Chapter 11
I stayed under the blanket and spent the rest of the night in a fitful, fragmented sleep that made me wake up with a stronger headache than the previous day. I peeped out of the furs carefully, apprehensive about Rock’s reaction after catching me watching them last night.
I had correctly assumed that after bringing in the brualdak, Rock wouldn’t need to go hunting today. Thankfully, it turned out he was butchering his kill in the cold cave when I woke up, and I didn’t have to face him right away. I had a hard time meeting Vlunn’s eye as it was. Looking at Rock would have been beyond awkward.
Vlunn escorted me to the bathroom. This time, I felt strong enough to walk on my own, only leaning on his arm for support.
“The sun will be above the mountain in an hour if you want to see the city,” Vlunn offered after breakfast. “Rock may join us too, after he’s done cutting up the meat.”
Hearing Rock’s name heated my cheeks and brought the memories of his glowing eyes once again. I wrapped my blanket tightly around me, remembering my resolution to stay in control.
It absolutely didn’t help that these guys preferred to run around naked.
As Vlunn went through his usual morning routine, I was treated to an unobstructed view of his toned ass.
The more I tried to ignore it and look away the more my gaze would come back to it, as if drawn by a powerful magnet. And then I would remember again the rock hard muscles of his buttocks clenched tight as his head was thrown back in ecstasy.
Exasperated, I had to acknowledge that the persistence with which my eyes followed Vlunn’s every move through the morning was way beyond the pure, scientific interest of a biologist.
Friends, I reminded myself. Vlunn belonged to Rock, not to me. He was Rock’s, not mine.
Finally, the sun was high enough for Vlunn and I to head to Corfoha. Vlunn took a torch to help us see in the dark tunnel, but he said that we wouldn’t need it once we got to the main cavern. I held on to his arm with one hand and clutched the fur blanket around me with the other. Maybe I should cut a couple of holes in it for my arms and use a rope for a belt to fashion it into a robe for the lack of better clothing? I didn’t want to ruin the fur with holes, but it would be easier to wear it in the day.
After a brief walk through the dark tunnel, it became lighter. The walls around us had expanded into a wider, higher tunnel, with intricate carvings on the sides. The sound of Vlunn’s footsteps echoed off the ceiling. Then we entered into what he called the main cavern.
“Wow!” I exclaimed in English, forgetting myself for a moment, stunned by the sight in front of me.
A cavern was definitely not a word to describe it. It felt more like we somehow had walked through the mountain and entered a different world. The space was enormous.
An open plaza with a crystal statue in the middle sprawled in front of us. Buildings of different heights and sizes surrounded it. Some looked like dwellings, others were bigger and appeared to have served some public function in the past. However, the structures were created in the same style—rounded walls, tiered design with tall, ornate steeples, and spires rising all the way towards the distant ceiling of the cavern. Narrow streets led from the plaza to all sides of the giant cave.
Even though the part of the place where we stood was slightly raised above the rest, giving us the best vantage point, I still couldn’t see where all the streets ended up. I was, however, able to trace some of them to wide, arched openings in the walls that seemed to be leading to other interconnected tunnels and caves.
“Vlunn, this is huge! I would’ve never imagined all of this could fit under a mountain, no matter how large.”
“It’s a city.” He shrugged. “It housed several thousand of us at one point. And it was built to accommodate many times that number.”
I craned my neck, struggling to see the ceiling of the cave but was blinded by the bright sunlight coming from the large, rounded skylight high above.
“That is a lot of glass.” I shielded my eyes with my arm.
“No.” He smiled. “The top of the mountain is made from diamond.”
“Diamond?” For a moment I thought I misunderstood the word or that it had a different meaning in valo language. “That is a football field size diamond up there?”
“I have no idea what football means, Zoya. But the ceiling needed to let the light in. Quartz and crystal aren’t strong enough.”
“So you hauled a diamond slab up there? This is insane! Where did you find it? How did you even get it that high?”
“We didn’t need to haul anything. Look.”
Vlunn picked up a small loose rock from the ground and closed his fist around it. He pressed his other hand to the middle of his chest and closed his eyes for a second.
“Here you go, see?” He opened his hand, showing the rock to me.
“Incredible.” I picked it up from his palm. The slate-grey piece of mountain rock had been transformed into a clear crystal. Or a diamond?
“Is this—?”
“Diamond.” His tone was casual while mirth danced in his golden irises at my wide-eyed surprise.
“I can’t believe you just made it.” I brought the crystal in for a closer look. It retained the original shape of the piece of rock, with rough edges and unpolished surface. To me, it looked like an uneven piece of glass.
“We can turn any stone into any other stone.” He took the newly crafted diamond from my hand and closed his fist again. He repeated the gesture of touching his chest for a few seconds before giving the rock back to me. It was clear yellow now, exactly like his eyes. “Citrine.”
“You have the same minerals that we do on Earth,” I said taking it from him again.
“Probably. I don’t see why not. You mentioned you noticed many similarities between our worlds when you told me about Earth and Milky Way.”
“Quite a few differences too.” I smiled, lifting the stone to his face to compare its color to that of his eyes. It was identical. The only difference was the brilliance of life in his eyes that the rock in my hand didn’t have. “Your eyes are so beautiful,” I whispered, mesmerized by the bright sparkles of light playing in his multifaceted irises once again.
His expression grew serious at my words. The gems of his eyes focused on my lips intently.
“There is nothing more beautiful than you.” His voice was low, and the usual rumble of their language became more pronounced. His words rolled over me like a swell of heated lava, clashing with my decision to see him only as a friend.
He grabbed the hand that held up the stone, his long fingers fully enclosed my fist, making me drop the citrine, and brought my arm to his face.
It wasn’t even a true kiss, just a light caress of his lips along the inside of my wrist as he slowly moved his head side to side. He inhaled, and his eyes closed as if savoring the smell of my skin.
My heart skipped.
“Vlunn?” My voice sounded small, but I didn’t make a move to pull my arm away from him.
“By Creator, Zoya . . .” He groaned, and suddenly crushed me to him, his arm around my waist. His hand on my fist squeezed almost painfully, but it hardly registered with me. My mind grew blank, even the ever-present lingering headache seemed to have stopped. All I could feel was the hardness of his body pressed to mine.
“What do you do to me?” He moaned into my neck, burying his face in my hair, breathing me in.
“Me?” I whimpered and closed my eyes, forgetting all about my best intentions. “Me?” I repeated, stunned that I could ignite this much passion in a man, any man, let alone somebody like Vlunn with his kind personality, happy disposition and the body of an ancient god.
He growled in response. His hand released mine, and he sank his fingers into the hair on the back of my head to hold me in place as he covered my neck with hungry kisses.
The dull ache when he pressed on the scar from my latest surgery brought me back to my senses. I cried in pain and jerked my head away f
rom him.
For a few seconds, he just stared at me. His eyes cloudy and unfocused, his breathing heavy, and his arms still firmly around me.
I pressed my forehead between his chest plates, hiding my face. The physical scars would heal with time, but they would always be a reminder that the pain had been there, that I had been damaged, possibly beyond repair.
The timing of the interruption couldn’t have been more right, though. We needed to stop what we were doing. I was not supposed to be making out with Rock’s lover.
We hadn’t done much, we hadn’t even kissed, but the intensity of it all felt as much of a betrayal as a kiss to me. If his hand hadn’t touched my still sore scar, I didn’t even want to think what would have happened. I had no idea if Vlunn would have stopped on his own, but I certainty hadn’t been going to . . .
He bent over my shoulder and gently brushed the long hair on the back of my head aside, exposing the long stubble that barely concealed the raised, bumpy scar. Aesthetics were the least of their concerns when they cut my head open and then crudely stitched it back up.
I stilled, waiting for his reaction.
“You’ve been hurt? Who did this to you?”
“He’s most likely dead,” I said softly.
“Pity. Now I can’t kill him myself.” The words left his lips easily, almost casually, as if murder was an ordinary thing to him. There was chilly determination and calm strength in his voice that sounded more lethal than rage. “Why would he? Why would anyone hurt you like that?”
I raised my eyes to his. Any trace of the smile that was so frequent on his face was now completely gone. With a serious expression he narrowed his eyes, waiting for my answer.
I inhaled heavily, bracing myself.
“He—they tried to get me to do what I wasn’t born to do. They wanted me to read the minds of others.” I moved my head so that my hair slipped from his fingers and covered my scar. With it exposed, I felt worse than naked in front of him. “But they only succeeded in making me understand the spoken languages of other beings, people or animals. They deemed me a failure, and I would’ve been killed in the name of science if the Concord hadn’t crashed on Sonhadra.”
“Do humans often do such things to each other?” His arms around me had eased their passionate hold and now enclosed me in a gentle hug.
The kindness in his voice made me want to tell him everything.
“I’m a thief, Vlunn. That’s why I was on that sky vessel, as you call it. I broke the law, and I was held prisoner there, without any rights. They were free to do whatever they wanted to me. I even lost the right to live when I outgrew my usefulness.”
“Why did you break the law?”
“I fell in love with a man, and he asked me to help him take what wasn’t his.”
“He forced you?”
“No.”
Jeremy was an undeserving scumbag, who tricked me, manipulated my feelings for him and lied to me for months, before I agreed to break a code using my knowledge of languages along with my ability to recognize patterns in sounds. The code allowed him to hack into a system to steal other people’s money.
He planned and masterminded everything. He lured me by daydreaming out loud about our future life together, by promising to donate enough money to support the animal shelter where I volunteered, by swearing to me that he would return all the money as soon as his investments had paid off.
Still the ultimate responsibility for my crime lay solely with me. “He didn’t force me. It was his idea, but I chose to do it for him. I could have said no. I should have, but I didn’t. I thought I loved him, and more than anything in the world I wanted to make him happy.”
“Did it make him happy? Did it make you any happier too?”
“You want to know if it was worth it? Absolutely not! Serves me well that he left me the moment he had his hands on the money. If I could go back, I would not lift a finger for him.” I exhaled a nervous laugh. “Actually, I would kick him in the nuts as hard as I could and then run as far away from him as possible.”
“You’re brave.” There was undeniable admiration in his voice.
“Brave?” I laughed again. “Trust me, you don’t need to be brave to kick Jeremy in the nuts. He proved to be a real coward.”
I knew that was not what Vlunn was talking about, though.
“You may look small and fragile, but you had to be strong to endure as much as you did and to admit your mistakes.” He cupped my chin with his hand and lifted my face up. His golden eyes peered deep into my very soul. “You still have light in your eyes, Zoya. The light that shines stronger every day. That’s resilience.”
Brave, strong, resilient. Definitely not the words I would choose to describe myself. But I had to agree with Vlunn on one thing. My will to live had only gotten stronger. Despite everything I went through, I had the courage to look into the future with optimism, hoping somehow that I’d still find a little bit of happiness for myself one day.
Chapter 12
Vlunn took me through the streets of the dead city.
Isolated piles of large boulders and smaller rocks scattered the streets and the central plaza. Most of the rock piles had double peaks and ranged in height anywhere from my hip to my shoulder.
Surprisingly, though, all buildings looked untouched by time, and the streets were clear of vegetation. Wildlife had not reclaimed the city, despite the centuries that had passed.
“Must be Ilena’s magic,” Vlunn speculated when I brought this to his attention.
“Magic?” There didn’t seem to be a word for technology in their language, which struck me as odd, considering that Stone Valos spoke Ilena’s language. The woman, who used some very advanced technology to create a whole army of valos, must have intentionally used the word magic to describe her powers. I assumed it was just another form of control for her. Technology could always be stolen or imitated. Magic would be perceived as something more personal as well as mysterious and therefore even more powerful.
“She intended this place to be for us and us only. After her death, most of her magic disappeared with her, but the traces of it are still here, keeping us alive. It must deter most plants and animals from making a home here. Small creatures get in now and then. However, large predators stay away from the tunnel entrances.”
“So, ours is not the only one? There are more?”
“Many more. All around the mountain. The tunnels were meant to give Stone Valos access outside from anywhere in the city.
“I’m not a Stone Valo, but I don’t feel any discomfort staying in here.”
If the place was protected by some devices emitting frequencies meant to deter wildlife, I didn’t sense them. If anything, this place almost felt like home. I loved the rounded edges of the architecture, the subdued greys and browns, and the filtered sunlight, which bathed everything in a soft, hazy glow. It felt cozy and actually magical, as if I’d found myself in an underground fairyland.
“You must be close to us in some way. Or maybe we—I wish that you were.” His smile was soft, and my gaze lingered on him a little longer than it should.
His face didn’t look alien to me anymore. In fact, I found it more handsome the more familiar it became. The slightly raised ridge along the bridge of his nose, combined with the strong line of his jaw, gave him a proud, noble look, which was only emphasized by his stately posture.
The more time I spent with Vlunn the better I could tell him and Rock apart. True, they were still very similar in appearance, but they no longer looked identical to me.
I noticed that Vlunn carried himself with an almost regal dignity. His gestures were more deliberate and his movements slower, especially when compared to Rock, whose speed and grace, even in his bulky fighting form, were impossible to miss.
The differences in their personalities also reflected in their facial expressions. Vlunn’s open face, where a smile was always ready to break through, drew me in like warm sunshine on a cold winter day.
The firm set of Rock’s mouth and the red glow of his eyes from under the heavy brow portrayed power and strength, making me feel like no harm could ever come to me when he was around. Whenever his huge arm hugged my shoulders or his massive thigh touched mine during dinner, I felt as if his strength and confidence could seep into me, making me too, invincible, if only for a second.
“This is her, Ilena, our Creator,” Vlunn said when we stopped under the crystal statue in the central plaza. “You look so much like her.”
I craned my neck up to see the face of the statue that was at least twice as high as me.
“Do I?” I didn’t see that many similarities in her face with mine. However, Ilena did appear more human than the valos. Like the valos, she had the slight ridge on the bridge of her nose. Unlike them, she had long flowing hair. And, she was dressed.
She wore tall boots, pants and a tight-fitting long tunic. A dramatic headpiece, decorated with several delicate, curving spikes, reminded me of elegant crown of antlers with branching points. It matched the wide, spiky armor on her shoulders and the set of ornate bracers on her forearms.
“She had the same orange colored hair as yours.” The hint of wistfulness in his voice prompted my next question.
“Did you love her?”
“We all did,” he answered without hesitation. “We would have died for her, had she but said a word. She wanted our unquestionable loyalty. And emotions that strong breed love.”
“Did she love you too?”
He nodded, but very slowly.
“I believe in a way she did. She was proud of us and loved us as her creations, but she never considered us her equals. She never saw any of us as men. We were just her soldiers, her servants.”
“You mentioned she died from a broken heart.”
“Those were the rumors, yes. She could have had any of us, all of us if she wanted, and we would have kept her safe. But she chose one of her own kind. She left one day and was gone for weeks. No one saw her come back. We found her already dead, here on this plaza one morning. Broken heart or poison, there was nothing we could do. We buried her deep in the mountain, and built a statue in her likeness right here.”
Enduring (Valos of Sonhadra Book 8) Page 7
