by Jess Granger
She was addicted to him, and she didn’t care.
Lightning scorched the sky. What was she doing? Cyani’s nerves stood on end as the crackling touch of electricity sizzled around them.
Soren lifted his head.
They had to get inside before they both got killed. Soren wove his fingers between hers, and pulled her back toward the hut. They ran through the iridescent sheets of rain, before tumbling through the door.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled as they reached the safety of the hut. She shook—she couldn’t help it. Her whole body trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m acting like a lunatic. I’m not usually so irrational.”
“I like it when you’re irrational,” he teased, as if nothing had happened. “It’s the only way I can win an argument, and if you weren’t a lunatic, you would have given up on me a long time ago.”
She smiled, grateful that he was directing the conversation away from what she had just done. Glorious Creator in the great center of all things, what was I thinking?
“Thanks,” she offered, wringing out her hair and letting it fall over her soaked shoulder. Her hands still wouldn’t stop shaking.
“For what?” He asked as he tied back his own hair.
“For being my friend. I don’t have many,” she said. Out of the forty Elite, and the fifteen or so in training, only one of the women had ever treated her fairly, but she couldn’t call Yara her friend.
“Actually,” he countered, pausing to rub Vicca’s belly, “you only have one, and I have no idea why she puts up with you.”
Cyani chuckled as Soren wrapped a blanket over her shoulder then began to unlace her bodice.
“What are you doing?” she asked, snatching his hand away from the laces.
“Getting you out of your clothes.” He shrugged and continued his work.
“Just because I admit I like you doesn’t mean I’m going to mate with you,” she protested.
“That wasn’t on my mind,” he said, his voice dark and defensive.
“Purple-eyed liar,” she jabbed. Why did the hut have to be so small? With the hammock and the bed on the floor, she had no place she could escape him.
“You need to get out of those wet clothes before you catch a virus that even the kiltii water can’t fix. I wasn’t going to touch you.” To prove it, he turned his back to her so she could undress.
“I won’t catch a virus,” she grumbled. Cyani felt like a heel. She couldn’t blame him for having purple eyes after she had just kissed him until she couldn’t think. She stripped off her wet clothes and hung them from the end of the hammock. She wrapped a blanket around her breasts, but the thin fabric clung to her wet skin and turned transparent. She scrambled to grasp a couple more before Soren turned around.
She was completely out of control.
With one hand he unfastened the buckle at his hip and his clothing fell off, leaving her a glorious view of his backside.
Ona forgive me, but you can’t see this. She had seen him naked, but not like this.
He wrapped a fur around his waist and reclined on his bed. Everything about him was a blatant invitation, from his long, powerful body to his burning eyes.
Cyani clung to the blankets wrapped around her as she sat on the very edge of the furs.
“Tell me what happened, Cyani,” Soren stated. The light from the brazier washed over his bare skin in golden waves. She couldn’t seem to pull her gaze away from the edge of the fur wrapped around his lean waist.
“Cyani?”
“I don’t think . . .”
“Have you ever told anyone the whole story?” he asked.
No. Who could she tell? The Elite? Justice didn’t matter to them, only the social order.
“Talk to me,” Soren ordered. His request reminded her of that first night alone together on the asteroid. He dipped his hand in the kiltii water, then slid his damp palm down her shin to clean some of the mud off. “It will turn into a monster in your mind if you don’t.”
She sighed. It was already a monster. She watched, mesmerized as he continued to stroke the mud off her calf, until he lifted her ankle into his warm hands.
“You can’t understand what the ground of my planet is like,” she began. He didn’t respond, just listened, continuing his gentle work. “We live on islands. On the ground, the center of the island is a cesspool, all the light blocked by the cities in the trees above. It’s dark, and it’s ugly. The people there are criminals.”
“You weren’t a criminal.” As the last of the mud dripped from her foot, he massaged her arches. She felt dizzy with pleasure as she curled her long toes.
Cyani shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. I grew up in a small fortified city that my mother founded. Only good people who obeyed the rules were allowed in. My mother and father defended it with their blood, and taught those who lived there how to fight. It was a little high city of our own. The only place on the ground with any rule of law. At least it was safer than the chaos beyond the barricades. But there’s no food, no way to grow anything, and no animals to hunt. We had to risk going outside the barricades to hunt sarbas or trap birds, or we wouldn’t have anything to eat but woodborers and millipedes.”
“They sound delicious,” Soren quipped, gently pulling on each of her toes before moving on to her other muddy foot.
Cyani glared at him.
He quirked the corner of his mouth in an amused grin.
What was she going to do with him?
“Do you want me to continue?”
He squeezed her ankle. “Please.”
She studied his face for a moment, her eyes lingering on the dimpled scars from the blinders. He was so beautiful, wet from the rain. And he was so strong. She felt like a coward compared to him.
She felt her heart stumble as she continued. “We were out checking traps near the sea cliffs. There are poisonous plants, and the felam beasts are very dangerous, but the cliffs are the best place to trap seabirds. I got separated from my brother when I noticed I had caught a fat groslin in a snare. They are a delicacy in the high cities, to catch one on the ground . . . It would have been like bringing my parents a little piece of the canopy, of their old life. I didn’t even think it might have been a trap for me. I was so stupid.”
“Cyani, you can’t do that,” Soren cautioned. His hands stilled on her foot.
“Do what?” She looked at him. His black eyes stared back with an expression she couldn’t read.
“You can’t blame yourself,” he stated with quiet authority.
“Trust me, I can,” she huffed. “Groslin don’t ever come near the ground. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was so obvious.”
“You can’t question why you ignored every warning you sensed. Why you decided to try to find the rest of your family instead of hiding, the way you were supposed to. Trust me, you can’t blame yourself. It will drive you mad.”
Cyani swallowed a lump in her throat as she realized he wasn’t talking about her. What had happened to him? And was it so different from her story?
“It’s funny the things you remember,” she mumbled, feeling suddenly connected to him somehow. Her words caught in her chest, words she had never spoken aloud, even to Vicca when they were alone in the dark. She looked down at her hands, the hands he had washed clean. “I fell in the mud, it was all over my hands.” Her voice didn’t sound like it was coming from her, but from somewhere far away. She pulled her leg back and tucked it close to her body.
“I was so scared,” she continued, “and my head hurt from where the high-hawk hit me. He ripped off the rag I used as a dress then laughed as I struggled to get my feet under me. I didn’t think—I don’t really remember anything but the mud on my hands, and the dark mark it made on his chest when I lashed out and landed a heart-strike. I had never done one before. I don’t think any of the other Elite can do it, kill with a single strike to the chest. How did I kill him? I don’t ever remember learning
how to do it.” She looked at him. “How did I kill him?”
Soren reached out and took her hand in his.
“The bodyguards caught me. I was so shocked I couldn’t run. They beat me until I was just at the edge of consciousness. They even denied me the escape of passing out. Then they dragged me up to the Halls of Honor to face my execution for murder.”
“Did you have a trial?” Soren asked.
Cyani huffed under her breath. “People from the ground have no rights, least of all to a fair trial. No one cares—they don’t even think we’re human. It didn’t matter that my mother and father were both highborn. On my planet, I am worth less than nothing because I was born on the ground. You should have heard them chanting for my death, like it was a sport or entertainment. I had no trial, only another vicious beating that left me unconscious for two days and an ultimatum.”
“How old were you?” he asked.
“Thirteen,” she admitted. “I was barely a woman.”
“You were still a child,” Soren argued. “What was the ultimatum?”
“The leader of the Elite saw me. She stopped the execution. I guess a thirteen-year-old landing a clean heart-strike impressed her. She started me on the path to become one of the Elite in spite of the others who wanted me dead. If I survived, if I obeyed every rule, every code, and I didn’t disappoint her, she said she would find my brother and raise him up to the high cities. If I failed . . .”
“They’d finish what they started,” Soren concluded. “I’m sorry, Cyani.”
“For what?” She shrugged. It was her lot in life. That was all.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize you have been enslaved as much as I have.”
Cyani felt like she had taken a force kick to the gut. “I’m not a slave.” She’d fought against slavery for the last five years. The Garulen and Kronalen enslaved others for their own personal gain. She had been given a second chance and had taken it. She wasn’t being manipulated.
Was she?
“Do you want to become one of these Elite?” Soren asked as he stretched his shoulders and placed his hands behind his head.
“Of course I do.” Didn’t she? She thought about the temple, the long years of silence awaiting her. Shakt.
“It sounds to me like you neither like nor respect them, yet you want to be one.” His eyes flashed. He was gearing up to dig into her again. She didn’t need this. She didn’t want to talk anymore.
“I’ll survive, Soren,” she snapped as she pulled herself up in the hammock. She sank into its woven embrace, glad she could no longer see him. “It’s what I do—I survive. I survived the ground cities. I have survived the attempts on my life from the other Elite during my training. I have survived the war. I’ll survive this.”
“But what do you want?” he asked as he smothered the brazier and threw them both into darkness. The rain pattered on the roof as the smell of wet grass and earth filled the humid air. The fury of the storm had passed, and the light of the twin moons seeped through the clouds and the wet cloth at the window enough to cast them both in shades of gray.
What did she want?
There was only one burning want in her heart, but it was the one thing she knew she could never have. It was as impossible as wishing to live forever. She dismissed the tugging ache as she thought about her family still struggling in the darkness. She wanted to know they were safe. She just wanted to keep those she loved safe. She would sacrifice anything to protect them.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she told him. “It only matters what I do. I know what I have to do, and I’m doing it.”
“Then you will lead a very empty life.”
Shakt, he sounded like her conscience.
She sat up in the hammock and glared at the two glowing slits in the darkness. “How about this, then? I want to sleep. Is that okay with you?”
“It would be fine with me,” he offered, “if you could.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your nightmares. The way you wake up thinking you’re under attack, but you aren’t really awake. You avoid sleep altogether to try to stop them, but it doesn’t work, does it? They stole that from you, too, sleep. And yet, you’re not a slave to them?” His glowing eyes closed, leaving her alone in the dark.
“Damn it, Soren.” She didn’t care if he was her only real friend besides Vicca. She felt like jumping down and giving him a swift kick. She could fall asleep if she wanted.
She tossed on her side and tucked the blankets around her like a constricting cocoon. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, determined to prove him wrong.
She didn’t know when she dozed off. She heard a boom in the distance. Bombs, they were under attack. She tried to move, but couldn’t. They hit her, she was down.
“Tola!” she screamed. “Get them out!”
She felt herself fall.
“Cyani.” Her name reached through her panic. “Cyani, wake up.”
Cyani shook herself awake and fought to stand up, but a strong arm wrapped around her bare back.
“Cyani, are you awake?”
“What?” It was still dark. She felt cloth, and skin. “What in the name of the Matriarchs are you doing?” she half shouted as she pushed herself up from Soren’s bare chest. She was sprawled out naked over him like a wanton lover.
“What am I doing?” he protested. “You’re the one who started shouting and fell out of the hammock.”
Cyani rolled off him and curled into a ball on the furs. Mortified, she took a deep breath while the cool night air kissed her bare back. Soren shifted behind her, moving closer. She tensed, but he pulled her blanket up over her shoulder.
“Do you want me to say you were right?” she asked bitterly. Why did he have to be right?
“No,” he whispered near her ear.
She rolled onto her back so she could get a good look at him. “Then what do you want, Soren?”
“I want to be an old man,” he admitted.
She sighed and turned away from him. She felt his fingers brush over her hair. “What do you want, Cyani?” he murmured against the skin of her neck.
“I just want to know peace.” She sighed as his warm skin pressed closer to hers. “I’ve never known peace.”
“That’s a good thing to want.” He snaked his arm over her side and pulled her into the shelter of his body, his hand resting protectively over her navel. Only the soft blanket separated their naked flesh.
She could feel his warm breath curling over the skin behind her ear as she stared at the wall. Even wrapped up in the comfort of his scent, his touch, the nightmares would come again. She was tired of death. She wanted a new life.
“Soren?” she whispered.
“Hmmmm,” he murmured into her hair.
“Do it.”
He rose up on one elbow. “Do what?”
She took a deep breath and stared him in the eye. What could blue mean? His eyes were turning more and more blue each time she looked at them. They glowed with dark fire now. “You know what.”
“I thought you told me never to do that again.” He lifted an eyebrow and blinked his dark lashes very slowly as the black lock of hair that fell over his shoulder tickled her cheek.
“I know what I said. I know what I’m saying now.” She shoved him on the shoulder. “Will you just get this over with, already?”
“You’ll be helpless,” he warned, his midnight eyes burning over her face. He leaned in closer, his presence completely surrounding her. She didn’t flinch.
“I trust you,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he leaned in and pressed his warm lips to her forehead.
When he opened his eyes, they swirled and glowed. She didn’t shrink away from him, but embraced the beauty of his power.
12
LEAVE IT TO CYANI TO FIND A WAY TO GET WHAT SHE WANTED. SOREN watched her from a distance, marveling at how she had adapted the Makkolen clothing to suit her own n
eeds.
She had gotten her hands on two more head scarves, and with them, she had turned the sensual and revealing clothing of the Makkolen women into a mysterious, and strangely threatening, warrior getup. She had wrapped a bloodred scarf over her head and face so only her eyes could be seen through a narrow slit. It masked her humanity, her femininity, until he could only see the cold power of her training.
With a second scarf, she cloaked her delicious belly by wrapping her breasts tightly with it, and lacing the bodice on top, then tucking it into the waist of her skirt. Even though it covered her skin, the allure of how the silk moved as her torso twisted in one of her kicks made Soren’s blood burn in his veins.
And finally she had taken a ginger cloth and managed to turn her skirt into a strangely tied pair of flowing pants, complete with “undergarments” of sorts. She looked like a warrior born out of restless flames, but he knew the woman she hid beneath her cloth, her weapons, her control.
Crack!
Cyani swung an arm-length stick over her head and brought it down hard on the toppled trunk of a dead tree.
She shook her head, took three strides back then ran at the tree with full force. With one hand she vaulted over the trunk, landed on the other side, and brought the stick down with another loud whack.
She fought so hard.
What was she really fighting against?
It had been four days since the storm. He was still feeling remarkably well, even though he could feel the drugs fading. He figured the kiltii water and sleeping so close to Cyani had helped keep his system balanced. Each day he regained more of his humor, his hope, but the days had tortured her.
She rarely spoke with other members of the tribe. He had taught her a few phrases, but she used them reluctantly. Each night she stared out at the far moon and watched the pinpoints of light flying to and from the Union base there. Every morning before dawn, she came to this shadowed place near the outer wall and practiced her training rituals. While she had grown closer to him, she didn’t seem to be adapting to Makko itself.
Soren turned the small round bead in his hand. With the edge of his knife, he deepened a slice to emphasize the edge of the fox’s face he had carved into it. He had made a whole sack of beads, but they sat in the dark, not woven into a necklace for the only woman who meant anything to him.
