by K. E. Blaski
He unsheathed his dagger and approached the bed.
“No, don’t.” Damen grabbed Quintus’s arm before he could swipe at her foot. Argathe’s science didn’t always work the first few times she tried something new. He recalled the caged creatures he’d had to put down when Argathe was practicing soul transfers. They still haunted his dreams.
“It’s okay,” Jennica tried to reassure him. “Just watch.”
Damen sighed and let go. Quintus swung his arm down, slicing the blade against her insole. The knife screeched against her foot, high-pitched, the sound of metal against metal.
When Quintus stopped and withdrew his dagger, Damen took Jennica’s foot in his hands, searching for a mark, feeling for the cut. There was nothing. Her silver foot was as smooth and unblemished as before. He set her foot down like it was a fragile glass, and went to the window.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy for me? Argathe says she’ll do my other foot tomorrow. I’ll be able to run again, jump. The metal is so lightweight I won’t need the salve anymore. Damen? Say something.”
“I’m happy for you, because you’re so happy. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“I’m worried, too.”
He watched as she scanned his face. Her eyes, deep pools of black, searched for him, pulling him in. He could drown in her eyes.
“Tell me what you’re worried about,” she said.
“The price. There’s always a price. What does Noble want in exchange for letting you run again? What does Argathe want in exchange for making it happen?”
Jennica tore away, as if she was unable to look at him.
“Tell me.”
She rose from the bed and crossed the floor to the window. Her voice was firm. “Quintus, I command you to wait outside the door. I do not want you in my room.” Quintus hesitated, confusion sliding across his face. “I am your Nobless. You have to do what I say.”
“Well. I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
Jennica waited until the door thudded shut. “No more secrets,” she whispered to herself, but loud enough for Damen to hear. Then she turned to him.
“Noble wants my entire body like this. So . . .” She swallowed. “So he can have sex with me, without killing me, before he takes me to Earth.” She continued before Damen could say anything. “And Argathe, she wants me to be able to get close enough to Noble . . . to kill him. She says she can make me stronger than he is. She says I won’t need a sword after all. I’ll be able to tear him apart with my bare hands.”
She sat back on the bed and clutched her hands. “My feet are one thing, but I don’t want to be entirely covered in metal. I was just getting used to being purple, you know? And I don’t think I have it in me to kill anyone—even someone who deserves it as much as Noble. But what choice do I have?”
Damen was shocked she was even considering this. “You can say no.”
Her laughter was harsh, forced. “Oh, sure. Just say no. ’Cause up until now, that word’s been so successful for me.” She balled up the sheets with her fists. “If I don’t do what Noble wants, he’ll kill me. If I don’t do what Argathe wants, Noble’s taking my soul to Earth with him.”
Did that mean . . . ? “You don’t want to go back to Earth?” He drew in his breath deeply. Everything depended on her answer.
“I don’t want him to go to Earth. Can you imagine the horror he’ll bring to my planet? My world already has enough evil in it. It’d be like handing the devil the key to every city.”
Damen forced himself to stay by the window, struggling not to throw himself at her feet, trying not to beg her to stay. He had to let her choose, and he had to keep some dignity. “What about you? Do you want to go back? Try to reclaim your life?”
“If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I’d have thought differently. But now? No. I don’t want to go back. I mean, I still miss my grandparents, and Uncle Ed, but these days it feels like they’re with me. Here.” She tapped her chest. “The problem is that by now, Nyima’s told them what her life here was like, so they’ve got to be freaking out. If I could just figure out how to get a message to them, let them know that I’m okay . . . But go back? No. I couldn’t reclaim my life even if I wanted to. It’s Nyima’s life now—she has to deal with my parents. I feel sorry for her.”
“You feel sorry for her? That is a change.”
“You changed it, Damen. You and Marcis and Joss and Amada, you did that for me. But mostly you.”
He wanted to gather her up and kiss her, but she had more to say. He waited for her cue.
“If I can’t kill him . . . if I fail and he succeeds in getting to Earth . . . I’ll have to follow him. To tell people who he is. To try to . . . contain the damage.”
Damen couldn’t hold back any longer. “No.” He seized her in his arms. His mouth found hers, eager, searching, tasting. Fire seared right through the inhibitor and threatened to engulf him. He clung to Jennica like a lifeline. Only Jennica mattered. He could never let Argathe, or Noble, or Marcis send her back to Earth. She wanted to stay—here, on Astrune. With him. Like this . . . returning his kisses with the passion of a thousand souls. A million souls. He didn’t have a plan yet, but he’d find a way to keep her here.
He tore himself from her, inhaling deeply to clear his head. Tucking her hair behind her ears, he left his hands on the sides of her face. “Don’t do anything impulsive. Please. Don’t . . . fly without pants.”
To Damen’s surprise, she suddenly burst into laughter. “Oh . . .” She could barely speak. “You mean . . . don’t . . . fly . . . fly by the seat of your pants.”
“Yes. That’s what I mean.” He dropped his hands, feeling foolish.
“No, Damen—don’t ever feel bad for making me laugh. It feels good to laugh.” She squeezed his hand. “Especially when my future looks so grim.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He spoke in urgent whispers. “There are armies coming, Jennica. I overheard Marcis. Revolution is coming.” He remembered the timeline needed to create the sword from Urion. Marcis would kill Noble, so Jennica wouldn’t have to. And once he explained to Marcis that Jennica wanted to stay—it could all work out. It was the beginning of a plan, anyway.
“What you need to do is stall,” he said. “Get Noble to push out the time of the transfer for at least another week.” All they needed was more time. Time to make the Sword of Urion.
“I can try,” Jennica said.
Pounding brought their talk to an abrupt end. Quintus cracked the door open and poked his head in. “Pardon, Nobless, but it’s time for your meeting with Noble.”
Jennica tied her hair back while Quintus waited outside again. Her graceful fingers worked quickly. He imagined them dancing across his skin and he had to turn away as heat flooded his face.
“You know Argathe visited the prisoners for me, to make sure they were okay? She brought them more bereket handkerchiefs. She doesn’t seem as horrible as you’ve described. She was nice about it.”
“Don’t let her fool you.” Cold crept up his spine.
“She wanted me to ask you something. I nearly forgot.”
“What was that?”
“What you did with her missing potion.”
DAMEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
RESOLVE
The Tovar priests were wrong. Telling the truth wasn’t a blessing from Aprica. It didn’t make Damen brave or special—it only hurt people. Telling the truth singled people out for Noble’s rage. It unburied secrets that were better left hidden. It hurt the people he loved. It hurt Jennica.
But worse than the Tovar part of himself was the coward part. The coward who waited for the question to be asked before telling the truth. The coward who wanted to poison and manipulate Marcis instead of confronting him. The coward who didn’t tell Jennica what was happening to her when she started spilling all her truths. He’d betrayed all of them . . . and now Jennica hated him—again.
She hadn’t said t
he words, but the anger had rolled off of her in waves, and the hurt had filled her eyes with tears. Even Noble, of all people, noticed her heart was troubled. He didn’t ask why; he mustn’t have wanted to know. Instead he sent her to her room early on the pretense that he was tired.
When Quintus and he walked her back, the silence had been heavy between them. He’d ached to hold her, entwine his fingers through her hair, kiss her. But her words cut through his desire worse than the sharpest knife.
“I need a break from you, Damen.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. I need to think straight. And I can’t do that with you around.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.” She’d turned her back on him and let the door close between them.
He’d vowed to return the rest of the truth potion to Argathe as soon as he had the opportunity. And now, this morning, he had that opportunity: Argathe was fixing Jennica’s other foot, which meant her room was empty, her case unattended.
It had been easy to get into Argathe’s room. Soldiers didn’t even guard her door. He sat on Argathe’s cot, staring at the open case in front of him. The first four vials lay fastened inside; the sixth one was in a pocket in his robe. The fifth was missing.
He tried to recall what the fifth vial contained. All he could remember was that it needed to be combined with Urion, and Argathe had laughed about needing a suitable test subject. Jennica? Was she using the contents of the fifth vial to change Jennica’s feet and grow her new silver skin?
The urge to run to Jennica and warn her came, and then went. She liked her new and improved silver feet. He’d warned her about Argathe, repeatedly; it was Jennica’s choice now.
One after the other, he touched the vials. He didn’t understand why Argathe had them, or why she’d created them. If they were invented to kill someone other than Noble, she would’ve used them by now. Yet she intended for Jennica to kill her husband with her bare hands. So . . . were the poisons a backup plan, if Jennica failed?
The first poison made a gas that would kill everyone in a room within seconds, maybe the entire castle, depending on how it spread through the air. She’d said the second poison would do the same, but more slowly: ten to twenty minutes. At least your soul would be released to Aprica. The third had to be consumed—it was an acid that would burn through your soul from the inside, resulting in an agonizing death. And the fourth? The most insidious of all. The fourth poison, combined with Urion, reduced your body to a blind, unfeeling shell, trapping your soul inside.
Damen remembered his experience in the Urion room, when he’d first stolen the Urion for Argathe’s soul-swapping procedure. The hallucinations, the lust for power, the ambition, the hatred. What if the Urion Argathe was using affected Jennica in the same way it affected him? He’d had brutal nightmares for a week after merely touching the blue chemical. What would happen when Urion was permanently applied to all of her skin? Damen had always suspected the soldiers’ aggressiveness in battle was fueled by their exposure to Urion—through the metal scales applied to their faces and bodies. The most violent of the soldiers had the most scales. Those soldiers didn’t even live in the castle. Noble sent them on special missions and rewarded them upon their return with even more scales. Noble himself was covered head to toe in Urion-based metal, and he was the most violent soldier of them all. Would Jennica turn aggressive? She might already be having nightmares.
Damen’s Urion-fueled dreams had always been variations of the same events: his father’s capture, his father’s execution, his father’s corpse. He’d have lost his mind if they hadn’t tapered off. But the dreams had had a lingering impact. They’d stirred up memories.
Talking to Jennica about his father had been a huge relief. He’d carried the guilt, alone, for so long. He still hadn’t relieved himself of all the responsibility, but now he could look at what happened with new perspective. His father shared the blame.
Damen wasn’t the one who’d put the family in danger—his father was. Once he’d run away from Noble’s army, he should’ve kept on running and never come home. When the soldiers came looking, he should’ve turned himself in; but instead, he watched his wife risk her life with lies. Encouraged her, even. And the two of them, mother and father both, had risked the life of their child.
Yet Damen couldn’t feel angry. He understood why they’d done what they’d done. He had his father’s and mother’s selfish blood running in his veins. Like Noble Tortare, doing whatever he wanted without considering the consequences. Taking power instead of earning it.
He wanted to be different from them all. Selfless, brave, someone Jennica could be proud to love—someone who didn’t resort to soul-snatching, or truth poison, or hiding under floorboards while soldiers terrified his wife and child.
Nyima had told him that children were expected to turn into their parents. It was a sign that you’d grown up. But he hadn’t felt grown up when he’d hid like his father and let the soldiers take Nyima. And if being grown up meant manipulating people like his mother did, he didn’t want any part of it. He’d done enough manipulating on his own—and it was time to stop.
“I don’t have to be like them,” he said aloud, to help make it true. Jennica wasn’t like her parents. She described them as preoccupied and self-absorbed, handing out doses of love only when it was convenient. Jennica acted the opposite. She put herself at risk to protect people she didn’t even know. She cared enough to find out and remember the names of the servants, gave pieces of her bereket handkerchief to the prisoners, risked her life to warn the rebels, freed the Cidrans, the harem . . . and what happened as a result? All those people gave her power—and love. They loved her. She wasn’t a frightened girl sobbing on the floor of her bedroom anymore. Through her own strength and kindness, she’d inspired a revolution.
Argathe’s power was based on lies. Noble’s was based on fear. Fragile power that could be ripped away by an assassin’s arrow or a gathering army. But Jennica’s power? Her power was given to her by the people. Jennica was stronger than Argathe and Noble both, because her power was based on love.
She was living proof that children didn’t have to become an imitation of their parents. Whatever the circumstances, he, Damen, was the one responsible for his own life.
By blood, he was truthful. But by choice—by choice, he could be selfless too.
Sighing loud and long, he dumped all but one drop of the truth potion onto the floor. At once, the stone absorbed the clear liquid.
One drop remained. Enough for a Tovar to experience the freedom of a loose and deceitful tongue once in his life. The damp spot began to evaporate, eliminating the evidence.
He untwisted the wires, releasing the second, third, and fourth vials from the case: the poison that ate through the body, the poison that ate through a person’s soul, and the poison that killed the senses. Which one? He’d steal all three and decide later. He poured half the contents into each of three empty inhibitor vials. At the washbasin brimming with clear water, he drenched a cloth and squeezed a stream back into the original poison vials, filling them back to the top. Then he carefully returned the vials to the case.
As far as Argathe would know, Damen still had her truth potion and no one had touched any of her other vials. He pushed her case back under the cot and pocketed the poisons.
The soldiers’ corridor was two floors below. Damen checked his timepiece. Plenty of time to find Marcis. And this time, he had a plan.
◊ ◊ ◊
Their gold eyes caught his attention first, like stained glass lit from behind. The second thing he noticed was their serenity. The two wives sat comfortably on floor pillows in Marcis’s room, talking softly with each other. They existed in their own little world.
“Where did you find them?”
“They found me. Knocked on my door like old friends come for a visit.” Marcis sharpened his dagger on a bos strop, glancing over at the women and shaking his head.
; “What are you going to do with them?”
“Help them get out of the castle, of course.”
“Marcis Balázs has been kind to hide us for the day. We’ll be leaving on a delivery cart come nightfall.”
Damen hadn’t realized they’d moved, but there the women were, standing nearby. They bowed in Damen’s direction.
“I am Nobless Ascelina, formerly of the House of Ombelie, and this is my sister, Nobless Molline, formerly of the House of Remus. We are pleased to make your formal acquaintance and extend our appreciation to you, as well, for giving us safe haven.”
Damen stood, mouth agape.
Her voice was silk on skin, her manner drenched in femininity. Not the draw of Rosen skin—Noble had taken that away from them—but something else entirely. The Cidrans modeled an exaggerated idea of what young women should be. It was . . . disturbing.
“Makes you want to do anything for them, doesn’t it?” Marcis said.
“Do you know where the rest of the harem is?” Damen asked.
It was Ascelina who answered. “Molline and I are the last in the castle. We chose to stay behind to see our sisters make a safe escape.”
“Where are they?”
“They are everywhere,” Molline said. “Durand, Benicio, Casilda, in the cities of their fathers and scattered throughout the countryside to make new lives for themselves. Ascelina and I . . .” She touched her sister’s fingers. “We will be going to our beautiful Esperance.”
“The castle staff and soldiers have been most kind. Hiding our sisters until suitable transportation arrived.” Ascelina’s thick lashes fluttered against her cheeks when she cast her eyes to the floor.
“Soldiers? Weren’t you worried they’d want payment?” He regretted saying it the moment the words passed through his mouth.
“I’m sorry for the boy’s comment,” Marcis recovered for him. “Noble’s army isn’t known for its altruism.”
“Their generosity as individuals might surprise you,” Ascelina said.
Noble had promised a lifetime of reward to anyone with information about his missing wives. Damen found it astonishing that no one had turned any of the women over. But he couldn’t discount the way he felt around these two women: protective, like they were his own sisters. Their safety was all that was important.
