Child of Fire, Child of Ice-A Sci-fi Romance Series

by JB Trepagnier

  “That could just be coincidence,” Ace argued. “We’ve both been trying to fix those issues since before the war.”

  Ace was a realist. He didn’t believe half of what Isolde and Elan were telling him about mind control. He believed the total opposite of what these Children believed. He believed the humans that settled on Cendis reacted to something in the atmosphere that made all of them look the same on some level. If their ancestors really could make fire like all their texts said, it was because of some freakish reaction to something in the air or the water.

  If they ever did have fire, they didn’t lose it because they were being punished by the gods. Humans simply adapted to their environment and whatever caused it, extreme exposure caused immunity eventually. Isolde wasn’t really reading his thoughts. Elan probably told her military secrets. Elan was probably taught the wine trick by the court fool.

  Isolde started laughing and it sounded like she was laughing at him. He puffed up his chest and huffed at her. Everyone was in serious danger and no one should be laughing right now.

  “I’m sorry. You’re the first person I’ve met since I got here who thinks like an Avalian. Several scientists back home have that theory. They teach it in schools now.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. No one knew he believed that. It was almost akin to blasphemy on Cendis. The way things were now, if you spoke like that in public, people thought you didn’t have proper fear of the Gods and were bad luck.

  She quickly changed the subject and got serious again. “I won’t tell anyone your secret, but you can speak freely if you come to Ragnis Crystal with us. Think about it for a minute, Ace. You’ve been trying to figure out these swarms for centuries, but what’s the first place you would try to fix? Not the areas that are swarm free now. I’m not judging. It’s like that on Avala too. We both know if someone knew of a way to kill of the swarms, they wouldn’t have started in your slums, where they are the worst.”

  “Maybe The Children did it,” he argued. “Maybe it’s part of some mass conversion plan. Sartika said they have some kid who’s managed to make sense of your tech.”

  “I’ve been in that man’s head more times than I care to. He doesn’t want to claim the Cendians living in the slums any more than the rest of the planet. Except you,” she said, staring off into space. “You bring them things. Supplies, medication when you can. You wear a hood and a mask up over your face so not even the people there would know. You drop the supplies on the doorstep of a small, run-down temple in the middle of the night.”

  “How do you—”

  “Ace, how much more proof do you need she hears everything you think,” Elan said with a grin. “Does she need to grab you and show you the hard way? It’ll take hours for you to wake up again and you’re supposed to be fishing on Children members in the military.”

  “Do you know how many people enroll in the military? Everyone knows we aren’t about to attack Avala again and the most dangerous thing you would face is a few starved peasants angry about food rations. Most men who aren’t high born sign up because it’s the surest way for a bed, food, and money to send home,” Ace snapped. He was frustrated. He needed help and he had no idea where to start.

  “You’re going to need a tribunal anyway, right? Why not start with the one you have? Is there a place you can pull them for a meeting in the palace where I can listen to their thoughts? I can talk to you in your head and tell you if they are safe or not.”

  His entire world was shattering. Isolde knew things she couldn’t possibly know and the only way she could have was from his thoughts. If Isolde could read his mind and Elan really poured wine with just a thought, then they were both way too valuable to hide behind a tapestry to listen in. They could be shot. There was an old story from earth with that almost exact scenario, just not with a gun.

  “I can hear behind walls,” Ace heard in his head. He leapt to his feet and ran his fingers through his hair. Hearing Isolde in his head confirmed everything they were saying, but it also confirmed all of the firmly held beliefs he’d had growing up may be lies.

  “Ace, this is only known to my mother, me, and my handler. Well, and Isolde now,” Elan said, squeezing her shoulder. The boy was totally smitten with her. “There’s a series of secret passageways all throughout the palace. The entrances are in my chambers and my mothers. I can get anywhere, even outside. There’s a network of underground tunnels running throughout the entire planet.

  “Use the council room. My mother will make it available. Isolde and I will be in the secret passage listening. There’s a hole in the frame of the painting of the king that started the wars. I can watch from that hole. My gift only works if I can see the person, but with that hole, if any one of them are members of The Children, Isolde can warn you in your head and I can knock them out.”

  Ace eyed both of them. “I’m glad you both don’t use these gifts for evil things.”

  “I can turn it off if I concentrate,” Isolde said. “It’s miserable sometimes, you know? Being in a room full of people and it’s so noisy in your head. You hear things you don’t want to hear. The only reason I haven’t since I got here is because you have a cult that wants me dead.”

  “You don’t turn it off around him?” he asked, pointing at Elan.

  Ace was married to a woman who was picked for him. They got along just fine, but neither of them would really say they loved the other. He couldn’t imagine how a marriage was supposed to work if one person had full access to all your private thoughts and you were totally helpless. Nothing would be sacred or private.

  “I can’t hear Elan like everyone else. I don’t think I’m supposed to. Maybe it’ll change after the bond. I can’t hear him, but if we are touching, I can sense what he’s feeling and talk to him in his head like I did you. He has to answer me out loud.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  If Lina could have just plucked from his head where he disappeared to when he was making his drops at the temple, she would have. If she could have locked onto the right thought to manipulate him into stopping, she wouldn’t have hesitated. They both knew she didn’t love him, but she was jealous of anything and everything that took his attention away from home.

  “I found it strange at first, but now I like it. If you could do what I can do, would you rather listen in to hear it or actually feel it?”

  “Ace, you’re getting distracted. You need to get all those men into a council room so Isolde and I can listen. I’ll let my mother know you’re using it so no one interrupts. How soon do you think you can arrange this?”

  “Sartika gave me a private COMM. Apparently, I can contact the Avalian regent on this thing too. I hear there’s a mess over there as well.”

  “Not as big as here. We don’t have anywhere near three hundred slaves and we don’t have Hikmat or Koswara on Avala. We are here, so let’s focus on what we can do. Viljar can organize what’s going on at home.”

  Ace left Elan’s chambers wondering if anything he knew was really true. Everything he knew about Elan was a lie. He didn’t think there was anything cosmic about the birth of the sixteen like everyone thought. He thought all the women planned it together in some silly high-born plot he didn’t understand. The king and his advisors were not well loved. Ace thought it was poison.

  His tribunal would be where they always were at this time. This was their downtime, so they would have gone down the hatch in Boomer’s quarters where he had a system set up to brew Chilled Hell. It was cheaper than the drinks at any pub and much stronger. It tasted like something used to keep a pod up and running, but it got the job done.

  These men were all his friends, comrades. He’d sat down that hatch getting drunk with them for decades. He knew they would come if he said he had top-secret intel. He just didn’t know what he would do if he heard Isolde’s voice in his head that one or all of them were traitors.

  Chapter 22

  Elan hoped he just got to enjoy
holding Isolde and talking before they were needed in the tunnels. Tati was right and when they didn’t break contact, she walked right out of the old ship after rooting around in Hikmat’s head again. He hoped Dasimah and the others would find something to keep them conscious too. Galih was going to keep pushing them until this was over.

  “We need to get everyone on COMM again to follow up on this morning. We won’t know anything about your military until Ace gets everyone in that room, but I need to know what’s going on back home.”

  She didn’t talk about Avala much and he hadn’t realized she might be missing it. He should have realized. He’d been so focused on showing her everything he loved about Cendis, he didn’t even think about how different it must be to what she was used to.

  “You feel bad. What is it?” she asked, turning around to kiss him.

  “I never ask you about Avala. All I do is throw Cendis at you.”

  “I’m enjoying what you show me. It’s beautiful here. Everything is handmade. We don’t do that at home. Everything is made by machine and looks the same. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to combine your artistry with our technology. For what it’s worth, Avala was pretty boring compared to what we’ve done since I got here. I do miss it though. Can you call Fjola? If she sees my face, she’s going to think I want to talk everything out.”

  “You’re going to have to eventually,” he said gently, trying to send comfort to her.

  “I know, but I want to do it in person. I want her to look me directly in the eye and tell me why she wanted me to think she hated me. And I want to be able to hear her thoughts too. She tricked me.”

  Elan dialed and Fjola’s hopeful face popped up. She quickly hid her disappointment when it was him and not Isolde. Then, fear flooded her features. Isolde hadn’t looked afraid this entire time, but it was the first time Elan realized how much Isolde looked like her mother. They both had the same upturned nose, full mouth, and doe eyes.

  “Is she hurt? Jovin taught her how to stop guns. She would have heard anyone trying to kidnap her or hurt her. What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” Isolde said a little too sharply. She finally joined him in bed and snuggled into his chest. He could feel she was irritated. He thought it would make her feel a little better Fjola worried about her.

  “She had eighteen years to show me she worried about me and she had me beaten instead.” He tried sending warmth and comfort to her since she couldn’t hear him. He was just trying to tell her he understood, but she took it the wrong way. “I’m not a baby, Elan. She can’t hurt my feelings anymore.”

  “Don’t ask me about the bond,” Isolde snapped. “I can tell you’re about to.”

  Elan had been looking at her and not the COMM. Isolde was eyeing Fjola through the screen. Fjola must have been watching both of them have a silent conversation. Fjola had her right eyebrow cocked up exactly like Isolde did when she was about to blurt out the first thing on her mind.

  “I wasn’t going to. I was just going to say if you can hear him now, you must be doing something right.”

  “Because I can’t do anything right. Is that what you were going to say?”

  The temperature in the room drastically dropped. It didn’t even get that cold when Isolde first got there and found out she had been lied to. He wondered if she was ever going to talk about her mother, either with him or directly with Fjola. He knew why she wanted to do it in person, but it was bothering her right here and now.

  “Isolde, are you upset with me because of the farce or because you believed it? You called for a reason.”

  “Yes, because while you were putting on this big show of having me beaten and convincing me you hated me, you had Cendians stealing tech and smuggling assassins right under your nose. We called to find out what you were doing with your mess.”

  “Isolde, do you want to talk it out? You’re mad at me and you have every right to be. Viljar and Galih thought it would make you stronger.”

  “You took your lover’s word instead of your instincts if you actually have any. No, I’m not talking about any of this from another planet. I want to know what you’ve done with the slaves.”

  “They’ve all been rounded up and are in the cells. We had to round up a few Avalians because we don’t want our people to revolt and think Cendis had something to do with you going missing. The Avalians we arrested we did after careful vetting. They would have been the people tech and science were most likely stolen from.”

  “I thought you gave out the story I disappeared after you found my chambers ransacked because I had earth relics hidden in there? How does that mesh with engineers and scientists getting rounded up too?”

  “I’m guessing you overhead from Viljar we share a bed—”

  “I don’t care who shares your bed. Stop changing the subject. I said I would talk about this with you face to face. When I will know you aren’t lying. Talk about what I need to know, not what can wait.”

  “I don’t think it can, but very well. The story we are giving is that the rucksack has answers about why the Cendians and the Avalians changed so much after they settled. You were studying it yourself, but a few slaves and a few among those we arrested heard you talking about it with Jovin. They ransacked your room looking for it and you fled to the mountains. You’re in a safe place studying the relics.”

  The temperature in the room dropped again. “You know you just put a target on Jovin’s back, right? People are going to want to know what I found out from those relics and where I am.”

  “Viljar already planned for that.” Fjola looked far away and dazed when she said his name. Elan wondered if Isolde would get like that when she talked about him when he wasn’t there. “I made a formal announcement and protected Jovin when I did it. Everyone knows Jovin is a vain fighter. He wouldn’t understand anything scientific in those relics like you would. I told everyone you didn’t discuss what you had learned with him because you didn’t think he would understand it. The rucksack wasn’t in your chambers when they were searched. You came in and found your room in shambles. You told Jovin you were going to disappear to study things further, but you didn’t tell him where you were going when you left for his safety.”

  “That story is going to give people hope for answers. You’re going to crush them when they find out where I was the entire time and it was for an alliance with Cendis.”

  “Maybe it’s time people started asking those questions. We have the temples preaching it was the gods, the scientists harping on the atmosphere. Maybe it’s time we found out for good. What if it is a mutation and it happens again on Ragnis Crystal?”

  “It’s been months. Have they found anything from the Cendian assassin they’ve been experimenting on?”

  “I don’t understand most of it. They dissected his eye and it’s different than ours. The lens is situated differently so that it reflects back red. The assassin’s eyes were actually brown when they removed his lens and the light hit it. The rest of his genes are just like ours. The genes that normally make people different in Avalians are the same and his genes explain his hair color. They haven’t found anything.”

  Elan expected Isolde to argue with a string of science, but she surprised him. “I don’t think that’s it. I’m starting to sense Elan’s bond animal and she can hear me. I can talk to Soelva from here. Something else is going on.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve found religion in the short time you’ve been on Cendis. I seem to recall you refusing to go to temple after you turned eight and spending more time with the scientists. You always argued with Jovin the bond was some elaborate lie once you were old enough to understand what you had to do and you refused to leave until you had those capsules.”

  “Do you think if I admit I was wrong about the bond, I’ll actually listen to what you have to say right now? Keep your reports limited to what’s going on back home. If you need someone to talk to, talk to Sartika and Viljar. It was the three of you th
at decided to make me this way.”

  Isolde snatched the COMM from his hand and disconnected in the middle of Fjola’s response. She tossed it on the bed and started pacing. She ran her fingers through her thick black hair and was agitated.

  “Why do they all think everything is supposed to be so easy? If we had listened to them about the bond, it may have ruined everything. And she’s just supposed to say sorry and everything is forgotten?”

  He jumped up and wrapped his arms around her waist. It was too soon to even remotely try to touch her the last time she was this agitated and he thought she might need it now, but there was a part of him that thought it still might be too soon. He was relieved when she didn’t fight him and held his arms.

  “What do you want her to say? What would make it better for you?”

  “It doesn’t make you furious that you and I didn’t have any say in how we turned out? We are exactly who they wanted us to be.”

  He walked backwards with her until his knees hit the mattress and sat down with her in his lap. He thought she would fight and get up, but she asked if they could lay together again. He loved just holding her, so he stretched out on his back while she draped herself across his chest. He stroked her back and thought he knew what to say to her.

  “They didn’t make you any way, Isolde. I’ve only known you a few days, but I already know there’s not much you do that’s not your idea. And if it is something you have to do because of who you were born, you do it in your own way. You’re smart and strong, Isolde. It’s why I love you. If they had wanted you a certain way, you wouldn’t have gotten so angry when you found out they lied to you about me. You would have tried for the bond anyway. Come on, if they really knew you because they created you, they wouldn’t have botched up our first meeting so badly. I was sure you were going straight home, you got so angry. If anyone back on Avala wanted you a certain way, they failed. You’re your own woman.”