by Erin Raegan
He uncapped a cylinder and a long needle shot out of the end. It was huge. I squirmed away from him, but he dragged me back by my bare thigh. Laying his forearm across my chest, he pressed me down while his hips trapped my hand against the edge of the table. His other hand lifted then plunged down straight into the wound, and I wailed in agony.
He quickly tossed aside the syringe and ripped open a foil package with his teeth. Something soft and wet was slapped over the wound and wrapped around and around. Then he wrapped it again with a thick grey cloth. I shuddered, gasping for breath as he held me down.
After he was finished, he lifted me from the table and sat on a bench, shoving my face into his neck and holding my arms trapped in one of his hands at the small of my back. The stretch of my arm tore another scream out of my throat and he shoved my head deeper into his neck. I bucked against him, sinking my teeth into his shoulder, wailing through it.
The pain held me trapped, making rational thought impossible for another few minutes. Slowly my arm tingled then warmed, and as the pain faded, warmth moved through my body from head to toe and I went limp against him. His hand around my wrists relaxed and he let them free to fall at my sides, then his hand moved to my back, rubbing it briskly.
“What were you thinking?” he rumbled furiously in my ear.
I shook my head silently.
He shook my body, jarring my arm until I whimpered. “What were you thinking?”
“She was bleeding and in pain. I just wanted to help her.”
“Boutin are poisonous,” he growled. “She could have killed you.”
I shook my head, burrowing closer to his chest. “Why are you doing that to them?”
Chyn sighed. “Boutin are slave trade.”
“But why?”
“I do not condone it,” he muttered. “The previous master had an interest in the market.”
“And you killed him?”
Chyn nodded against my temple, his lips resting against my cheek.
“Good.”
We sat silently for another few minutes. Wiping my nose against his cloak, I turned my cheek to face his neck and sighed unsteadily, slowly wrapping my uninjured arm around his neck. “You can stop it now though, right?”
Chyn dropped his forehead to my shoulder and sighed heavily. He tightened his arms around my waist and pulled me deeper into his chest, but he didn’t answer.
“Chyn?” I leaned back, searching his face.
He looked me over, curling a piece of wet hair back behind my ear. “A trade.”
“What?” I looked at him, shocked. “You want to trade me for their freedom?”
He sat up, dropping his hands to my waist and pulling my hips deeper into his. It was then I noticed what was happening in his pants and I was—stunned. He’d been completely unaffected by me sitting on his lap at the Dahk castle. Since then, he’d given me these looks and they made me feel like, maybe? But then he would dare me with those challenging eyes or he’d trap me in a game and I dismissed it as him just playing with me.
Now, I couldn’t lie to myself. I couldn’t deny the tiny thrill that moved through me at the possibility. God, that was bad. Right? I mean I was his prisoner. Wasn’t I? I was so confused.
“A simple trade.” His eyes lowered to stare at me beneath his thick black lashes. “If you comply, I’ll release all of them.”
Hungry looks like that weren’t helping my confusion.
I gaped at him. “All of them? No more slave trading amongst the Juldo?”
He nodded.
“They’ll listen to you?”
Chyn gave me this look—I couldn’t help but snort at the arrogance of it.
“What’s going to keep the entire territory from pushing back? Won’t that start a civil war or something?”
Chyn snorted, his lips ticking up and his hands smoothing around my hips to the top of my bottom. He tapped his fingers there. I looked away from his unnerving stare. Behind him I could see outside and down a platform. We were on a small ship.
“You’re that sure of yourself?” I raised my brows. “You’ve been top dog for what, like, a day?”
“Top dog?” He grinned. I shivered involuntarily at the sexiness of it. “A human reference?”
“Yeah, sorry, you’re usually pretty good at understanding me.” I looked away from the intensity of his eyes.
“I like it,” he murmured, dropping his nose into my neck. “I am top dog now, but more importantly, my brothers thrive on direction. We are instinctive, impulsive, and thirst for battle, but I earned my place in their eyes on the battlefield. They will not question whatever order I give them.”
“Hmm.” I bit my lip, wanting to ask why he seemed to be jumping so smoothly into a role he’d fought so hard against— according to Vyr. But I didn’t want to spoil his sudden good mood, especially after it started off so badly. “What do you want for it?” He grinned, and I was quick to add, “Not that I’ll agree to it.”
Chyn sobered and sat back. “I kept you for a reason.”
I nodded, holding my breath. Was he really going to tell me?
“The gods, do you remember?” He shuddered under me and wrapped his arms around my waist, holding me tightly.
I hesitantly put my hand on his neck, nodding. “They don’t like me.”
He nodded, shuddering again.
“What’s wrong?”
I felt him bare his teeth in a grimace against my collarbone, and a shiver of apprehension numbed my toes.
“I want you to go somewhere with me.” He sucked in a breath through his teeth and shuddered again.
My fingers slipped on his neck and I leaned away, noticing the thin coat of sweat on his brow and face. “Go somewhere with you?” That was it? Why was he reacting this way? He could just drag me wherever he wanted. “What’s happening? Are you sick?”
“No.” The layered texture of his voice thickened and deepened. It sounded as if he’d had to tear the word from his throat. His arms around my waist were so tight now, my hips ached.
“You’re scaring me,” I croaked, rubbing his back and neck. He moaned in pain and I grasped his face, pulling it from my neck and forcing him to look at me. “Chyn? Tell me.”
“I can’t say,” he rasped, nearly inaudibly.
“They won’t let you?” My eyes stung and my hands shook against his face. What was happening to him? I gaped at my hands, what was happening to me?
He shook his head, groaning and stretching his neck back, baring his scarred throat. He roared to the ceiling and squeezed me tighter when I jumped.
I couldn’t begin to understand what was happening to him. I felt like I only had bits and pieces of the overall problem. But I couldn’t deny what I had witnessed. I knew he could do unbelievable things. I knew he was nothing of any world I could ever dream up. I knew he was constantly at war with himself, never more acutely than he was right now.
I barely knew him at all, but something deep in my gut trusted him anyway. Stupid looks and stupid bodyguards. I was so, so stupid.
Right now, as I watched him physically and mentally battle a force I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever understand, I knew I needed to help him.
“Wherever it is, whatever it is, I’ll go, okay?” I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him. “We’ll go right now.”
He nodded, his claws pressing into my hips. “Get off me.”
I stiffened and looked at him, about to ask.
“Go. Right now.”
I scrambled off him, sensing his urgency.
He stumbled to his feet. “Stay.”
I nodded, scared out of mind for someone who had kidnapped me, or at least had kept me after the kidnapping and had done everything in his power to terrify me and then confuse me. But as he stumbled off the ship, that I just knew he had ready to take us back to the castle just so I wouldn’t have to travel with his dark slinky shadows, I wasn’t afraid for me anymore.
15
Chyn
They fought the assassin, raged
at him for daring to think it.
She is not what you think, they screamed. She is nothing.
Chyn stumbled behind a tent and heaved, purging their influence.
They bombarded him, one after the other. Trying their best to hide what he now knew.
But they couldn’t hide it from him.
She’d drunk the sap. Their sap.
He wasn’t sure she’d survive it. And if he was honest with himself, he’d been worried. Not that she would survive it. But that she might not. That he might be callously taking her life for a foolish hope. That he might see her sting and sweetness fade from her eyes because he was weak. Because the hope was too much to withstand. And he needed to know.
He needed to be sure.
They’d tried to hide it from him.
When Vyr was reborn and found his pair in Vivian, Chyn hadn’t recognized it. Nor had the gods. Not at first. But soon they knew. Vyr had been grounded by his missing counterpart. The gods had no hope of holding him when he was so deeply entwined in another.
And when London showed her light in Chyn’s dark abyss, he had been too far gone to see it. But not the gods. They’d recognized her for what she was. Vyr had taught them that.
It was their aversion to her that had given it away.
Chyn’s darkness could not harm his pair. It would never touch her, so they urged him away.
But she’d drunk the sap and lived, and now Chyn was sure. She was his missing counterpart. The one being who could ground him in the light. The only one who could bring him out of the shadows he had been drowning in for so long.
But the gods would not go quietly. They would not release their prince without a fight.
And so Chyn had a choice.
Take from her what she could not know she offered. Or save her from this battle and drift into the dark and fade from this life as he’d always planned.
But Chyn had always been selfish. He knew no other way to be.
And so he would take from her if she was so naively giving.
The gods could cry and wail all they wished.
She was already his.
16
London
Chyn left for so long, I started to get worried he’d abandoned me on that ship. I wasn’t stupid enough to go get him. I would only get lost—or worse, abducted again. But the wait was hard. The worry even harder. Worry for him. Because I wasn’t ready to feel it. It was new and frightening and I didn’t understand it.
When I was falling asleep, Vyr showed up. He came misting into the cockpit, scaring the crap out of me.
“God,” I shouted, smacking his chest. “Warn a girl. Shit.”
He ignored me and climbed into the cockpit.
“What are you doing? Where’s Chyn?” I looked out into the dark field, but I couldn’t see anything.
“He’ll meet us there,” he muttered, firing up the ship.
“Meet us where?”
“Latari,” he said, shocked and confused. It was an unsettling look for him.
“What’s Latari?”
Vyr shook his head. “We need to gather a few things for him and you. I’ll explain on the way.”
“Why isn’t he here?” I grabbed Vyr’s arm as he lifted us into the air. “What’s going on?”
Vyr looked at me, and I could see how shaken he was. That only escalated my own anxiety.
“He said you made a deal,” Vyr said low. “Did you agree to go with him?”
“I mean, yeah I told him I’d go where he needed me to go, but he never said where.”
Vyr sighed. “They’re fighting him too hard right now. He can’t be around you until you’re there. I knew it would happen, but not so soon and so suddenly.”
They.
“You need to give me something better than that. I’m freaking out.”
He nodded and spun the ship in a circle, guiding us through the dark. “Latari is Chyn’s original home. A moon very far from here. It is where the Shadow Born originated, though no one knows and will ever know.” He looked at me in warning. “They were a simple species, very calm and peaceful. They worshipped the moon’s gods: light, darkness, and harmony. Together the three gods provided for the Latari, and in return, the Latari revered them. They lived in tandem to one another.” He looked at me then quickly back at the dark sky. “But they were not alone. The moon also fed a malevolent force. The Juldo.” He looked at me pointedly. “The Juldo infected the moon over time, deriving its energy from the sun.” He took a breath. “Chyn believes them to be gods, but not in the sense you or my Vivian understand them. They are not sentient beings. You understand?”
“Not really.” He lost me way back with Chyn being a member of a simple, calm, and peaceful species.
He sighed. “He believes them to be sentient, but they are not. Light.” He looked up. “Sun.” He nodded out the window. “Darkness, the vast ocean of stars. The moon rotated around a planet full of gases, giving relief from the bright rays of sun and dark nights of space. Harmony. Understand?”
“You’re telling me he interprets them still so primitively?” I asked skeptically. Sun, moon, and stars? That was like seriously hard to believe. The aliens were leagues more advanced than us and even we knew better.
Vyr nodded. “The Latari worshipped these as gods. They were a young species, too young.”
“And the Juldo?” I asked, dread growing in my stomach.
“Juldo were not as they are now. The Juldo was a sickness that spread throughout the moon, infecting the Latari and the land.”
“The infection that turned you into Juldo, that came from Latari?”
Vyr nodded. “The Latari males were infected by the Juldo vine. An infection, changing them, evolving them. But the females were immune. Their immunity held back the infection in the males. As long as they had a female pair, the males would not lose their minds to the infection.”
“God,” I breathed, wincing. “Bad word choice. I just… that’s crazy.”
Vyr nodded. “But the females suffered from what the infection did to the land. The water supply diminished, food became scarce. The males did not need as much nourishment because the Juldo infection thrived in the most deplorable of conditions, adapting and evolving. They could survive with very little nourishment. But as the females died of starvation and dehydration, their male pair lost their connection to an immune donor.”
“Donor?”
Vyr nodded. “The one thing that abled them clear minds. Mating allowed the females to provide immune DNA to their males, though they did not see it so scientifically as you or I do. They believed their mated pair was a gift that kept them grounded. A generation was born from the first pairs. Chyn was the first child of such a pair. The Latari prince. A great many were born in his generation.” Vyr shook his head. “The females did not survive, but the males were born with the Juldo infection and a trace of the immunity from their mothers. They lived. They thrived. They showed no signs of needing a pair. They were the Shadow Born.”
I was holding my breath, mesmerized and horrified by the story of the Latari.
“Their mothers passed, and soon after, their fathers were lost to the infection and its madness, fading into the abyss and becoming one with the land. But they prepared their sons. And those sons thrived on Latari, worshipping their gods and grieving their loss. Their abilities manifested over time, allowing them to visit worlds in the blink of an eye. They met other sentient beings and forged partnerships. But they wanted more. They grew in strength, but they did not have the numbers. It was Chyn who changed the first. Infecting a race with the Juldo infection on a world where the species adopted his DNA by mere touch. He did not know he’d done so until the infection had spread too far. That planet is now called Juldoris.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Is the infection there still? Here?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t the world that was infected. It spread through the species. Hundreds of years passed as Chyn and the others lived with their new b
rothers.”
“No sisters?” I asked, thinking not for the first time I’d never seen a female Juldo.
“The infection has not been able to thrive in a female. Some have grown sick, but it is rare. Most are completely immune to the virus. Though the Latari females were immune, they were still affected by the virus. They evolved in other ways. Pairs were linked.”
“What does that mean?”
Vyr shook his head. “It’s hard to explain. Vivian is my pair. I knew I could share my long life with her by using the virus counteragent Chyn strains himself. But he did not share this with me at first, fearing I would seek her out intentionally. What I didn’t understand at the time was that it wasn’t the virus counteragent Chyn derided that would give her long life but the virus itself.”
“You infected her?” I asked in disbelief.
He nodded. “I will not allow her to leave this life before me. The virus tied her to me. We are one and the same.”
“I’m so confused,” I muttered. “I thought you said Chyn and his generation didn’t need a pair.”
“They did not—at first. But their generation had adapted it and were affected at a much slower rate. Species that are infected now have much the same reaction as the first Latari, though they do not evolve as the Latari did, nor do they have their abilities. Chyn and the first Juldo Master—Dordyn, developed a nano-mite that eats the infection as it tries to consume the host, prolonging the host’s life. Though their bodies break down over time, their lifespan is still significantly longer than before they were infected.”
“That’s why they’re all rocking metal appendages.”
Vyr nodded and opened his tunic, pointing at his silver veins. “Before my Vivian, I needed the same supplements. But now that I have found my pair and she holds that immunity, I no longer need them.”
“Wow, that’s oddly fascinating.” And also extremely confusing.
Vyr chuckled. “My Vivian feels the same.”
“So she was cool with you infecting her?”
He nodded again. “Though I did not know it was the infection at the time, I would never harm her and she knows this. She is my life.”
