by Elsa Jade
His universal translator struggled with the image and gave up. As she’d given up, apparently.
“I didn’t fight,” she whispered, giving voice to what he’d surmised. “After all those years of fighting, when it most mattered, I didn’t even struggle.”
“You were overmatched,” he reminded her. “Frightened, drugged, not even on your planet anymore.”
Her spine was straight and stiff under his hand. “Is that what you would tell your troops, warlord?”
“I am not a warlord anymore.”
And that loss bit at him as cruelly as her moment of weakness haunted her.
Finally, she curled into his side. “I want Rayna and Trixie to be happy. They fought and won—Rayna got us the space station, Trixie got rid of Blackworm—so they deserve their happiness. But me…”
When she didn’t continue, he wanted to shake the rest of the words out of her. But what made him think he had that right when he was a failure himself? “As a one-time warlord, I can tell you war and reward are not always matched.”
“And that’s why we’re hiding here in a ruined castle, stealing love tokens.”
He wanted to argue with her, but… She was right. This wasn’t a battle he could win. Fighting her friends would only make him more like Blackworm when he was trying to prove the opposite. The best he could do was unearth some ancient testament of his identity from a life that was no longer his.
As his hope for a future went, it seemed the chains of the past were stronger even than the fatal abyss of a black hole.
***
They didn’t sleep long, although their makeshift bed was cozy enough. Tynan sensed the coming daylight even before it drifted through the door they’d left ajar. As long as he’d been gone, the rhythms of the mountain were still the same.
Lishelle shifted, easing away from him.
“Good morning,” he said softly.
“Oh, hey.” She pushed upright, nudging springy curls out of her eyes. “You’re awake too. Good. It’s a race whether my stomach is going to cave in first or my bladder explode.”
“Either way, sounds messy.” He rose and held one hand back to her, tugging her to her feet. “Let’s see if the bathrooms still work and then scrounge the offerings.”
She tagged along behind him, not trying to pull her hand out of his. “I’m scared to ask, but…”
He glanced over his shoulder as they stepped out into the great hall. “You can ask me anything.”
Her brow furrowed. “What kind of bathroom exactly?”
His bark of laughter echoed in the big room.
By the time he showed her the bathing options—which had only a trickle of water, but enough to do the job—and explained how the castle had been plumbed with gravity-fed runoff a millennium before he took it by right of conquest, they were good and hungry. They found a selection of unexpired food pouches in the gifts strewn around the dais and took their haul outside to the front steps.
The morning sun had climbed high enough to shine down through the jungle. The storm last night had left raindrops everywhere, glistening like the world had been dipped in jewels in every hue of green with a few pops of blossoming color. Though it was still early, the heat was gathering, and silvery wisps of fog spiraled up from the ground to dance among the vines.
“It’s beautiful,” Lishelle murmured. “So unlike the Azthronos estate.”
“The estate planet was always the proper head of this system,” he said. “This world was its wild heart.” He stared up as a small flock of local avians flew across the courtyard, chirping a morning song. “I’m glad this at least hasn’t changed.”
When a less musical gurgle came from his companion, he turned his attention back to her.
“Sorry.” She clamped one hand over her belly. “Tell me more.”
He smiled. “While I feed you.”
They tore open the packets of food. As befit gifts for a god, everything was high quality, maybe too rich for a picnic breakfast. All the bottles they tried were various strengths of ghost-mead and even more exotic liqueurs. Except they found one bottle of a delicate fruit nectar that hadn’t been fermented and one suspiciously dark carafe—
“Coffee!” Lishelle hugged the carafe to her chest. “Thank god!”
“Thank this god,” he said smugly.
She grinned. “I suppose I should share.”
He waved it away. “I’m feeling benevolent.”
While they dined on Thorkon delights, he told her about growing up in a jungle village near the castle. When he’d been denied a servant’s position at the castle because of his jungle upbringing, he joined the army of a neighboring warlord and worked his way up through the ranks where his rough ways hadn’t mattered.
“When the warlord died in battle with the next Thorkon galaxy over, I took his place. I finished his war and decided to come home.”
“I can’t imagine the castle’s lord at the time was happy to have an army camped on his doorstep.”
“On his dais, actually.” Tynan smirked. “I told him I still needed a servant, but he declined and took his household to the more civilized estate planet.” His grin faded. “I loved it here. Until the goddesses came.”
She set aside the carafe to squeeze his knee. “That’s over and done.”
He gazed at her, her kindness and her forgiveness piercing him more deeply than the goddesses had. “Now I have someone else’s past haunting me.”
“I’ll explain to Raz that you’re telling the truth about who you aren’t. And who you are.” She jerked one thumb toward the castle behind them. “God of Beloveds.”
He crinkled his eyes doubtfully. “Neither the duke nor his enforcer seem particularly devout.”
“Not really,” she admitted. “But Raz is the Avatar of the God of Oaths. Doesn’t that mean he has some way to verify if you swear it’s true?”
“Maybe if he was actually a god.”
“Now don’t get all pompous and proud.”
“I’m not,” he protested. “Not when the plumbing’s only good for one, maybe two more flushes.”
“Good thing we still have the shuttle,” she said.
He watched her closely when he said, “I should take you back, shouldn’t I?”
“I don’t need to pee yet,” she said.
“Back to the station,” he clarified.
She stilled.
In the warm, dewy light filtering through the wet jungle, her dark eyes were mysterious. Instead of the night robe she’d been wearing in her suite (when he’d abducted her; he winced at that truth) she’d swapped for a lightweight sampler of the sort Thorkon girls used to weave for their dowries. It was an antique that she’d found under the throne, protected from the elements in a plasilk bag. She’d wrapped it around herself in a simple style that crisscrossed over her breasts—one side in the brilliant yellow with crimson threads of a lamanya flower, the other in a perfect blue—and tied behind her neck. With her headscarf confining her curls in an upswept column, she looked like a goddess of bold color.
And she looked like she was thinking of smiting him.
He did not have good luck with goddesses…
“Back to the station?” For all the tropical warmth around them, her tone was frosty. “So you bring me to your stronghold, bone me on your throne, and now want to send me on my way. What, so you can summon ninety-nine more lovers to be your lady?”
He recoiled. “No! Why would you think—?”
“You have a history here, don’t you?” She rose to her feet, which she’d left bare. Framed against the vibrant lines of the forest behind her, she widened her stance. “But you’re right. What was I thinking?”
When she spun away from him, he stared after her, confused. How was he supposed to know what she was thinking? He might be a god, but he couldn’t know the female mind.
All he knew was he couldn’t hope to hold her when his future was as hazy as the morning fog and the past everyone believed was his left him mire
d in darkness. She might believe that because she hadn’t fought she’d never find her happiness, but if the goddesses had taught him anything, he knew everyone deserved to be loved.
He shoved upright and jolted after her. “Lishelle. Wait.”
She strode toward the path to the landing pad, her heels flipping up the hem of her improvised skirt. “Don’t worry. I’ll still vouch for you to the duke. I can swear, cross my heart and hope to die, you aren’t Blackworm since at least he was trying to win back his true love.”
“True…?” True love? Wait wait wait. Was she saying that she wanted to be his—?
While he’d dithered, she’d hurried a short distance ahead, lost around the curve of the path. He raced after her, his heart seemingly one step ahead of him. “Lishelle! Just—”
“Take me back,” she called. “Actually, you know what, I’ll just get the EVA suit and spacewalk back. You can stay here. Since you’re home now.”
His throat tightened. Yes, he was home, unlike her. But…it wasn’t like what he’d remembered. He wasn’t what he’d been.
He faltered a few steps. She already believed he wasn’t Blackworm, but could he convince her he wasn’t Tynan either, or at least not the reckless warlord he’d been who’d broken hearts and spaceship blockades with equal abandon?
She was almost to the overgrown clearing where they’d landed the shuttle. Not that she could fly away without him. He hung back for a moment, knowing he’d have to risk her anger to court her favor.
But the chance he was taking blossomed inside him like one of those improbable lamanya flowers under the black hole’s radiance from the first time he’d seen her.
He hustled forward, not sure exactly what he was going to say but trusting the power of his godhood would save him.
About to step out into the clearing, she hesitated, her face turning up toward the sky. The sun shimmered in the corner of her eye, and his heart seized to think he’d made his strong lady cry. “Lishelle.”
He reached for her arm just as she spun toward him, her dark eyes widening with terror. “Run!”
Behind her, a vicious orange beam of light speared down from the heavens, and the shuttle exploded in a rain of ruin.
Chapter 12
Lishelle had half a heartbeat to stare at the violent fireball reflected in Tynan’s wide dark eyes before they were both knocked flat.
The breath was punched from her lungs, her ears ringing dully, but he caught her, cushioning their fall. Before that heartbeat finished, he’d dragged her to her feet and they were running back toward the castle.
Her numbed mind supplied only one coherent thought as she stumbled along behind him: Her scarf had been ripped right off her head, and her hair was an absolute disaster.
For some reason, that realization reset her brain, and she threw herself into the run. She’d never been athletically inclined, but she was tall and she was going to put those long legs to good use, goddamn it. She drew even with Tynan when they hit the front steps of the ruins, and she actually passed him in a dead sprint for the front portal.
Ooh, why had she thought the word dead?
There was zero lag in her heartbeat now. Her blood was screaming through her veins, giving her a lifetime of awful cardio in minutes. Together, they swung around and shoved at the huge double doors, closing them tight. When Tynan strained to spin a gear that dropped a thick bar across the entry, she pointed mutely—ears still ringing and her tongue dry in her mouth—at the hole in the ceiling. He shrugged, held up one finger, and pulled the blaster from his thigh holster.
She cringed back. He was going to try to force the attackers to come through one opening. Where he could mow them down.
She swallowed hard. “Tynan, wait.” Her voice sounded thready and weak, even to herself. “It might be the duke or the captain and their people, come to rescue me.” She obviously hadn’t convinced them she’d gone willingly; was it because, as her ex had accused, she always held back a bit of herself, never quite convincing herself she was where she wanted to be?
But Tynan shook his head. “That was a mercenary cruiser. No ship ident, and no warning. They’re here for Blackworm. For me. And they just destroyed our only means of escape.”
Okay, turned out, her heart could only race so fast before it stopped entirely. “How did they find us?”
“Apparently whatever flair I had as a warlord atrophied in my time as a love god.” His dark eyes narrowed, sharp and glinting through his lashes, as if the plasma fire had forged his glare into obsidian. “They intercepted our last communications with the station, or they followed our wake, or our mimic shroud wasn’t configured correctly, or…” He snarled. “I larfing failed. I forgot what I was. But that stops now.” He turned those hard eyes on her and grabbed her hand. “Come with me.”
Disconcerted at his abrupt transition, she followed along behind him without question. He hauled her around the dais and then slung her toward the small hidden room behind.
“Get into the spy room,” he snapped. “There’s food and drink for several days.”
A surge of relief made her almost dizzy. “Yes. We can hide here—”
“I’ll seal you in,” he interrupted. “Whatever happens, stay quiet. They’re here for me, or who they think I am. Once they have me, they won’t care about you.”
“Wait—”
He grabbed her, the butt of the blaster pressing sharply into the small of her back as he yanked her up against his chest. He stared down at her, and she was achingly aware of every point of contact between them, even more aware of the fragility of her own body and his, for all his potent strength and godliness.
“You make me believe not what was, but what could be,” he rasped.
“Tynan,” she whispered.
His mouth crashed down on hers, all brutal finality and zero of the grace she’d known from him, as if the infinity he’d known as the God of Beloveds had shrunk to this single point of time between them.
She swayed into him, grasping at his shoulders, but he was already pulling away. Her lips stung from the pain of his kiss, and she could only loose an incoherent cry of denial when he planted his widespread hand between her breasts and shoved her back into the room. She stumbled a few steps, almost bouncing in the lighter gravity, before she caught herself, but even as she launched toward the opening, he gave her one last look and slammed the door in her face.
“Tynan!” She grabbed for the seam of the hatch. It had taken both of them to force it open yesterday. Despite the hopelessness, she clawed at the recessed handle, throwing all her weight at the closure. She had enough weight to crack the seal… Argh, but not enough to force it open! She just needed a few more pounds, a little more leverage. Her whole life had been scrabbling to make it just a little further from where she started, and yet here she was again, trapped and abandoned. Not by her own ambition or some vile abductor, but by the man she loved.
She loved him.
The truth expanded through her in ravaging waves like a supernova consuming everything in its orbit. Someone smarter—someone like she’d once been—would run and hide from such devastation. But…what was fear, what was uncertainty in the face of this power? She couldn’t protect herself from this, and…
She didn’t even want to save herself.
Shoving away from the door, she raced to the spy holes in the wall that observed the dais. Tynan stood in the center of his throne room, staring up at the broken ceiling, his legs braced wide and the blaster extended at his side. Sunlight streaming in a bright column through the shattered window, bright motes dancing in the humid air, left him standing in a pool of stark shadow. He looked like the warlord he was.
And he looked very alone.
Every muscle in her body contracted with dread and betrayal. She’d told him her secret shame, that she hadn’t fought her way out, and now he’d locked her in. Damn him! She slammed her hands against the wall on either side of the spy hole, as if she could strike a blow against him, agai
nst an unfair universe that didn’t believe in the power of love.
She swung her face away from the sight of him ready to fight for her, die for her.
And found herself staring at the tokens they’d brought into their little hideaway. Plenty of people had believed in love…
She raced to the goodies. Could she make a molotov cocktail out of the bottle of ghost-mead and…uh, something from the energy source in the solar lanterns? Was that even possible? Damn it, why had she read so much about philosophy and not enough about anarchy?
She tossed through the offerings—alien cheese and crackers, vacuum-sealed pastries from who knew how long ago, probably as yummy as Twinkies but not super useful unless she could gain enough weight immediately to pry open the door with brute strength, a small unlabeled box…
Bobbling it in her hand, she wondered what it could be. A tiny bomb? That would be good.
She popped the lid.
And stared down at a beautiful ring. The fiery yellow gemstone in the middle was cut into a diamond shape, throwing sparks across her hand even in the low light. Scarlet striations threaded through the stone like veins of blood.
Useless. Why had he even brought this back here from all the gifts on the dais?
Tynan was going to sacrifice himself and she’d never have the chance to tell him that she loved him. Growling in frustration, she shoved the ring on her finger as she spun around to survey the room again. If only the jungle had grown this far, a tree branch would’ve been more helpful than all these riches… Her gaze fell on the inflatable mattress where they’d spent the night. Why hadn’t she said anything when they’d been wrapped in each other’s arms?
She narrowed her eyes.
Racing to the mattress, she whispered nonsense to whatever gods might hear her. She poked at the controller on the side of the sleeping pad, and it sucked itself back into a shape almost as small as the ring box. If this worked…
