by Ford, Lizzy
And this realization stirred emotions as deep as those he felt for Kiera. He had never consciously felt the fear of rejection from Anshan, never been willing to admit he was afraid to return and find the planet wouldn’t accept a ruler who had been unable to save his home. The relief at his core left him grateful and shone a light on the secret reason he had both fought for his planet to the death yet never ventured to its surface except to save his lifemate.
“We are one, as we were meant to be,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I will not leave you again.”
The flickering navigation hologram light drew his gaze. It was on its last leg, and he swiped it off the ground. Two points remained: his location and the approximate location of Gage’s ship. He wasn’t far, though there was no way to know what stood between him and his sister.
A’Ran oriented himself until the beacon turned blue to indicate he was facing the right direction. With a lingering glance at the grass, he began walking at the fastest pace possible given his injuries, determined to find and help his sister. As he moved, he mentally prepared himself for the worst-case scenario, for the discovery of his sweet sister dead.
Not long after starting off, he made out the intact form of a personal spacecraft. A’Ran’s pace quickened until his leg was pulsing with pain. He reached the craft and circled it once to gauge what shape it was in. The landing had been hard enough to destroy the engines in the rear and put a deep dent along one side – but his sister somehow had managed not to smash into the planet.
A’Ran went to the dented side, guessing Gage hadn’t left the vehicle since the door was damaged. He tested it and then pounded on it.
“Gage!” he shouted above the harsh winds. “Gage!”
After a brief pause, the door shuddered and screeched as it tried to open. A’Ran gripped the door the best he could and yanked once, twice, three times before the beleaguered motor overcame the damage and helped him open it.
“Gage?”
The interior was well lit. Dust swept into the craft, and he heard his sister cough in response from somewhere in the rear.
Uncertain how she would handle the planet’s poisoned air, A’Ran climbed in and forced the door closed to the storms.
Gage sat in the rear of the carrier, her sleeve over her mouth. She stared at him, speechless, before springing up and throwing herself into his arms.
A’Ran didn’t chide her like he would have before meeting Kiera. Anshan women were supposed to be more in controlled and embracing another family member was almost scandalous.
But Kiera had changed much about his family, about him, and he wrapped his good arm around his sister instead of reminding her of her place. She shook and was pale, but he saw no sign of blood or other injury.
“You were very fortunate,” he said and held her against him. “The storm destroyed my craft.”
“You came to find me?”
“Yes.”
Gage looked up at him, her dark eyes in turmoil. He saw the unasked question in her gaze but wasn’t able to explain his actions to her. As far as they had come since meeting Kiera, it was still awkward to discuss emotions with his family.
“Is there a medical unit here?” he asked instead.
She nodded and released him, moving to the rear of the compartment once again. “How did you survive the storm?”
He sat down and began unraveling his hasty bandages. “The planet did not wish me dead,” he said simply.
“Anshan saved you?” She paused from her position sorting the various devices used for mobile injury treatment.
“Yes.” A’Ran wasn’t entirely certain how else to explain it. The reminder of what he felt seeing the grass left him closer to emotions than he cared to be, so he focused instead on his wounds.
Gage helped him maneuver skin patches into place to stop bleeding and soothe the pain, at least until he was able to spend some time in a tissue rebuilder. He used a bone patch on his shoulder and another on his left forearm meant to stabilize and prevent swelling. The patches didn’t fix the wounds but made it easier for him to continue functioning.
She ordered clothing for him from the clothing generator.
A’Ran stood and stretched his injured limbs gently. He wasn’t going to do any heavy lifting or fighting, but he was strong enough to help them escape to wherever they could take cover from the storms.
“Why are you here, brother?” Gage whispered, her back to him as she waited for the clothing generator to spit out new clothes. “I bring nothing but shame to you.”
“Your actions may at times,” he allowed. “But you do not. You are my sister.”
“I won’t be exiled.”
The women of his family had grown brave since learning from Kiera how women on her planet acted.
“No one will be exiled,” he said. “Ever. It was a mistake.”
She faced him, mouth agape in surprise. It was the first time in his life he’d admitted fault to any of his sisters. They may have blamed him for misfortunes or his actions but warriors did not admit to mistakes. They fixed them. Like her sisters, Gage appeared ready to cry.
At his limit with women, A’Ran indicated for her to hand him the clothing and took it into the front of the spacecraft to change. His body cooperated but not without pain and stiffness.
He went to the cockpit next to check the systems. His attention was immediately snagged by one of Kiera’s papers lying crumpled on the floor. He retrieved it. On both sides were crudely drawn symbols and commands for the navigation system.
“This is how you landed the spacecraft?” he asked and left the cockpit to confront his sister.
She nodded. “I asked Kiera to explain it to me and drew it.”
A’Ran bit back his immediate response, that it was the most foolish act he had ever heard. Some of the symbols were inexact, as if Gage hadn’t known exactly what Kiera was describing or wrote it incorrectly. The process laboriously outlined on the paper was nonetheless dangerously wrong, and he began to think Gage was luckier than he first thought.
Itching to reprimand her, he likewise knew she was already taxed and upset from her experience. His lifemate would also point out it was his fault Gage had fled in the first place. So he turned away silently and returned to the cockpit to check the instruments and computers.
The emergency beacon was working. Not that it’d matter, since the magnetic storms would skew the location before the signal reached the moon. But Mansr knew where he had gone. If any ship were able to get close enough, they’d locate the beacon.
As long as they hurry. He tapped the symbol indicating the craft’s atmosphere was lower than he liked. Alone, Gage likely had a day, maybe day and a half, of air left. With him present, the supply was cut in half.
Hoping they were rescued was not the way of a warrior, and his thoughts returned to the deep mines Ketnan claimed existed.
“Sister, I need for you to remain here,” he said and left the cockpit. “There are emergency respirators stored with the medical supplies. Should the air run out before I return, use them but do not leave the ship.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I will find somewhere safe for you and return.” He paused at the door when he saw the dismay on her features. “I will return, Gage. Very soon.”
She nodded and hugged herself. “Be careful, brother. Forgive me for placing us both in danger.”
“This is of my doing,” he said firmly. “Regardless of what you may have told Ne’Rin to aid him, I should not have turned my back on you.”
She was staring at him again in completely shock. “What I told Ne’Rin?” she repeated. “You think … you think I betrayed you?”
“He knew things he shouldn’t have about our family, about Kiera. She nearly died at his hands.”
“Brother, I never told him anything that would put you or nishani in danger.”
“You may not have known you did,” he said.
“And you would banish me for that.”
�
�And because I feared his family would use your child against you to manipulate you.”
For a long moment, Gage studied him. The shock from her features was gone, her look one of consternation.
“I love you, A’Ran,” she whispered. “But Kiera is right. You give your sisters no credit. You underestimate how strong we are and how dedicated to you and our families we are. I never told Ne’Rin anything, and no one, including you, will use my child as an excuse to determine my fate. His family has no claim on me or my child. I do not care what our traditions are or how you think it should be! I will go to Kiera’s world, and I will live among people who will accept me!” Fire was in her eyes. Usually the meekest of his three sisters, Gage was furious with him.
A’Ran suspected his sisters’ independence, which began blooming when Kiera arrived, was going to be part of the legacy Kiera left behind for Anshan. She was a nishani from a different world, and some of her traditions and customs would become his traditions and customs, just as his would become hers.
The first thing he had to contend with: the returning sense he had never truly seen his sisters as women or treated his family the way they deserved. It left him ill prepared to determine how to handle the insurgency in his own home. But he didn’t feel as though Gage was wrong, and he pretty much already knew what Kiera would think. Gage was willing to kill herself, or try to, in order to prove her point to him. She was as dedicated and loyal as any warrior, and it struck him he didn’t really know how to rule his people when there was no war. When he needed to wield more than the heavy hand of a ruler whose life had been nothing but war and strife.
“Very well,” he said.
Gage waited for more.
“All my sisters will have the ability to choose their fates, their lifemates, and when and how they speak to me.”
“You aren’t angry?” she asked.
“I am regretful that my actions and decisions left you with no choice but to risk your life here on Anshan,” he responded slowly. “My nishani is correct – I cannot overlook a second chance to see you alive and honored to be part of my family. If change … my change … will make you, D’Ryn and Talal happy, then I will change.”
She offered a small smile. “I think you already have, brother.”
He knew as much, too.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“It is my honor.” He bowed his head before turning to the door. “I will return for you.”
He jimmied the door open and stepped outside once more. The protective bubble reappeared around him. He oriented the beacon tracker and reviewed what he knew of the terrain before striking out into the storm in the direction opposite of where he had crashed. If the topography of Anshan resembled what it had been before he detonated the surface mines, the mountain range separating him from where Kiera had been taken was in this direction.
A’Ran didn’t let himself think too long on how he was going to scale mountains and make it back to his sister within the time she had remaining. Doubt had never been part of his makeup. The same faith that made him fight for a planet the rest of the Five Galaxies assumed he had lost guided him towards the mountains and the caverns that may be deep enough for there to be untainted air.
Except this time, it was more than frail hope. Anshan’s energy trickled through him, from his feet to the tip of his head, leading him in the direction of the mountains.
Chapter Ten
The strange figure with six legs was back in her dreams. This time when she ran towards it, she managed to close half the distance between them before she experienced the same level of fatigue and frustration as usual. The grass was retreating even faster, towards the figure, and Kiera could do nothing to stop it.
The dream shifted and changed, morphing into one of the fairy tales she’d been trying to tell A’Ran, Leyon and Mansr about on their trip to Qatwal. In place of Goldilocks, she saw herself walking into a house with three bears. Before she could talk to them, the dream slid away into darkness once more.
When she awoke sometime later, it was nighttime on Anshan. Kiera’s head pulsed with pain, and her hair was sticky with blood. She was wrapped uncomfortably around the moss-covered boulder she’d smacked into earlier. She struggled to sit, safe from the storms in the strange bubble. The grass around her was waist high, and she smelled flowers blooming in the Anshan desert.
She touched her head gingerly. The bleeding had stopped and her hair was gummy.
Instead of the pitch black Anshan night she’d experienced in the draw, light glowed from the opposite side of the boulder. Too miserable to dare hope it was the light of a ship, she nonetheless prepared to discover what it was.
Bruises, burns and cuts ached with her movement. Nothing seemed broken, and she climbed to her feet unsteadily. One knee was unusually stiff, and she limped around the boulder to see what lay beyond.
During the day, she’d been unable to see the basin into which she’d fallen. But at night, the entire area had been covered with grass and small, glowing flowers unlike any she’d ever seen on earth. They stretched as far as she could see into the basin, a carpet of darkness that appeared almost to repel the storms sweeping by over the edges of the shallow basin.
Trees had begun to grow as well and were twice her size in height but unlike any she’d seen on Earth or Qatwal. Instead of branches, chains of broad, flat leaves connected one tree to its neighbor to create a single, solid canopy above the basin.
Kiera paused at the first bunch of glowing flowers and knelt to examine them. Her head hurt too much for her to squint. She plucked one free and lifted it to her eyes. The flower continued to glow. It was shaped like a miniature sunflower the size of her thumb.
She started to smile despite her pain. The glowing sunflower emitted soothing, quiet light. As her senses awoke from sluggishness, she heard the trickle of water from somewhere in the basin.
Kiera stood with a grimace and limped towards the sound, pausing to admire the fields of glowing sunflowers and look up at leaves as wide as she was tall. She began to make out other types of flora, some of which were nothing more than dark shapes between patches of sunflowers, and one of which appeared to be a living glow stick that grew at the bases of trees.
She reached the small spring at the center of the basin and dropped beside it, exhausted. After drinking her fill, she leaned over and did her best to rinse the blood out of her hair before sinking back onto her heels. A flicker of movement distracted her, and she waved the sunflower over the surface of the water. Its light reflected off the rainbow scales of fish darting beneath the surface.
Fascinated by what an Anshan fish looked like, she peered into the depths of the water. The fish had five fins, resembling a starfish, and an eye in the middle of its body.
“Not as scary as the cats,” she murmured.
And then it hit her. The planet was not just producing flora but had begun to repopulate its critter population as well. She touched her head as she rose, grimacing at the wave of pain, and gazed around. Anshan days were longer than Earth days, and she estimated she’d been out for about ten hours.
Ten hours. And she’d regrown an area the size of a football field. Kiera’s hand fell away. Astonishment filled her as she realized exactly what she’d done.
The trees, short for Earth, with their interconnected leaves, appeared impervious to the winds and dust, providing shelter for the plants to grow beneath them. Vines wrapped around the tree trunks, giving the trees a fuzzy appearance in the dim light.
Was this what Anshan once looked like? The lush jungle was very different than Earth’s yet beautiful in its own way. Kiera started towards the rim of the basin to venture back out into the storm, stumbled, and stopped, gripping her hurt knee. She lowered herself to the ground at the base of a tree with a deep sigh.
“Looks like we aren’t going anywhere,” she murmured. Somewhat relieved, she was also worried about finding a way to escape underground or communicate with the moon, and the Anshan energy seem
ed to be tugging her to leave the basin. No part of her looked forward to leaving the oasis for the storm despite feeling there was somewhere else she needed to be.
She sat back and sighed. Was this patch of green large enough for those on the moon to see with their radars, as Mansr had once shown her? Or would the magnetic distortions prevent anyone not on the planet’s surface from seeing it? She looked up at the leaf canopy, saddened once more by the idea she had no idea how to help the planet or alert her lifemate about her location.
Her stomach growled. She rested a hand on it with a grimace and pushed herself up. She wasn’t about to try to catch a fish let alone start a fire. She’d never been a camper.
“I can eat flowers,” she said and limped back towards the fields of glowing sunflowers. They were small enough, though, that she quickly assessed she’d need to eat all of them to put a dent in her hunger. She knelt in the middle of the field, left leg extended to relieve the pressure from her aching knee, and began plucking up the moon colored flora and gathering them in a pile. “Thanks for not killing me,” she murmured to the planet. “I don’t know what to do next, if you have any ideas.”
She spent an hour gathering flowers before starting to eat them. The handfuls of blooms held a tiny drop of honey flavor, and barely took the edge off her hunger. Tired and beat up from the fall into the basin, she curled up in the grass shortly after for a nap.
The gray morning roused her, but it was the light, tickling touch of something along her neck that made her eyes open. Kiera stared briefly into the tiny eyes and anteater-like nose of a familiar creature until realizing what it was. She yelped and sprang up and away. Pain radiated through her left knee, and she gripped it, cursing under her breath.
The Anshan and Qatwali versions of cats resembled basketball sized tarantulas with outwardly jointed legs, round bodies and tiny heads. The main difference: the creatures were the cleaners of the alien worlds. They survived off dust, mold and mites sucked up through their tiny trunks. At first scared of the creature that awoke her, she soon straightened.
