf she had prepared for him. He interacted with Ateki almost like they were friends or siblings. He protected this preteen para-lightcurver, chided, teased, and listened to him, though she doubted he would ever call Ateki a friend aloud. His friends were people like Xlack Ekymé, and he would do anything for them.

He was a reflection of Izeko in that regard—a twisted, still mostly evil reflection. She hated to admit that this shade of loyalty was even a little endearing.

She concentrated on the icy mud instead, then on the river winding along the valley’s nadir and the speckling of city lights that straddled it. They danced in an odd, distorted way. Had Sirvette not confiscated her schema-specs, they would have shown her the dome forcefield encasing the settlement. Without them, she smacked into it like a bird flying into a clean window.

It sealed out unwanted weather, she supposed with a sigh, watching melted snow trickle in nearly invisible cascades down the overgrown bubble. It did the same for unwanted guests.

As she schlepped through the slush along the border, she pictured herself on the other side of that clear wall, where the path was clean and the temperature and humidity bowed to the whims of a button. She sealed her Adapt as much as she could, but without a helmet, her nose and ears fell victim to the wind’s bite.

When she finally found an entrance, it was guarded. Vehicles flowed through a checkpoint, and even had she been brave enough to leap onto one of them, surely the field allowing them to pass also served as a scanner, or worse, was selective. Running into the dome at walking pace had hurt enough. At this speed, it would be lethal.

Before, they had ridden in an autopiloted, spherical transport bejeweled with a thousand mirrors, as Sirvette claimed all taxies were. If she found another of those, would they still stop her? Could she say she had returned on Ravi Sirvette’s business?

She located one in a raised holding area to the side of the entrance. She lacked the credentials to activate the elevator, but the nearby ladder didn’t require any authorization.

Luck and Tragedy had collaborated to paint the scene atop the platform. Aside from the taxies in their berths, a scattering of other vehicles underwent inspection in a row of booths. Two barges took up half these stalls, spilling lines of Zalerits in plain uniforms. Some wore scowls or smiles of excitement, but the majority touted indifference, compliant with the directions of patrolling wardens.

Keeping low, Sažka slinked behind the cement cones arrayed at the platform’s edge. Several were chipped, cracked, or crumbled, fallen pieces rattling as a vehicle took off too low overhead. Its exhaust left her with shriveled lungs and an overwhelming need to cough.

“Why did Nobleman Athikil say he wanted this large purchase shipped to his summer residence again?”

Sažka stilled, color draining in a familiar sensation, like water streaming down her skin. Her hand disappeared against the broken cone.

“Come on, they’re just Zalerits. Do you really have to peek at every one of them? The steward will have my hide if we’re late.”

“Then you should have come earlier.”

A purchase? Some noblemen had bought these people? Righteous fury climbed up Sažka’s throat, buoying her upright like a hot air balloon. She shouldn’t interfere. There was nothing she could do in the long run except get herself killed. She should just use this opportunity to slip into the city.

She closed her eyes and breathed. She would be the hero later, once they were inside, once she had found Twi’s team and figured out how to get off this world.

Still invisible, she darted between the cones, skirted the row of those waiting to be inspected, and ducked into the closer barge. Benches lined the narrow interior, so close, those sitting across from one another would inevitably knock knees. A small ledge above the door offered a safe place to wait and not get trampled while the travelers reloaded.

It was not an ideal seat. She almost fell when the engine started, then again when they lurched forward, and a third time as the barge turned, presumably to glide through the city entrance. The solid walls didn’t provide a view to confirm that.

Windows would have helped her anticipate changes in direction and speed, if nothing else. A sudden stop threw her off her ledge, and since the occupants of the benches were packed shoulder to shoulder, there was nowhere to land besides on someone.

She rolled off them quickly and scrambled behind a row of ankles, but a scream still cut above the road noise. Her hip throbbed. The boy it had struck—a child of not even a decade—held the back of his head and wailed.

“What’s his problem?” a gray man standing in front of the door bellowed.

Sažka was a scholar with a particular interest in ancient Zalerit languages, but she recognized none of the boy’s words.

“Speak Nayatilix,” the gray man ordered.

“He doesn’t know it,” a woman said, vowels so thick, Sažka barely understood her. The woman cradled the boy, and he sobbed into her shoulder.

“He’d better shut up and learn quick, then.” A whip danced in the gray man’s hand.

Sažka closed her eyes and covered her ears, but that didn’t filter out the whip’s crack or the boy’s shriek. When the strap came down a second time, she was on her feet, toes wedged between others on opposite benches.

She caught the third strike and yanked. The warden fell, mouth agape and face darkening. Others shied away from him as best they could.

“I’ve got a fully invisible one back here,” he said to his wrist as he rose. He dropped the whip and pulled a pistol from within his jacket. “Para-lightcurver most likely. I’ll have to put it down.” He aimed for the whip’s hovering tip. If she dropped it, he might fire into the cowering mass of people.

If only I had ’netic Talents at all, I could make it hover where no one was.

Instead, she charged, careful to keep lower than his aim. The whip looped over his wrist, and she pulled again. Bullets scorched a wavy line on the wall, ending at the door. He faced it, and she was behind him. Still tangled with his arm, the strap wrapped his throat. Sažka held its handle in a double-handed grip over her shoulder. The nape of her neck pressed against his, and her feet shoved off the wall.

With a wheezy bellow, he slammed into the door. She twisted, arms around him and hand sharing his grip on the pistol. Five shots, five holes in the door’s seal. Breath left her as he crushed her against the opposite wall. She dropped, rolled, and threw herself at the door.

It gave, and the wind took her, gifting her to the ground in a spray of gravel beneath luminous fog. She didn’t know if the barge would stop and return for her. She didn’t know what the warden would do to the others, where they were going, or how to help them, and the uncertainty was a dagger of ice in her core. She couldn’t stay here, though. At the very least, they would alert the authorities.

She crawled below the fog until she reached the side of the road. At some point, her lavender glow had returned, so she slid back into invisibility before she hauled herself over a hashed fence and hurried unseen down a wide sidewalk as fast as her complaining legs would carry her.

At least the temperature was pleasant, though the air was unnaturally still and had an awkward processed scent. She studied the city and its denizens with a scholarly eye. The architecture almost fit with the meticulous illustrations she had seen in Mumir’s library. How often she had pictured herself in those sketches, fingers trailing along stone bricks cut in jigsaw designs and perfectly pieced together with no mortar.

Textbooks claimed Zalerit buildings were ‘meant to cast no shroud,’ walls porous, constructions squat and far apart, but the buildings here were tall and looming. Deep shadows lurked between them, and she feared to touch anything lest someone notice even an invisible hand.

After ten minutes at a brisk pace, she wondered if it would be better to let herself be seen. The warden had mistaken her for a para-lightcurver because of her invisibility. More specifically, because her clothes were invisible, too. Any Zalerit could be invisible if they stripped.

Streets and walkways ran at all levels, most of them narrow. In one of these alleys, she poured purple back into her skin. The outfit she had worn to see the Knalcal queen seemed too fancy compared to the simple tunics worn by Zalerits in the crowd here, despite the mud sullying her lacy hems. If anyone asked, her story would remain the same: She was here on Ravi Sirvette’s business. It wouldn’t be too odd for a high-ranking Aylata’s slave to be fancily dressed, would it?

The deeper she ventured into the city, the more the crowd thickened, until personal space vanished. Barricades funneled pedestrians into slender side passages, some narrower than a shoulder’s width. Beyond the barriers, wide streets ringed an important-looking building garnished with geometric masonry. That had to be the capitol. She had to get to it, no matter the parade that had commandeered the wide avenue.

She drained her color again and climbed over the barricade, calculating a route through the musicians and baton-spinning dancers, though her eyes kept returning to the enormous creature centered in the procession. Its shoulders rose level with the fifth-story windows. Each of its four legs were as thick as Sažka, Izeko, and two more standing back to back. Bark-like flakes covered its round, flat feet and equally thick tail.

A gray boy perched upon its withers, controlling the beast with musical whistles and taps of his bare toes. She wouldn’t have guessed the monster could feel anything so gentle through the paler flakes that lined its spine like overlapping armor plates or through the bubbling black hide protecting the rest of its bulk. Silvery lines marked the edges of its scales, as if liquid mercury might pour through its cracked skin.

Beneath boney ridges, its white eyes boasted black-diamond pupils. They focused on her.

The creature stopped and roared. It was a haunting, hollow sound like the yawn of an empty tomb.

It surged toward her. The boy on its hackles fell, and she lost sight of him. Official-looking people charged toward the monster, powering up tasers that were larger than they were. The crowd panicked, and Sažka joined them, but no matter how zagged her path and no matter her invisibility, its eyes remained fixed on her.

An official crashed into her, and she pulled into a backward somersault, now colored pastel blue.

After a shout of surprise, the official grabbed her. “So, it’s you that set the mykuro off. And after we went through the trouble of asking the local Protector to stay away.”

“I-I’m here on Ravi Sirvette’s business.”

“Lucky he didn’t come himself.” The official shoved her toward the mykuro. “These beasts love Magni. Love destroying them, anyway.”

She tried to circumvent him, but he blocked her with the taser’s length. A blue bolt connected with the ground, warning her not to get too close.

“Go on, then, placate him so we can move on.”

You mean go and die so I don’t ruin your day any more.

She faced the mykuro, the street’s radiant fog swirling around her boots. The monster’s black fangs gleamed as its maw reached for her. Toes sinking in gravel, she sprinted toward it, dove, slid, rolled.

Beneath its towering chest, she heard the snap of jaws before its rocket-like growl drowned out all other sound. It shuffled its feet, and she danced away from its tree-like appendages. If she could get on its back, leap through a window, and run to the top of the building, would she be safe then?

The beast spun, jaws crashing under its own side. Its tail lashed the capitol, and masonry rained as dust and shattered brick. Its mouth opened, following her further beneath its belly. It spun, and sunlight shone upon her in the gentlest caress before the tail plowed into her.

Everything cracked. She flew and landed on her back. The green dot of the sky—or maybe it was her shoulder—was the only constant. Everything else flipped and twirled like a kaleidoscope. Her own voice screamed as if from a distance. Black teeth filled her view, then darkness.

Continued in chapter 28

Thank you for reading!

The last time Twi was in this situation, it ended with a monster barging through the wall. Memories of what happened afterward crowded her vision and stole her senses: Sep wrapped like a decaying corpse, sitting on the edge of a med-bed. He told Rifo to make Dr. Qcoice go away because she purposefully made his bandages extra itchy.

“Itchy bandages are the least of your problems,” Dr. Qcoice said. “If you didn’t do such stupid things, you wouldn’t have to wear them.”

After she stormed out, Rifo asked Sep why he claimed to have loosed a deadly rikor just because he wanted to make a wetsphere out of its acidic saliva.

Sep’s only response was a glare, his bandaged arms resting limply on his lap. Lying across from him on a med-bed of her own, Twi barely saw him through drug- and pain-glazed eyes.

Rifo sounded sullen. “They know ya lied. That’s why they’re angry.”

“It’s the principle. Authority figures are always telling me to do this or that, as if any decision I make can’t possibly work out.”

Twi attempted to sit up. “As your hrausq leader, am I included in that?”

“You’re different. You allow me a semblance of control over my own life.”

She slid off the bed unexpectedly, and only years of practice falling allowed her to alight on her toes and rise despite how her head swam. He went rigid as a tree as she brushed his bangs aside and inspected his face, now dotted with tiny hematite scars. The impermanent freckles would fade in a few weeks. Beneath the itchy bandages, his arms and hands had gotten the worst of the rikor’s dousing.

“I thank you for saving me,” she intoned, “but I do not thank your methods.”

He half smirked. “Rifo tamed the beast with his creepy stare.”

Rifo put on a cheery face as if that alone could wipe away all that was wrong with the world. “He couldn’t think of a proper plan and wouldn’t wait for someone else to, too distraught at the loss of someone so gorgeous.”

They both glared at him. Anything between them was between them and not everyone else. Sep did think Twi beautiful, and he did feel a strong attraction to her. He had told her as much the day before, but that wasn’t all he had said. The fact that everyone always assumed he would like her made those feelings annoy him, as if it were some prophecy and he had no choice.

Twi’s glare softened, making way for a sly grin. “If Sep thinks I’m gorgeous, I’d prefer to hear him say it.” Her gaze swiveled to him.

He mirrored her grin. “Unfortunately, danger shares that opinion, and I’m hard-pressed to keep its hands off you. How did you get in that pit?”

A quest for information had led her to an Aberrant stronghold near Vlavaran, and she had captured her first glimpse at the Aberrant database. Her imprisonment in a shaft lined with shattered glass had been Rogii Moshee’s fault, but never would she reveal that to Sep. The one time she had, he went after the Aberrant heir and barely made it home.

She kissed his forehead lightly. “Gravity.”

Memories of Sep always chose the most inconvenient moments to well up and burst through her subconscious. Gravity had struck again, and this time there was no Sep to break her free.

Circumstances differed in other ways, too. She had no idea how far she had fallen this time. The floor had absorbed her momentum, denting like soft padding before spitting her back out. Now, it seemed as smooth and solid as her oha’s hull, and its frigid, stinging signature was familiar in the worst way.

Six months ago, when the leaders had told her to kill Ekymé and she had followed him aboard the Isike, a mechett had attacked her. The machine’s metal had parted like water before her weapon, undamaged like the surface of a pond. Her ’netics had been unable to influence it because the metal had a life-signature of its own.

That signature surrounded her now like a downpour, everything else blurred and shrouded.

She stood and snapped open her ju’wack, hoping against seeing an army of those eerie machines. The sight of an empty, small square greeted her, lined in the silver, living metal. It stretched higher than she could see or feel.

Were Lanox and Rifo still at the top, and where had Ekymé gone? Could they hear her if she called? Or had she been teleported elsewhere like when in Aylata Tower? Her stomach flipflopped.

“Lanox! Are you there?” She sent a broadcast whisper with the shout. Whispers traveled further, but Lanox didn’t always catch them.

Only her own voice echoed back to her. The metal rippled, and images flashed of a rikor crashing through it like when Sep had come for her in the shaft. The confusion and panic of that moment danced anew in her heart. She attracted disaster. She was not someone to be desired as a leader or teammate. She was the opposite of good luck.

Again, memories came unbidden.

Aboard an Aberrant transport bound for Kelis, they had curled in a storage space beneath a bench. There had been barely enough room for one person, let alone two.

Sep whispered, “Danger shares my fascination with you. We’re both idiots.”

“It’s a good thing we’re invincible,” Twi replied with a challenging smile.

“Or just fortunate. One kiss for luck?”

She pecked him on the forehead as she usually did, but he shook his head.

“That doesn’t count,” he said, and as she protested, he covered her mouth with his and kissed her until she got over her shock enough to kiss him back.

When he pulled away, she studied his face in the dimness, searching for any hint of his thoughts. He leaned back against the wall, the blue of his steady eyes nearly black. They were the same jeweled color as the emblem on his wrist, something only partially in her view as his hand tangled in her braids. So clear. Knalcal eyes were never that clear. They were always patterned or clouded in some way.

He waited for her to say something, but he had stolen her breath.

“Sep, I can’t breathe.”

He smirked. “Want to kiss me again?”

She did, rationalizing that two kisses would make double the luck.

Her kiss brought no luck, only tragedy. Only death.

An object landed on her shoulder, warm, alive, and strong. She whirled, ju’wack a crimson blur that halted shy of a familiar face.

“Ekymé?”

She should have recognized his signature—like a song she had heard on repeat for the last six months. It had an unrelenting beat, thunder and shrills but never silence. It was conspicuous at best and overwhelming at worst, and here, the living metal devoured and spit it out, stretched and torn.

“You’re crying,” he said, voice softer than the sound of his hand moving through the air. It stopped, thumb extended but not touching her. The trail of tears down her left cheek fled to him.

She stepped back, shoulders hitting the wall in this small space. “It was a trap all along.”

“Are you alright?”

She held back the “of course” that jumped to her lips. Though the animate metal had cushioned her fall, it didn’t know to take extra care with her back and ankle. She was standing, and he could see it. That was answer enough.

“We can worry about being alright once we get out of here”—her eyes ran over the mirror-like walls. Her ju’wack bathed it all in red—“wherever here is.”

Her attention drifted in the last direction left to darkness. They had dropped from above, and that was the only way out. Yet, their ’netics couldn’t cling to the walls, thanks to the metal. No materials waited to be shaped into tools aside from what they had on their person and the air they breathed.

Rogii Moshee could walk on air, hardening it into invisible stepping stones. She and Rogii had more in common than either would ever admit.

“No, Twi, that’s not a good—”

She ran and jumped, determination pushing her. Six steps propelled her up the wall before gravity denied her more, but she saw what she needed to. Another six steps would have brought her to a metal ceiling. Either it had closed after their fall, or they had been teleported after all.

She soared into a slow flip, collecting pillars of air beneath the soles of her boots. They found no traction, no matter how hard she kicked. The ground rushed at her. She wouldn’t land on her feet. Would the metal cushion her as it had before? She dropped her ju’wack, but no clattered landing found her ears.

The crunch of Sep’s bones echoed louder than the wind of her plummet.

Together, her team could get out of anything.

Sep wasn’t coming.

Arms wrapped her. Her feet tapped the floor, still trying to run, pounding the same spot over and over.

Ekymé held her tighter. “Calm, Twi. I’m here. We’re in this together.”

His heart pounded against her back, strong and steady, like the complex symphony of his signature. His Ier hovered behind him, and its silver light flooded the space more than her ju’wack had. A myriad of minute calculations kept it aloft same as many more kept him standing. Each one was a droplet. His influence was a tepid mist beating against her skin, and the Ier’s signature swam through it like impossibly cold breath. It stroked the scar on her back, promising it would have a second taste of her.

She stiffened. “If the metal is thin enough, we can cut through it.”

“It’s morphometal, Twi. Even if our weapons don’t bounce off it, it’ll repair itself before we can both get through.”

She wouldn’t leave him behind, and he wouldn’t leave her. Wherever there was one Adjuvant, there was always another. Were Lanox and Rifo still together? Could a teleporter steal Ekymé away, even with his arms around her like this?

She leaned back into his warm chest. It blocked out the Ier’s whispered promises, and his signature was better than the metal’s strange resonance. The weight of his arms kept her grounded in the present.

I betray Sep, allowing Ekymé to embrace me like this.

Her teacher’s words at the gala reinforced that guilt. Do not let yourself get attached to him.

He spoke into her ear. “We have to be smart about this. We can’t waste our energy or breath.”

He thinks we’re sealed in, that this is all the air we have.

She turned, searching his face. Lit in profile, his pyrite pallor glowed. Normally, his monochrome shades hid the edges of his features in a vague, smudged blend, but here the contrasts drew sharp, disjointed shapes. The whisps of greenish chrysolite in his eyes could have been flames. Nothing about it should have been comforting.

“We’ll find a way out, I promise.” The words wafted over her cheeks.

She kissed him. No logic drew her lips to his or said if she pulled hard enough, she could breathe him in. It was wild, reckless stupidity that tangled her hands in his jacket and dove in when his mouth parted. A tingle rose from every touch of his fingers. Her sense had gone, but her senses had not, and they wanted more.

She stood on her toes, fingers combing into the small curls on the rear of his neck. His hold tightened and lifted her.

Her back spasmed. Her knees buckled, and she was stone. He didn’t let her fall, but now his touch burned, and she pushed him away, shins clacking on the metal floor. Her stomach churned. What had she done?

“I’m sorry.”

He knelt, forehead to hers. “Don’t be.”

“It’s not safe to love me, Ekymé.” The tears were back, hot and ridiculous as they dripped from her lashes.

“Safety is a myth.” His fingers wove into her braids and pulled her back to him.

Her hands found his jawline, his throat, the collar of his shirt. His kisses trailed a similar path on her, each starting slow as if he expected it to be denied. She didn’t stop him and didn’t stop his hands from gliding lower or hauling her onto his lap. This was want and greed, not wisdom. This would get one or both of them killed, but she shoved thought aside and took his lips again.

The Ier dropped and closed as he fell back. Darkness pounced on them. Its false weight clung to her, whispering she would never see again, and she almost understood the Zalerit fear of it.

She scrambled off Ekymé, and when he followed her, hands on her hips and a burning kiss landing on her temple, she said, “No.”

He paused, retreated a hairsbreadth in the dark, and cleared his throat. His voice was still strained. “No?”

“No.”

He respected it, pulling to the opposite corner of the square. Frustration fizzled and shimmered, a visible cloud to her Mind Talents even in the dark. Spikes of hurt and regret prickled its hollows as he recovered the Ier and turned it back on. Longing glazed his eyes.

She closed hers. “Does the metal have a weakness?”

He swallowed hard. “Electricity.”

She nodded, careful not to meet his gaze as she opened her eyes. She would too easily fall into him again. So, she focused on the objects produced from the pouches on his belt: a rope, his datapad, a zap-cord. She sat in her corner and tried not to waste the air as he fiddled these things into something they could use.

Her thoughts stampeded. She snatched at a few and toyed with them like a feline with prey. Was this trap K’alaqk’s or Sirvette’s? Whose did she prefer it be?

“I want the future to be not like the past,” Atok Quanko had told her when she first awoke in Aylata Tower. “I want it to be better.”

He had called himself an instrument for change, one piece in an orchestra conducted by K’alaqk. He had said she would be even louder. Could she help bring much-needed change to Napix?

Ekymé stood and tried his makeshift taser on the wall. The metal wilted away from its arachnid coils of lightning. Solid rock lay beyond it. The same rested beneath the floor.

With sparse, efficient words, they determined the ceiling had the best chance of not being lined with rock, and Ekymé set about modifying his device to fly. The first attempt launched it only half as high as he could have thrown it.

Twi returned to her thoughts. When they had arrived in Lakol District, Ekymé had shared a frantic surge of memories. He had told her to find his friend, Ject Sirvette—he meant safety—but also to avoid him.

Somehow, despite all impossibilities, Sirvette lived up to that conflicting description. He had tried multiple times to kill her. He had also protected her. She couldn’t explain it, but in the deepest corner of her heart, she understood it. Twi herself was a queen of contradictions, after all.

Ekymé tried the taser-grapnel again. It sizzled somewhere above, then returned, trailing smoke, and Twi welcomed the acrid stench as a distraction from the sweet, grassy taste that lingered on her lips.

One kiss for luck.

She should not have kissed him. She should not have kissed him twice.

The grapnel flew, trailing rope like a comet’s tail. It found a home, and Ekymé’s elation thundered like a supernova. She tried not to look at him, but the reflective walls offered a view of every angle.

She snagged another thought and played with it, aloud this time. “This reflective environment, do you think it would be a dream or nightmare to a lightcurver?”

Ekymé paused in testing the rope and swallowed after a silent moment. “I guess a nightmare.”

Her head tilted as if allowing ball bearings to roll into place. Would it be like Mind Talents in a crowd or a hall of glass to her ’netics?

“The hoard of reflections would be overwhelming?”

He gave his full weight to the rope. “Probably. In legends, heroes always take light away, except…” One hand above the other, he climbed. “I don’t want to talk about monsters.”

She pulled her feet in and rose. “The lightcurvers or the so-called heroes who killed them?”

“Lightcurvers are monsters. They can’t even talk without hissing.”

“That makes them monsters?”

His Ier traveled with him, far enough above now that darkness nudged her from all sides.

He was a chandelier clothed in black and gray. “It makes them creepy.”

Twi could think of much creepier things than lisps, but she took the rope in silence.

What little hearts are stuffed with often remains untouchable.

He reached the hole in the ceiling. Faint coils of lightning nibbled at its edges but shied at his touch. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed?” he whispered to himself.

She abandoned him to his thoughts and concentrated on scaling the space between them despite her aches. Gripping the rope with her legs as she reached above wasn’t so bad. Neither was supporting that status quo with her arms. Yet, every finger’s breadth of upward progress demanded a thousand screams from her lower back, as if she tore the flesh from it over and over.

Ekymé offered her a hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, she accepted it, staring into the shadows beyond him. Her ’netic senses described a vast space with countless stone bridges. Glass stairs lined distant, marble walls, room after room waiting behind them.

“We must have been relocated several times as we fell,” he said, Ier in hand and held high to inspect an arched bridge above. “This is Mount Gulik. It’s just across the bay from where we were, but it’s too far for a single teleportation.”

“The inside of a mountain is so recognizable?”

“We’re in Zaranik’s palace.”

Zaranik, the most influential man on Zalerit when the Napix arrived. They termed him a king, though his own never called him that, even when he led their defense.

“I thought it would have been destroyed.”

With a jump, Xlack caught scrollwork along the bridge’s underside and swung onto its top. “Drin preferred not to destroy when he could collect. The first Ravida even lived here for a time. The third had it buried.”

Again, he volunteered to help her up, and she took the assistance. Worms with needles for noses slithered beneath her scars. She had no strength to waste on pride.

His touch lingered this time, and she wished she didn’t want it to. She hoped he didn’t see it.

She met his gaze. “They would deign to live in a monster’s home?”

Letting go of her hand, he headed toward a glistening staircase, face carefully blank. “You know the story of Sibsi Uanik?”

Twi did, in fragmented pieces of quotes collected from the Aberrant database.

She is beautiful, but no one sees her, only my rendition of her.

I am beautiful, but no one sees me, the face behind her mask.

—Sibsi Uanik, the Lady Lightcurver, about Arique Smirazi, Empress of Napix

She followed. “A little.”

“Emperor Drin was infatuated with Arique Smirazi, a Sereh he had kept at court for years to ensure her brothers’ loyalty.” He glanced back, pointing with his eyes at the weakened spots in a glass step. “During the conquest of Zalerit, all the Smirazi died when they sided with Vozin, but instead of killing Lady Arique, Drin made her his empress.”

Carefully placing her toes between webs of near-invisible cracks, Twi picked up the story. “But she had switched with Sibsi, daughter of Uana and Zaranik.”

Ekymé nodded. “This was her birthplace, and she convinced Drin to live here.” Another glance shot over his shoulder and caught on her. “He would do anything for Lady Arique.”

Twi fought not to look away, to narrow her stare and not fall into his. “Despite how she hissed.”

He stopped and turned to face her. Strained glass chimed beneath his heels. “No recordings of her still exist. If she hissed, someone should have noticed, so maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was that good at lying.”

“The deceit kept her alive.” Twi ducked around him, heedless of the drop or the lack of rail separating her from it. “Adjuvants are similar. We survive by hiding. Are we monsters?”

He swallowed, otherwise motionless. Why did she goad him like this, daring him to realize the universe would deem them enemies? 

Because loving me will destroy him. I cannot let him love me.

Then why couldn’t she continue up the stairs? What held her in place, facing him, with the gravity of a star?

Memories bled in: Sep’s arms around her. She belonged there, his heart tapping her back, his signature tiptoeing over her skin.

Blood streamed down those arms, cobalt mixed with Kelis green. His icy aroma fell beneath the insectoids’ burnt metallic stench. His bones crunched. His weight pressed upon her, face against her neck. No breaths stirred her hair.

The arms around her were Ekymé’s, longer, grayer, more hesitant. The blood remained. The weight remained. The stillness remained, and it hummed.

Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

‘It’s not real!’ Ekymé’s voice. But he was dead, wasn’t he?

How had he died? These were his dripping arms. What cut him? Why would his blood be blue and green?

She raised a hand and touched the gray sleeve. It was dry. The blood didn’t smear. It wasn’t real, though the arm was. It gripped her too tightly. She couldn’t breathe.

‘Sorry, but you jumped off the edge.’

She hadn’t, had she? He had grabbed her for no reason. She should hurt him lest he decide that was acceptable. It was not. It absolutely was not.

“Let me go.” She said it. Her voice scraped through her throat, and her mouth shaped the words, but she didn’t hear it. So, she screamed it, again and again, but no matter how loud, no matter how her throat tore, her ears said there was no sound. Everything was normal. Everything was okay, except that Ekymé refused to release her.

‘My embrace is torture, I know, and I’m sorry, but I won’t let you jump.’

Why would she jump off the glass staircase into never-ending darkness? Why would he think that?

Were they running? No, she wasn’t. She flew. It wouldn’t matter if she jumped. She could fly. She just had to prove it to him.

Glass shattered. The stone floor was hard beneath her hip, her shoulder, her cheek. She rolled, righted herself, and came face to face with him. Blood streamed from his brow, gray as a sea beneath starlight. She touched it, and it spilled over the crooked scar she had received on Kelis, washing away its silver brilliance with leaden ink.

“You’re bleeding.” Again, she knew she said it, but her hearing claimed she didn’t.

His lips moved in silence. “Am I?”

He’s faking it. He’s lying. Make him pay for that.

His hands cupped her ears, but even without them, she couldn’t avert her gaze from his. Chrysolite lightning cracked over the gray and black seas of his eyes. His voice thundered. ‘Don’t listen to them. This is how felere hunt.’

Felere are only Magni myths. He’s tricking me again. Hurt him.

Why would he, though? They were a team. What did he want?

Me, my body, more than I’m willing to give.

His arms surrounded her again, pressing her against his chest as he struggled to rise. ‘Stop helping them. I’m trying to shield you.’

But they didn’t exist. It was just an excuse to touch her like all the times she had made up a reason to touch Sep.

Or maybe they did. When he fell, this time, he didn’t get up. The whispers had been a trickle, a mildly uncomfortable mist. Now, they were a deluge of hail.

Continued in chapter 29

Thank you for reading!

Anger was rain to Mind Talents, its many flavors as unique as each storm: sometimes a mist, others a torrent. Sometimes tepid, others frozen slivers slicing beneath the skin.

This was the latter and ironic since the city’s shield was supposed to keep it temperate while snow fell outside. That same snow had erased Sažka’s trail. Ject had come here on a hunch—not that he expected her to try to go anywhere else. If she had any hope of rescue, she had to meet up with other Adjuvants, and she knew they would come to Kaitaetha’s capitol building.

No, the guess was that she would make it past the city’s shield and checkpoints without him.

Something pinched deep in his chest, but he wouldn’t admit it was anything close to amazement. How could a Zalerit amaze him? It was disappointment, he told himself as he weaved against the current of the panicking crowd. She had come so far only to get scooped up in the jowls of an irrationally angry mykuro.

He preferred mykuro in bite-sized pieces on a plate. Those ones didn’t swing their tail and knock masonry off state buildings. Protector Zundi would have quite the mess.

That twinge in his chest twisted tighter. He was an idiot. Mykuro hated Magni. Once it saw him, it would stop at nothing to destroy him. Yet, it would have to see him if he would snare its gaze.

The beast’s jaw worked, and its head thrashed. Spicy frustration burned in the anger’s icy rain. Sažka must have been dodging the teeth. He had been in her position once. Three to four extra points protruded from the inner side of each tooth, crisscrossing in rows of lethal X’s. He had fought to stay equidistant from them and an eager esophagus, all while wrestling with a tongue that was larger than him and had the texture of a desert plant.

Unnoticed, he caught a scale on its front foot and climbed. It creaked like a brittle tree limb, thick and rough like bark. The softer scales above offered less traction. His feet slipped once, twice. He wouldn’t reach the creature’s head in time.

He closed his eyes—anger’s blizzard clouded his vision anyway, unaffected by his blinks. A kanaber’s hilt fit into his palm, thumb swiping the laser blade on. It stabbed into the mykuro’s leg.

“Notice me, you overgrown lump of lard!”

To it, he was less than an insect. The kanaber cut, but it drew no blood. It wasn’t long enough to penetrate the beast’s thick scales. He kept stabbing, kept shouting, and spread his Mental fingers into the snow. The ice speared his bones, but he ignored it, catching flakes and piecing them together.

This wasn’t sapient thought. Every edge glistened like a blade, simple but strong, predictable but wild, with the arms of an ocean that wished to embrace him forever.

He let it. That was how one defeated a larger enemy. That was what he had learned from the winged vulpine felere, the Mind Talent master hunters. Don’t fight the tide. Join it, become it, then turn it into something unexpected.

The anger, the frustration, the tiny pricks of pain—all were still ice, but they no longer swirled freely. They formed chains connecting his every bone to this beast.

He yanked, and the mykuro’s head swiveled toward him. He leapt onto its snout. His hand fit between two of the sensitive ear holes atop the animal’s muzzle, and velvet skin wrinkled beneath his fingers.

“Open.”

Boiling air geysered from nostril slits beside his knees, smelling of brimstone.

He locked his teeth and dug his nails into the velvet. “Open!”

The beast’s jaw hinged, and its tongue flopped. Foamy drool oozed between its incisors and drenched the gravel street. Sažka fell amid one of these streams, and the luminous fog rippled away from her. Several seconds passed before she rolled into her hands and knees, coughed, and wretched.

A glance revealed torn clothes and plenty of abrasions but nothing too serious. Ject couldn’t spare a longer look. The full weight of this beast’s will careened down a single track, and if he had any chance of reining it in, his whole self had to stand within that narrow focus. Every distraction stole a piece of him, lightening him and uprooting him a little more. He was a tree facing down a tempest and surrounded by a flock of woodgnawer birds.

Silky awe wrapped his limbs, and adulation popped on his tongue like juicy berries. The crowd had returned to watch this Aylata save them.

He shied from the press of their gazes. They knew he was Aylata, but had any of them recognized him?

One of the chains unraveled, and the others snapped taut with an awful keen. The sound poured from his throat in a ragged, distant way. He planted his inner feet, wincing from the strain, and sunk.

The outside world vanished, then returned.

Something stood on his nose—a too-large nose whose sniffs birthed gales. Crouched boots came into focus, topped by a cloaked and masked figure. The darkness of its stone-chiseled eyes captured all light.

It was like looking in a mirror, except in this version, unknown colors waltzed over him. One tinted the sky and cast its pallor onto everything.

He flinched, and both bodies responded. Weight pressed against his haunches, and stone cracked. No, not just his haunches, his tail. He lowered it safely, folded his forelegs beneath his ribs, and brought his belly to the ground.

The crowd cheered, and warmth bubbled in his chest. It raced up his throat—both throats—head thrown back as a roar smashed the air. Ject’s smaller body fell between his brows, barely hanging on.

As the cry faded into the rumble of the crowd, one voice cut above all others. “You did it, Ravi Sirvette!”

A hundred mouths repeated the name, and it spread like dye in a clear pond. Hope and curiosity tinted the reverence already pounding at him from all sides. The club had grown thorns, and they leaked a thousand whispers.

“Ravi Sirvette? Did Ravi Sirvette save us? Did he save that para-lightcurver?”

Ateki, you idiot.

How could he stop it? How many memories would he have to wipe?

The chains tore from his hands. The mykuro’s head swung, and Ject flew. This body was so light, so tiny. How could it be all he had?

Gravity pulled on it anyway, and an open maw waited below.

He spread his arms and directed his dive, tucking between the beat’s nostrils. He hit its stubby, plated neck with a crunch, breath gone.

He hoped everyone—Ateki especially—had the sense to get as far from here as possible.

Protector Zundi leapt out of the sky, sparking trident in hand. With the sound of thunder, the electromass stabbed into the mykuro’s withers. Plains of muscle seized beneath Ject, then softened, threatening to engulf him like a well-used mattress.

He stood, unsure if the word on his tongue was one of gratitude or rebuke. It evaporated anyway as the crowd rippled and parted to allow High Defender Qem Sirvette into the square.

His Messenger subordinate grabbed Ateki. “This must be the para-lightcurver they reported.”

“Nah, pretty sure it’s this one,” a second Messenger called. He dragged Sažka toward the others.

Zundi scowled at the crumbled building fronts. “Sure did cause a lot of damage.” He slid down the mykuro’s side and tossed the electromass at an official. As he stomped toward Ateki, the platinum tendrils of his Ier stretched and curved, filling in an invisible mold. He raised the weapon, cutting the air with the cry of a forlorn gale.

“Don’t.” A whisper. Not loud enough. Not good enough. Ject tumbled off the beast, feet lost in the street’s swirling fog and barely holding him.

This wasn’t Ateki’s fault. Not even Sažka was to blame, or the mykuro. Ject shouldn’t have brought them here.

He ripped the electromass from the official and hurled it end-over-end at Zundi. “I said don’t.”

He immediately knew the mistake. The vague instruction sank into the minds around him, each taking a piece of him with it. He couldn’t breathe. Blood filled his mouth, hot and metallic.

His teachers always warned of the inherent danger of shout suggestions.

Never attempt one unless your will is stronger than the sum of all those present.

On top of that, the nature of this cast was inside-out, an intention to not do the thing commanded, and he left it in its most vague form. All the interpretations flooded back at him.

Don't breathe. Don't run. Don’t speak. Don't stand.

His next sprinting stride didn't hold, and he fell as if all ground had vanished. Distant arms caught him, spindly but unbreakable.

Why would he want to fight them?

Oh, right, they would carry him to his father and back into the role everyone else chose for him. He dug his toes into the gravel, but they dragged him along undeterred.

The High Defender’s short, middling-gray waves of hair shone like tin in the slanted sunbeams through the city’s shield. His small eyes widened as they took in the sight of his oldest son—the Ravi, the one saddled with all the grandest expectations, the one that never looked anything his father.

As Ject opened his mouth, blood leaked down the side of his chin. “Don’t touch the Zalerits. They’re mine.”

* * *

Mine.

The thought buzzed, squealed, and droned on overlapping repeat as vulpine figures converged on Ekymé. Wings flapped, pushing others aside. Claws slashed, and slender jaws snapped.

Twi joined in, throwing herself over his limp body.

Mine.

Was he hers, though? She elbowed and kneed her competitors, the memory of his kisses burning across her skin. She had pushed him away.

My fault. To want me is to invite danger’s attention.

A ghostly, sideways glow fought solid pools of shadow as bare fangs dropped to Ekymé’s neck. Twi kicked the creature, and it clung to her boot. She slammed it against the wall, and it stuck, wings unfurling as it scrambled higher, then dove over her.

Her jacket tore under the frenzied swipes of a dozen paws as her arms wrapped Ekymé. Her skin split even easier, blood hot and sticky inside her sleeves as she stood. She screamed at the felere, though she didn’t understand her own words.

Perked ears, skinny snouts, curved tails—all covered in chrysolite feathers. These vulpines had once been high on Magni’s food chain, though legends claimed they were large enough to ride, unlike these knee-high pipsqueaks.

They breathe invisible flame that incites madness, those same legends said. She never thought they meant Mind Talents.

Tepid breath filled her ear. “Tell me you missed me.”

She whirled, and the cruel, sunken set of Lorm Spycykle’s features filled her view no matter how many steps she scrambled back. Her spine hit the wall, Ekymé held to her front like a ragdoll, his heels moaning against the stone and glass floor.

Nothing had a signature—not the walls, not the body in her embrace, not the supposedly extinct predators, and not the monster panting her name.

“Navaria Twi, this couldn’t be more perfect.”

We have very different versions of perfect.

It had to be an illusion, a nightmare conjured by the felere. Still no signature registered, but fingers squeezed her throat. If it was an illusion, what trapped the air in her shriveling lungs? Forced nightmares always had some tell, some thread that could be pulled to unravel the whole.

She couldn’t find it. Her chest burned, and needles threaded her back, expanding into daggers—a warning of the Ier in Spycykle’s hand and exactly what it could do.

“Let’s not allow him to get between us.” Spycykle swept Ekymé out of her arms.

The smack of flesh on stone echoed, fading beneath yips, hisses, and the whoosh of wings as the felere resumed their scuffle for the biggest piece of the prey. Twi fought the urge to cover her ears.

Don’t acknowledge it. Interacting with an illusion lets it deeper in your mind.

She couldn’t sit here either. The felere were real, as were the cuts on her skin. She couldn’t see the seams between reality and illusion, but she could try to turn it on its creators. She pulled on the image of Spycykle, folded its edges in jagged creases, and threw it at every nudge on her mind.

‘Danger. Great danger. Flee while you can.’

A few vulpine heads turned to her, and warm amusement seeped through the cracked mortar of her defenses.

“Trying to tell my felere something?” Spycykle cackled. “They’re my minions, well-trained residents of my palace.”

The truth of that floated like oil on the surface of their shallow minds. He was dangerous, but that made him a good leader. His presence always meant the possibility of food for the strongest.

He was no illusion. So, why the lack of signatures?

The felere know my ’netics are an advantage. They’re blocking my senses. That’s the illusion.

Spycykle lined her cheek with his, the Ier’s light drowning her other side. “I hoped for a rematch, but you’re making this too easy, Navaria.”

She gripped his wrist and twisted it as she dropped. “You don’t get to call me by my first name.” Her good ankle hooked into the back of his knee and launched her to the edge of the stair.

Faceplant into the wall. That would be perfect.

His stumble proved too brief, righting in a pivot. He hummed. “That’s more like it. I planned to fight Ekymé while he protected you from the felere, but I’m happier it worked out this way.” He leveled a pistol at the center of the writhing mass of feathers. “How much will you protect him?”

His finger curled around the trigger, and Twi flew. The shot’s ping filled her ears, impossibly louder than the thwack of her weapon’s red strands slicing through the darkness. Dull gray tendrils laced through her ju’wack and turned it aside, but she captured his arm again, shoving the pistol’s aim into the void above.

The weapon heeded her call, meeting her palm as she sent her ju’wack arcing into the stone behind him. It took the tangled Ier with it, sizzling and roaring. When all fell still, Spycykle stood spine against the wall, arms spread, the pistol’s barrel pressed into the underside of his chin.

“Tell the felere to retreat.”

He laughed. “You’ll have to show off for me a little more. Let’s see that Aberrant blood in you.”

She flinched, and the ju’wack fell. “What do you know about that?”

“A lot.” Spycykle swung the knotted weapons, and she ducked.

No, focus. I don’t have time to wheedle curiosities out of him.

She rolled to her feet and danced around his swipes, calling her ju’wack, though it didn’t come. Her ankle screamed with every change in direction. The pistol blazed against her palm, daring her to use it. An Aberrant would.

She was Adjuvant, no matter what her mother was.

The Ier spun. She dove under one end, then sprang into a backflip over his shoulder, pointed toes parting the pack of felere and landing on either side of Ekymé’s hips.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

The pistol clattered on the floor as she scooped up Ekymé and ran, but the felere wouldn’t relinquish their prey. Bodies, claws, and teeth slammed into her from all directions. Her heel landed only halfway on the stair, and another shove toppled her into open air. She grabbed tails and feathers, legs wrapping torsos, and somehow all the flapping wings slowed their fall.

It took an eternity, but the ground reclaimed them with an unforgiving fist. Felere squealed beneath her, their pain a thousand swords through her skull. Another pounced on her chest, not that she had any breath the landing hadn’t already taken. She rolled and kicked over and over. This was making too much noise. Spycykle would find them despite the darkness.

Her foot grazed a snout, and jaws clamped down on it, parting boot and flesh like gourmet cheese. A hoarse cry tore through her, and her free leg desperately hammered her captor. It let go with a yelp, but others took its place. She cradled her injured ankle just as she had six months ago when the fire door shattered it.

She tried to conjure images of easier prey, to believe these quick meals were nearby and shove the thought at the felere, but these half-woven suggestions vanished in mud of disbelief.

Where was Ekymé? When had she dropped him? He lived, the raging pulse of his life-signature like an echo in a blizzard, lost among the avalanche of intrusive thoughts.

You don’t like him. You don’t want him. Sit still. Let us help you.

Lies. They were lies.

You pushed him away.

To protect him.

He doesn’t want your protection.

She found and gathered him to her, but she couldn’t rise. His forehead pressed into the crook of her neck, hair matted with drying blood, gashes still weeping as she crawled and fought. She was numb, brain issuing commands but refusing reports for fear of bad news.

Spycykle caught up, Ier in one hand, her ju’wack in the other, drenching the space in pale red. Distant walls glittered faintly, etched with scenes of long ago. A cool breeze chilled her sweat and prickled her skin, hissing against the laser staves as Spycykle swung. It was a signal. The felere backed off, huffing their disagreement.

Twi curled over Ekymé, face buried in his ashen curls, breath held as she ordered her heart to slow. No matter what the whispers said, she had to fight. They were not invincible. No one was. If she did nothing, they would die, but as long as she moved, she had a chance.

‘Calm. Think. Wait. Observe.’

When Spycykle stood over them, bundled staves roaring their disapproval of each other’s touch and aimed to stab down, Twi called her weapon. It met her hand as she propelled into the air. It batted the Ier away as her kick connected with Spycykle’s shoulder.

Her hands greeted the ground, arms folding, then uncoiling as she vaulted to her feet, ju’wack across her front. The Ier smashed into it, and she dropped into a backward crouch. Dull gray tendrils swept a finger’s breadth above her face, and she leapt after them.

Ju’wack again parried Ier as she caught his forearm and pivoted into a handstand. Her back bent over his head, heel crashing into his nape and confirming what she suspected. Morphometal armor hid beneath his jacket. Its weight slowed him, but it would keep her weapons from reaching his skin. If she aimed for his face, would it react like Adapt?

He whirled with another downward chop, and she deflected it, weapon above her head as her ankle gave out. Red tendrils sliced at Spycykle’s shins, and he jumped, Ier descending with his full weight. The ju’wack swiveled vertical, and the impact drove it into the floor like a nail.

The weapons were laced again, howling like a midnight storm. Spycykle’s reeling pulled Twi to her feet. A spin and a twist on her part separated the staves, but her ankle couldn’t hold her.

Why does it have to be like this again?

Another blow sent her staggering. Her back hit a wall, and its icy chill crawled across her skin. The breeze was stronger here, oversweet like decaying flowers. She slapped the stone, ’netics boring into it, and dust flew into a cloud. It descended on Spycykle and layered into stiff rock.

He laughed, Ier smacking ju’wack harder, pressing her against the wall. The dust fell, then rose again. She shoved at its façade on Spycykle, but he was too heavy for her to budge.

He leaned over their crossed weapons. “Too bad you ran from Aylata Tower. K’alaqk would have protected you.” He planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek.

She gagged. A stone struck his ear, leaving a bloody streak. In the ju’wack’s light, it shone red like a Zalerit’s.

“Show me more,” he crooned, pressing against her everywhere the staves weren’t.

Instinct screamed for her to fight, but the whispers were louder. They shoved everything else into a distant corner. Why did any of it matter? If she turned off the ju’wack, she could escape. The Ier would fulfill its promise to cleave her in two.

She would die. The dead didn’t worry. They didn’t fail. They didn’t constantly remember those already lost. They were beyond Danger’s reach.

‘I’m sorry, Ekymé. I think I did love you.’

She closed her weapon.

Continued in chapter 30

Thank you for reading!

A Zalerit proverb claimed one had no need of weapons when in a lover’s embrace—no weapon beyond wit and whispered breaths.

The irony amused Atok. The proverb’s authors intended no allusion to whispers, literal weapons in a Mind Aylata’s arsenal. Yet, between those gifted with this type of Talent, romantic embraces involved more than physical touch.

He carefully kept to his own head as he traversed a corridor in the new Aylata Tower, all too aware of Lady Evimé at his side. Alcoves lined the walls, each with a metal cast of a clan symbol—stacked rectangles for Ekymé, four wings for K’alaqk, an abstract Ier surrounded by eight shattered stars for Quanko.

Atok’s surname was only three generations old, a blip on the timeline compared to those with whom it kept company. Revel was kind to include it in the display.

Evimé stopped before it, splashed in the cold mist of surprise. She reached for his hand, but he tucked it behind him. Her empty grasp hovered long enough for him to regret his resolve, an apology bubbling on the back of his tongue, but she retracted it and fondled the engagement pendant through her left ear. Its Blamooka fire stones glowed, the same shape as the artwork.

It will be her name, too. She is engaged to my brother.

When she stood near Ponruk, did his blood race like this? It must. How could it not? Yet, the idea birthed envy, a twisted, shriveled sprout that split at every touch of logic’s wind. He wanted every world to acknowledge the thrill that was Evimé Clin’s presence, and at the same time, he wanted it to be unique to him.

He swiveled forward, feet pointed toward the guest quarters he had asked the Tower computer to secretly prepare at the end of this hall. These thoughts were a delusion of destiny and exclusivity. He knew better, yet…

“Why are you ashamed of me?”

He flinched at her words, so quiet yet so sharp. Not ‘are you ashamed.’ ‘Why are you ashamed,’ with no doubt to the shame’s existence.

Swallowing his first objection, he turned to her, hands locked around each other behind his back. “What reasons lead you to the conclusion that I am?”

“You are free to roam this Tower, and if I doubted that, this”—she swept a hand at the metallic rendering of Ier and stars more than twice her height—“testifies to your acceptance. It can represent no one else whom the faux emperor would honor.”

He held back all retorts. Revel K’alaqk had been chosen by the Ravida and was therefore as valid as Kys the First had been. He was better even. When crowned, Kys the First had not even known how to read, and Revel could read much more than words. However, telling Evimé what she should believe would not win her, and this was not about her political alignment. Not yet.

She continued. “So, it is not yourself you wish to hide by skulking through these basement halls on alert for anyone’s notice. You want not to be seen with me.”

He wanted nothing more than to tell everyone she was his, but his gaze cut to the engagement pendant.

“If you want me not, Atok, you should not have asked me to stay.” She reached out to him again, and though she did not touch him, fingers a handspan from his jaw, her mind did. The Mental caress had the texture of cream and the strength of the tide. It rewarded thoughts of forward movement with slick, warm bursts of euphoria. Notions of flight impaled themselves upon blades of flame and agony.

It was not a suggestion per se, this subtle art passed from mother to daughter. It was a tenuous offering, as weak as an overextended hand, but it promised happiness—or at least pleasure—to those who reached for it.

His feet followed its summons and brought him to her, cheek leaning into her touch. She flowed only one step with the advance, then her spine pressed against the Quanko art, denying further retreat.

In a voice so quiet, it may only have been the distorted echoes of that tap, she asked, “Beneath the weeping tree in Kikari Station’s gardens on the day of my debut, you remember?”

“Our first kiss.” When he had thought he would be allowed to ask for her.

Sereh were often betrothed by the end of their debut gala. High Lady Clin had not accepted any proposals for her daughter that evening because she expected an offer from Grand Lady Quanko that never came.

Until it did, apparently, but for the wrong son.

“You told me you loved me. Do you still?” She pushed off the representation of his name and tilted against him, her softness and warmth like clouds and daylight—such uncapturable things, yet here they were, personified and tangible.

His hand met hers on his cheek, slid up her arm, tangled in her sleeve, tugged her closer. She was the afternoon sky, and he was an ocean, waves curling across the border between them.

As she tilted her head to accept the deepening kiss, the engagement pendant chimed. The stones’ glow highlighted the ample curve of her cheek, throat, shoulder, the bulge where her pale Skaelao skin met the dark velvet of her low-cut top. His hand followed that line in reverse order, fingers fanning behind her neck and thumb brushing her jaw. Like weight added to a scale, the gesture inverted her tilt and hid the accursed jewelry from his sight.

It was not meant to come off easily, yet he would not leave it. A tug, a twist—each gained a hair’s worth of progress in unraveling the metal knots and laces. With each, he provided a distraction via lips, breath, a press, a squeeze, or a touch only in their minds.

With a growl, she rose onto the tips of her toes—taller than him—and he rewarded her with greed. Tighter, faster, fiercer, deeper. The emotion was a raging river to their Mental senses—cool, strong, and hungry. It was also acidic.

His shoulders hit the wall of the alcove.

Sweet kisses and sweeter whispers, the poets said.

Nothing about this was sweet.

His left hand splayed across her lower back, holding her to him, when the pendant came free in his right. She gasped, and though he chased that breath, she ducked and pounced on the stolen jewels before they could disappear in his pocket.

She pried at his fist. “I need that.”

“To fall back on when I fail?”

She stilled. “It is a sign of my obedience to my mother.”

“It is a sign of your lack of trust in me.”

“I do trust you, Atok.” Yet, she did not let go.

“Show me.”

“Then kiss me again.” Her hands fell from his, and she studied his face, faintly shaded eyes burning with even fainter chrysolite and the coals of resolve. “Kiss me, and I will wear it as a sign of your promise, forged in the fire of my blood.”

So he did, slowly, as he wrapped a whisper in amusement. ‘The fire of your blood. You have not your father’s Fire Talents.’

‘I have been told it matters not what Talent a Sereh possesses, only the ones she carries.’

It mattered to Atok, though, that she shared his Talent. That she could touch him both outside and in. That he could share these sentiments with her without a word, and he did.

She responded with silken pride and an engulfing Mental caress.

It collapsed as another’s whisper fell into his mind. ‘Atok.’

‘Not now.’ His fingers crawled through Evimé’s ringlets.

‘You will be teleported here in three seconds,’ Revel said. ‘Consider that a warning.’

Atok broke from Evimé. “Computer, n—”

Darkness and tearing. Smashing and light. This room sat high in the Tower, one wall formed of windows. Evening shaded the cloudless sky, and shadows pooled in Reiceilako Canyon. A loft in the corner boasted the throne from the emperor’s antechamber back in Kobolast, plush with lyoko fur. Revel K’alaqk balanced on the edge of its cushion.

Atok glared at him. “The next time the computer does that, it breaks.”

“An idle threat,” she said, voice echoing. “My reach is greater than yours.”

Nothing was beyond the reach of an intuitive Watcher, but he let it go, noting the room’s other two occupants. High Defender Bril Dekkom stood at the bottom of the loft’s stairs, a large, older man with fog-bright eyes, a crooked scar between them, and a reputation for silence. Per usual, his trusted second, Defender Lioden Nyoki, lurked at his side, a shadow made of glowers.

An odd tension hung in the air, untouched by Revel’s usual calm façade. Sorrow locked around him like steel, tethers of trust taut and fraying.

“What happened?” Atok asked.

Revel rose. “Spycykle has found some disturbing evidence against you.”

And you would believe Spycykle over me?

He knew better than to say it. Spycykle’s tips were always accurate and perfectly timed. Dread hatched in Atok’s deepest bones. The palace courtyard and sparring princes flashed in his mind. Sarqii had tried to warn the others.

Revel’s words fell like boulders and guillotine blades. “You and I discovered that Princes Ontz, Sarqii, and Chyr were killed by death suggestion. Likely Emperor Gera Kys as well.”

A tremor ran through Atok. He had an idea where this headed and no excuse to stop it.

“Yet you knew that,” Revel continued. “Those death suggestions were yours.”

Chyr’s smile. Reluctance like sludge as you slip into the boy’s mind. You don’t want to do this. The palace’s grand chamber glitters through Chyr’s eyes, so much sharper than your own view. Tugging. Ripping. Pain. Darkness.

Atok held his mask in place though unease slithered between every cell. He knew the next argument: Whoever killed the royal family likely also killed the Ravida.

“You do not deny it, so why, Atok?”

He swallowed, hands rigid at his sides. “I swore never to tell.”

“To whom?”

“I will not tell that either.”

Revel strode to the stairs, his layered emperor’s robe open and billowing like wings of ink. “So you hid it from me, pretended to help me search, but you already knew.”

Atok’s mask cracked, allowing a tremor in his cheek, his lip. “Not everything.”

“Did you kill the Ravida?”

“No!”

Revel halted, scrutiny a spearhead on his gaze. Atok fought every flight instinct. He was a worm on a hook, wiggling in vain. The fish Revel wanted would not come for this kind of bait.

See the truth, friend, or at least see the lack of deceit and ask not further. You will not like the answers.

Though soft, Revel’s voice stroked the walls, and they repeated it. “Do you know who killed the Ravida?”

A scream cut through the room.

Atok whirled. Near the door centered in the wall opposite the windows, Evimé thrashed in the arms of Reiceilako District’s Protector, Lemlan Kiqkion.

“Release her.” The suggestion bubbled from Atok’s throat, one part command, nine parts growl.

The Protector’s hold unraveled, and Evimé dropped, the click of her heeled shoes echoing louder than her gasp. Atok extended a hand toward her, but Kiqkion grabbed her arm.

The Protector’s gaze lanced past him and set on Revel. “Let one Skaelao in, and spies breed like rebalo.”

“Lady Evimé Clin is a Sereh, and you will not touch her.” Atok placed a hand over Kiqkion’s—a promise. If that grasp did not retreat, multiple bones would break.

Kiqkion’s grip tightened.

Revel’s hand clasped Atok’s shoulder, and the raw flesh hidden there writhed, recalling the electric caress of that Partah’s weapon just before he had omitted Evimé’s arrival when asked.

He wrenched at Kiqkion’s wrist.

Revel hauled him back. “You will hand over your Ier to be tested against the Ravida’s wounds.”

Atok stilled, an ice dagger of fear through every joint. “You know I did not—”

“I cannot leave any doubt or mystery in this.” Revel let him go, and it took everything Atok had not to sink to his knees.

“If it was me, what then?” So weak. So hoarse. Invisible hands strangled him. “I know what fate he decreed for me.” In a rote move, his Ier slid into his hand.

Attack.

Kiqkion’s intention slammed into him before the Protector moved. Atok dodged, but Defender Nyoki was there. A shove brought him to Kiqkion, so Atok planted his left heel and poured his momentum into a right-footed sweep. Kiqkion flew back. Airborne and upside-down, Nyoki caught Atok’s shin and slammed both feet into his shoulder.

He collapsed, breath gone, and chased Nyoki’s ankles off his chest with an arm. His unopened Ier clattered on the unfinished floor’s padding, beyond his reach.

“Still,” Evimé suggested.

It lasted an instant, but that was enough for him to topple the Defender and scrabble at those Mental strings himself. Nyoki knew better than to meet his gaze, and the only pieces of his mind Atok could reach were half-frozen slush—they stung to the touch and, while seeming solid, flowed between his fingers.

Nyoki’s body was just as fluidic. Legs encircled Atok’s waist, and arms wrapped his neck, squeezing the life out of him.

Kiqkion aimed a flaming kick at his stomach, and Atok rolled. The blow reverberated through Nyoki, strong enough to hurt even through this living shield. The Defender’s silent pain was a second blow, like a metallic rasp against Atok’s teeth.

Kiqkion grabbed Atok’s arm and hauled them up, a pistol in hand. Atok kicked the weapon, and Kiqkion yelped. His pain added to Nyoki’s, phantoms of those broken fingers echoing in Atok’s hands.

He twisted free of Nyoki and let his feet slide from under him, arms up to protect his head from Kiqkion’s foot and flames. The kick hooked around an elbow and jerked it aside as Kiqkion’s vice of a grip clamped down on the other. They spun like dancers at a ball in fast-forward. Atok’s feet scraped the floor to no avail, smoke trailing from his sleeve.

When they stopped, a cold, hard barrel drew a perfect circle between his lower ribs. It fired.

Evimé’s scream drowned out any other sound. Through barely open, barely focused eyes, Atok found her.

“Make them stop,” she pled, clinging to Revel’s arm. “Please make them stop!”

Stop. He could not stop. They would kill him, and these secrets would die with him as they should. As he had vowed they would.

Prince Sarqii steps toward the Ravida, but the entirety of his memory sits in your hands. With needles of his own fear, you unknit them. He can no longer walk, cannot stand, cannot breathe, and neither can you.

Atok’s heel met Nyoki’s hip. The circle dropped away from his ribs, but the acid in his veins remained as Kiqkion yanked him into another spin. His arm wrenched behind him.

He crashed into Nyoki. One arm slithered over his shoulder and resumed crushing his throat. Another curved around his side and aimed a kanaber at his heart.

“Halt.” Revel’s suggestion this time, infinitely stronger.

For a beat, no one moved, all eyes on their emperor. Annoyance simmered in Nyoki, pungent like sunbaked carrion. The kanaber’s point hovered a finger’s breadth from Atok’s chest. His free hand on Nyoki’s wrist might as well have been trying to push the wall.

As if a statue at the base of the stairs, High Defender Dekkom had not moved except that now he held Evimé’s arms locked behind her. Tears streaked the hand covering her mouth.

The dormant square of Atok’s Ier vanished into Revel’s pocket as he stopped before them, hand extended in demand of the kanaber. “You shot him. What was in that dart?”

A dart, not a bullet. A drug. It rode in his blood and set the border of his body and mind ablaze. He knew this drug.

Ridduxe, the worst punishment he had ever received. It stripped away his Talent as if ripping off a limb and repeated the process second by second. Nyoki’s pain was gone, as was Kiqkion’s. It was all his own.

Nyoki deactivated the laser knife, but its sleeping hilt remained pointed at Atok’s heart. “You can’t continue sparing him. The kanaber would be kinder, really.”

Revel’s brows drew together. “My whisper does not reach him. Did you dose him with Ridduxe?”

“The modified version we use on our Alliance targets.” Nyoki shook his head, and Atok’s hand fell from his wrist. He couldn’t feel where it was, only that it was on fire despite the lack of visible flames. “It’ll kill him, but it’ll take a while as it eats him from the inside out.”

Somewhere behind them, Kiqkion guffawed in approval. The emotion should have skittered across the back of his mind like insect feet. It should have smelled of boiling broth, sounded like a distant keen, or shone like morning’s first rays. Instead, Atok hovered in a sea of pain. With every heartbeat, its waves washed over his head.

“Give him the antidote,” Revel ordered.

Nyoki remained stationary. Atok’s skull throbbed, and bile rose. Revel was in control only on the surface, his hold on the world oiled by information, and he sorely lacked that in these recent months. Atok sagged in the Defender’s arms.

Please, at least take Evimé away. She should not watch this.

From his previous experience with Ridduxe, he knew he would not be able to hold back his screams. She should not have to watch him die, but especially not like that.

He would not die like that.

Atok ordered his hand to return to Nyoki’s.

“The Ravida is dead, and whether Atok cooperates or not, he has information I need. Give him the antidote.”

It took several attempts, but finally the kanaber’s hilt burned beneath his palm. He tugged it closer.

“If you let him beneath your defenses with a memory flash, you’ll be the next victim.”

The faint, distorted voice did not understand how Revel’s Talents worked. Revel could take whatever memory he wanted with no lowering of defenses involved.

The hilt pressed against his chest. His thumb fumbled over Nyoki’s for a position on the toggle. A swallow, one last breath, and a confession. “I killed the princes. On the Ravida’s order.”

* * *

Following orders kept one alive if not sane. Rifo always did his best to follow the plan. More than that, he made sure he knew all branches of the plan before they set off. Plans always went wrong. By his calculation, he had spent seventy percent of his life worrying about his team and the other thirty percent implementing rescue operations.

No part of the plan called for Twi and Ekymé to vanish down an abyss, so when Lanox asked what they were supposed to do now, he fell back to basics: Rescue the person who could answer that question.

They tossed pebbles into the cave and never heard them strike the bottom.

Head tilted and impractical number of beads chiming, the Sereh Aliara promised to devote her resources to discovering where they had gone. No deceit soured her declaration, but darkness outlined it—an ulterior motive. Rifo didn’t trust her. Let her search her way. As soon as she was out of sight, Rifo and Lanox repelled into the cave themselves.

Their individual ropes were too short, so they lashed the two lines together and tied themselves back to back. Rifo did the work of repelling, and Lanox played lookout, her ju’wack on for light. She insisted this way was safer, and though Rifo doubted it, he tired of arguing with her.

He wasn’t sure what they hoped to find at the bottom. They couldn’t leave without checking, yet he dreaded reaching a gruesome scene.

“Lanox, when we reach the end, I don’t think… What are ya doing?”

Her fingers drummed her arm and the back of his bicep, but before she answered, his sys beeped. Hope dared lift its head as he tapped his ear to answer the call.

Both in real-time and in a delayed, electronically amplified roar, Lanox shouted, “How dare ya fall in a hole like that! Ya had me worried within a moment of my life!” A squeal ended the tirade as they fell then jerked to a halt.

Rifo strangled the rope. “I didn’t fall down any hole, and if ya want to prevent my doing so, don’t yell in my ear!”

“Rifo?” Tears choked her. “Why do you have Ekymé’s sys?”

“He had his datapad, and he only had the time to modify two syses.” Rifo let out an over-patient sigh. “He gave me one, and ya have the other. Actually, he gave the other one to Twi.”

“But I always take care of the electronic stuff!” Offense oozed off her though Rifo hadn’t accused her of anything.

He didn’t push it. He already knew the answer to his unspoken question: Xlack gave the sys to Twi because he didn’t want to lose her, and Twi had given it to Lanox for the same reason.

If Twi is dead, we have to complete the mission ourselves. We have to rescue those taken and negotiate some agreement that this never happens again.

He didn’t even know where to begin.

Above all, I have to make sure Lanox survives.

As he resumed their downward journey, her tapping returned.

“What are ya doing now?”

“We should tell Estiga Mystis what’s happened. And Estiga Sterra.”

“Lanox, I don’t—”

It was too late. She had already convinced the device to somehow stream through this foreign network and reach beyond it. She had mad hacking skills.

Sadness coated his skin like sweat. Twi was also good with machines, but through different means. Lanox tinkered and pushed buttons. She read tech articles and picked up terms for everything. Twi, on the other hand, spoke to electronics through her ’netics. The pattern of ebb and flow was a language to her.

“I’m linking you in,” Lanox said.

Distance and static warped Sterra’s traditional Knalcal greeting. “Oitat.”

“Oitat, Estiga,” Lanox chirped, and Rifo hoped the fact that she didn’t bother to announce herself meant she had included introductory information in the call.

“Lanox?” Despite the distortion, Sterra’s alarm rang true.

“Twi and Ekymé fell down a big hole, and Rifo thinks they’re dead!”

He nearly dropped them again. “I didn’t say that.”

“But ya do think so. Oh, what do we do, Estiga?”

“It was a trap,” Rifo added. “Ravi Sirvette’s little sister led us into it.”

Sterra spoke slowly, over-annunciating. “You do not know for certain they are dead?”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Rifo cleared his throat and tried to steady his voice. “We’re headed down now, but it’s deep, Estiga.”

Lanox’s panic burned. “Tell us what to do.”

“If…” Sterra’s voice faltered, and she drew a deep breath. “Can you navigate without them?”

The answer fell trembling from Rifo’s mouth. “I could find my way back to where we hid our oha. I could fly it, but we would be spotted. I would have to outmaneuver any pursuers.”

“And what would that accomplish?” Mystis cut in. Either Lanox had managed to call both leaders and Mystis had just now decided to contribute to the conversation, or she had stolen the sys right off Sterra’s ear. He wasn’t sure which was more likely.

“Estiga?”

“Why do you run away like a skittish bird from a child?”

“Because a child with laser weapons is a dangerous prospect.”

“Indeed,” Mystis agreed with some amusement, “but my question stands. If you return now, what will you have accomplished?”

“I have no allies here.”

Aliara would never have talked to him. Even if she would have for the prospect of gaining exotic intel, he would never have known to look for her.

“Yet, it is you on whom we rely.”

“What do ya want me to do?” The words dripped out so softly, he wasn’t sure the sys could pick them up and carry them all the way back to Knalz.

“You’re a good negotiator, Rifo. Find your way to their emperor and use what you can: his wants. His weaknesses. And stop saying I as if you are alone. You have Lanox. Izeko and several members of his hrausq will be guiding a modified Knalcal fleet to join you.”

A fleet? Hardly subtle.

“And keep on the lookout for Sažka,” Sterra added. “Ravi Sirvette took her. She is a linguist and observer—potentially useful in your cause, but what she learns can put her in more danger.”

Rifo to the rescue yet again. The familiar. The expected. His chest swelled with determination.

He repelled down another two body lengths. “I do as I am told, Est—”

Lanox shrieked. “I see the bottom!”

A few more hops brought them there. The rock floor was bare, no trace of their missing teammates. No bodies, no blood, no footprints in the dust. The space was barely as wide as he was tall, the walls unmarred by cracks or passages.

Nausea overtook Rifo, a chill that penetrated his every cell in micro-second bursts. Did this mean they were alive? Where were they? His legs crumpled, and he hung from the rope securing him to his remaining teammate. The soup he had eaten met the floor.

Lanox ran her hands along the walls, ju’wack held between her teeth. Somehow she still managed to speak. “Twi said they had teleporters in Aylata Tower. That must be what happened. They were teleported away, and they’re alive.”

Rifo gulped the stale air. “Where?”

She shrugged. With her head tilted and the laser staff still in her mouth, she looked like a pet fetching a too-large stick. “That’s what we need Aliara for.”

“Right.” He pressed his feet to the floor, tested his legs, stood. He wasn’t sure if Mystis and Sterra were still on the line. “Right. We continue on with the mission. We ask her to take us to the emperor. If Twi and Ekymé are still alive, that’s where they’ll be headed, too.”

Continued in chapter 31

Thank you for reading!

The emperor of all headaches built his palace within Ject’s skull. At the command of this cruel dictator, mallets pounded drums of bone, and everything—air, light, blood—became an instrument for pain.

The outside world sat across a wide chasm, and nothing made it across intact. When they—faces he thought he should know but didn’t recognize—noticed his open eyes, they spoke to him, but it was only sound, no meaning. Mouths moved funny when people talked.

He laughed, and the drummers hastened their efforts. The light became spears, and the room’s bitter scent stuck him like a pincushion. It lingered on his tongue, metallic and acerbic.

Disinfectant. This was a med-center.

He closed his eyes and focused on untying his muscles. The doctors would overthrow the headache, and things would go back to normal.

He waited, trying to count the drumbeats, but numbers were banned in this domain. He counted anyway—an act of defiance riding random integers. Sometimes six came after eight. Sometimes six came after six. Sometimes the number didn’t have a word, only measure, and it was all there was.

A giggle broke through the palace wall, and more followed through the rubble: a rebuke to be quiet. An apology. Two voices, both with a feminine chime and the elongated Zalerit cadence.

One had the rasp of age, and he knew that one. Her name sat behind a barred door. Names, like numbers, were a danger to the crown and forbidden. Yet, he wasn’t loyal to the fake emperor—not in the wider universe and definitely not in here. If he could see this woman’s face…

He set his will upon the pulley that controlled his eyelids and heaved.

A sting met his elbow. Ice flooded his veins, then warmth. He lost the pulley, and it took him some time to find it again. By then, the drums had slowed, though they remained as loud as ever.

The light was a horde of arrows this time, but he squinted past them. A teen with a Zalerit’s luminous skin and four dark eyes cradled his arm with an unfelt touch, head bent over a multi-tool picking at his scabs. He didn’t feel that either.

As if footsteps heralded his stare, she looked up. “Estiga, he sees.”

He did. Between a sitting and lying position, he saw her return to her ghostly work with hands unsteadied by his gaze, so he shifted his eyes elsewhere. The onyx-beaded sash at her hips marked her as a doctor’s slave, but the nostril ring that would have told him to whom she belonged hid in its own shine.

The answer was forthcoming anyway. A burden lifted from his head, allowing the drums to resurge. His eyes tracked the missing weight—a compress in a familiar hand. It discarded the used packet, then returned to cup his chin and forced him to look at her.

He whispered her name. “Auntie Uriet.”

“Your fevers always were the worst.” A package crinkled, and she slid a fresh compress into his grasp. “Are you with it enough to find your own forehead?”

His nod fought her grip, and she straightened, charcoal robe open over her lacy shirt, flowing pants, and clunky shoes. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of her platinum doctor’s beads.

Other sights just as unwelcome played on the inside of his eyelids: Sažka scooped up by the mykuro. The crowd whispering his name. Ateki held by his father’s men while an Ier gulped a path to his heart. No one listened to Ject, not until he made them in the worst way.

“Where are my Zalerits?”

“In the hallway. Now, open those lovely eyes of yours and don’t blink.”

He released a sigh as he complied, and she shined a pin light at either pupil. He rolled the compress to give his hand something to do. Chemicals mixed within, and it became soft ice.

Don’t touch the Zalerits. They’re mine, he had said, the only protection he could offer them at the moment. They had survived at least, and they were nearby.

“Your father had a terrible time getting the truth from them, and what he ended up with is ridiculous, though not half as ridiculous as you.”

“I’m not in a mood for insults, Auntie, even in jest.”

“I’m never in the mood to have to bring you from death’s door.” She stepped back, fists on her hips. She was an aged replica of Aalee, down to her holier-then-thou stance and unruly hair, though hers was dark like his mother’s. Not as dark as his. “Really, Ject, a shout suggestion in a frenzied crowd. What were you thinking?”

Arguments like insects swarmed up his throat and over his tongue, but before he let any of them fly, the curtain at the foot of his bed flapped aside. There stood his father, High Defender Qem Sirvette, tall, broad, coloring middle-gray, features round and soft and curved in a jagged frown.

‘Everyone thought you were dead.’

‘From a shout—’ The whisper wilted beneath a burst of pain, and his head sunk to his hand, finding the compress.

His father huffed. “Your aunt wouldn’t let you die from that foolishness.”

Of course not. A Ravi was too valuable. Even if the brain he had left equated to vegetable stew, she would bring him back and keep him breathing, just as she had when he was born too soon.

His eyes caught on the arm he still couldn’t feel and the glowing hands dabbing salve onto a row of tidy stitches.

“Because I disappeared,” he said, and the word had two faces. He had abandoned his duty as Protector of Lakol District to serve a greater duty to the empire—rescuing the First Ravi, Xlack Ekymé. To those who would—could—never know that reason, he had fled. When they needed him to maintain their daily norm, he disappeared.

He watched the slave’s hands lift and lower the swab in overlapping circles. Zalerits could be invisible. Ateki had rendered Ject invisible on multiple occasions. A deep, stupid, hungry part of him wanted that ability for himself.

“You disappeared,” his father repeated with a pinched sigh, “after an explosion in your district, your blood and skin and hair found in the rubble, your emblem there with it.”

Ject looked up and met his father’s frown, offering an open window into his intentions. “I had to—”

“I would like nothing more than to be enthralled by your reasons, but one higher than me wishes the honor of hearing them first. Dr. Remkiren, can he stand?”

Auntie Uriet grinned. “With effort, like with most tasks.”

“Then he’ll follow me.”

Ject obeyed the indirect command with a mountain’s worth of winces and hitched breaths. Walking gave the drummers in his skull something to compete with. The compress wasn’t doing anything, so he stripped it off and squeezed it in a fist.

The iconic art of Threnian Station’s wire-woven walls hummed the melody of distant conversations and unseen machines. Threnian was a place he associated with family, with vacations spent teasing younger siblings and letting his mother spoil him. It was not a place those who outranked his father frequented.

Yet, someone on that short list had tied his father’s tongue, and the headache wouldn’t give him peace enough to unravel who. Ject’s Mental defenses were walls of wet paper. His father’s worry howled like a summer storm, and frustration crackled like thunder, interlaced with an undefined sizzle. These took the drummer’s mallets and taught them how to hit harder.

The hallway stretched and narrowed, and Ject was a giant, his head stories above his toes. A fall would be fatal, but no chair offered to catch him, and he wasn’t supposed to touch the walls. He’d been told that often enough as a child.

Wait. The hallway.

He stopped. “Where are my Zalerits?”

His father didn’t turn or slow, and the distance between them grew. “Interesting that they were wearing Adapt and yet nothing to mark them as yours.”

“I needed the stealth the Adapt provided, and they’re recent acquisitions.” Ject grimaced. His word had saved Ateki and Sažka two-fold then. Something as small as a stud through a nostril stamped with his clan pattern could save them when he couldn’t say anything. “I’ll need a piercing for them both.”

“What you need is to keep walking.”

Like a pet on a leash, Ject complied. Despite the headache, despite the jumble of emotions—his, his father’s, and distant others’—truth gleamed in the sentiment, wrapped in the promise of more unsaid. Someone important—the Lead Protector, an Elder Watcher, or even Refraction Leader Mohk Ekymé—waited at their destination, and so did Ateki and Sažka.

The crowd’s fickle, fleeting thoughts found Ject long before they entered the station’s lobby. He tried to patch his paper walls before stepping through the final door, but broken bones only healed so fast, and broken defenses healed no faster.

All traffic to and from the station funneled through this room, and all were curious of today’s guest. Those who could lingered. For some this meant slowed steps and rubber necks. Others lounged on couches around low tables spread with refreshments.

As he entered, shoulders straight and chin level, their recognition formed a barbed fence. He walked through it, limbs tangled in its wire, eyes on his father’s flailing cape, blurring now. How he wished for his mask and hood, for the brief security of anonymity.

Was he still walking? He couldn’t feel his feet.

Solid arms embraced him, and a deep, aged voice spilled syllables he barely pieced together. “Welcome home.”

* * *

Home had always been a fluid notion for Anku Phy. If a con required he be from the fields and karsts of Azlano District, then that was home, regardless of if he had ever been there. More often, it referred to a place to temporarily return to—a bed in a rented room under a false name or guest quarters lent to little-known relatives.

Per his great uncle’s tutoring, Phy had never stayed anywhere longer than a month. Until now. This was the greatest gambit of his career—of his whole family’s career. As the days and weeks had passed, he knew he needed to get out. The trap would close, but pride weighted his feet.

He wanted to see Great Uncle’s face twist as Phy told him he had not swiped the famed Fountain of Conquerors from the center of Kizmet District as challenged. That he had instead stolen the entire city and lived as its king for two months, then three, then six.

He lingered in the doorway of the bedroom he had most recently called home, jaw attracted to his toes. No matter how many times he blinked, light continued to slant through the wall of windows. The drawers and closet remained tucked away. The round chair and small table in the corner waited as always for him to wind down in the evening with a cup of tea. Per usual, the thin sheet tucked at the corners of the mattress centered across from the door, but a body beneath that blanket gave contour to what should have been a flat plain. It was no one he had invited.

He stammered soundlessly as a large feline form grazed his knees and spun tightening circles on the bed, then settled on the intruder’s chest. With the familiar face hidden beneath the beastling’s spotted scales, Phy could pretend the legs were mere wrinkles in the sheet. That the mess of ashen curls on the pillow was something the animal had dragged in.

“Rell, down! You’re too big for that.” Lady Aliara Yayin shoved past Phy just as she had an hour ago when she barged into the apartment, hair blowing in the breeze of her own haste. A team of men had poured in after her, carrying the body now on the bed, and she’d had a terrible time since keeping the beastling away.

A low, popping growl filled the room.

The Lady’s stance shifted from authoritative to placating, hands outstretched. “Rell, your master can’t breathe like that.”

Phy clung to the doorframe. He wouldn’t mind if Protector Xlack Ekymé suffocated. Then no one would know he hadn’t chosen Phy to play acting Protector six months ago.

It was time to go. His jelly legs carried him backward down the hall toward the main room as he fumbled in his pocket for his datapad. It unfolded, the emergency departure app shimmering in the corner of the screen.

His thumb hovered. At the touch of this button, Anku Phy, trusted administrator, would cease to exist. He would surface in another city, his name scrambled in an anagram. The things he wanted to keep from this life would make circuitous journeys to a planned cache. He would continue the game.

Yet, he liked playing this role. As acting Protector, others fell all over themselves to fulfill his every request. When scribes accepted gifts in exchange for biased services, he looked away, and they did the same for him. This was a once-in-a-thousand-lifetimes gig, and he mourned its end.

A door near the end of the hallway opened, and Phy stopped short of crashing into a doctor in a black robe and platinum beads. The man, unsteady on his feet, didn’t acknowledge him or his mumbled apology, a hand raking through his mess of mid-gray hair.

“Is Dr. Kitza on his way yet?” the Lady called from the bedroom door, arms crossed.

“He’s been conscripted to serve exclusively at the capital, Lady Aliara. He can’t come no matter how many times you ask.” The present doctor’s words slurred with his swaying steps, and his shoulder thumped the wall. A hung frame displaying some certificate of achievement rattled.

With the slowest of backward steps, Phy retreated toward the main room and the exit like prey hoping the slightest movement wouldn’t attract the attention of powerful beings.

The Lady sighed. “I’m just worried that Ravi Ekymé hasn’t woken up yet, and you seem so...indisposed.”

“Felere insanity is like an acidic venom. I have to draw it out carefully and hold it isolated in my mind while I sew up the holes it leaves, in both the patient and myself.”

The word picture called to Phy too strongly, and he swallowed his curiosity before it lugged him down undesirably dark paths. If being a doctor didn’t work out, the man could be a poet.

The Lady stretched a smile that was compassionate if thin at the edges. “I understand the drive to handle this on your own as a dutiful apprentice, but Dr. Kitza needs—”

“Dr. Kitza doesn’t have Mind Talents and would rely on me for this anyway.” He sighed, rubbing his temples.

With as much nonchalance as he could summon, Phy swiveled to the door.

“It would help,” the doctor continued, “if there were someone I could dump the dregs into. A slave that the Protector wouldn’t mind losing?”

“Scribe.”

Phy stiffened, sure the Lady had just volunteered him. He was no one Ravi Ekymé would miss. If he ran, how far would he get?

“Go to the market at the edge of the district and acquire a Zalerit. Tell the administrator that the one chosen is not likely to survive what we have in mind.”

Phy’s chest shrunk in relief as he pivoted to her in a bow. His thumb pressed the app that would sever his ties here, and the datapad folded, secreted into a sleeve behind his back. “Right away, Milady. I shall return with unmatched haste.”

He should have known better than to lie in front of the doctor, impaired or not. The Mind Aylata’s eyes narrowed with the faintest flickering swirl of chrysolite, and the fine lines around his mouth deepened.

As one final turn brought Phy to the door, the doctor clamped his wrist.

Phy was a rigid tree, not fighting, simply being, his voice as hoarse and squeaky as two scraping branches. “Excuse me, I cannot fulfill the Lady’s request if—”

“You have no intention of fulfilling the Lady’s request.”

“No, I mean, I do. I will. I…” He tried to convince himself of this truth. On his way out of the city, he could purchase a slave and have them sent here. As long as he believed it, the Aylata should have seen sincerity, but it wasn’t working.

A new tactic came to him. He pictured the most disgusting things he had witnessed and added on anything that would make them worse until he gagged. With his Mental defenses weakened, the doctor swayed, then vomited, but his grip remained. Phy added the new material to his arsenal—the sharp, meaty stench, the warmth seeping through his sleeve and shirt and cloth boots.

The Aylata would not fall for the trick twice. He gripped Phy’s jaw with fingers as cold and firm as steel and met his gaze. Phy tried to cinch his eyes, but it was too late. Sensation fell into that distant storm of chrysolite, then whipped back to him three-fold.

The Aylata’s hands released him, but something far worse took their place. Thoughts wove wires and laced his muscles, their curved ends hooking through his feet. His leg jerked in one step, then two, continuing despite how he internally screamed for them to stop.

These halting paces carried him to the bedroom, where he knelt alongside the headboard, useless hands in his lap. Protector Xlack Ekymé lay shivering, skin damp and breaths shallow. Bursts of heat had rendered the sheet’s edge dark and crisp.

Phy’s eyes widened, but his feet ignored all commands to flee. This man would have killed him a dozen horrid ways six months ago if Phy hadn’t appealed to the Mercy of the Judges. At that trial, this man, had he bothered to show up, would have condemned him to death for petty theft.

The irony formed a dull blade digging into Phy’s gut.

The doctor knelt across him and placed a palm on the Protector’s forehead. Images led, then sound and pain. Flashes of teeth and talons, screeches, muscles punctured and ripped. Softer organs oozing from the holes in his body, the tang of blood welling in his mouth, drowning in it. Loss and failure. Guilt.

“Estiga, please,” he sobbed.

The wire within his jaw tightened and sewed his lips shut.

* * *

On the inside of Xlack’s closed eyelids, a deft hand sewed thoughts of peace, safety, and calm. With this constant repetition, the boiling murk of the felere whispers subsided.

Cleanup was slow, that same hand scooping up fistfuls at a time, then returning to address the damage. Once he worked his inner self free, Xlack helped, but he was no surgeon. The repairs he attempted were lumpy at best, and when he couldn’t dissolve an intrusive thought fast enough, he stashed it somewhere out of sight.

Awareness of his body returned, bringing control with it. He didn’t have enough air, but when he ordered a deeper breath, it wouldn’t come. Weight pressed on his chest. He squirmed, arms pinned by the same bulk.

It stirred, set to a series of low, rapid pops. Smooth scales rubbed his chin, then again in the opposite direction with enough force to rattle his brain. He opened his mouth to shout but didn’t have the breath for anything beyond a wheeze.

Scent came into focus first—the warm salt fragrance of home, and much closer, a stinging tang more metallic than fish and coarser than basalt. Elitbeast, he recognized, just as he would recognize one’s silhouette. But this one had a familiar twinge, stretched and changed but finding a match in his memory same as the nudge against his chin.

“Rell,” he croaked.

The beastling stood over him, a question in the rising pitch of his purr. Sleeping on Xlack’s chest and greeting him by running his side against Xlack’s jaw had been fine when Rell was smaller than his shoe, but the beastling had grown. He pawed at Xlack’s collar, and it hurt.

Xlack wrapped his arms around the beastling’s neck and wrestled him off his feet into a hug. “Rell, I missed you, too, but you weigh more than me now.”

Rell yipped in agreement and nuzzled in closer, belly upturned in a plea to be scratched. Xlack complied, and all four paws rose into the air, toes and claws extended. Those paws were larger than Xlack’s hands, legs corded in lean muscle. Only a thin line along each forearm marked where his baby fins had been.

As the beastling wiggled in appreciation, his pewter scales glistened in the horizontal light of sunset streaming through the wall of windows. Xlack stilled. This was his room, his apartment in Kizmet District. The last news he’d had of Rell came from Lady Aliara, and that was before—

He was on his feet, bare heels sinking into the mattress as he scanned his surroundings.

“You’re safe, Great Cousin,” Aliara said from the chair in the corner. “I’ve brought you home.”

He didn’t want to be home, not this home. “My team? Twi? And don’t make me bargain for your answers.”

With a twisted grin, she set her steaming drink down on the small table. “Life is a bargain. If you want anything, especially a thing as valuable as information, you have to trade for it.”

He trained his crooked glare on her. “Tell me where my team is.”

Her face slackened, and the answer fell from her as a monotone rush. “The two Tala you left behind asked to be taken to the emperor. I brought them as far as the border of Reiceilako and gave them directions to my contacts there.”

“Reiceilako.” Xlack shook his head. Kobolast was the capital, but Aliara had said something about it being moved. Rifo and Lanox must have chosen to carry on the mission.

How brave and loyal of them.

Was it selfish if he wanted a part of that loyalty for himself? They assumed he was dead and kept moving.

They did what they had to. It’s commendable.

Rell, determining that his pose was not going to get him more belly rub, rolled to his feet and stretched.

Aliara stood with a humph. “You will not invade my mind again.”

Xlack’s attention leapt back to her, a second suggestion already on his tongue, but she turned and packed away her emotions before he could snatch them. They remained as a corona along her edges, an intangible glow, faint like a datapad’s screen.

“I’ll win my answers with guesses, then.” His ready stance waned until he stood on his knees, then sat on the end of the mattress, feet on the floor. “Your Messenger, the one skilled in stealing secrets from people’s pockets, also has a knack for adding tracers to the things he returns.”

Without word or movement, she confirmed it was true.

“Your tracer logs show Twi and I underwent a series of teleportations before ending up in Zaranik’s palace.”

Again, true.

“You brought me here. What did you do with her?”

At the growl in his master’s voice, Rell looked up, long, slender tail swaying.

“Lady Aliara.” Xlack rose, feet soundless on the wood floor. “I will use another suggestion.”

“Then you’ll throw away our friendship for nothing, because I don’t know where she is.”

He didn’t touch her. Sereh were never to be touched in violence. But he slipped between her in the wall. “You have the tra—”

“The tracer is on her weapon, not herself, and I wasn’t the first to find you.”

The natural follow-ups, “Who did then?” and, “How did I end up here with you?” thundered in his skull, but he refused to voice them.

Squinting, he leaned back against the door frame. “I’ve never been good at haggling, so tell me what you want from me.”

“Let me tell your father you’re here.”

“Because you want to trade that info to him?”

She lifted her chin. “No, because it’s what’s right, for him, for you, and for the empire.”

“For the empire.” With a scoff, he folded his arms. “You don’t even really know what happened six months ago.” Silence beat an unheard drum. He blinked, straightened. “Will you give me what you know about Twi’s whereabouts if I trade you that story?”

Aliara caught and released a slow breath.

Rell sat between them, tail swaying opposite his head as he looked from one to the other. His master had woken up, so it was time for breakfast.

With a gurgle, Xlack’s empty stomach agreed. He swiveled off the doorframe and sauntered down the hall toward the kitchen, Kinetically fixing the crooked frames along the way out of habit. Where was his over-picky live-in teacher anyway?

Rell followed, tongue lolling out the side of his rounded snout. Most of his molars remained baby-sized with large gaps between them.

“Several historical coalitions have petitioned to turn Zaranik’s palace into a museum,” Aliara called, steps loud behind him. “A survey group found you and didn’t know what to do with a missing Ravi. They were frightened and grateful when I offered to take you. And Defender Lorm Spycykle.”

Xlack stopped, stomach in his toes. Both hands curled into fists. “He was there? And unconscious?”

“The place is infested with felere, so the group carried scrambler lamps. They had protective equipment, of course, but anyone not appropriately goggled who saw the flashes—”

“Would have been knocked out,” Xlack finished. “They didn’t mention Twi at all?”

Aliara’s lips pursed in the thinnest line, infant flames dancing across her polished nails and licking at the hem of her short dress. “I have reason to believe the coalition is a front for a rebellion.”

“Rebels have Twi.” The statement was air and no voice. He couldn’t believe it, yet he could believe nothing else. Had she awakened? What did they want with her?

To the slave at the soup stand, she had identified herself as a follower of Vozin Nar, the original traitor. Six months ago, Revel K’alaqk claimed she was as dangerous as a lightcurver—not because she could cut down armies—but because of her potential to be a symbol.

His throat burned. “You knew she was with me. You never give up, Aliara. You never just let something go. So why...” He trailed off, wanting to run, but his heels remained glued to the floor at the end of the hallway.

Aliara didn’t press for more information on Twi because she wanted the rebels to keep her. Or at the very least, she wanted Twi away from Xlack.

“Are you with the rebels?”

She propped a hand on her hip, and the line of her lips followed the same tilt. “Of course not, but as if I would admit it.”

He no longer wanted breakfast. With a dry heave, he caught the back of his favorite lounge chair. Rell’s nudge at his thigh didn’t help. The stench of vomit clogged his nose, mixed with the sting of antiseptic.

That wasn’t in his head. Someone had been sick in this room, and it had been cleaned. This nausea, this tumult of emotion, wasn’t all his own either. He grabbed that distraction and searched.

There shouldn’t have been a life-signature that size in the coolbox. He stepped toward it.

“How loyal are you to the empire, Xlack Ekymé?”

He paused, and Aliara placed herself between him and the kitchen.

“Why not use your title’s authority, do what your uncle did and make it known you want this foreign Magni delivered to you?” She shrugged. “Safely, in this case.”

Because he wasn’t sure he had any authority left and was even less sure those who did would back him. Deeper than that, his insides shriveled at the possibility of his father’s disappointment. It was better not to know than to confirm that the one person he most wanted to be proud of him thought him a fool.

“You didn’t leave on an approved mission. That’s why you left Rell behind,” Aliara guessed. “You ran away. You had to leave right then, and you didn’t expect to ever come back.”

“I didn’t think that far ahead.” With a sigh, he raked his fingers through his hair, focus bouncing between his cousin and the coolbox beyond her. Either there was a person in there or disturbingly sapient mold. Either theory was ridiculous. A hallucination. “I’ve learned things since then. About how life can be more fair. And I’m selfish.”

“Then use it.” She caught his wrist with a gentle touch, cradling it as it dropped from his head. “You, First Ravi, are in a position to change things.”

“You mean collect power so I can distribute it more evenly?”

“I mean, the Buqo tree of the Antarctic is the symbol of selfishness because it would rather burn than provide shelter through the long winter. Yet, without that fire, there would be no light when the Daystar doesn’t rise. Their heat keeps the ground from freezing solid and allows the seeds of their neighbors to germinate. Without the Buqo tree, there would be no southern Atetu forests.”

“They’re not selfish, they’re martyrs?” He snorted.

“I’ve told you often enough, Great Cousin, if fire doesn’t improve your situation, it at least makes things more interesting.” She upturned their palms, a flame growing in their shared grasp. “Perhaps it is time for the empire to burn.”

Continued in chapter 32

Thank you for reading!