by Alix Nichols
LOR staffers and ambassadors were about to discover who their new superintendent would be.
Appointed by the Council of Seven for the next ten years with the possibility to be renewed for ten more, that person would become one of the key figures in the galaxy. And, incidentally, Keiron’s new boss.
The outgoing superintendent, Sir Nohad and six other members of the Council—ambassadors of Xereill’s most powerful realms—mounted the podium.
When the clapping ceased, Sir Nohad took the floor. “I am sure you’re all burning to know who my successor will be.”
The audience cheered.
“It wasn’t an easy decision.” He surveyed his fellow council members. “Among the candidates whose names were kept secret to protect them, we had some very deserving people.”
He motioned to the ambassador of Ramoh, a fellow council member, who stepped forward.
“One of these deserving people brought to the table something more,” the ambassador said, “something that goes beyond her gifts, professional skills, and dedication.”
Keiron’s stomach knotted with apprehension. He couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had triggered his unease, but the gut-wrenching feeling grew with the ambassador’s every word.
“That person,” Norbal’s ambassador said, taking over, “has a vision for the League of Realms. A vision that is both grand and anchored, principled and pragmatic. As our conclave progressed, the Council of Seven became convinced that she is what LOR needs now. That her insight, energy, and youth—indeed, she’ll be the youngest superintendent LOR has had since its establishment—are what Xereill needs.”
The ambassador paused. When the public processed her words, she turned the floor over to the only representative of the galaxy’s third inhabited arm on the Council.
“Distinguished Ambassadors, my Ladies and Lords, my Dames and Sirs,” Vouh’s ambassador said. “We cast our final vote just two hours ago. The ink hasn’t dried on the announcement yet, my Dames and Sirs! The press and the galaxy are holding their breath, but according to tradition, you’ll be the first to know.”
His unease growing, Keiron wanted to shake the old guy who could never make a statement without a poetic preamble. Out with it!
The ambassador surveyed the room. “My Dames and Sirs, dear Colleagues, please welcome Her Grace Lady Olinnie Tann-Lo from Ittroise, the newly appointed superintendent of the League of Realms!”
Amid the standing ovation, a slender, graceful woman ascended the podium, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a bun. Even before she turned around, Keiron knew. Linni had aged herself, no doubt to look more respectable, but he recognized her shape, her gait, and the way she held her head.
She marched to the center of the stage, bowed to the Council and then to the room. Her golden eyes had little lines around them. Her face was more angular, and her skin less radiant. She’d hollowed her cheeks. Even her lips appeared to be thinner.
To him, she was still appealing as hell. Except, now she looked stately. Regal. No longer Pretty Face, but a solemn, grand lady who would command attention and respect in her subordinates—not dirty thoughts about her tight, wet heat.
Although… Keiron did get a hint of that nature right there, looking at her.
But that didn’t count. If his first sighting of Linni had been in this shape, as Her Grace Lady Olinnie Tann-Lo, he wouldn’t have dared. Keiron was sure of it.
Umm… almost sure.
When she addressed the assembly, her voice was different, too. Graver, deeper. She thanked the Council and said she’d do everything in her power to earn the confidence they’d placed in her. Then she spoke about the League of Realms, how it was set up exactly one hundred years ago to protect Xereill from disasters like the one unleashed by Emperor Mastredeles.
She reminded the audience how the Ra-human race—soldiers and civilians alike—still hadn’t fully recovered from the loss of life it had suffered during the Empire War. How the only way LOR could shield the Allied Realms from another such war was by ensuring the League was strong both politically and militarily. That it had the will and the means to ensure compliance in all three arms. In short, that its bite was worse than its bark.
Like many others in the room, Keiron found himself nodding. But unlike most, he knew it wasn’t empty rhetoric. He had no doubt the new superintendent Lady Olinnie Tann-Lo would give the League of Realms her full attention. Full and undivided.
An hour later as he was climbing into his transport to return to the enforcer base, his commlet beeped, showing the caller’s name: Linni.
She asked if she could see him now in her temporary office while she had fifteen minutes before a string of visits from various ambassadors.
He said he’d be there in five.
“Colonel Yaggar,” she greeted him when he stepped in.
“Your Grace.” He pulled the door shut. “I gather you summoned me to answer my question from last week.”
She looked down at her feet.
He planted himself a few inches from her. “I’ll take a wild guess. It is not ‘Yes, I’m so happy you asked.’ ”
“That’s right,” she said without looking up.
“May I see you as you are, one last time?”
Before his eyes, she grew younger. His hand inched upward to her face.
“Can I count on your discretion about what happened last week?” she asked.
He yanked his hand down. “I’m not a kiss-and-tell kind of guy, Your Grace.”
She shuffled closer. “Our relationship must be strictly professional from now on.”
His mouth thinned.
“It’s been only a few hours since my appointment,” she said, “but someone is already spreading a rumor that I’d slept with the outgoing superintendent and the ambassador of Ramoh to get the job.”
He grimaced. “What?”
“The Ittroise delegation pinged to give me a heads-up.”
“Rumors like that, they crop up whenever a young woman gets a high-profile job.” The corners of his mouth drooped. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to it.”
She attempted a smile. “I was hoping my gray hair and wrinkles would help.”
“Maybe,” he said.
They remained silent for a moment.
She touched his hand. “I won’t forget that vacation.”
That was all she’d give him. He knew that. He could understand that. And yet… he felt let down. Her refusal to say more, to acknowledge how special their connection had been, stung. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
She touched her hand to her forehead and bowed.
His heart clenched. Was that it? Could she really switch to “strictly professional” so abruptly, so easily? Was she trying to convey that their night at the Ice Moon Hotel had meant nothing to her?
Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t hunger for me. Tell me you won’t be mourning what we’re giving up.
Linni straightened and stared into his eyes.
Holding her gaze, Keiron wondered if mind reading was one of her many gifts.
Her eyes grew darker—the color of brandy. “If I admit how much I want you, how hard this is for me, it’ll delay our getting over each other. Can’t you see?”
She shook her head and turned away from him.
Without a word, he strode out the door.
On his way to the docking bay he estimated their chances of successfully “getting over” each other in the near future.
He figured fifty percent on Linni’s end.
On his? Honestly?
Zero.
<< <> >>
Author’s note
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed THE CYBORG’S LADY, prequel to the Keepers of Xereill series!
Will Linni and Keiron be able to resist their attraction for each other, or will it grow into something more?
What is really afoot on Tastassi?
While Linni’s gifts are impressive, there’s a rich-blood in Xereill
who, to save the man she loves, will unleash a power no one thought possible…
Check out Book 1 in the series, THE TRAITOR’S BRIDE, set on Hente (a backwater planet in the Baylian Arm) and on LORSS (the League of Realms Space Station)!
I’ve included a three-chapter excerpt below.
Enjoy!
Alix
P.S. Help me spread the word about this new series by telling your friends about it and reviewing the books on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews are worth their weight in gold!
A passion that defies the stars. . .
Four weeks ago, ex-army Major Areg Sebi was thrown into prison.
Now he’s on the scaffold, laying his head on the block.
No public trial for the disgraced war hero. No cyborgs from the League of Realms to whisk him away.
No help. No escape.
A priestess chants a prayer for the major’s soul, even as a judge cries out, “Death to the traitor!”
In the crowd below, laundry maid Etana Tidryn stares into Areg’s eyes.
His lips were hot against hers last night. His hands roamed her body, worshipped her, pleasured her.
She’s falling for him, hard and fast.
She’s still hoping, even if he’s given up…
Can Etana transcend everything she knows — transcend life itself — to save him?
Can she rise to meet her destiny?
CHAPTER ONE
The massive lash hit Areg Sebi’s bared back anew.
A gasp rippled through the crowd.
Etana Tidryn had never seen a whip like that before. It had multiple tails with knots at each end.
She looked closer, and gulped. The knots had claws. Every single knot was woven with small shards of glass and metal barbs to make it even nastier than it already was.
Raising his arm high above his head, the flogger struck again, hard.
The man on Etana’s left cheered.
The two women on her right unwrapped their bread rolls, bit into them, and began to chew with a single-minded keenness. Their faces reflected a mixture of horror and fascination.
“Still regret skipping breakfast?” the older of the two asked the younger one.
“You joking?” The younger woman smiled. “This show is absolutely worth it!”
Their gazes never left the scaffold while they talked.
Etana turned away from them.
To her relief, few people in the crowd seemed to share her neighbors’ enthusiasm. Many averted their heads, cringing with pity for Lord Sebi. A few brave souls even dared to hum and drone in defiance, risking jail time if the cops found them out. Clearly, they didn’t believe the charges leveled against their hero.
Everything had happened so fast!
Lord Sebi’s reputation had always been unmarred, as clean as the springs on Mount Crog. An heir to a long line of noble-bloods famous for their integrity, he was destined for a great future in Eia.
Then Teteum invaded the realm.
Lord Sebi joined the army and rose to major. His bravery on the battlefield earned him several decorations, including a Golden Double Serpent Wand—Eia’s highest honor. When his parents and younger sister died in a tragic accident, there was no end to letters of sympathy people sent him from all four corners of the realm. Everyone in Eia looked up to him, hung on his every word, admired, and even worshipped him.
And then, a month ago, Police Chief Zorom Ultek arrested him.
The Orogate Daily revealed “the truth” about Areg Sebi, which Etana didn’t believe for a second. Neither did her parents, or her brother and sister. Nor, apparently, many others here in Iltaqa.
The flogger brandished his freak whip again. It laid a long, ragged line of red into Lord Sebi’s broad back. Etana’s cheeks flamed the instant she realized she was ogling the distinctly masculine shape of his back, despite the grim reason it had been exposed.
Divine Aheya, the shame!
But what with Pa being so straitlaced, and her brother Rhori so hopelessly shy, she’d never seen a grown man’s bare upper body before. And Areg Sebi’s was something to behold.
Once more, the whip cracked against Lord Sebi’s back. The knots bit into his flayed skin, peeling strips of it off.
Etana shuddered and gripped Rhori’s arm.
But she didn’t avert her eyes.
The town of Iltaqa hadn’t seen a public punishment in over a year, ever since the “space conmen” floggings.
In the early months of the Teteum invasion, when things looked bad for Eia, four enterprising individuals set up a daring scam. Over several weeks, they sold hundreds of tickets to a bogus rescue transport. The transport was supposed to arrive from Norbal in the neighboring solar system and take the ticket-holding refugees off Hente. Norbal’s booming economy needed the extra workforce and talent, the conmen had explained.
When no transport materialized, the swindled ticket holders—most of them proficients and noble-bloods—reported the scammers to the police. The authorities caught them, confiscated their booty for the war effort, and had them flogged in Town Hall Square.
In retrospect, that punishment looked like a mother’s spanking next to Lord Sebi’s treatment.
The whip came down again on the bloody ruin of his back, making him arch and grunt in pain.
Letting go of Rhori’s arm, Etana scrabbled at her chest through the layers of her work apron, dress and underwear until her fingers found her Serpent Coil pendant. She began to stroke the ouroboros, her lips moving in a silent prayer.
Suddenly, a buzz-like sound invaded her ears.
She scanned her surroundings for its source before realizing it was coming from inside her. There were other sounds, too—sounds she hadn’t noticed until that moment. Sparrows chirped in the distance, squirrels scampered up and down the old oak trees across the square, bugs hummed in the lush flowerbeds, and a dog growled in a yard.
Etana felt dizzy.
The air around her, the very air she breathed, acquired a strangely sticky quality. Something invisible wheeled and eddied in the sky over her head.
Divine Aheya only knew why, a childhood memory flashed in Etana’s mind. She saw herself, her parents and Rhori standing around Mayka’s high chair, watching stern-looking vestals examine her baby sister. But the memory was blurry and, for the life of her, Etana couldn’t recall what had gone down that day or why she was recollecting it now.
Could it have something to do with the sultry, fog-like substance condensing above her?
Whatever it was, it spun faster and faster, the whirlpool descending toward her, inexorable.
Suddenly, she was trembling in its eye.
When it burst into her chest like a gale-force wind, she gasped and fought for breath. Except, there was no room in her lungs for air. They were filled to the brim with the mysterious fog.
Etana coughed, desperately trying to rid herself of it. No luck. Her knees wobbled, and just as she was about to faint, the substance left her body, and dissipated without a trace.
A flurry of lash strokes descended on Lord Sebi’s back in quick succession, the whip leaving deep welts rimmed with blood.
Etana swayed and leaned against Rhori, who wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Only a couple dozen more,” he whispered in her ear. “It’ll be over soon.”
A couple dozen more.
Etana dug her nails into her palms when the next stroke landed, adding another crimson groove to Lord Sebi’s back.
A man in gold-rimmed black robes stepped forward from the box on the side of the scaffold where notables sat during major events. He raised his hand, commanding everyone’s attention.
Etana had never seen him before. She gave her brother a quizzical look.
“It’s Lord Mahabmet, the high judge,” Rhori said, surveying the man. “I’ve seen his picture in the Gazette. He almost never leaves the capital.”
Etana knitted her brows. “Haven’t you wondered why Lord Sebi is being flogged here and not in Orog
ate?”
Rhori nodded. “I have, as have all my friends.”
“Orogate is only an hour’s ride from Iltaqa,” Etana went on. “No more than twenty minutes in a motorized vehicle. Why didn’t they transfer Lord Sebi to Old Kingdom Prison? Why isn’t he being flogged in Republic Square?”
On the scaffold, the high judge cleared his throat. “Silence!”
“It simply doesn’t follow,” Etana said, looking up at Rhori.
He pressed his index finger to his mouth. “Shush. Lord Mahabmet is about to say something.”
Etana dutifully shut her mouth. She was a Tidryn, after all. A menial. Shutting up was what menials did every time a noble-born, a priestess, or a proficient opened their mouth.
Etana never understood why the likes of her were considered so vastly inferior to everyone else. It was said that menials had no Ra spark left in them. Not a drop of the ancient Original Race of Xereill. Their blood was thin, all imported, all human.
Except, where was the proof of that?
Not a single book in the Temple Library supported that belief. Menials, just like everyone else on Hente, were cut from the same Ra-human cloth. True, they had no Ra abilities, or “gifts.” Then again, no one on the entire planet did. But it was menials who’d been pushed to the bottom and told they belonged there.
It bothered her.
What bothered her even more was how pliantly other menials—including her family—accepted their fate. Mother and Father believed that the rigid makeup of Hente’s society was what kept things together, what had saved their civilization from falling apart in the wake of the Cataclysm. Rhori believed that, too. Everyone she knew did…
