by Nia Mars
“When the Oath Forger awakens to her calling, is it like this?” I ask.
He looks stunned, shaken, eyes a little wild. “I would have thought it’s even better, once that connection is fully made, but I can’t imagine anything better than this.” He sighs. “Ava, if it gets better, you are going to bring me to my knees.”
No, that won’t be me.
The thought of Tiam with someone else, however, sends red hot, murderous jealousy ripping through me. I draw a shuddery breath.
What right do I have to feel jealous?
None. No right at all. Not even a little. It would be stupid beyond stupid to start wishing for more than I can have.
“Let me stay here with you.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “We’ll rest together. There is comfort to be found in just being held.”
As he promised, he is not pushing. He is asking for less than I’ve already allowed—not even another kiss, just me in his arms.
The temptation is maddeningly strong.
“Another time.” I need to be alone.
When he steps back, his smile is accepting. “Lock the door unless you want to wake up with Dason sleeping at your feet.”
I grin through a new welling-up of tears. I wish Tiam would draw me into his arms and kiss them away all over again.
“If you really want me to leave, you have to stop looking at me like that, Ava.” His voice is ragged. His gray eyes are filled with concern, but also with his own need.
I turn away from him, back to the window, and stare straight ahead until I hear him walking away, until I hear the door close behind him. Only then do I dash away my tears on the back of my hand.
Until now, I’ve never fully considered the possible cost of my lies, only the benefits. I kind of thought that if I were caught, the worst that could happen is that they would kick me out of here and send me back home. Jail at the very worst, but, honestly, would they jail someone just for lying?
But...what if I fall in love with one—or more than one—of the kreks? We are still only friends, and already my heart is breaking at the thought of someday leaving them.
Chapter Nine
IN THE END, I can’t take the pressure and concoct a plan. I tear off all the little flowers and ribbons from my dress to make it even simpler. I braid my hair into one long braid down my back. I keep my head down and do my best to look like a member of the palace staff, nobody of particular importance. I’m a scavenger—I’ve had plenty of practice hiding in plain sight.
I carry one of my fancy dresses, as if taking it to be laundered, and when I meet someone as I scurry down the hallway, hugging the wall, I lift the big bundle of the dress high enough to cover at least part of my face.
When I reach the side door Tiam took me through the day before to get to his pod, I look behind me. Nobody in the hallway. I drop the dress, then open the door and sail through. The guards outside never see anything more than the back of my head—one of the hundred people who work in the palace each day, eager to get home after work.
My heart beats so hard, I fear it might burst.
I’m outside the palace!
I need to be free, even if only for the rest of the day. I need to get away from my gilded prison, from everybody’s expectations, from the people around me. Because having people around me means that I have to keep lying, and lying, and lying.
I’m hyperventilating, but I force myself to walk no faster than somebody getting off work would. I’m still within view of the guards. They could still call me back.
The building is huge, so the block it sits on is endless. An eternity passes before I reach the first cross street. I definitely can’t turn right. I don’t want to run into my fan crowd in front of the palace. Not that they would recognize me, but still.
I keep going straight, then randomly turn left on the third side street.
The mansions are three and four stories tall, the doors ornate, the door knockers elaborately decorated with patterns unique to each. I wonder if the patterns are specific to each noble family, like shields of arms used to be on Earth. Enormous windows sparkle in the sun. Every single house is magnificent. It’s clear that only rich people live this close to the palace.
People walk around as if they don’t have a care in the world. Nobody is watching the sky with anxious eyes. They go about their business as if their safety is assured, taken for granted. There might be war in the galaxy, but it hasn’t reached Merim.
I gawk. A lot. The city looks very different seen from street level. From the air, from Tiam’s pod, it appeared like a patchwork quilt. I still can’t get over the orderly rows of houses, how every single building is standing. On Earth, everything’s in ruins. Here, the store windows are full. God, the stuff I could scavenge. Of course, here it would be stealing. I fold my hands together behind my back.
As pods swoosh by above, I keep thinking there’s a sandstorm coming. But if there’s ever been a city that has never seen a sandstorm, it’s Merim. The streets are pristine.
How is a world like this even possible? My heart aches for Earth. I drink in all the colors, the sounds, the riches, and it’s like walking through a dream. I want to remember it all so I can tell Lily. I swear that someday I am going to find a way to see her again.
As I turn the next corner, I see a tower that looks like it’s made out of onyx, a glittering monolith. Must be someplace important. When I reach it, I spell out the letters above the front doors, but they don’t come together to mean anything as far as the implanted translator in the back of my neck is concerned. Maybe it’s an acronym.
Tiam would know.
My heart grows heavy. Tiam is going to be worried about me when he finds me gone. Dason will be crushed if he thinks I’ve run away. I’m not sure about Uthan, I don’t know him well enough yet, but I think he’ll be disappointed in me. They all put a lot of stock into our Oath Forger connection.
I stop and glance over my shoulder. If I went back now, they might not even realize that I’d run off. But I can’t make myself turn around. I need this freedom. I’m not ready to return. Not yet.
The city around me is almost like watching an old sci-fi movie on my comm unit. In some ways Merim is startlingly similar to the futuristic movies, and in other ways it’s nothing like Hollywood imagined.
For one, there are no roach-like aliens—that I’ve seen—and thank God for that. But the tall glass buildings, the whooshing pods, the cleanness, the green... It’s the stuff utopian movies are made of. Too bad our own Earth turned dystopian.
Merim is such a strange, overwhelming place, but I’m not scared. I used to be a scavenger. I have lived life on the knife’s edge. This? This is a piece of cake. I’m a damned tourist.
I reach some kind of an open-air market. I’m sure people here order their food through their comm units and have it delivered like my great grandparents did on Earth. The open-air market is probably a curiosity, nothing more. People buy things here for the fun of it, to remember how things were once upon a time, back in the day.
I stop in front of a stall that sells what I think might be fruit. I’m unfamiliar with the shapes and colors. They are bright, and most of them are round or cylindrical. They smell sweet.
“An erep for the pretty lady?” the seller, a middle-aged man in brown overalls, offers. His kind eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles at me. His nose has a bony ridge, but other than that, he looks just like an Earth human.
I glance at the yellow fruit he holds out, but something else catches my gaze, a brilliant, iridescent red globe that’s just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“An agra?” He reaches for it.
I feel myself blushing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t set out to shop. I didn’t bring any money.”
I move on, but he calls me back. With an even wider smile, he puts a large red fruit into my hand. “You’re not from around here.”
“I’m from Earth.”
“Never heard of it.”
Silently, I
wish I’ve never heard of the Federation. I thank the man, then walk away. The comm unit on my collar gives a tiny chirp. I’m almost certain it means I just paid. That makes me feel better. At least I’m not a complete moocher.
Oh wait... It’s not like the comm unit is drawing from my measly credits on Earth. I owe The Five too much already; for clothes, for shelter, for food.
I walk on, trying to estimate how much I owe them so far. Then my gaze drops to the comm unit. The palace can probably track me through it. I pry the little plastic disk off and toss it into the grass that edges the sidewalk. Now I’ll owe for that, too, but at least I’m free. I’m nearly floating above the ground when I finally bite into my agra, whatever it is.
Oh. Dear. God.
Agra is the best thing in the universe.
The agra is mine, and I am the agra’s. If The Five were made of agra, I would have accepted them already. I only have eyes for my agra. Which is why I bump into a wall of muscle.
“In what universe do you think that this is acceptable?” The voice is a sharp blade of cold fury. The words are prison bars snapping into place. The intonation says I should be locked up, and the key should be thrown into a black hole.
Tiam’s eyes are harder than I’ve ever seen them. The gray flashes like sword metal. This is not Comforting Tiam. This is not Horny Tiam. No more Handsome Geek Tiam either. This is Tiam the Avenger.
When he grabs me by the shoulder, it hurts. I drop the agra and the sweet fruit rolls away in the dirt.
I nearly whimper at my loss. Then I switch to anger in a split second. I shove against Tiam. “In what universe did you think you were going to keep me as a prisoner?”
I’m shouting, and I don’t care who hears it.
His expression tightens dangerously. “You are not a prisoner. You are protected.”
“It’s protection when it’s by my choice, with my consent. Otherwise, you’re nothing but a prison guard.”
He dips his head low. His grey eyes swirl charcoal. His mouth is so tight, I think every ounce of self-control he has is needed to hold himself back from losing it.
The air crackles between us.
Okay, the man is seriously intimidating. Smart thing would be to back down. Apologize, even.
I kick him in the shin.
His lips keep flattening until they disappear. “You’re coming back with me.”
“I’m not.”
I was going to return, that had been the plan all along. But now that he has made an ultimatum, I can’t back down.
“Do you know what could happen to you out here?”
“Absolutely nothing. Have you ever been to Earth?”
“I’ve been to hell.” He doesn’t look like he is joking.
Right. He’d been to war. War is hell. Okay, I get it.
“I want to see the city.”
“On foot? Without guards?”
“Like a normal person.”
“You are—” He bites off the rest and glances around.
People are standing around, watching. A crowd, in fact. And some are tapping their comm units. Are they taking pictures?
Oh God, of course they are. Because they recognize Tiam. He’s famous. He’s krek. He’s a freaking king.
He catches the moment when I realize all that, and he flashes me a glare that tells me just how little he appreciates being put in this situation. And then his pod is there, lowering next to us, beeping to give the crowd warning that it’s landing. As soon as the door whooshes open, Tiam pushes me inside with a warning growl. He’s never been more like Koah than at this moment. As annoyed, grumpy, and bossy as he looks, they could be brothers.
The door closes behind us, and we lift straight up.
Tiam doesn’t give me time to sulk over the sudden end to my very temporary freedom. He yanks me across the gap between us and onto his lap, shifting me until I’m sitting sideways on his thighs. His arms close around me like iron bars. I turn my face to his so I can glare at him better. We are nose to nose.
“You will never do that again.” He carefully enunciates every word, with chilling menace. “I don’t care if you feel the connection or not. You will not put yourself in danger.”
“So I am never to leave the palace?” I snap back. “Then it is a prison!”
“You can leave whenever you wish, within reason. Under full guard. Preferably with one of The Five.” Then he adds, at his angriest yet, “The Five have enemies other than each other, dammit.”
“The pirates?”
“Them too.”
“Who else?”
The anger leaks out of his expression, but his arms don’t loosen. “The pirates are gaining power too fast. They have too much. They control territories they should not be able to control, considering how disorganized they are. They used to be at each other’s throats. They never amounted to more than riffraff before. How are they suddenly a defacto sixth alliance and pushing at our borders?”
I take several seconds to process his words. “You mean you think someone’s helping them?”
“Not just one person. Some kind of an entity. A group. And it’s a group with power. I can’t pin them down. They’re invisible. Every time I catch a hint, their trail disappears like vapor.”
“They wouldn’t know about me,” I whisper, subdued.
He carries plenty of weight on his shoulders. I shouldn’t have made him chase me. I flinch. I don’t like feeling like a temperamental child.
He holds my gaze. “Wouldn’t they? If they are as big, as organized as I think they are, they have spies. And if they have spies, those spies are in Merim.”
“Is that why there hasn’t been a public announcement about me yet?”
“Part of the reason.”
“The other part is that I’m not ready.”
He nods.
There hasn’t been an announcement yet because The Five are protecting me. I sigh. Like an idiot, I ran away to feel the sunshine on my face. Which I could have done in my own walled-in garden.
I should probably apologize, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I do feel like a prisoner in the palace. I do feel like the walls are closing in on me. But maybe what I feel is just the wall of my own lies. I can’t blame The Five for that, can I?
“Are you unharmed?” Tiam asks without looking away from my eyes.
“I am. I had fun.”
His body relaxes around me. “Next time, let’s have fun together.”
“You owe me an agra.”
He almost smiles. “You like agra, do you?”
“It’s the best thing in the universe.”
“You are the best thing in the universe, Oath Forger.”
I don’t have the heart to correct him.
He dips his head forward and rests his forehead against mine. “I aged at least a decade in the past two hours, you know that?”
Two hours of freedom? Is that really all that I could manage? Honestly? It’s kind of disappointing. “Is that all that I’ve been gone?”
“All?” he chokes on the word and pulls back, looking at me, his gaze incredulous. “A hundred palace guards have been discreetly scouring the city, and nobody could find you.”
“Were you very mad?”
“I was beyond mad. I was scared to death. I want to lock you in your room for the rest of our lives. And you can be glad Roax is not here. He would want to tie you to the bed.”
Now I know two things about Roax. One: he is ugly. Two: he likes to overreact. I stash away that knowledge.
This time when Tiam kisses me, that careful edge he’s been holding on to until now is gone. He is done trying not to scare me. My disappearance scared him, and now he is scaring me right back.
He kisses me fully and kisses me hard; there are no preliminaries. Nothing exists outside of our pod. I stop worrying about the future. I can’t remember the past.
“My Ava.” He growls the words into my mouth. It’s not a question. He’s done with asking.
I’m done
with making him ask.
He rips the top of my dress open. Okay, not rip. The dress has snaps. The snaps are in the front today. I had forgotten.
His lips burn a trail down my neck, he tastes my skin and murmurs his approval. “Sweeter than agra, any day. Please don’t run away again. Ever.”
“I just went out for air,” I gasp the words. “I didn’t run away.”
Here is the scary thought: I’m no longer sure I could run away from him. From them.
Chapter Ten
I WASN’T MAD AT TIAM for bringing me back to the palace. Well, I wasn’t mad by the time he brought me back. I was mad at first. But then he turned me boneless. And then, I got mad again later. A lot madder.
He locked me in my room while he had some stupid strategy meeting with Uthan and Dason. Without me! Like I’m not an interested party. What. The. Hell.
I paced. I ate the dinner Taly brought, some kind of vegetable stew. I waited for Tiam so I could yell at him. When the sky turned dark outside, I gave up waiting and took a shower, then, because I expected no more visitors for the day, I put on my nightgown.
But now, because I’m too wired to actually go to bed, I start pacing again.
When the door rattles, I pivot, ready to give Tiam a piece of my mind—and also maybe a foot in his arrogant ass—but it’s Dason.
His eyes... God, his eyes are twin blades in my heart. I had hurt him.
“I thought you decided you couldn’t accept us,” he says.
Moonlight glints off his short, blondish-brown hair, off the shirt that covers his wide shoulders. He’s all gorgeousness and a ball of tension.
“I just needed air.” I smile at him to make him relax. “It’s a little too much, you know?”
He nods. “The five of us. Tiam says you probably don’t have to choose all five to make it work.”
From the sad tone of his voice, I can tell he fully expects that he will be the one not chosen.
“Dason?”
His body tenses. He’s waiting for me to tell him.
“I hate sleeping alone. Would you please stay with me again tonight?”
