by Loren Rhoads
Something cold struck his chest. Wetness soaked his pajamas until they clung clammily against his skin. The liquid lashed out again, drenching him.
Fear threaded through him. “Eilif?” The tone of his voice embarrassed him.
“She’s dead,” an all-too-familiar voice replied. Raena Zacari struck a match. Twin flames sparkled in her black eyes. She hadn’t changed, hadn’t aged a day: still twenty years old and too thin for her tiny frame, with black hair hanging straight down her back.
A smile slipped across her face like a knife being eased from its sheath. Thallian felt his body respond to that smile. He shifted his hips to draw her attention.
She flicked the burning match at him. It tumbled through the air, arcing slowly above his sodden clothing. The fumes ignited with a whump that crushed him down against the bed. A rush of intense heat stole the air from his lungs. As his flesh began to burn, Thallian jerked awake.
Moon-colored light filled the sleeping room the way water would fill an aquarium. Eilif sighed gently at his side.
His reaction to the bondage hadn’t been a dream. Uncomfortable, he looked down at his wife. She slept like a child on her stomach, one knee drawn up, her fist curled softly beside her cheek. In the fifteen years she had been his, Thallian watched the lines etch around her eyes, watched her body grow lean as it outlasted its youth. She was no longer the beautiful girl he’d taken for his own. Still, she was his. She was here.
His mind whispered, if only Raena had touched him before the flames woke him . . .
He shook the thought away. He crawled between Eilif’s open knees, grasped her hands in his, and worked his way into her body.
Eilif woke, every fiber aquiver. Thallian rode her, using her counterthrusts to his advantage.
She managed to gasp, “My lord . . .” before he released her hand to cover her mouth. He pinched her nose as well, allowing her to understand the consequences of breaking her silence.
Raena never spoke to him during sex. She merely gritted her teeth and set herself against him, taking pleasure unapologetically no matter how he used her.
Eilif began to panic as her brain starved for oxygen. Thallian released her at the last moment of consciousness, savoring the flavor of her terror. She was, in so many ways, Raena’s inferior.
* * *
Raena woke Sloane by nipping his ear. He opened one eye enough to squint at her. She grinned wickedly. Sloane’s heart jumped.
“It’s nearly dawn,” she said throatily. “Ariel and I are going out to run. Wanna come?”
He groaned and turned his face into the pillow. Raena rubbed her cheek against his neck. He felt her crawl off the mattress. When he turned to look, Ariel braided her hair in front of the mirror. Both women wore leggings and hand’s-breadth bands to bind their breasts. They’d tied windscreen jackets around their hips.
Ready to go out, he realized. They’d never expected him to want to come along. Raena woke him merely as a formality, so he wouldn’t wake alone and worry.
The light cast by Ariel’s mirror struck Raena’s back, highlighting her scars. She felt Sloane’s gaze on her and turned to meet his eyes with a smile so fierce and sweet it made his heart stop.
Ariel joined her, slipped an arm around her sister’s shoulders, and grinned at him, too. Her smile was more complicated. Then the women traded an amused look and stepped out into the hallway.
Sloane tossed in the too-big bed before he finally got up and poured himself a drink. The image of the two of them, arms around each other, backlit by the mirror, would not leave him alone.
* * *
By the time Ariel and Raena reached the beach, Sloane had already been forgotten. The horizon had lightened to mauve. The white curls of the breakers reflected the ambient light of the casinos up on the palisades overhead, but the beach itself sprawled out, dark enough to be featureless. Ariel pulled up, expecting Raena to halt, too. When she kept running past, Ariel called after her, “I can’t run in the dark!”
“It’s not that dark, is it?” Raena called, her voice moving farther away.
“It’s too dark to be sure of my footing,” Ariel answered.
“It’ll be light soon,” Raena promised. “Wait for me.”
Ariel stormed back up the boardwalk to the bench beneath the final lamppost. She adjusted the knife sheath tucked into the waistband of her leggings and sighed. She wished she had her holdout pistol, but like all her other sidearms, it was safely locked on her ship. Carrying a weapon on Kai was punishable by death. Still, a girl couldn’t be too careful. Ariel would have felt naked if she went anywhere completely unarmed, especially with Thallian lurking around the universe.
Then again, no one but Raena would be foolish enough to come down to the beach in this murky light. Ariel wondered how dark it had been in that tomb, if Raena wasn’t afraid of blundering around now.
Her pity faltered as anger swept up over her again. It figured Raena would abandon her; Her sister was definitely trying to prove something, Ariel thought furiously. She ought to go back to Sloane’s bed and give him something to wake up for. Let Raena come back when she got good and ready.
Her hand rose to touch her lips where Raena’s wake-up kiss still lingered. Under the covers in the hotel room with Sloane’s familiar snore on the far side of the mattress and Raena’s small warm body pressed against hers, Ariel had a moment of the kind of happiness she hadn’t known in a long time. Running on the beach at dawn seemed like a wonderfully romantic idea.
Instead, here she was, alone again.
The first sunlight gilded the clouds. Before Ariel worked herself into too dark a rage, Raena doubled back. She lengthened her strides until she practically flew across the damp sand. Her body looked like a top-flight machine, every element and system in tune. Her grin spoke of pure physical pleasure, the deepest enjoyment of freedom and movement.
Ariel tried to imagine what freedom must feel like for her sister. Raena seemed to have been frozen in time. Of course, only her appearance remained unchanged. The spirit inside had been caged for twenty years. Ariel remembered Raena’s childhood nightmares, the shouting horrors that woke her with the sensation of being buried alive. How could Raena have survived the reality? Ariel shuddered, unable to envision it.
As the dawn began in earnest, Ariel stretched to warm up before she jogged down onto the beach. Raena pulled up, grinning. “Enough light for you now?”
“Some of us can’t see in the dark,” Ariel said, meaning to tease but getting the tone wrong.
“I’ll remember.” Raena seemed unfazed by Ariel’s rebuke. “How far do you want to go?”
Ariel decided to let it go and answered the question. “Up to the arches?” That was a good couple of kilometers, about as far as Ariel could see in the dawn mist. Three stone arches, little more than fingers of rock offshore, pointed out to sea.
“You set the pace,” Raena said. “I’ll keep up.”
They ran in silence. Ariel dodged the incoming waves, trying to keep her shoes dry, but barefoot Raena splashed happily through the water. She seemed childlike now, hardly the jaded teenager Ariel remembered. This Raena seemed excited by everything: the growing light, the incoming surf, the feeling of running . . .
Raena said, “It’s beautiful here. Did you pick it or did Gavin?”
“I came here with my mother just after the Templars died, before the War ended. The city was smaller, less built-up then.”
“I’m glad they left the beach alone,” Raena said. “Race you to that rock.”
You’ll win, Ariel thought, but she dug in and sprinted with all her strength.
* * *
They reached the end of the beach. Ariel leaned over, hands on knees, to catch her breath. Raena stretched, twisting in a slow-motion dance. Her sister’s joy in simply being alive made Ariel feel maternal. It was like something Ariel’s kids would try to express, something they could only convey physically. She felt overcome with longing for them, a desperate wish to confirm
that they all were safe. Better not to draw attention to them, though.
Bending back to look up the cliff face, Raena asked, “What do you think is up there?”
“A hotel pool,” Ariel guessed. “That’s the way this place is: an ostentatious pool overlooking the perfectly vacant ocean.”
“Wanna find out?” Raena dusted her hands off, looking for a crevice into which she could hook her fingers. Lean arms knotted with muscle, she pulled herself upward until her pointed toes left the ground.
Ariel ached. There was a time when they were young that she would have attempted anything Raena did. She wouldn’t have cared about wrecking her manicure or tearing up her fingers. Her muscles would have been in condition to climb a bare cliff without suffering for it later.
“Go on up,” she encouraged. “I’ll spot you from here.”
“You want me to come back down?” Raena asked. She looked poised to jump, even though she’d already shimmied up twice Ariel’s height.
“If you think you can make it to the top barehanded, I want to see you try.” Ariel backed up another step so she could look up without craning her neck. Didn’t want to get a cramp. “I can’t wait to hear what they say when you creep up on them up there.”
Raena concentrated, looking up no farther than her next handhold, never looking down. Her bare toes served mostly for balance when she reached upward. Her arms and shoulders did all the work. Ariel tensed just watching her.
Just then, Raena’s fingers slipped. She swung by her left hand, both feet off the rock. Ariel felt time stop. If Raena fell from that height, Ariel couldn’t break her fall without the chance that they’d both be seriously injured.
As Ariel watched, Raena strained upward and wedged her free hand into the cliff face. She didn’t glance down to gauge Ariel’s reaction.
Ariel shivered. Raena had clearly returned to fighting trim. Ariel wondered why that scared her so badly.
CHAPTER 7
The medical robot trundled backward and Jimi flexed his fingers. The healing left behind a twinge of pain, but Jimi was used to that. His bones were a map of injuries inflicted by his father. Each repair left a little more pain behind.
Even though he was only twelve, he knew he had to get away. This would be the time to do it, while Revan and Jain were gone, while his father was distracted by his latest obsession.
It would mean keeping out of the way of Uncle Merin, the family watchdog. Jimi didn’t underestimate his danger, but in this chaotic time, avoiding Merin’s notice should be easy enough. Merin preferred the boys who were warriors like himself. He had little use for the handful of boys who opted for mental over physical challenges.
Jimi hopped down from the examining table. Choosing to leave home was the easy part. Figuring out how to do it was the problem.
* * *
By the time Raena reached the top of the cliff, Ariel craved a drink. She summoned a taxi to bring her up to casino-level, which saved her the jog back down the beach. When she found the right hotel, Raena was waiting in a restaurant with lush vines concealing its Templar-stone walls. Electronic birds sang from hiding places near the ceiling.
Raena had pulled on her windbreaker to cover her back. She wasn’t the most underdressed patron in the place, but she was by far the most awake. She’d tucked the lily from the table decoration over her ear. She grinned as Ariel slid into the booth beside her, both their backs to the wall.
Before she could lose her nerve, Ariel asked the question that was foremost on her mind, “What happened between you and Gavin?”
“Originally?” Raena asked.
Ariel fidgeted with the menu. “Yes.”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
Ariel shook her head. “You know how he can be. I’ve never known anyone less likely to give a straight answer. He said Coalition command sent him to get you. He said you were coming in.”
So full of amusement that it bubbled over, Raena asked, “Did you believe that?”
“Were you?”
“That wasn’t my plan. I was stranded on Nizarrh. Imperial troops were everywhere. You remember how it was. I knew I was running out of time. Then Gavin showed up, claiming he’d been sent to rescue me. I planned to ditch him as soon as he got me off-world. I expected to have to kill him.”
Pitching her voice to be more lighthearted than she felt, Ariel asked, “How’d that lead to romance?”
Raena sipped her water and grinned at some private joke. “We got off Nizarrh all right. We were somewhere in the void when Gavin’s ship started acting up. When he kicked us back to normal space, the Arbiter caught us. Thallian’s men boarded Gavin’s ship and recaptured me.”
That was nothing like Ariel had imagined the story to be. Sloane’s veiled admissions over the years had led her to envision something grander. “So when did you two have time to fall in love?”
Raena met her sister’s eyes. “Who says we’re in love?”
Ariel frowned, trying to sort it out. “Why did you give him your medallion then?” She noticed Raena was wearing it this morning.
“Well, there’s more to the story, between my capture and the tomb.”
Ariel signaled the waiter and ordered a bottle of xyshin. The saucer-eyed marsupial checked its chronometer, then thought the better of remarking on the early hour when Ariel placed a fifty-credit chit on the table.
Raena waited until the drinks arrived and she’d had a good swallow. “Gavin came after me with some half-considered plan about smuggling me off the Arbiter.”
Ariel sucked down her own xyshin with a shiver.
Raena took Ariel’s free hand and continued, “When Gavin appeared in my cell, it was a total surprise. I know he came after me simply out of pride, since he’d given me up without a fight, but that made me realize he was crazy enough to survive the War. I didn’t know if you were still alive. I didn’t know if your parents were alive. Who else knew me? I was afraid to vanish without a trace. So I gave Gavin the only thing I had, in hopes that someone, somewhere, would remember me.”
“What did you do to him?”
Raena gave her a blank-faced look. Ariel had known her long enough to know such innocence wasn’t an act; it was just Raena’s expression of surprise.
“Gavin always believed that you witched him somehow so he’d never be able to forget you.”
Raena filled their glasses again. “I know he thinks I did. I guess that’s easier for him to believe than to believe that he imagined the whole grand romance. I asked him to remember me. That was all.”
“And the message you left on the medallion?”
“There wasn’t any message for Gavin.” She pulled the medallion out from inside her top. “It still has the holo of my mother on it.”
“So this great love . . .”
“We kissed twice. Once was goodbye before I gave myself up.”
That was so entirely opposite of what she’d expected that Ariel was grateful for her own glass of xyshin.
“If we’re going to drink heavily,” Raena observed, “we’d better order breakfast.”
* * *
The apartment on Brunzell was opulent despite its shades of beige and chocolate. Jain walked around the perimeter of its sitting room, trailing his fingers from leather to suede to fabric so soft he didn’t have a name for it. It seemed a very long way from the spartan barracks he shared with his brothers.
Uncle Revan and the guards moved methodically around the apartment, checking for anything that might confirm the identities of the people who’d stayed in there. Jain knew he should help with the search, so he began opening the cupboards built into the sitting room’s wall.
His first find was a bottle of Old Kentucky Home whiskey. The words didn’t mean anything to Jain, but he guessed the nature of the contents. With a glance over his shoulder to confirm that no one was paying any attention to him, he slid the bottle into his satchel and cinched the top shut.
He continued poking around, hoping for some other contra
band. Anything he brought home for the other boys would be vastly appreciated. They led such sheltered lives, eclipsed by their father’s shadow.
His fingers brushed a wall panel that seemed no different than the others, but triggered a hidden door. When it slid open, a sheath of indigo silk hung inside. Without knowing why he did it, Jain held the fabric to his cheek. He caught a warm, wild scent that brought a flush to his cheeks.
He swallowed hard. “Uncle Revan?” he called. “I found something.”
* * *
Ariel gave the server a businesslike smile as he slid a platter of raw shellfish onto the table. She noticed his attention linger over Raena and felt a hot flash of jealousy before reason reasserted itself. Of course he was more interested in Raena; she looked closer to his age. She had the crazy knife-shorn hair. The breast band she wore revealed the corona-shaped scar where she’d once taken a bullet for Thallian. Undoubtedly, the waiter had heard that she’d climbed up the cliff face from the beach, too. For someone lying low, Raena wasn’t passing very well as an average tourist.
The boy, who sported an exuberant topiary of facial hair, offered Raena an appreciative nod, then backed off.
“How come we have a human server?” Raena wondered. “All the other waiters have been aliens.”
“We don’t call them aliens any more,” Ariel said mildly. “Humans are a minority in the galaxy.” She changed the subject to answer her sister’s question. “The restaurant owners are probably just trying to make us comfortable. They hope we’ll tip better if we see a friendly face. There’s still a lot of anti-human prejudice in the universe.”
“Go figure,” Raena said dryly. She reached for her fork and snagged a bite of fish for breakfast. Ariel was amused that Raena didn’t comment on the cuteness of the boy. Had it even registered?
They ate in companionable silence until Raena prompted, “Tell me about Gavin.”
Ariel gulped down a chewy piece of tentacle and reached for her xyshin. She said, “When it came down to the wire—and I always knew it was going to, when I worked with Gavin; the man had the most incredibly bad luck—I always knew I could count on him. He was as good in a scrape as anyone I’d ever hung around. He always had our backs. I guess that’s because he spent so much time watching his own.”
