by Theresa Kay
I do none of these.
Instead, for the past who knows how long—ten minutes? thirty?—I’ve sat here with Flint’s head resting in my lap while I brushed his hair away from his face. Over and over and over again. Early on, my fingertips brushed against the blood that bubbled from his mouth, and now his cheeks and temples are streaked with lines of red, the subtle paths of my worthless ministrations.
The voice in the back of my head tells me I’m in shock, that this inaction serves no purpose and may just get me killed. I don’t know when they’ll be back for me, I just know that they will be… eventually. But I don’t care. What Jastren wants from me, what purpose he thinks his demonstration served… who knows. If it was meant to motivate me, it failed. Instead of broken, now I am shattered. Mind, body, and soul.
Flint’s chest still rises in a regular rhythm, but he hasn’t opened his eyes, not once, not even when I had to shift his limp form around so I could lay his head on my lap. The location of the wound and what I can clearly see within the jagged edges tell me it’s fatal. There is no hope. But there should be pain. A gut wound is not silent, not like this. If not for the blood, the stench, and how pale he is, he could be sleeping.
Maybe there was—is?—some small piece of my brother left inside the shell Jastren commands. A piece that remembers the love he holds for Flint and that eased Flint’s pain somehow. There are so many secrets and abilities hidden within our E’rikon heritage… Perhaps one of them includes this mercy.
I don’t know much, but I do know I can’t stay here. And I can’t take Flint with me.
Will his peacefulness last until…?
I close my eyes and press my lips together. Simply thinking the word is too much for me right now. But what if it doesn’t? What if I slip out the window and he wakes up in agony and has to spend his last moments alone?
There’s no rescue coming. I know that too. I was lucky enough to save my twin from the E’rikon city, to save him from their torture. But my pseudo-brother? The boy who’s held me together, laughed with me, and let me cry on his shoulder? I can’t save him. I won’t get that lucky twice. I will surely lose this blond-haired brother. And my twin might be gone too. One to death, and one to darkness.
A half-hearted chuckle escapes my mouth. Which one gets the better deal?
The burn of tears forms behind my eyes, and as much as I try, I can’t push it away any longer. My composure cracks, and the first tear trails down my cheek just as Flint lets out a soft moan. It’s good I haven’t yet made my escape then.
Another quiet noise of pain follows the first, and Flint’s eyelids flutter open.
He’s foggy and confused, but his blue eyes meet mine. He blinks slowly and then squints up at me. “What… What happened?” He gives his head a brisk shake and his feet scramble against the floor in an effort to push himself up. “My dad… Jace. What?” He twists as if to use the wall for leverage, but the color leaves his face and a muffled gasp passes his lips. One arm goes to his waist. He doesn’t look down, simply brings his blood-covered hand up to his face and stares at it with glazed eyes. “Jace…”
I nod mutely. There are no words that would make this easier. As his eyes clear and realization crawls across his face, my tears come faster.
“Jace?” Flint’s voice comes out in a croak. “He did this?”
He doesn’t need my answer. Pressing his lips into a thin line, he shifts slightly to the right and relaxes his head back into my lap. “It’ll be okay. You can get through to him. He wouldn’t let me die… Right?” His voice breaks with naked hope on the last word, so much of it that I can’t bear to tell him the truth.
Jace is lost to him.
And to me.
His next exhalation comes with a grimace, and he closes his eyes again.
I lean against the wall and take a deep breath, focusing on the calming warmth drizzling across my connection with Lir to keep me grounded, to keep me sane. If only Flint could share in my peace…
Wait. My eyes fly open and I sit up straighter. What if he can? What if I can use the connection with Lir to heal him? It worked on my leg. It could… It has to.
A long, slow inhale. I close my eyes and try to relax into my breaths, letting my mind actively search for the connection. The pale green thread is easy to find, and I skim along it, reaching for him with everything I have. Help!
Lir responds without hesitation, his words flowing into my mind as if he is right next to me. Jax? What is happening? How can I help?
Even mentally I can’t make the words form correctly, and my panic starts to rise. How do I explain it? What do I do? If only he could just see…
I grab hold of that last thought. He can see. I can make it happen. I just have to… pull. In my frantic mental scramble, the warning I should have given gets lost in the shuffle, and unresisting, Lir answers my call. With a simple tug, his consciousness crashes into my head.
We open our eyes.
“Jax?” My mouth, but not my voice or my question.
Help him! I direct our gaze down to Flint.
A sharp inhale through our teeth. “That… is not within my power.”
But it has to be! You helped my leg. This… Help him!
He shakes our head. “No. The bond healed your leg. I have only basic medical knowledge. There is nothing I can do. Perhaps Jace? I do not know if it is possible, but if they have formed a bond…”
Despair rushes through me. Jace. I swallow. Is not an option.
“Why—”
“You do know that’s incredibly weird, right?” Flint’s voice is faint, and he looks up at us with only one eye cracked open. “No offense or anything.”
Lir chuckles with my throat. “I imagine it is. It is odd for me as well.” He raises my hands and flexes my fingers. “The shuvata is not an enhancement I have seen in my lifetime—”
You’re wasting time! I screech.
A knowing smile quirks at the corners of Flint’s mouth. “Yelling at you, isn’t she?” The soft “heh” noise he makes is barely a laugh, and he winces as a cough works its way from his mouth soon after. One arm moves to his abdomen to push against the wound, which bulges with the tensing of his stomach muscles. His face goes serious then, and he meets my eyes and Lir’s gaze. “There’s nothing to be done for me,” he says.
“No. There is not,” Lir answers, softly.
Flint nods and his features harden. “With Jace…” He sighs and shakes his head, a pained look briefly robbing him of words. “She’s going to need someone. And—”
“I’m right here, you know,” I manage to snap after regaining control of my vocal cords.
“Just hush, Jax,” Flint says. “I’m trying to talk to your… uh…”
“Bondmate,” Lir supplies.
“Yes. That. We’re having a discussion man to man here, and it’s strange enough that I have to talk to your face while doing it.” He coughs again. “Anyway, I’m kinda glad you’re here. I don’t know if you’ve heard stories about the humans they called the samurai, but… I’d rather not die a slow, lonely death, and Jax needs to get the hell out of here.”
Samurai? My mind churns trying to place the reference. Japanese warriors from well before our time… Somehow Lir takes the jumbled knowledge from my head and makes the connection a few seconds before I do. I catch a glimpse of some abstract concept of E’rikon society and the word they call something like this that loosely translates into “dying with honor.” But I mostly see the human words: ritual suicide.
Flint’s asking Lir to kill him.
No no no no no! I chant the word over and over, but it doesn’t stop Lir’s nod of acknowledgment.
“I imagine our anatomy is fairly similar.” Flint touches his neck and then the inside of his thigh. “Either one will do I think. I’d do it myself, but…” He lifts up one shaking hand. “I don’t think I have the strength left.” His voice drops into a whisper and he swallows. “I don’t want her to have to do it.”
“I un
derstand,” Lir says. He pulls the knife from the waistband of my jeans.
I struggle for control and manage to get my fingers to release the weapon.
Please, Jax. Lir’s voice is a tortured plea in my head. Let me do this for him… and for you.
Neither one of us can stop the tears that well in my eyes or the gut-wrenching anguish that floods through my body. But as small and slight as it may be, I give Lir my blessing and then retreat as far into my mind as I can. This is not something I want to watch. It’s probably not something I can watch and survive, not intact and sane at least.
Lir wraps my fingers around the knife handle, bows my head, closes my eyes, and mumbles something too quickly for me to translate: a prayer of some sort. When he opens my eyes again he focuses on Flint’s pain-filled blue ones. He leans over and presses the blade to the inside of Flint’s thigh and then lowers my chin in a respectful nod. “Farewell and good journey, my friend.”
The tip of the knife has just entered Flint’s flesh, and the blood has begun to well around it, when a shudder goes through my body and Lir’s presence is wrenched away from me. He’s gone. I don’t know what happened or why, but there’s no time to try to call him back. The cut is already started, and I know I must give my friend this peace no matter how it eats like acid at my soul and feeds into the darkness that lives there.
I push the knife deeper—until a spurt of blood tells me I hit the artery I was aiming for.
A sob escapes my chest, and Flint’s confused and fading eyes meet mine. He mouths my name. He knows. I release the knife and press my lips to his in a chaste and gentle kiss. A goodbye to the boy who was a brother to me in every way but blood. And whose blood and death are sure to haunt my dreams.
I hold his gaze until the life leaves his eyes and his body goes limp, his head lolling to the side. The cracks inside me widen, and inside those crevices lives the darkness. With each spreading fracture, a little more seeps out, until it takes everything I have and everything I am to hold it back, to keep it from taking over. It mocks me from the back of my mind:
It could be so easy. Just let me out and you never have to feel pain again.
MY CONSCIOUSNESS HAS RETURNED to my own mind, but it still takes a moment for me to recuperate from the transition and open my eyes. I am lying slumped on the ground and my vision is wavering slightly. I push up into a sitting position and run a hand over my face in an attempt to clear my head. It does not work. Shapes and colors flow around me, and the sound of raised voices fills my ears. It is all too bright. My brain cannot make sense of things.
I close my eyes and reach out to Jax in the hope that she can call me back, but there is nothing there. Even the simple connection of the link is lost to me. I am useless and helpless and… Blazes! I am beginning to get dizzy from all the spinning. Is this a side effect of shuvata? If so, it is a blasted stupid enhancement, if you ask me.
Leaving her like that, to deal with it on her own…
I shake my head, then rest my forehead in my hands. The feel of metal against my palms does not register at first, not until my head takes another whirl around the room—or is it the room around my head?
There is a metal circlet over my temples. Metal. Cold. Just like a—
I snatch the thing off my head and toss it across the room. It clatters against the wall, and I scramble backward into the opposite corner, pull my legs up, and hug them to my chest. There are very few things that could cause dread to climb into my limbs and make me act so irrationally, but the feel of a kiun against my skin is one of them. I press my palms over my eyes to push away the memories of the pain-filled time I spent as Vitrad’s prisoner.
“I told you that was an awful idea, you asshole,” says Rym in a flat voice. My eyes open and focus on him as he shakes out of Matt’s hold and walks over to crouch in front of me. “When you passed out, things got a little… heated. Using that thing to ‘wake you up’ was Scarface’s idea.” He leans closer and lowers his voice. “I did not wish to tell them about the shuvata, though I recognized it for what it was.”
I give him a nod. Being splayed out on the floor and then acting like a frightened child is more weakness than I would have wanted to demonstrate to these humans, but there is nothing I can do about it now.
Thankfully, the sound of the door sliding open echoes across the warehouse and the attention is turned away from me. Every member of Adam’s team stiffens and goes silent.
The people who enter are not so quiet. Feet shuffle. There are thumps and bumps and whispered curses as the new arrivals make their way to our location.
“Mitchell? You back there?” a voice calls out.
Adam winces and mutters, “Noisy idiots.” Louder, he says, “This is the rendezvous point, Ulrick.”
Rym moves forward, but he halts as I put my arm in his path. We are better off staying tucked into the shadows and out of sight for now, at least until we know if these new men are a threat to us.
The other two E’rikon stay to the rear as well. Perhaps the relations between them and Adam’s group are not as amicable as they have appeared to be.
A group of six men walk into view, four in front and two behind. These men are harder than Adam and Matt, more rigid, and generally more what I expect of humans. They are in some sort of loose-fitting clothing, colored in varying shades of green that are distributed seemingly at random, and they all carry guns. As they come closer, I can see that one of the men in the rear has a small, limp form in his arms. Stella.
There is a thump and another muffled curse from somewhere to the left, and a seventh man walks out from behind the stack of boxes. It is immediately obvious why he was delayed and, perhaps, why he was cursing: Trel stumbles along in front of him with her hands bound behind her back and a cloth over her mouth. She is busy struggling against her captor, and does not appear to have noticed that the number of men has increased.
But when she draws closer, her eyes widen, and then narrow. The cloth dampens her words, but by the look on her face I imagine they are not kind ones. The effect of her angry outburst, however, is offset by the tear tracks on her cheeks. She makes another desperate attempt to wriggle free of the man’s grasp, kicking at his legs and pulling her body forward. The man grabs her by the hair, yanks her backward, and hisses something into her ear I cannot hear. The fight goes out of her. Her shoulders go slack and her chin drops to her chest.
I stiffen and curl my hands into fists.
Linx scowls and his jaw tenses. Both he and Rym move to step forward, but they are held back: Rym by my hand on his arm and Linx by a shake of Adam’s head.
Adam turns his attention to these new men. “Is that really necessary?”
“Well, she wasn’t going quietly, and we couldn’t leave a witness behind,” says the man holding Trel. “Besides, you might be particularly interested in this one, Doc. I was doing you a favor.”
“And why is that, Randall?”
The man pulls the back of Trel’s gown so that it lies tightly against her body and reveals the subtle bulge of her stomach. Trel is pregnant? How… The reason my cousin went back to wearing the mourning gown becomes clear. She has been trying to hide the pregnancy. But why?
Before I can stop him again, Rym rushes past me and heads for his sister. He snatches her away from the human and pulls her into his arms, huddling over her as if to shield her. The stunned looks on the men’s faces quickly shift into aggression, and their gun barrels rise to point at my cousins. Karo moves forward, shoving his way past Adam’s attempt to restrain him. The men back away, half their guns turning to follow Karo, the other half staying firmly on Rym and Trel.
“Call off your pets, Mitchell,” snarls the man in front. “You might have agreed to whatever truce with them so they’d get us in here, and I might have to put up with them back on base, but that doesn’t mean I have to put up with them questioning my authority.”
“Karo, stand down,” says Adam. Then he turns to me and tilts his head in Rym’s direct
ion.
I move up to stand beside Adam. Whatever his motives, at this moment we share common goals. “Rym, bring her over here. Slowly.”
With one arm around Trel’s shoulders, Rym complies with my command. As soon as he and Trel are within Karo’s reach, Karo pulls a knife from his belt and cuts through the restraints around Trel’s wrists. It does not matter to him that she is a Linaud. All that matters now is that she is one of us and she was mistreated, an especially grievous offense considering she is a pregnant female.
Head down, Trel continues forward and comes to stand in front of me with her brother by her side.
“Are you well? Did they hurt you?” I ask softly.
“I am fine,” she says. Her face jerks up. Hardened eyes filled with quiet rage meet mine. “So, Steliro, is this how you propose to get me to listen to you? Having that human scum manhandle me?”
“No. That was… not my doing.”
She chuckles and her lip curls upward. “Not your doing? So these humans found their way here on their own? I believe your presence here belies any explanations that do not include your culpability in this. They would not be the first enemies you allowed entry into the city.”
“Though they did have inside help,” I say, “it was not from me. It is true that, once I learned they were here for Stella, I have used the opportunity to my advantage, but I did not ask for this. I certainly had no part in anything that could have led you to harm. Especially since…” My gaze drifts down to her midsection, the roundness once again hidden in the folds of her attire. “Why did you not tell me?”
“I never even had a chance to tell him.” Taking a step back, she protectively wraps her arms around herself. “I had only recently found out when I received news of Kov’s death. And why would I tell you now? What business is it of yours?” A hard edge creeps into her voice and she drops her arms to her sides. “My father knew, and that was enough. He was ensuring my child would have a good life, a full life, one not stuck in this tiny bubble. And you tried to ruin it. The initiative is the only way for our race, for my child to prosper, and you took up with a half-breed and forgot all about the people you were supposed to protect, the people you were one day supposed to lead. You sided with the humans. Do you think the humans truly care what happens to us? Do you think they will continue to be docile? They have already begun to fight us, and still you choose to side with them. Do you truly think you will get away with this? Traitor is too kind a word for you. All of you.”
