by Dark, Raven
“The what?”
“The glass surface. Put your hand on it.”
Panic settled in, but I needed the answers. Whatever they were. I heaved a breath, stepped forward, laying my palm on the screen.
It came to life, glowing a bright violet.
A voice came out of it, startling me so much, I jerked my hand away and jumped back. The voice was female, strong and commanding. It was also speaking another language, even though, somehow, I heard it in my own.
“Handprint analysis confirmed. Welcome, Worldmaker.”
“What the fuck is that?” Sheriff snapped.
“What is it saying?” Pretty Boy demanded.
My breathing came out fast and hard. The fact that the men couldn’t understand it, but I could, only made me more afraid.
“What is going on, Priestess?” I bit out.
She spread her hands. “This is where your answers are, Worldmaker. Speak to the voice. Ask.”
One more time, I licked my lips.
“What. Am. I?”
I looked at the…screen, she’d called it. Familiar jagged letters and swirls ran across, right to left, interspersed with a few images that blurred at a speed too fast to decipher.
“Shana Rayan Holographic image one,” the voice said.
A long beam of light came out of the screen. It widened and then slowly took on the shape of a woman, first a silhouette, then rendered into glowing lines criss-crossed until it formed the details of her shape. Feminine, strong features, long legs and arms with ropes of muscle, but with a superhuman bulk.
My eyes almost fell out of my head. The simulated woman was huge, surely seven feet tall. Color illuminated the lines, showing hair as a bright pale violet, her eyes purple like mine. Armor covered her body in scaled metal plates that also covered the top of head like a helmet.
Maker, she looked like Ali’san, but bigger, with armor. Then I saw the color of her hands and face.
Her skin was deep dark purple.
“No. Way,” Doc whispered.
“Wow,” Steel rasped.
I swallowed and fixed Layana with a disbelieving stare. “What is she?”
I had a panicky feeling I knew the answer.
Once more, Lanaya spread her hands. “She is what you are.”
Chapter 28
I’kiran
For what must have been only seconds but felt like ten minutes, I stared at the image, my voice nowhere to be found.
The men were speaking, but they’re voices were distant through the loud thumbing of my heart in my ears.
“No way. This has to be a trick.” Steel sounded like he’d swallowed his tongue.
“Unbelievable,” Hawk said.
“I assure you, gentlemen, I speak the truth,” Lanaya said, nodding to the image. “This. This is what Violets would look like if they were wholly Shana Rayan.”
“No way in hell.” Sheriff smiled up at the image of the woman, then at me.
“She’s not lying,” I said when I finally found my voice. How I knew that, I didn’t know, but it was true.
I looked at Lanaya, my voice trembling. “Who is she? What is she?”
“Her name is I’kiran.” The Priestess’s voice was hushed with reverence. “Captain of the High Command of Shana Ra, Exelar of the First Order.”
“Captain?” I squeaked. “She’s a soldier? Of what army? What is Shana Ra?”
“Ask the voice.”
I tamped down my impatience. “What is Shana Ra?” I said loudly.
The image of I’Kiran vanished.
“Holographic image two,” the voice said.
An image of many spheres appeared, revolving around one another. There was a large yellow one in the center. It flickered.
“Wait a minute.” Doc held up his hand, his eyes closed. “Is that…a solar system?”
“Yes,” Lanaya said, with an enigmatic smile. “It’s the Shana Rayan star system. The large yellow planet is Shana Ra.”
“Pla…planet?” I croaked. I clutched my roiling stomach. It didn’t settle.
She nodded. “That star system is millions of light years away.”
“This is insane. I can’t be…I can’t.” I shot Ali’san a look beside her. “Did you know about this?” I snapped.
Ali’san’s face was white as a sheet. “No.”
“Truthfully, you did not know?” I repeated angrily.
“No. Not about this.”
I turned my focus back to the image of the planets. “Show me Ikiran again.”
The planets vanished. The huge Violet with purple skin appeared, still giant, still powerful. Still…
Still alien.
For a long time, I just stared at her, as though if I did it long enough, she would become human. I fixed Lanaya with a glare. “Tell me how,” I said. “Tell me how I am like her.”
Lanaya clasped her hands behind her back, and as she spoke, her eyes went up to the image’s face. “Five hundred years ago, when the Virus hit, they came.”
“The Shana Rayans?” Doc asked.
She nodded. “They gave a small percentage of women their blood. The future children of these women were born Violets, what you see when you look in the mirror, Setora. They were branded with the stari. Those children developed the super strength, the precognition, the accelerated healing that the Shana Rayans have. The world’s people were supposed to keep those who had the Gift, the blood, sacred and protect them. Their children would repopulate the world. Instead, the government of the time hid the knowledge of our alien visitors from the world and kept secret what the Shana Rayans had given us.
“The Shana Rayans came to help our species. As a result of the Virus, women were scarce, and what was meant to preserve them, ended up enslaving them. With Violets, the hope was to expand our species and heal again. Fertility was guaranteed, you see, with the blood of the Shana Rayans flowing through our veins. But the world never knew the truth.”
She paused and glanced at me, then at the men. “Women would have been freed. Populations would again grow. But as you know, none of that occurred.”
“But why would they do that?” I demanded. “If the world could have been saved because of what the Shana Rayans did, then why would they hide it?”
“Most of the government never knew. Only a select few were aware there was another way.” She shrugged, her eyes distant. “Fear, fear of losing our humanity. Losing what made us human. Most became greedy and coveted the Violets for their rarity, as they still do to this day. Some said that the few who knew the truth became greedy for control. Others say the Gift stopped working. Eventually, the truth was buried. Until the people who founded this priesthood discovered this pedestal. Our descendants, Setora.”
My head was spinning. The things she was telling us didn’t fit inside my head. “So what the Shana Rayan’s gave us produces only female Violets, right? Well, what is Julian, then?”
Her face lost color. “He is…a Violet, yes. But that is not all he is. Males usually do not inherit the genes needed for the powers a Violet possesses. It is rare, but does occur, yes. But when it does, males have the coloring of a Violet, but never the Hive Mind abilities.”
“Except Julian.” I closed my eyes.
“Yes. Except Julian. And in that, he is an anomaly.”
“You mentioned that there was more to him. What else?”
Lanaya didn’t answer, instead, she turned to Ali’san.
“He is evil, Setora. Pure evil,” my Violet Protector said.
I cleared my throat, goosebumps rising on my arms. “And what exactly is his plan?” My words came out as a rasp.
Ali’san walked a few paces around the image before us. “Julian has developed a dangerous delusion that he’s a superior being, beyond any other. He wants Violets. Hundreds of them.”
“And rebuild the world in his image,” Hawk growled.
“Yes. He thinks he’s a Worldmaker, of sorts. His rare power only feeds his delusion. He wants the world rid of all but Violets, Seto
ra. And he wants you to be his queen.”
“And with Setora under his influence, he would be unstoppable…” Pretty Boy said.
“Exactly.” Lanaya fixed each of us with a solemn stare. “Dark Legion, Setora. If Julian is able to gather enough Violets, he will use the army they give him to destroy everyone who is not a Violet. You, even the Yantu…” She took a breath, closing her eyes briefly. “Worldmaker, if you don’t stop him somehow, everyone he does not see as his equal will die.”
“Priestess, forgive me...” Hawk stepped a little closer to the image of I’kiran. “What do you mean, even the Yantu?”
She lifted her shoulders with a sigh. “The Yantu have never known where they’re faith stems from. Their Order is nothing more than an amalgamation of various Shana Rayan belief systems. The Order you follow, Hawk… The fighting style you use, the uniform, the rituals, they all stem from an alien race’s beliefs. Her race.” She nodded to Ikiran. “The Yantu and the Violets’ history go back further than you can imagine.”
Hawk closed his eyes and shook his head at the floor. Worry pricked at me, wondering what this knowledge would do to his sense of identity, his ideals. Did he feel as if Lanaya’s words rendered his faith meaningless?
I focused on Lanaya once more, trying to process all that I’d heard, but I couldn’t. I knew deep down she was telling the truth. The pieces all fit, but it was just too big to take in.
Maker, I wasn’t even human?
Opening my mouth and closing it several times but unable to come up with anything to say, I finally looked up at the image of the woman in front of me. The uniquely beautiful woman with her purple skin, who wasn’t of this world.
I shook my head. “I can’t… I just can’t.”
Feeling like my world was crumbling, I turned and left the temple.
Chapter 29
Shellshock
Setora fled.
My Kitten. I couldn’t blame her, not after what she’d just learned.
Her footsteps rushed across the floor of the temple’s entry hall, toward the front entrance as if she couldn’t get out of the temple fast enough.
I spared a glance for the purple-skinned warrior woman’s image looming before us, then glanced around at the others. The news High Priestess Lanaya had dropped on Setora had left us all reeling. The guys all looked like they’d seen a ghost, yet all of them went for the doors to the room at once, each ready to deliver their own brand of comfort, talking-to, or reasoning, but Setora didn’t need anyone crowding her right now. Even Ali’san, after saying a few quick words to her superior, looked like she was about to rush out to Setora, she too looking paler than a sheet.
No wonder. The truth about what made Violets what they were applied to her too, but the last thing Setora would want was to be around someone she didn’t trust. That truth had punctured a hole in everything I believed in, sending an uncertainty I was not accustomed to jolting through my soul like a white hot flash of lightning, but I’d think about that later.
I went to the doors and put my hand out, stopping the others from following. “I’ll talk to her. She’ll be okay.”
The others backed off, Ali’san with the same formal bow I usually gave. Sheriff nodded, backing off as well. He looked at me, not through me, but at me for the first time in months. Joy for him trickled beneath the other emotions this catastrophic news had wrought, pitifully muted under an onslaught of my suddenly upended world.
I turned to head out of the room after Setora.
“General Hawk.”
Priestess Lanaya’s voice called out, and I looked over my shoulder at her.
“She must accept this, General,” she said. “War is coming. The Legion must form an army to face those Julian has gathered, but only she can face him. There is no time to be delicate or worry about her feelings.”
Irritation with the woman’s single-mindedness pricked at me. As a man of the Dark Legion and a Yantu, I could appreciate her cool, logical approach, but she’d just upended Setora’s whole world. The woman needed to give her a break. Instead of telling her that, though, I nodded. “We will see that she does.”
I headed across the hall to the entrance.
Over these last few months that Kitten had been with us, she’d proven she was no coward. She’d faced kidnappings, a stab through the heart, major surgery, a broken jaw, not to mention all the shit Julian had put her through possessing her body. But this… This kind of revelation struck at the core of who she was. This would make her question the most basic part of herself—what it meant to be human.
Would she come back from this?
At the entrance, several women near the front doors nodded or pointed up toward the mountain we’d come from, indicating where Setora had gone. I looked up. With torchlight above her, she sat on a stone bench, looking north-west, ignoring the temple as if she wished it and the truths it held were not there at all. She had her knees curled up to her chest, arms around them, making herself small. Her chin rested on her knees. Fuck, she looked so lost, my gut churned for her. I made my way to her.
Silent, giving her time to process, I sat on the bench beside her, the cold her almost biting. She didn’t lift her head, didn’t look at me. I rested my hand slowly on her back. Letting her know I was there and nothing more. If I pushed too hard, she’d retreat deeper.
Setora’s back tensed under my fingers, but I left them there.
“You want to talk about it?” I said quietly. Fuck, I felt like I was approaching a skittish animal. She felt as fragile as glass, about to break apart with the slightest force.
She sniffled and shook her head. Not looking at me, but not running, either.
“Okay.” I rubbed her back slowly.
Priestess Lanaya would probably have pushed much harder. The world was at stake, war was coming, ‘she alone’ and so forth. There was no time to mollycoddle. If I had to, I’d force the issue, but right now, I didn’t give a shit. My woman needed time. Taking a few beats to let her process would hardly make a difference.
Which is why I sat there with her, giving her silence. Waiting until she was ready.
A beat passed. Then another.
Setora lifted her head, looking out over the night sky, the mountains dark and hard on all sides. She wiped her cheeks. I wanted to fold her in my arms and kiss away her pain.
“We’d better go. There’s no time for me to fall apart now.” She got up and headed back down toward the temple.
Clearly, I hadn’t given her enough credit. I could hear the determination in her voice, the need to just get on with dealing with the task at hand and worry about her own feelings later.
I strode after her. “Kitten.”
She kept walking, down the torchlit path.
Catching up to her, I took her arm, turning her around.
She faced me, cocking her head, waiting for me to speak. Her expression was completely closed off, hard with determination. Worries and doubts and fears clouded her amethyst eyes, but they were muted, pushed back where they couldn’t reach her.
“Kitten, you have to deal with this. You’re in shock. Talk to me.”
“There will be time to deal with it later. After we get back to camp. After we deal with Julian. You heard what Lanaya said. He has to be stopped. If what she said about what I am is true…” She took a deep breath, acceptance hardening over her fear. “What I am won’t change. This is bigger than me. I’ll handle it after this is over.”
Fuck. Her response to this whole mess was so entirely Yantu that I could practically see her constructing a Fortress behind her eyes. Not the hard steel walls, dark and impenetrable, but her garden, that tranquil, serene place that served as an equally impenetrable oasis where her fear of what she was and what it meant couldn’t touch her. Couldn’t undermine her focus or cause her to break down when we—when the world—needed her most.
How deeply ironic that thought was. How ironic, considering that I wasn’t even sure what being Yantu meant anymore. Consideri
ng that the whole concept of the Yantu, at least the way I knew it, was a lie.
Just as she had done, I put that thought aside for later. The problem would be there later anyway.
I cupped her face in my hands and titled it up. “Setora, are you sure? There’s nothing wrong with taking time to process.”
“I’m sure.” She took my hands in hers, appreciation momentarily softening her eyes. “I will process it but later. I need to do this. I need to know the rest of it.”
Surprise and respect for her filled me nearly to bursting. Fuck, I loved her. I loved her strength, her stubbornness, her selflessness. Her willingness to put others first that both annoyed and captivated me. I would have pushed for her to talk about what she’d seen in that temple now, but I could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes, she needed to deal with the bigger issue before she could handle the smaller one. Julian was definitely bigger.
Nodding, I slid my arm around her and rubbed her back, then headed with her toward the temple.
The other men were in the main room, talking quietly amongst themselves. Probably working out what to do next, coming up with a strategy they’d present to me later. They went on as if it was business as usual. Good men.
With a hand on her shoulder, I steered her toward them. As soon as they saw her, their faces lit up with respect and wonder.
Well, she had just restored Sheriff’s sight. By fucking touching him. They were all also looking at her as if they’d never seen her before. Trying to wrap their heads around what they’d learned about her.
Except that all of them also looked like they were about to close in, offering their own brands of comfort or reassurance.
Setora tensed, and I gave the slightest shake of my head, silently telling them not to crowd her. I didn’t have to. Pretty Boy settled for a smile that included her, letting her know she was still one of us. Steel stepped just a little closer to her, but nothing more. Sheriff put his hand around her nape, squeezing just once before dropping his hand.
Appreciation for them flickered across her face, and the barest hint of a smile touched her lips as her eyes met Sheriff’s. For a single instant, she set her fingers on his arm. Connecting with him, letting him know she was glad he could see again.
