by Eva Brandt
“Like I said, it’s about Selene. I’d rather talk to you in private. Now.”
Something in my tone must have alarmed Tanya, because she ushered me into a private room without protesting further. The other priestesses weren’t thrilled, but they obeyed Tanya and left us alone. “Selene’s been taken,” I said as soon as we were behind closed doors.
“Taken?” Tanya repeated in disbelief. “By who?”
“King Philip.”
Tanya paled, having obviously not expected this response. “Impossible. We had an agreement.”
“Chimera royals tend to honor their agreements selectively. You should have known better than to trust him.”
She didn’t explain her actions, nor did she mention the fact that she’d wanted to kill my son. I couldn’t allow that, not when we didn’t actually know for sure what the king wanted with Selene. “What did you tell him? Why did he take her like this?”
“Tell him? I haven’t spoken with him in ages, since he asked me to come to Tartarus Base to teach that class. He said that he’d allow promoting a better image for Terrans as long as I made sure Selene gave up her position as a Chimera tamer.”
“And you agreed to that?”
Tanya shrugged. “I know Selene is fond of that beast of hers, but the whole point of the arrangement was to get her pregnant with Brendan’s child. If that happened, it wouldn’t have been so difficult to convince Selene to step down for the benefit of raising the baby.”
That was actually very plausible. Selene cared deeply about our child, even if her relationship with me was still very rocky. She would have prioritized the baby over everything, including Sphinx.
But that was beside the point now. What mattered was that Tanya didn’t seem involved in this particular ploy, if she was telling the truth, at least. “So you didn’t mention she was pregnant?”
“Of course not. I’m not insane. That child of yours… It’s a curse. If anyone found out about it…”
She trailed off as realization dawned and her eyes filled with horror. “They did find out. That’s why she’s gone.”
“More or less, although I think it’s a little more complicated than that.”
I gave her the brief summary of what had happened at the base, including the attack of the Centaurs and the way the king had controlled all the chimeras. “Selene could do next to nothing to protect herself,” I finished. “She’d almost miscarried the baby earlier and she was very weak. It would have been pretty easy for them to take her.”
I didn’t want to reveal the fact that I knew what she’d been planning, but the poison in my voice gave it all away. Tanya didn’t flinch, but I could see a shadow of pain and guilt in her eyes.
To her credit, she didn’t apologize, nor did she try to launch the blame at me. Instead, she chose to stay practical. “I see. So I take it you want to save her. What can I do?”
“Right now, we’re assuming they’re taking her to Hades Base. But there’s no way for us to get there, not without some major firepower. So we need reinforcements.”
“You want us to fight against the star fleets? You’ve lost your mind. We’re not warriors.”
Despite her words, I could see she was considering it. Brendan had been relying on this. Tanya loved Selene, to the point of having hidden the truth about what had happened in Gaia’s Haven from everyone else. Just like Selene would prioritize the baby over Sphinx, Tanya would put Selene over her own people. I was here to take advantage of that vulnerability.
“You’re not trained in combat, it’s true,” I told her. “But how much longer will you allow Chimera nobility to oppress you? You know as well as I do that Selene is only the beginning. If King Philip succeeds in this, the results could be devastating. You’re well aware of how things are for women on Tartarus Base. I have no doubt that terror will spread on Earth, as soon as he tightens his hold on the chimeras.”
That was actually a lie. I didn’t think King Philip would immediately target Terrans. He didn’t deem them a real threat, so he’d go for the major issue first—the Apsid Quasar. Heliads were the ones that were a problem.
But I trusted the Great Mother to prepare for a possible invasion. In the meantime, I could stir the Terrans into a frenzy. Even if the immediate threat wasn’t to them, they could still come in handy.
“I see your point,” Tanya said, “but we’re not equipped to go to Hades Base. Our powers are fueled by Gaia. It’s next to impossible for one of us to use our abilities when we’re out in space. I can barely manage and Selene is an exception.”
“We know. You don’t have to do anything like that. What we want is for you to provide a distraction. After all, you have superior numbers and firepower here on Terra. You can easily take down the outposts of The Grand Judiciary, as long as no chimeras are involved. That will make them send people here, which will give us the opening we need in Hades Base.”
“That makes sense,” Tanya mused, “but are you sure you can get Selene out of there safely?”
“I wish I could say ‘yes’,” I answered, “but I’m not sure of anything. The only thing I know is that we can’t leave her to Philip.”
Maybe she would have agreed, but we didn’t get the chance to finish our conversation. An explosion sounded outside, and the whole temple shook with the echoes of the familiar power.
Gaia’s Temple was crafted primarily out of earth and wood. Nothing here was resilient to tachyon manipulation. The ceiling of the room crumbled, coming down on top of us. Tanya gasped. “What in Gaia’s name…?”
I didn’t bother with words. Moving as quickly as a photon blast, I threw myself over her and blocked the falling wreckage, forcing it away with my power. I couldn’t keep up a Heliad aura, since it would kill Tanya and I still needed her. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. My intervention bought Tanya enough time to recover her composure and step in herself.
Waves of blue-green magic enveloped us, and I let go of the remnants of the building. Tanya took the weight with ease. “Quickly, High Priestess. We have to get out of here. New Washington is under attack.”
“Yes, I understood that much,” Tanya snapped as she worked to free us. Sweat beaded her brow and her eyes lit up with green fire. “I hope you have some kind of explanation for this.”
I had my suspicions about the identity of the attackers, but that didn’t give us a real explanation. Still, I held my tongue and waited, half-hoping I was wrong.
I should have known better than to make such foolish wishes. As soon as we managed to make our way out of the room, we ran into groups of other priestesses. Some had been injured, but for the most part, they’d contained the damage like Tanya had. I’d have been happier about it, but the real problem wasn’t inside. It was waiting for us in front of the temple.
“High Priestess,” someone screamed from straight ahead of us, “come quickly! It’s… I think they are chimeras. But I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
We followed the cries and desperate pleas for assistance, stumbling over pieces of stone and barely avoiding being crushed under the still damaged building. Even before I emerged from the structure, though, I knew what I’d find.
Unlike the priestesses, I’d had an encounter with our attackers before and it had been less than an hour ago. The Centaurs had come to Terra.
Another herd had gathered in the courtyard, but based on the explosion I could see in the distance, I suspected some of its members were rampaging through New Washington. It was far easier than it had been to attack Tartarus Base. The ground crumbled underneath their hooves. The buildings splintered and fell apart. Fire started to consume every structure the Terrans had so painstakingly built from nothing.
I’d seen this kind of destruction before, in Gaia’s Haven, when The Grand Judiciary had sent Brendan and the rest of his unit to hunt down a group of harmless rebels. But this was different. New Washington wasn’t an illegal settlement. It was one of the most important cities on the American continent.
Why w
ould the Centaurs target New Washington of all places? They couldn’t have known I’d come seeking reinforcements here. My trail wasn’t that easy to track down. Had they simply decided to attack because this was Selene’s home town? But that didn’t make any sense. Why would they do that? Based on what the others had told me, the Centaurs did have a higher purpose and weren’t just focusing on revenge and blind destruction. Their immediate target should have been Tartarus City and the nearby asteroids, not a Terran settlement.
Either way, I wouldn’t get any answers if I just stood there and stared like an idiot. Sending a prayer to Helios, I launched myself into battle again. Photons bloomed around me and spread out in a wave of systematic destruction. They flared over the chimeras closest to me, blasting them aside.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t gather enough light particles to chase them away like I had in Tartarus Base. To make matters worse, my attempt to neutralize my opponents drew the wrong kind of attention from the people who were supposed to be my allies. “It’s a Sun-Dweller!” Yolanda screamed. “Kill it!”
“Bring it down!” another woman cried. “It must be why the chimeras are here!”
Wonderful. Why was I not surprised this had happened? It stood to reason the Terrans would blame me for this attack, since the chimeras had never done this before I’d shown up.
I wanted to tell them this wasn’t my fault or my responsibility, but I doubted they would believe me. Tanya hadn’t tried to clarify the situation, so I assumed she believed there was no point in making the attempt.
I was on my own. That didn’t really scare me, but it also didn’t provide me with the answers I sought. My presence had distracted the priestesses, which made it even harder for us to push back the chimeras.
“If you want to fight me, do it later,” I shouted. “I’m not the one trying to kill you.”
“They’re only trying to kill us because of you,” a priestess snapped back. Shards of green flew toward me like fragments of palpable light. I waved a hand, and her power dissipated under Helios’s touch.
This wouldn’t end well. The Centaurs had stopped their rampage of destruction and were zeroing in on me, which seemed to confirm the priestesses’ suspicions. But I suspected that as soon as I was no longer an issue, the chimeras would turn on the Terrans.
I had no choice. I needed to get out of here, before I was killed, or worse, captured. I didn’t fear death, but imprisonment could be a problem. I didn’t have the ability to self-immolate, not without an external force powering me, and unless the Great Mother activated the Nexus from the Apsid Quasar, I might be at least incapacitated, if not completely trapped.
I stole one last look toward Tanya and mentally wished her luck. I still didn’t think the Centaurs’ presence here had anything to do with me, but I couldn’t stay any longer. Besides, maybe we could use this later.
Taking a deep breath, I focused on the spark of Helios’s power burning inside me. I faced the chimeras without flinching and dropped my guard.
As tachyon fire enveloped me whole, my body burst into flames, consumed by Tartarus’s power. It hurt far more than I expected, but I accepted the pain and willed it to guide me back to the Venom.
I’d gone through the process countless times before. It should have come as second nature, and in a way, it did. But at the last moment, something went wrong. A mental connection I hadn’t even known was there cracked, distracting me from what I was doing.
Zephyrus. Something was wrong with Zephyrus.
“I’m sorry,” I heard her whisper. “Goodbye.”
An image of an exploding vessel drifted into my mind’s eye. For a few seconds, I felt like I was inside Zephyrus again. And then, the fire rushed over me, bright and brutal. The particles of my body scattered and I knew no more.
* * *
Brendan
Throughout the course of my life, I’d made countless mistakes. I hadn’t been able to save my mother before she’d died, withering under the hold of my father’s tyranny. And even so, I’d held back from squashing him, because I’d believed I needed to assure the stability of our government before I made a decisive move.
It had made sense at the time, but I realized now that I’d underestimated him. I should have known he wouldn’t stop researching the diamond cores of the tablets and he’d do something really foolish with the results. I should have shared the information with my unit and asked for their advice. I hadn’t, and now, we were all paying the price for my mistake.
No one had outright stated that they blamed me for Selene’s disappearance, but my earlier argument with Knox had been nothing but a gigantic accusation. I couldn’t blame them for resenting me. If I’d been smarter or faster, Selene wouldn’t have been taken.
All things considered, it humbled me that they even agreed to follow me again. But we were just that desperate, and it wasn’t like we had any other options.
The plan relied a lot on factors we couldn’t control—Tanya’s cooperation, Jared’s powers, The Grand Judiciary falling for our ruse, my father not communicating with them properly, Tartarus Base remaining offline for a little while longer. I was hoping the people in Hades Base wouldn’t be informed of what my father had done. He didn’t seem the type to share power, so he would’ve wanted to keep the advanced model of the chimera control tablet to himself. But even so, it was still a long shot.
For a while, we were forced to just wait and see what news Jared brought to us from Terra. I hated it with a passion, but it at least gave us some time to recover. My uncle was finally able to take off his bandages, the chimera inside him drifting to the back of his mind. Pollux’s mother stuck close to him and they even shared a brief conversation. Commander Trevor managed to finish the final adjustments to his replacement arm.
It was a good thing too, because less than half an hour after Jared’s departure, we received another blow—literally. A powerful blast struck us and I briefly thought the Centaurs had chased us from Tartarus Base. We could have maybe managed to deal with that, since the Venom’s shields were still in good condition and I was excellent at shuttle piloting.
Unfortunately, the threat wasn’t something we could fight off, because the explosion came from inside us. My world went white, my blocked bond with Typhon cracking and splintering. I screamed, scrambling to remain in control, to hold onto the drifting soul of my chimera.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my room on the Venom. At one point, I must have lost consciousness, because I didn’t remember a thing after that strange attack.
A glass of water manifested into my line of sight. I took it and asked, “What happened? Where are the chimeras?”
“Gone,” Selene replied. “At least for now.”
I dropped the water in my lap and turned to stare at her. I had no idea how I’d missed the fact that she was the one in the room with me. Now that I’d noticed the obvious, I was dumbstruck, staring at her in complete disbelief. “Selene? How?”
“Your father is a lecher and an idiot, that’s how,” she said. “He got a little too close to me. Turns out it’s a bad idea to try to touch me when I’m not wearing my uniform.”
The underlining meaning of her words infuriated me so much that for a few seconds, I couldn’t even see straight. “What did he do?” I asked, my voice cold and dead.
“He didn’t get the chance to do much. Just fondled me a little bit. Don’t worry, though. He won’t be touching anyone else, ever again.”
She didn’t sound very happy with that, and alarm replaced my anger. “Selene? What’s wrong?”
“Do you really have to ask that?”
Our eyes met and that was when I understood. That was when I allowed myself to grasp the magnitude of our loss. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Sphinx said there was no real way to free them from the hold your father had on them. They had to force themselves to stay still long enough to give me time to escape. She blew herself and the others up.”
I didn’t know what to say to tha
t. I understood the logic and I didn’t blame Sphinx for her decision. Typhon would have agreed to it, since there was nothing he detested more than the idea of slavery. He was a powerful chimera, and if we’d worked together so well, it had been in part because I’d respected him as my equal.
Being captured and mind-controlled would have torn him apart at the most basic level. That didn’t mean his loss didn’t hurt.
Tears filled Selene’s eyes, and I finally snapped out of my trance. Leaving the bed, I knelt in front of her seat and wrapped my arms around her. I didn’t make her any promises, nor did I tell her everything was going to be okay. That would have been insulting to her and to our chimeras. I just held her as tightly as I dared and caressed her long, crimson hair.
“Why did this have to happen, Brendan? Why can’t the world just let us be happy?”
“The world is cruel. You know that, princess. We’re just as cruel as everyone hunting us. But that’s okay, because our cruelty comes with determination. I have no doubt that Sphinx and the others will come back.”
“Yes, they will,” she whispered. I wasn’t sure she believed it. If she did, it didn’t reassure her enough.
As she broke free from my arms, I struggled to come up with something else to help her. The only thing that popped up in my head was another question, a distraction. “Where are the others?”
“They woke up before you did,” she explained. “The shock was pretty powerful for them too, but I think it hit you harder because of how strong Typhon was.”
“Probably didn’t help that a lot of my regeneration powers came from him and I’ve been using them like crazy since we left Tartarus Base,” I mused. “Anyway, now that you’re here, we should figure out what to do.”
Selene nodded and got up. Together, we left my room and headed toward the main deck of the Venom.
The sound of raised voices reached us before we even got to our destination. “And I’m telling you I sensed an anomaly on Earth. Something’s gone wrong. I know it.”
“And why should we care about that, August? Even if you’re right and the apsid got himself caught, he’s not relevant anymore now that Selene is back.”
