The Ravager Chronicles: The Complete Series

by Sara Page

  But Beast grins. “You look beautiful. Now come.”

  I rush excitedly over to him and take his offered hand. He leads me out into the hallway with Striker following behind us. Now that my father is well, he’s returned to his own personal chambers, so it’s just a short walk down the hallway from mine. The King’s Guard part and the double doors are pushed open.

  My father is right there, standing on the other side of the doors with his arms open, awaiting me. I drop Beast’s hand and rush right into them.

  “Ameia,” my father says in his deep, familiar voice.

  “Father,” I choke out. I hug him tentatively at first, but when I feel that’s he’s real and very much solid and I probably won’t break him, I hug him harder. He’s alive. He’s healed.

  This is happening.

  I hold my breath, holding back my tears. I will not cry, even though they will be happy tears, my father detests them. This is a happy reunion and I don’t want to ruin it, so I just hug him until I feel like I can breathe normally.

  “If you would kindly excuse us,” my father says and I peek open my eyes.

  Beast and Striker are lingering in the doorway and even though I’m here with my father, they seem unwilling to leave me.

  I nod my head and still Beast has to grab Striker by the arm and force him back. The double doors close behind them. I give my father one more tight squeeze then release him.

  Taking a step back, we both regard each other warmly. My father rests his hands on my shoulders as he examines me. There are no words as we take in each other.

  My father looks not only healthy but radiant. His gray beard has been braided to hang down from his chin, today it glitters and sparkles with clear diamonds. He’s not wearing his crown upon his head, it’s only necessary if he ventures out in public, but he’s dressed in a royal purple cape and an immaculate white suit.

  I’m the first to break our silence by asking, “How do you feel?”

  Now that he’s here, standing in front of me just as I’ve always known him, that twisted melted version of him seems like some dark nightmare. A nightmare I will never forget.

  He smiles and answers, “I am well.” And I know he hates tears, but I swear his eyes are gleaming as he looks at me. “And you? I heard you’ve gone through quite the ordeal.”

  “I am well,” I tell him and try to smile. “It’s good to be home but it’s a long story.”

  “Come,” my father says, offering me his arm. “I want to hear all about it. I’ve missed talking to you.”

  Taking my father’s offered arm, he leads me over to his seating area. We sit down to a spread of tea and biscuits but I’ve never been less hungry in my life.

  “Ameia,” my father prompts me after a few minutes as I nervously stir my tea.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I sigh.

  “Just start from the beginning. I’ve been so worried, I want to know everything. How did you get off the planet?”

  And that’s where I start, with me going up in the ship with Vrillum on my birthday. And it all just kind of spills out from there. I tell him about crashing. I tell him about waiting for rescue, and I dull down how scared I was when Beast first appeared. Instead, I focus on explaining how Beast helped me, how he fed and sheltered me, and how, thanks to him, I was able to return home.

  “And this other Ravager, Striker? He’s helped you too?” my father asks.

  I nod my head and explain how Striker helped me against Vrillum but explaining those parts is so much harder. Especially when I remember the screams in the conference room.

  “They’re alive,” my father informs me as I’ve stopped talking because I’m stuck in the memory.

  “Who?”

  “Your guards. They’re alive though it’s doubtful they’ll return to active duty any time soon.”

  “How?” Am I hearing this right? I was there, I heard the screams. I heard the thuds. I swear I kicked a head and it rolled.

  My father laces his fingers together and his lips thin as he explains. “From the reports I’ve read, many of the guards are testifying that the lights went out in the conference room, and when they came back on they were disarmed of their weapons. They also claim they searched for you but you were nowhere to be found.”

  “All of them?” I ask. “They’re all alive?”

  “All of them are alive, yes,” my father confirms with a nod of his head.

  It doesn’t make any sense but I’m both relieved and dumbfounded.

  “Vrillum, however,” my father states gravely. “And Admiral Yarkof are both dead. They were found decapitated in the royal chapel.”

  I thought explaining what happened in the conference room was hard, but I can’t even find the words to describe what happened in the chapel.

  After watching me struggle, my father reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Ameia, Bishop Ardam has testified and I believe I have enough information to piece together what transpired. You need not recount it to me if it causes you distress.”

  I nod, grateful to be spared from explaining Vrillum’s head being twisted off and then being pulled into the shadows…

  A heavy silence falls between us, both of us facing our own demons.

  My father breaks the silence by saying, “Vrillum was very sick.”

  I can’t disagree with that.

  “What happened?” I ask, trying to understand.

  “The lure of power,” my father admits and he looks so tired all of a sudden. He explains that before my birthday, Vrillum approached him, requesting my hand in marriage. When my father refused him, Vrillum seemed angry and standoffish. He claimed to love me and that he didn’t care if he was to be king. He was so convincing, my father and stepmother almost believed him and were seriously reconsidering offering him my hand. When I disappeared, however, it only reinforced my father’s suspicions, but by then it was too late. My father wanted to press charges against Vrillum but he couldn’t prove foul play. Vrillum claimed it was all an innocent mistake and Admiral Yarkof supported Vrillum’s story.

  “I failed you,” my father admits.

  “No. You did not fail me,” I reassure him. I hate hearing my big, strong, infallible father speak such a thing.

  “I thought he killed you, Ameia,” my father says, his voice breaking as he looks away. “I cried in relief when he revealed you were still alive.”

  “He knew I was still alive?”

  My father nods. “He programmed your escape pod to crash on some remote planet outside of the sector. He would only give me the coordinates if I agreed to the marriage.”

  “Did you agree?”

  “Yes, but I made a mistake. I allowed my anger and my need for retribution to rule me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your stepmother is pregnant. After your accident, Sarcia and I went before the council in a closed session. We secured the rights of ascension for our unborn child, then I sent her away. When Vrillum approached me in this chamber, I agreed he could have your hand, then revealed the rights of ascension had been changed.”

  I suck in a sharp breath.

  “He became enraged. That is the last thing I am able to remember.”

  My ears are ringing. It’s like a bomb has gone off, leaving me shell-shocked. I want to ask about the rights of ascension. I want to ask if I’m still to be Queen.

  But first I ask, “Is Sarcia safe?”

  “Yes, thank the stars, she is. I’ve sent for her. She should be here shortly.”

  “Am I no longer to be Queen?” I ask and hold my breath.

  “We can go before the council, Ameia,” my father reassures me and pats my hand. “We can have the rights reverted. No one would deny you your birthright.”

  The question though is do I even want it? To be Queen or not to be Queen?

  I can be free if I want to be free.

  Epilogue

  The following days are utter chaos as my father brings order back to the palace and the capit
ol city. Dozens of internal investigations have been launched by my father’s most trusted men and advisors. The council has been shaken up, more than a few members have been implicated in Vrillum’s plot for the crown and have been charged with high treason. And half the royal navy has resigned or been sent to the brig.

  Sarcia is indeed pregnant, and according to the scans done with the Ravager’s medical equipment, she is expecting a healthy baby girl. She is due to give birth in approximately seven months, and given she has access to the best medical equipment the universe can provide, complications are highly unlikely. Reuniting with her after speaking with my father was difficult, she and Vrillum have always looked eerily alike, but she seemed genuinely distressed about everything that’s happened to me. And she plans on naming her daughter after me. Not because of what Vrillum did, but because she was so grateful I saved my father. My little sister will be named Eluna Ameia. I am very much looking forward to meeting her.

  After speaking further with my father in the privacy of his chambers, he’s confirmed everything Beast told me about the Blackspire treaty. He even revealed that one of the reasons he kept me in the dark, so to say, is because he knew of the Calling and feared I would succumb to such a fate. Thus, the Ravagers protection was not necessarily welcome, but due to his respect and high regard for my great great aunt Lorune, it was tolerated within certain limits. The Ravagers agreed to never to set foot upon Terrea except for under the most dire of circumstances. And their spaceships that patrol our section of space were ordered to remain far enough away that they couldn’t be seen from the surface with the naked eye.

  So they’ve always been up there, hovering above me, I just didn’t know it. Though he assured me all would have been revealed the moment I became Queen.

  My father has begrudgingly tolerated the Ravager’s presence in the palace in part due to all the help they’ve provided but it’s becoming clear his patience is wearing thin. Most if not all the Ravagers have returned to the Harpy’s Talon which is still orbiting Terrea just outside the atmosphere. Beast, Striker and only a skeleton crew of medical staff remain. And I’m sure if he could, he would send them back up to the ship too without me.

  He is not happy in my choice of mates, but I’ve already made it clear that the decision has been made and I will not change it. I’ve given my word, I’ve accepted both Beast and Striker in accordance with their alien custom and they’ve accepted me. By the Transgalactic standard definitions of law, we are legally married.

  Yeah, legally married. Ha. I legally have two husbands.

  And yeah, that was a fun conversation. But my father seems to be coming around, especially when he sees how good Beast and Striker treat me.

  Whether or not I decide to make a push to reclaim my rightful crown, however, remains to be seen. For the time, I’m enjoying my freedom. For the first time in my life I can live my life, safe and comfortable in my own home, and there are the barest of expectations of me.

  The only expectation of me at the moment is that I make a decision. And I’m quite content putting off the decision for as long as everyone will let me.

  I get two blissful months of procrastination before something weird happens…

  * * *

  I’m running through the gardens. Lately, Striker and I have been making a game of this. It has become one of my favorite ways to pass the day. I run and he chases.

  Beast and Striker have been unbelievably patient with me. There have been no new mentions of returning to Blackspire. No, if anything, they seem just as content as I to be wasting away the days and spending the nights together in bed. This is like a honeymoon for us.

  I’ve run the outer perimeter of the hedges and I can sense Striker edging closer and closer. I spot him just as I round a corner and let out a squeal. I somehow manage to turn sharply on my heel and run back in the other direction.

  “You’re wasting your time, Ameia! You might as well give in!” Striker calls out.

  He takes it easy on me, he has to, or this game wouldn’t be worth playing.

  “Never!” I squeal back. I get such a thrill when I resist him.

  I take one step and then feel like I’m falling.

  The garden, the world, has opened up and I’m falling into a pit of darkness. My squeals of delight transform into screams of terror.

  I fall

  and fall,

  it feels endless.

  Something blinks.

  “Ameia,” Striker growls, yanking me back until I feel my butt hit the grass.

  He glares down at me and he looks pissed. I look down at myself, I’m completely naked.

  “What the hell just happened?!”

  Striker doesn’t answer me. He just scoops me up into his arms and rushes me straight to the medical ward for a scan.

  “What’s going on?” I ask over and over again but no one gives me an answer. “What’s wrong with me?”

  It isn’t until Beast shows up, and after he has a look at the results of the scan, that he takes me into his arms and informs me with great delight and with a great big grin, “You’re pregnant.”

  “No,” I say in disbelief. I can’t be. It’s not possible. But both Beast and Striker take great delight in correcting me with, “Yes, you’re pregnant, and it’s twins.”

  Shit.

  Still reeling with the news, later that night while they both take turns rubbing their big purple hands across my tummy, they mention returning to Blackspire. Gently, they try to convince me that it is no longer safe here on Terrea for me and the twins. On Blackspire I won’t have to worry about the twins pulling me into the shadows because there are safe zones or something to prevent it from happening.

  I don’t agree with them until two days later when I take another tumble into darkness. If Beast hadn’t been checking on me in the bathroom, I’m not sure if I would have ever stopped falling. And I was just minding my own business on the toilet.

  Ameia’s era of procrastination has officially come to an end.

  With many tears and much sniffling, I pack up my gowns and what few possessions I wish to take with me, and inform my father that I officially withdraw my claim on the throne. The title of Queen may pass on to my unborn sibling, Eluna Ameia, neither I nor my offspring will make a claim upon it unless requested. My father doesn’t seem very surprised by the decision, no, he seems as if he’s been preparing himself for it. He gives me the biggest hug and makes me promise to visit often with his grandchildren.

  I think everyone has known it would come to this, I was the only one living in denial.

  There may not have been a party when I returned home, but there’s one hell of a party to see me off the planet. It feels like the whole of Terrea has let loose in celebration. The palace hangar has been officially opened to the public. There are fireworks, farewell speeches, and toasts a plenty.

  The people of Terrea have really embraced the Ravagers after my marriages were announced. I think everyone just wants to believe that the boogeymen we’ve feared for so long are really our friends. Maybe it makes them feel better or something? I swear I even saw one little boy with a Ravager action figure. The media and consumerism are turning them into heroes.

  It takes Beast, Striker, and I hours just to reach the landing ramp of the vessel. Then another hour to step inside after all the congratulations and tidings for a safe trip.

  My father is with me and I give him one last hug before he tells me he loves me and to take care of myself. He’ll miss me but he expects me to call him often through video conference. I manage to keep it together. I don’t even cry when he says goodbye to Beast and Striker, thanking them for all that they’ve done. It’s not until he threatens to hunt them down if they don’t take good care of me and his grandchildren that the tears start coming. But he doesn’t scold me for them as he hugs me, he’s trying too hard to hold his own tears back.

  Beast stands on my right side and Striker stands on my left. I look one last time at my people, at my home, and at
my father’s retreating back before Beast hits the big red button and the landing ramp retracts.

  Hidden from the public’s eyes, my two Ravagers each wrap an arm around me and hug me like no one is watching.

  “Are you okay, Ameia?”

  “You’re shivering, my princess.”

  And I am shivering because there’s the very real, very frightening possibility that I may never come back. This may very well be my last moment on Terrea, forever. And I have no idea where we’re going. Blackspire sounds like a scary place full of shadows and dark things. Not a place to raise children. My children. But I’m trying very hard to trust the two men looking at me because they’ve earned it, and I’ve learned when I don’t trust them, bad things tend to happen.

  “I’m okay,” I fib. “Just a little anxious.”

  Striker sighs and Beast leans close, pressing his forehead against my forehead. “Be at peace Ameia, there is nothing to be afraid of.”

  But I am afraid.

  I’m afraid because when I fell, I glimpsed something in the dark.

  And when Striker tugged, I felt that the dark glimpsed me.

  The Other Side

  Chapter One

  “Pay attention.”

  I’m trying, I project in frustration, but I keep drifting away.

  Drifting into the void…

  …just particles scattering into endless space.

  “You are not trying, Ameia. You are succumbing. Stop giving in.”

  I could almost laugh at the irony of his words– if I wasn’t engulfed in total darkness, weightless, bodiless, and floating away…

  “Dammit, where do you think you’re going? Come back here, you.”

  I feel a sharp tug, and as I’m yanked back colors bleed at the corners of my eyes.

  “Focus,” Striker says sharply.

  And I try. Stars, do I try.

  But the dark swallows me.

  The dark is inside me.

  Something inside me shivers, fearing that I may never again glimpse light.