by Chele Cooke
“I’ve not seen one in so long. Would you mind showing me?”
Keiran didn’t wait for an answer. He carried Braedon down the hall as if he’d lived in the house his entire life. He left Georgianna kneeling by the doorway, fear flooding into her stomach. She had never seen Braedon scared of his grandfather. Even when she had been on the receiving end of her father’s anger, she’d never been truly scared of him.
Peeling herself from the floor, she braced herself by the door. The sunlight only reached so far into the house so that, even as she stepped into the family room, she couldn’t see her father immediately.
He was on the other side of the room, sitting against the wall, chin against his chest, hands clasped around an object in his lap.
“Da’?” she asked.
From the jerk of his head and the clench of his fingers, she knew he had heard her, but he didn’t lift his head as she moved closer.
“Cruel spirits,” he groaned and shifted towards the corner, away from her.
She was close enough to touch him, though as she looked down, she paused. He was clutching a toy that he had carved for her as a child. It was a wolf in mid-stride, one of the toys she had loved most dearly.
Tears filled her eyes in that instant and she wished Halden had warned her that their father had taken her capture so hard.
She moved tentatively around the chair, laying her hand on top of his, and leaned close to kiss his forehead. His body jerked. Even through the shadows and beneath his clothes, she could see that he had lost weight. She wondered how long he’d been this way and why Halden had not told him about the plan in order to keep his spirits up. Maybe he had, but her father had been too depressed to believe him.
“It’s me, Da’,” she whispered. “It’s Gianna. Your Gianna. I’m here.”
Lifting his head, he stared at her and blinked. His eyes, dulled from the sparkling green she always remembered, were filled with longing, but also brimming with loathing for the spirit that tormented him.
“You can smack the backs of my legs,” she told him, giving him a watery smile. “I deserve it, but I’m here now.”
“Gianna,” he finally breathed. “My girl.”
She nodded.
Zello, the wolf, clattered to the floor and strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her into an embrace that crushed her ribs. She wriggled her arms free of his grasp and hugged him. Normally, she might have pulled back. The ferocity of her father’s embraces could become restricting, sometimes painful, but this time she didn’t move. She let herself be crushed against his barrel chest and inhaled the scent of woodchips in his shirt. She clutched him tighter as she felt his body convulsing with his silent sobs.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t answer except to cup the back of her head with his hand, stroking gently from crown to neck and catching tangles of hair in his fingers. She didn’t know how long they stayed there. Neither was willing to break the embrace, or to break the silence of their relief. It was only when she heard footsteps in the hall that she finally opened her eyes and turned to see Braedon appear in the doorway. Keiran stood behind him and gave her a brief smile as she peeled herself away from her father.
“Foal seems in good shape,” he announced in a casual tone that did not mask his discomfort.
Georgianna let out a contented sigh as she sat back on her heels. She wondered whether he had met her father when he came to tell them about her capture. He clearly knew Halden, but had he ventured far enough to visit her family home? For all his insistence that he was not one for joining with another person, he was certainly acting like the dutiful boyfriend, here to meet the family. She figured that it all had to be incredibly awkward for him.
“You did this.”
Her father was on his feet. His hand rested on her head for a moment, unwilling maybe to break the connection. All too soon, the comforting touch was gone and he was advancing on Keiran.
Whatever struggles her father had suffered since her incarceration, any loss of strength or virility that age had taken from him over the years was unnoticeable as he crossed the room. His hands balled into fists. Georgianna remembered him looking as big as a giant when she was young, the look he had about him now. Whether it was actual fear or simply the desire not to fight her father, Keiran shrank back from the man advancing towards him.
“Vtensu Belsa,” he growled. “You think your cause is so important and everyone else be damned. I told her not to help you. I told her it would be her neck, but no…”
More than anything else, Keiran looked shocked. Shocked and confused. His gaze darted between them and he clenched his fists before relaxing them again.
“It’s not like…”
Keiran stifled a growl as he was grabbed by the collar, hauled forwards. He grasped the hand at his throat, clinging on. But he didn’t fight back.
“Da’, stop!” Georgianna screeched, jumping to her feet.
“I’ll tell you exactly what it’s like, son. Your kind used my daughter and discarded her.”
“Da’, come on, it’s not Keir…”
“You stay quiet, girl!” he snapped. “I’m warning you.”
“Sir, I didn’t…”
Her father lifted his fist and Keiran fell silent, glancing between the fist and Lyle Lennox’s furious glare. Georgianna leapt towards them, grabbing onto her father’s arm with both hands.
“Stop it! Stop it! He didn’t do anything! He got me out, Da’!”
Her father faltered, even if it was only while he tried to disentangle Georgianna from his arm. Her fingers slipped, but when a loud wail came from the doorway, she stopped trying to hold her father back. Braedon was hugging the doorframe, tears gushing down his face. He didn’t understand what was happening. He only knew Keiran as the man who had been interested in the foal outside. It didn’t make sense to the young boy that his grandfather wanted to harm the cheerful man.
Georgianna forgot about her father and Keiran and, leaping towards Braedon, she lifted him up into her arms. She held him against her, his clammy cheek against her own as she rounded on her father.
“You’re scaring him!”
Those words did the job that she had been unable to do with force. He winced, his glare softening as he looked at Braedon. His fingers twitched and released Keiran, though he threw another warning glance his way. Keiran did what could only be considered sensible and moved towards the door.
“Keiran got me out,” Georgianna repeated. “He made a deal. Him and Halden. You should be thanking him, Da’, not trying to break his neck.”
“A deal? What kind of deal? You’re not free?”
“Not fully,” she murmured, grimacing. “Keiran and Halden organised for a guard to buy me. I’m… I’m a drysta now.”
He didn’t speak at first. Moving forwards, he grasped Braedon around the waist and pulled him into his arms. After hugging him tightly for a few moments, murmuring into his ear to placate him, he set him down.
“You should get your things packed. We’ve lost some time, but if we move fast, we can catch up.”
She stared at her father.
“What?”
“We’re going south!” Braedon chirped. His cheeks were still wet with tears, but he was beaming.
“Da’, no, I can’t.”
“You will. It’ll be better for you, being away from here, away from them. Now, go. We can set off in the morning.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Keiran said. “George can’t leave the city. She’s a drysta, owned by an Adveni.”
“I know what ‘drysta’ means.”
“Well, then you’ll know that they’re not about to let her go traipsing off south. You won’t be travelling; you’ll be on the run!”
Braedon’s excitement at the idea of travelling was quickly replaced by an expression of concern that Georgianna felt should never be seen on such a young boy. His gaze darted between them, waiting for one of them to tell him what they were doing
.
“I can’t go,” Georgianna murmured slowly. “But… but maybe you should. You can get out of the city. No one will be looking for you. It would be safer for all of you.”
“I’ve not made that trip without you in twenty-seven years, my girl,” he answered as he crouched and picked up the toy wolf. He turned it over in his fingers, a fond smile creeping into his expression. “The first time, you were already in your mother’s belly, and I’ve not made that trip without you or your brother since. I don’t plan on starting now.”
Georgianna wanted to argue and convince him. While in the compound, she had been depressed at the thought of her family travelling without her, but she didn’t want them to stay simply because she couldn’t go. If they left quickly and made good time, they could catch up with the others who had decided to make the trip. They had no marks against their registrations; they would be allowed the permissions to travel. The arrival of the Adveni had never prevented them going south.
She wanted to convince her father to go, but without being able to assure him that she would be safe, she couldn’t. Without being able even to reassure herself that she could survive without her family, she feared that her father would now never make the trip again.
Georgianna yawned and stretched. Her muscles ached in protest as she leaned forwards and rubbed her hands vigorously over her face. Behind her, she heard a chuckle and fingers swept down her waist to her bare hip.
“You can sleep, you know,” Keiran suggested.
He massaged her hip in gentle, absent motions as she shook her head and stifled another yawn. The lamp flickered from its place on the upturned crate, the flame desperately lapping up the oil from the string wick. It was running low and it wouldn’t be long before it gave out. Still, Georgianna didn’t want to waste time on sleep.
“No, I want to hear what’s been happening around here.”
Returning to the comfort of the mattress, she curled up against him. Her hand found an easy resting place on his stomach and she began drawing idle patterns against his skin. They had spent most of the afternoon and evening with her family and, despite Keiran’s visibly growing discomfort, he hadn’t complained or suggested doing anything else. It had been her suggestion to leave once Halden had put Braedon to bed. Her father had been disappointed and reluctant to release her from their parting embrace, but they’d finally made their way back to the city, ducking into the tunnels at the first entrance.
Keiran had been stoic with her father, even after the older man had apologised for blaming Keiran for her incarceration. Questions her father had asked him—about everything from his position within the Belsa to his family situation—were answered with noncommittal, short sentences. He’d admitted that he was Nerrin, but that was the most information he’d disclosed about his personal life. It had only been then that Georgianna realised she knew nothing about Keiran’s family. She hadn’t wanted to ask him in front of her father, not while the two were still on shaky ground, but it had piqued her interest in the Belsa sergeant’s history.
Still, he remained silent at her request, nothing but a slight smirk and a squeeze of her hip in response.
“Come on, I told you all about Lyndbury and Edtroka,” she urged.
“Yes, the rambunctious tales of George in the compound. I don’t think I can match their excitement.”
His eyes glinted in sarcastic amusement as she smacked him on the stomach. Coiling more tightly against him in a mess of hair and limbs, Georgianna pressed her lips against his shoulder.
“Please?”
Keiran grasped her thigh and pulled her leg across his lap.
“Things haven’t changed, George.”
Running her finger absently across his chest and down to his stomach, she frowned against his skin.
“You’re sure Beck is alright with me being here, right?” she asked.
He gave her a well-rehearsed smile and nodded.
“I spoke to Casey before coming to meet you. As long as you didn’t have a collar, and you changed clothes…”
“Changed clothes?”
He waved it off.
“Yeah, something about tracking devices.”
Georgianna lifted her head and looked down at the crumpled pile of clothes on the floor. She’d changed her clothes at home, exchanging the ones Edtroka had bought for her own.
“I would have noticed.”
“Not necessarily, if it was small.”
Blinking, she chewed on her bottom lip. While she’d changed clothes at home, she’d packed the ones Edtroka had bought her into a bag.
“Where’s the bag?” she asked. “What if there was one of those tracking things? I bought the bag with…”
“I gave it to the guard when we came in,” he said gently, as if he’d been expecting the question. “He was handing it off to Casey to be checked.”
Georgianna slumped back down against him and nodded. Apparently, they had thought of everything. Keiran slid his hands beneath his head and closed his eyes, but Georgianna’s mind was still too full of questions to try to sleep.
“What happened with the information Alec got from Maarqyn?”
He gave a derisive snort, but when Georgianna lifted her head, he was staring at the ceiling. She was getting annoyed at him keeping information from her. Maybe he thought it was best, that the less she knew, the less she could be coerced into sharing with the Adveni. Perhaps he was right, but she still wanted to know that Alec and Nyah were alright. She needed to know that Alec hadn’t been under that man’s control for two years for nothing.
“Maarqyn said that Alec was spotted.”
Keiran looked worried for a moment before he was able to mask it in a smile of indifference.
“When did you see him?”
Georgianna lifted her hand to show the bruising across the back of her fingers. It had luckily only started to come up more clearly after they’d left the house. Her father had already been angry enough about the mark on her cheek.
“This morning. He knew Edtroka had bought me. He wanted information.”
“That was it?”
She placed her hand back against his stomach and gently drummed her fingers against the muscles. She hadn’t wanted to worry her father or Halden, but since Keiran had made the deal with Edtroka, he had a right to know.
“He wanted to buy me,” she admitted. “He said so before I even went into the compound. Edtroka had to make the sale privately so that he couldn’t be outbid. Maarqyn’s pretty angry about it.”
“Yeah, I bet he is.”
There was a distance to his voice that caught her attention. She paused, wondering whether to ask if he knew something he wasn’t saying, but she shook it off. With how little he’d told her, she doubted this would be any different.
“So they’re safe?” she asked. “Alec and Nyah?”
“They’re fine. Alec returned here and Taye took his girlfriend out to the camps.”
“They didn’t stay with the Carae?”
“Apparently not.”
“And Alec’s just gone back to the Belsa like nothing happened?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Georgianna didn’t want to be angry at him, but his noncommittal answers were frustrating her. She pushed herself up and glared down at him.
“Well, what about the information he had? Has that done anything? Has the escape changed anything?”
“It did something, alright. Their escape brought the Adveni down on everyone’s asses harder than ever. Good choice, the Tsevstakre commander’s dreta.”
Frowning, she stared past him.
“What was he after anyway?”
“Who?”
“Alec. With the theft?”
“Theft?”
“The one when he was spotted. Why did Beck agree to let him go?”
“Benefit outweighs risk,” he mumbled. “Funny, but that was how he was caught and became a drysta in the first place.”
“Did they get what they wan
ted?”
“Don’t know. I’ve not been involved.”
“You haven’t?”
“Not my speciality. Wrench has been in on it. Apparently all his time spent working with Adveni technology like the cinystalq gives him the perfect background.”
Eli Talassi, known to most people as “Wrench”, was a good friend of Keiran’s. They’d grown up together, but Georgianna hadn’t really known him until she met Keiran, and it was only when he agreed to help in Alec and Nyah’s escape that she really trusted him. Wrench had a reputation of being good with technology, and the fact he was able to remove cinystalq collars without killing the wearer was a very helpful skill. Apparently, that skill was now being transferred to working on the pillars surrounding one of the Adveni’s worst weapons, the Mykahnol, a bomb capable of wiping out their entire planet if it wasn’t contained.
When she’d first seen Alec again, he’d told her that even the Adveni couldn’t stop the Mykahnol if the pillars weren’t in place, that they wouldn’t set it off without their own protection. She wondered if that was what they were planning. Though she didn’t feel comfortable sharing that with Keiran. He’d hardly told her anything and, from his voice, she wasn’t sure that he liked Alec all that much. She didn’t want to be vain, but she couldn’t help but wonder if Keiran had found out about her romantic past with Alec. She and Alec had never been serious, and they had butted heads more often than anything else, but having known Alec since childhood, Georgianna wouldn’t have been surprised if Keiran felt threatened by her connection to the other man.
“So, you’ve had all this time since I was taken to the compound and you weren’t even involved in the excitement?” she asked, grinning. “What have you been doing with your time, you lazy vtensu?”
Keiran growled under his breath, making her giggle. The worry about the pillars was forgotten in an instant. He moved quickly and before Georgianna could think of fighting him off, he’d sat up and pushed her forwards, forcing her face down onto the mattress. He pinned both her wrists above her head and planted his leg across the backs of her knees. He knew how to surprise her. He’d been a hunter when with the Nerrin, as well as now being a Belsa, but those facts slipped into the background, almost forgotten. His effortless charm and cocky personality sometimes caused her to forget that he was also a skilled fighter.
