“You’re not alone.”
How long had it been since she’d felt like she wasn’t alone? No one cared about her beyond what she could do for them. Everyone she’d met since she’d been forced from her home had tried to use her for some kind of gain—which team would win, what industry would thrive, perform parlor tricks for my dignitary friends. That feeling of aloneness could be all-consuming and hard to see past.
“Fiora,” Salena called, appearing on the path ahead of them. She waved her hand for her sister to hurry.
“We should go,” Fiora said.
Jaxx grabbed her arm and didn’t let her leave. Firmly, he stated, “There is always another way. We will find it.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, but now wasn’t the time to ask. He released her and began walking with her toward Salena.
“You’re not alone.”
His words stayed with her as they rejoined the others on the path.
“What were you two—?” Grace automatically stopped her teasing question with a look at Salena. She shook her head. “Never mind. Not asking questions.”
It was too late though. Fiora already knew what the rest of the sentence was. “Jaxx kissed me and then refused to kill me.”
Salena began to speak, but Jaxx lifted his hand toward her and shook his head. “Everything is fine. We’re near my parents’ home.” He looked at Fiora. “And you’re not hiding in the forest.”
“It will be good to see your mother again, Jaxx,” Salena said. “Olena was very kind to me after you found me. I think you’ll like her, Fiora.”
Jaxx’s parents lived a short walk from the Draig village. The home was nestled into the trees, larger than those they’d passed in the village but unassuming and not what she’d expected for a royal couple after seeing the palace.
Grier suddenly stopped. “Do you hear that?”
Fiora tilted her head and listened. “No.”
Jaxx lifted his hand in front of Fiora to stop her advance. His face changed by small degrees as if trying to shift into a dragon only to stop halfway. A ridge formed across his brow, pushing out from his forehead to create a protective line over his nose and eyes. His eyes flashed with yellow flames, and talons grew from the tips of his fingers.
Fiora’s breath caught, but she wasn’t frightened of him.
“It’s too quiet,” Grace said, inching along the path toward the house with her cousins. “Something’s wrong.”
Two glass doors to the home were opened wide, revealing the interior before they were close enough to step inside. One of the doors had been smashed.
“This isn’t right.” Jaxx’s voice was gruff.
“Grace, guard them,” Grier ordered as he ran toward the door.
Grace grabbed hold of the sisters and pulled them back toward the side of the home while still craning her neck to see inside. Her eyes flashed with gold.
Fiora caught a glimpse of the floor. Shards of broken glass and pottery littering the entryway.
“Olena? Yusef?” Grier yelled.
“Are you in here?” Jaxx called in his now gravelly tone.
“What’s happening?” Salena whispered. “Who would do this?”
Fiora instantly picked up the future of a woman with red hair following a man as he carried a broken chair through the woods. The man glanced back, surrounded by stark sunlight and shadows, looking very much like an older version of Jaxx. For a second, she started to smile, thinking she might have picked up Jaxx’s future. That meant he would survive, and they were on the right path.
“I don’t think they’re here.” Jaxx appeared at the door, worried. “Someone tore up the house.”
“Jaxx, blood,” Grier called from inside.
“What does Olena look like?” Fiora asked her sister.
“Beautiful. Red hair. Flaming red. Um,” Salena gestured at her own face as if trying to recall. “Green eyes. Kind of mischievous, knowing expressions. Quick wit.”
Fiora felt her hopes crash. It wasn’t Jaxx, but his father. She pointed toward the forest to a tree she recognized from her vision. “I think they’re walking over there, or will be soon.”
“Jaxx,” Grace yelled. “Fiora thinks she knows where they’re going.”
Jaxx appeared at the door. His face was still shifted in his worry. “Where?”
“I can’t believe you were going to throw that chair into the fire bit to be burned,” a woman scolded from the direction Fiora pointed. The older version of Jaxx appeared on the path carrying a broken piece of furniture. “I held our son in that chair, and if your son ever gets his act together, I plan on holding my many grandchildren in that—”
“Our son or my son?” the man she assumed was Yusef answered. “You can’t have it both ways, firebird.”
“He’s yours when he’s pissing me off,” Olena quipped.
“Aunt Olena,” Grace called. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”
The woman instantly turned toward the home and smiled. “Grace? What are you doing…?” Her smile dropped as she saw everyone. “What’s happening? Has the palace been ransacked as well? Are the villagers—?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Jaxx assured them, rushing toward his parents. The man-dragon features retracted back into his body. He reached to help his father carry the chair. “What happened to the house?”
“I think people were looking for food,” his mother answered. “They raided the kitchen and took a few loaves of blue bread and dried wilddeor. We were in the village when it happened, trying to calm nerves after the general visited the palace.”
“They tried forcing their way into the guest room doors with this chair,” Yusef said. They set down the broken chair without carrying it back inside.
“And your father was trying to sneak it into the fire pit so he didn’t have to fix it for me while I was retrieving the cleaning droid from its storage bin to sweep up glass shards,” Olena added.
“I don’t like this,” Grier said, pulling Salena closer to him as if to protect her from the unseen. “General Sten and now intruders?”
“Well, either Nadja has started dabbling in making clones, or Salena found a sister.” Olena looked at Fiora and then Salena.
“I’m not a clone,” Fiora said, answering the implied question.
“I didn’t really think you were, dear,” Olena said. The woman’s future wove through Fiora’s thoughts. The impressions were sweeter than she was used to seeing—husband and wife holding hands, laughter as Olena ran through the forest, a stolen kiss in a crowded room. There was love here, as deep as Fiora had ever sensed before. But, also, beneath Olena’s surface smoldered a fierce protectiveness—of family, of shifters, of the people of Shelter City.
Jaxx had been raised in this love. She felt a pang of jealousy, or maybe it was better classified as longing. Her parents had loved their three daughters just as deeply.
Yusef and Olena moved to go inside the home, stepping over the broken glass.
“Why are they living in the forest without protection?” Fiora whispered to Jaxx.
Apparently, her whisper wasn’t quiet enough because all eyes turned to her.
Olena opened her mouth to speak but then quirked a brow. She stared at her from within the doorway. “You’re not like your sister, are you? We’re not compelled to answer you.”
“No, I—” Fiora began.
“Fiora has other gifts,” Salena put forth. The interruption reminded Fiora of when they were children, and Salena always tried to protect her from strangers finding out about her ability.
“In all my hundreds of years, we have rarely needed protection.” Yusef motioned for them to follow him inside.
Looking past the broken shards scattered about the floor, Fiora found the home more welcoming than the palace. There was a luxury in the palace, yes, but here, in the woods, there was comfort. Logs from the giant trees of the forest lined up to create curved patterns along the wall. Black curtains half covered the dome window in
the ceiling. Small wooden carvings decorated a stone fireplace.
“And not since we married and the war with the Var ended.” Olena gestured toward the couch. “Check for glass before you sit.”
“War?” Fiora hadn’t picked up any hints of a shifter war in her visions. Usually, there were threads of animosity that came through after a region had been through a war. “How long ago was that?”
“I’m seventy-two, so roughly that long ago,” Jaxx answered.
Fiora’s eyes widened, and she looked him over. “You’re seventy-two?” She then glanced at Yusef. “And you said you’re hundreds of years old?”
Yusef nodded. He looked very much like his son except for his dark eyes. Jaxx’s eyes clearly were inherited from his mother.
“Does it matter? Does that change your interpretation of the timelines?” Salena asked. “Is the—event—further away?”
“No.” Fiora shook her head in denial. “I’m just surprised I was kissing someone that much older than me and didn’t realize it.”
“Kissing?” Olena excitedly jumped on the word and rushed back toward them to stand before her son. “Have you…? Are you telling me that…?”
Jaxx put his hands on her shoulders. “Easy, Mother.”
“Are you two together?” Olena demanded, turning her attention to Fiora. “Seriously together? Is that why you have brought her to meet us?”
“Awkward,” Grace mumbled under her breath as she sat on the couch. She gave a small laugh. “Jaxx, tell your mother if you’re getting married.”
“You do not have to be married to kiss. No, we are not getting married. I’m afraid that is not in the stars. Your son—” Fiora began.
“—is preoccupied with other things,” Jaxx put forth, stopping her from telling them about the death mark. She was grateful for the interruption.
“So, no?” Olena’s expression fell. “If you’re kissing, you like each other. Are you two making things more complicated than they need to be? Is this because you’re planning on waiting a year for the next official ceremony? If so, don’t worry about it. The whole ceremony is old fashioned anyway. You won’t be the first to meet your mate outside of those parameters. You can stay in the marriage tent and go through the motions when the time comes. Now, tell me everything. We can talk through this.”
“I don’t know if it will be in a tent, but I will have sex—” Fiora began.
“I don’t want to talk about any of this with you,” Jaxx said with a glance around the room. “Do you want help cleaning?”
“Leave them be, my love,” Yusef said, not answering his son as he went toward a kitchen. A counter and stools separated the open space. The Old Earth style was still popular on some planets. “We are not ones to lecture them about easy beginnings when it comes to relationships. Need I remind you about the night we met at the mating ceremony? I believe you tried to stab me in the neck.”
“It was a tiny prick with a drugged hairpin,” Olena dismissed with a wave of her hand. “And you survived.”
“Whatever you say,” Yusef answered. He opened a compartment in the kitchen and activated a cleaning droid to sweep up the glass. The unit made a low humming noise as it rolled over the floor.
“Would it help if you found your crystal?” Olena asked her son with a sideways glance toward Grace.
“It would help if you stopped pestering me about it,” Jaxx said.
“Can you blame a mother for wanting her grown son to know the love and happiness I have found with your father?” Olena asked.
“No, not for wanting it. Insisting your will on him is a different conversation,” Fiora said. She gasped and covered her mouth while giving Jaxx an apologetic look.
Olena’s eyes widened. She stared at Fiora for a moment, before suddenly laughing. “I like this one.” She slapped the back of her hand against her son’s chest. “I approve. She has fire.”
“Thanks,” Jaxx said, smiling at Fiora. “I like her, too.”
“Seriously, though, there is something about you.” Olena narrowed her eyes. “You’re not like Salena. What are you like?”
“I get premonitions, and I can’t lie,” Fiora answered. “When people ask me what the future holds, I have to answer, even if I don’t want to, or I know they won’t want to hear it.”
“Interesting,” Olena said more to herself, before adding louder, “the two of you make quite the set, don’t you? No wonder General Sten is hot to have you both. A natural interrogator, and a predictor who can’t lie about what she knows. It’s fortunate that fate has brought you to us. I can’t imagine what would happen if that power was in the wrong hands.”
“We’d be forced to advance the agenda of evil men,” Fiora answered. Her hands shook a little, and she clasped them together.
“There is evil in the universe. I’ve seen it firsthand,” Olena touched Fiora’s cheek, “but you’re safe here. It might not feel like it, but I promise you are.”
“Aunt Olena was a space pirate before she landed here,” Grace said with a grin. “Sailed the high skies looking for trouble.”
“Speaking of sailing the high skies looking for trouble, what is this about you firebombing your cousin off the watchtower?” Olena asked.
Grace made a small noise of dismissal. “He deserved it.”
“Oh, hey,” Salena exclaimed, hopping out of the unit’s way as the cleaning droid came close to her feet. “You said you thought they were looking for food, but do you know who did this? Do you think it was someone from the village?”
“I doubt this is the work of shifters unless some of the marsh farmers drank too much of their product and became lost in the forest looking for their stills,” Yusef said. “Normally, you can smell them coming. Or lingering, for that matter.”
“It has to be Cysgodians,” Olena answered with a pointed look at her husband.
“How can you be sure shifters didn’t break in?” Fiora asked. It didn’t feel right to assume automatically that the Cysgodians did it without proof. “If they were hungry enough…?”
Her words trailed off.
“Why don’t you all answer her questions?” Salena asked to force them to explain. “We’re asking my sister to go to the city to read futures to help all of us. She should at least know what she’s stepping into.”
“We’re sure because it is not our way to let our neighbors go hungry,” Yusef said.
“We take care of our own,” Grier added. “It’s a matter of honor. If someone is hungry, we make sure they are fed. If their home is destroyed, we build them a new one. If a child is left without a parent, they are taken in by a family. In this way, we all thrive.”
“That is why you let the aliens come here in the first place, isn’t it? The Cysgodians needed help, and as a matter of honor, you helped them because it was the right thing to do.” Fiora nodded in understanding. “And that is why the general was always frustrated with the limits you set for the city. He’s trying to find a way to expand his territory.”
“My uncle King Ualan, and King Kirill of the Var cat-shifters, could not deny so many people in need,” Jaxx said.
“Any more than they could have killed the aliens themselves,” Grier added. “But I don’t think they realized the invisible strings that were attached to the deal they signed.”
“It is not just the fault of the kings. All of the royals from my generation agreed to it, knowing that the Federation could not be trusted. There was no other decision we could make. Letting an entire population die over our dislike of the Federation was not something any of us could live with. An alien plague besieged them,” Yusef said. “The radiation from our blue sun has healing properties and aids in our long lives. It worked. It healed them. For that, we are grateful.”
“We agreed to help them recover, not this,” Olena said. She spoke with more force than her husband, but Fiora got the impression Yusef could hold his own despite his laid-back temperament. “The Federation was not supposed to be here for decades.”
“So the Federation was not here before, at all? That’s unusual,” Fiora said.
“Until then, we had kept ourselves free of the Federation Alliance,” Grace put forth. “Do we need to go over this history lesson? What’s done is done.”
“Yes, we do,” Salena said. “Keep talking.”
“The Federation claimed squatters’ rights because they had dominion over the makeshift city,” Grace said with a frown toward Salena. “We refuse to agree that city was anything more than a temporary settlement—to do so would be to accept the alliance. As long as it can be argued that the Cysgodians are not recovered, the Federation can stay. If you want my opinion, the Federation is keeping them sick. It’s why they refuse to give them medical treatment and food.”
“We can complain all we want about this political battle, but we all know who the real victims are. The Cysgodians should be allowed to choose their own futures, whether it be in space, Shelter City, or settled somewhere else on this planet away from Federation rule.”
Fiora closed her eyes. Their futures converged on her. She saw Grace running through Shelter City in a cloak with another woman. Fire lit the sky as a dragon flew overhead. Unfortunately, these images weren’t helpful.
Jaxx lightly touched her arm, stopping the visions.
She glanced up at him. “There are too many people in Shelter City. The walls cannot hold them all. I sense the restlessness.”
“Yes,” Grier said. “The city has grown beyond its intended size. The Federation keeps sneaking people into the city against the treaty, but we can’t prove it. We’ve long suspected that it happens the one night of darkness a year when the Draig are distracted with their sacred ceremony.”
“I don’t know if it helps, but they did not bring me here when the planet was dark,” Fiora said.
“The most immediate problem is that we need to get those food simulators established in the city,” Olena said. “If Cysgodians are risking leaving the city and traveling this far for food, then things have gotten worse than we realized. This has to stop.”
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