“This is the Burning One. Your forty-seven-times great-grandfather.”
Sera scoffed. “A photograph? Of someone from four thousand years ago? Are you serious?”
Alaia was amused “Four thousand years ago, Ylia was still more technologically advanced than Earth is now. You and your society are mere children compared to us.”
Theyn stood and walked toward her, his hand extended. “May I?” The priestess handed him the tablet, and he studied the face in the picture. “And this symbol on his chest…”
“That’s what I asked you about. Do you recognize it?”
“It’s the same as my daughter’s birthmark.” He swallowed a lump in his throat, and Sera could sense a great upswelling of grief and worry in his heart. She wished he hadn’t admitted it.
“You were also born with that mark.”
Beno looked at Alaia as if she were insane. “How would you know?”
“I know, because I was there.” She nodded into the stunned expressions of the two Ylian men. “I have lived a long time, and I was in hibernation for many years. I am the priestess who attended Empress Kina every time she gave birth.”
Theyn shook his head and put the tablet back into her hand. “I don’t believe you. But if you were the priestess who blessed my birth, tell me where my birthmark was.”
‘You have no birthmark,’ Beno said, shaking his head.
‘No,’ Theyn agreed. ‘But I did. It was surgically removed.’
‘Why?’ Sera asked. ‘Why was it removed?’
‘Because my mother said it was a lie.’
Alaia answered. “It was a perfectly shaped starburst, just where your left clavicle joined the acromion.”
Theyn rubbed the spot in question, his hand on the front of his shoulder. “That’s exactly right.”
“We were convinced, Prince Theyn, that your son will be the Burning One.” The priestess smiled. “We have been waiting for you to return to us, and for you to sire a child. But now it appears that we may have been wrong.”
Sera felt a flash of alarm spread through her body like a wildfire. “You think Kira is the Burning One. That’s why you took her.”
The priestess nodded. “That’s one reason. She has been tested by our clergy, and she shows signs of all of the abilities a Ylian could have. It might be too soon to be sure, since she is so young, but she has the birthmark, and she has the seeds of what might be our savior.”
“But she’s a girl,” Theyn said. “You said the Burning One could only be a boy.”
“She’s not your savior,” Beno objected. “She’s just a baby.”
“She’s more than that,” Alaia disagreed. “And that is where you and your bond mates come in.”
Sera nodded. Nima had said that hearing out the priestess’s demands was a prerequisite to regaining their daughter, and even though the woman was on her last nerve, she would listen. She would do anything to get Kira back.
“So talk,” she said.
“As you know, our people are in dire straits on this planet. Bruthes was supposed to be our refuge, but it’s become our prison, and worse. You know what the Taluans and Bruthesans are doing to us.” She waited for a response, and Theyn nodded. Satisfied, she continued. “The Resistance is ready to free our people once and for all, but the people are unconvinced. They need to know that they have a true leader, one that is both Imperial and sacred. They need you, Prince Theyn. You are a symbol that will unite them and galvanize them. You and your bond mate, as the only remaining full-blooded Ylian males capable of merging, will be the symbol of their hopes. You need to present yourselves to them.”
Theyn frowned. “I’m not a warrior. I’m not accustomed to leading. I can’t be at the forefront of your revolution.”
“You need only be a figurehead. We, the clergy, will lead from there.”
The two men looked at one another, and Sera had the sensation that they were having an intense mental conversation. Alaia knew it, too, but she waited politely for them to finish. Finally, Theyn looked back at her.
“I am not a banner you can wave, and the two of us alone can’t bring the Ylian people back from the brink.” He stood. “I will not cooperate with this plan. I think it’s a fool’s errand. There are too few of us and too many of them, and we can’t take an entire planet from such a poor starting position. The best that we can do is to find somewhere else for our people to live.”
“You misunderstand,” Alaia said with a gentle smile. “We aren’t asking.”
“You can’t force us to do this,” Theyn objected.
“Do you want to see your daughter again, or don’t you?”
The calmly spoken question filled Sera with rage and dread. She lurched up out of her seat and charged at the priestess. Alaia rushed behind the desk and hit a button on its surface. A force field sprang up between the chairs and the desk, and Sera bounced off painfully. She lost her balance, but Theyn caught her in his arms before she could fall. Behind them, the door opened, and a trio of grim-faced Ylian hybrids entered, long weapons in their hands. The gunman in the center raised his rifle and pointed it at Sera.
“You are unnecessary,” he told her. “If your mates fail to cooperate, then you will be destroyed.”
Theyn tightened his grip on Sera and turned so he was between the soldiers and his Selected. He looked up at Alaia in resignation.
“Tell me what I need to do.”
Chapter Thirteen
The soldiers at the door kept their weapons trained on Sera, who pushed away from Theyn and stood on her own, embarrassed and still angry. Beno’s face was flushed, his osteoderms beginning to stand out from his skin in his rage.
Theyn sighed. “I’m listening.”
Alaia looked victorious behind her force field. Sera hated her. “Good. Will you cooperate?”
“Failing to cooperate will result in the loss of my Selected and possibly my daughter. What do you think?”
“Can I trust you to keep your Selected and Companion under control?”
Beno ground his teeth but kept silent, exchanging another silent communication with his bond mate. Theyn turned to Sera. ‘Please, for Kira’s sake, don’t fight them.’
She sat down again, her arms tightly crossed. She felt like she wanted to either cry or scream, or possibly both.
‘There will be time for that, I promise you,’ Beno said in her head. ‘And when that time comes, we will wade through their blood together.’
Theyn nodded to the priestess. “They won’t be a problem.”
“Good.”
She deactivated the force field and came back around the desk to stand within arm’s length of Theyn. Sera noticed that she stayed well out of her own reach, and definitely far from Beno. She was afraid of them. That thought pleased her to no end.
Alaia looked into Theyn’s eyes. “You will come with me to address the leaders of the Resistance. Your Companion will come with you, but he will remain silent and cooperative.”
“Or what?” Beno asked.
“Or your Selected, whom we will keep with us, will be killed.”
Her dark-haired mate fell silent, and she felt a wave of shame from him before he was able to lock down his emotions again. He looked straight ahead, his back stiff.
“We understand,” Theyn told her. “And when I address them, what am I to say?”
“I’m very pleased by this sudden obedience, Prince Theyn. It bodes well for your future,” Alaia smiled. Sera wanted to bite her. “Tell them that you have returned to lead the Ylian people out of darkness. Tell them that you bring the light of the Burning One within your veins, and that you will bring our species back from the brink.”
He blew a short, staccato breath through his nose, the only indication of his anger and frustration. “And if they ask me how I intend to do that?”
“Tell them that we here at the Temple have the orders you’ve drafted, and we will disseminate your commands when the time comes.”
He shook his head. �
�You want me to lie. I’ve never lied before.”
“Welcome to the politics of rebellion, my prince.” She chuckled, then gestured toward the men at the door. One of them came forward and closed a golden collar around Beno’s neck, an inch tall and gleaming like burnished jewelry. The red flashing indicator light on the back told Sera that, whatever it did, it was completely functional. He clenched his teeth and grasped the arms of the chair he was sitting in as Alaia explained, “This will give us insurance that your Companion will behave. That is a neural scrambler. If he gives us the least amount of trouble, if he attacks us or tries to run, I need only press this button here on my bracelet, and his frontal cortex will be reduced to mush. He will still be physically functional for mating and merging, but not for much else.”
Sera was sickened, and from the feelings their link shared with her, Theyn was, too. Beno burned with shame at his own helplessness.
“You will have no occasion to press that button,” the prince promised. “My Companion knows how to comport himself.”
“Good.”
One of the men stepped up to Sera and clasped a matching collar around her slender throat. As soon as it closed, she could feel a painful sting as it extended tiny electrodes beneath her skin. She closed her eyes in trepidation. She could feel the intruding biomechanical nightmares as they extended through her flesh, looping up under her scalp until they stopped just over her forehead, barely within her hairline. The pain intensified for a moment, and then it was over. She gasped, suddenly realizing that she had been holding her breath. When she opened her eyes again, Theyn was looking at her with tears and apologies in his eyes.
Alaia looked at Sera, then at Theyn. “I trust I don’t need to tell you that your Selected will also be watched. Her scrambler will be keyed to another bracelet, one worn by her guard. If I give the word, she will be ended. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” He closed his eyes, but when he opened them, his back was straight and his head was held high. He looked every inch a prince, albeit a trapped one. He lifted his chin. “Take me to the Resistance.”
They were escorted through a door in the back of the room that Sera hadn’t seen, so seamlessly did it sit in the wall. Beyond the door was a lift, and it carried them downward silently, moving faster than any other elevator she had ever been on in her life. The cab stopped, and the door in front of them opened onto a rock-walled corridor, tool marks in the stone showing where it had been mined away with hand-held laser drills. The heat from those lasers had heated the edges of the cut rock, turning them into something that looked like black obsidian shot through with sparks of white, and the dark glittering made the place look like a sky full of stars.
The soldiers behind them prodded them forward, and they left the elevator, assembling in the hallway. Alaia took the lead with Theyn at her side, and Beno and Sera were herded to walk immediately behind them. As they went, Sera glanced at the weapon-toting hybrids. They were all wearing the bracelets like the one Alaia wore. Presumably, they controlled the neural scramblers.
“So which one of you is holding my leash?” she asked.
One of the guards chuckled. “All of us, Selected.”
“You can’t set this thing off by accident, can you? Like, brushing over the buttons or something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you don’t know?”
“It shouldn’t happen,” he shrugged.
One corner of her mouth curled up in a humorless smile. “Wow. That’s super comforting.”
“We won’t do anything to you if you behave,” he reassured her.
“Hush, now,” Alaia scolded mildly. “Voices carry.”
They walked another hundred meters and the corridor opened out onto a wide rock ledge lined with thick metal railings. Sera peered over the edge and was astonished by what she saw.
A huge subterranean chamber, easily a thousand meters square, was waiting some hundred meters below them. The space was accessed by four tunnels, each equipped with heavy blast doors. The entire floor was packed with Ylians and Ylian hybrids, their glowing eyes lighting the chamber like so many displaced stars. She gasped at the sheer number of them, and she realized that out of all of the sets of eyes turned up toward them, not one of them was blue.
Alaia stepped to the railing and raised her arms. A thousand eyes turned up to her, and Sera could sense hope and excitement from the assemblage below them.
The priestess spoke in Ylian, but because of the translator earring she still wore, Sera understood every word.
“Good people, our time of hope has come. The Burning One has heard our prayers, and he has sent to us a savior. Look now upon the face of your deliverance – Prince Theyn, born of the Empress Kina, born on the soil of Ylia and here with his Companion and his Selected.”
A gasp went up from the crowd, and murmurs raced through the massive chamber below. Alaia beckoned, and Theyn and Beno stepped forward, each of them holding one of Sera’s hands. As she passed her, the priestess whispered to her, “Your eyes show that he has the power to do what we are asking.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were born almost entirely human, but the touch of the Burning One has changed you. You are being slowly purified and brought into a fully Ylian state.”
Sera frowned. “Biology doesn’t work like that.”
“No,” Alaia agreed. “But faith does.”
Then there was no time to speak, because she was pulled the last step forward to stand between her mates at the edge of the railing. The crowd below them was silent for a stunned moment, and then the chamber rang with shouts of jubilation. People embraced, some began to weep, and in the back of the chamber someone began to sing a hymn of praise to their fiery god. Soon the whole room was singing.
‘This is nauseating,’ Beno opined to his bond mates. ‘We’re deceiving these people. We’re offering them hope and we’re going to fail them. It’s cruel.’
‘What else can we do? We don’t exactly have a lot of choices here,’ Sera pointed out.
Theyn’s response was sad but calm. ‘We may fail them, and we may not. Chances are that we will all be dead before this is over anyway.’
The prince held up his hands, and gradually the celebration went quiet. The people listened, waiting eagerly for the first words to fall from his lips. Theyn was probably the first royal they had ever seen.
“My fellow Ylians,” Theyn began, “I weep for the circumstances of your lives here, for the betrayal of the Bruthesans and the collusion of some of our own.” He glanced at Alaia, then continued, speaking the words the priestess had asked him to say. “With my Companion, Commander Beno, and our Selected, Sera, I have returned to lead the Ylian people out of darkness. I bring the blood of the Burning One within my veins, and I will bring our species back from the brink of destruction. The Temple has been given my instructions, and they will lead you onward as we take back our destiny. We were born for greatness, all of us, and this captivity will end.”
The people erupted with shouting, exclaiming their joy. The noise was deafening. Theyn stood and accepted the accolade for as long as he could bear, and then stepped away from the railing. He spoke to Alaia, his voice hidden by the jubilation coming from the chamber below.
“I hate you.”
The priestess was unimpressed. “Take them back.” She stepped forward again, and as she began to address the crowd, the guards took Theyn, Beno and Sera and dragged them back toward the lift.
They were taken to an even lower level, then through a set of blast doors and into a long corridor lined with closed rooms. They were escorted into the room at the end of the hall and pushed into the center of the room. Their captors left them there, locking the exit securely as they departed.
The room was large, with a wide bed big enough for three and a sitting area off to the side with an upholstered divan. There was a bathroom area in the corner, free-standing and open to the rest of the room. Apparently privacy was not
something that their captors believed was necessary.
Theyn sat down on the gray divan and put his head into his hands. Sera sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders. Beno joined them, sitting on Theyn’s other side, his hand on his bond mate’s knee in silent support.
‘I lied to them,’ he lamented. ‘I’m misleading them. I’m betraying their trust.’
‘It might not have been a lie,’ Sera told him. ‘There might be a way to make the promise come true.’
‘How?’ Theyn’s despair was so heavy that it was almost a physical weight in Sera’s mind. She kissed his shoulder.
‘We might not be able to take the planet, but as you suggested, we can get our people somewhere else,’ Beno said.
‘Where? How? Did you see how many of them there are?’
‘Earth.’
Sera looked at Beno, surprised by his calm answer. ‘How are we going to hide a hundred thousand Ylians on Earth?’ she asked. ‘If you’ll recall, the authorities were a little upset when there were only two of you. If we bring that whole group - ‘
‘If we bring that whole group, then the authorities will have to rethink their position,’ Beno answered. ‘It’s the only thing that makes any sense.’
‘It makes no sense at all,’ Theyn sighed. ‘But at least it’s a tangible goal.’
They sat in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts and feelings. Sera fretted over Kira, wondering where she was, and worried about Asa and Joely. She had a terrible feeling that something horrible had happened to her friends, and she wished she had some answers.
Beno touched the collar around his neck and winced. ‘These probes are a little annoying,’ he told them.
‘You are a master of understatement,’ Sera told him. ‘They hurt like hell.’
Theyn closed his eyes. “I am so, so sorry.”
“Not your doing. You have nothing to apologize for.” Beno scowled. “But the minute I have that bitch of a priestess within arm’s reach…”
“She’ll turn your brain to jelly. The revenge isn’t worth the risk.” The prince stood. “I don’t know what to do now.”
Ignition: Alien Ménage Romance (Phoenix Rising Book 2) Page 11
