“Did you not think we cultivated plant life on our planet?” she’d asked. “We wouldn’t have lasted very long if we didn’t.”
Cade hadn’t pressed the matter further, deciding instead to follow Percival’s advice and remain cautious around Ersia. Percival didn’t trust the Monaskin queen, and neither did Cade. And the deeper she led him down this tunnel, the more his distrust grew. She’d been leading them forward for some time, guiding them by lamplight, and despite agreeing to take Cade to this sacred place, she was very tight-lipped on details. Either she wasn’t much of a talker or she was hiding something. Cade assumed the latter.
“Can I tell you something?” Ersia asked. “Between just the two of us?”
Cade paused. He was wary of Ersia; something about her being so young and holding so much power put him on edge. She’d also made him fight a deranged gorgan. Still, he couldn’t really say no, given the circumstances. “Go for it,” he said.
“I’m glad you healed the gorgan,” Ersia said. “I didn’t make him that way, you know. That was my brother, which is partly why he’s currently held in a prison cell and will be forever.”
“Why else is he locked in a cell?”
“He’s a sadistic lunatic.”
Cade nodded. He knew all about sadistic lunatics; they chased him around the galaxy every single day. “Is that how you came to be queen?”
“Our parents died, and he became king. He sucked at it. So Xeric and I led a revolution and won. We overthrew my brother before he could kill us all, and Monaskis has been a much better place since.”
For a moment, Cade found himself liking this teenage queen. “You know, you’re not nearly as awful as I’d initially thought you were,” he said.
Ersia tsked at Cade. “I didn’t ask.”
“Look,” he said, stepping in front of Ersia and blocking her path, “this banter we’re developing is a ton of fun, but you have to clue me in, at least a little bit, as to what we’re doing here. What is this place, and what is supposed to happen while we’re here? ‘Chamber of Memories’ is a cool name and all, but I have no idea what the thing actually is.”
“You mean you don’t have a Chamber of Memories where you’re from?”
“Uh, no. I’m pretty sure it’s not a very common thing.”
“I know,” Ersia said flatly, stepping around Cade. “I was kidding.”
Cade grinned and followed Ersia.
“I know you’ve only been on Monaskis for a short time, but have you wondered why we haven’t abandoned this planet?” Ersia asked. “Let’s be honest: It’s literally a bombed-out ruin of what it once was. I’m told it was great at one point, but right now, it kinda sucks. I mean, just the work required to make this place sustainable … it’s not easy.”
“I didn’t want to be rude,” Cade said, “but yeah, I did find it weird that you all haven’t left this place. I mean, I come from Kyysring, which is basically the armpit of the galaxy, and I couldn’t wait to get off it. But at least it was in one piece.”
“We would leave, but there’s one problem,” Ersia said as she led them left when they reached a fork in the tunnel. “We’re connected to this planet. All Monaskins share a special bond with this place.”
Cade followed Ersia, ducking low-hanging roots and maneuvering around others that bulged off the wall. This path, for whatever reason, wasn’t treated to the same grooming as the previous passage; the deep scent of wild, musty moss filled the space and rushed Cade’s olfactory system like a stimulant. There was something different about this tunnel, and it wasn’t just the overgrowth. An indelible aura saturated it, like an otherworldly presence. In another life, Cade would chalk the feeling up to being a little creeped out by the dark, dank tunnel in the middle of a planet that wasn’t supposed to exist. But he knew better now. There was something unique about this place, and Cade’s sense of it only grew stronger the deeper they went.
“What do you mean you have a special bond?” Cade asked. “In what way?”
“How do I say this?” Ersia said, stroking her chin. “Monaskis possesses certain … properties. I wish I could explain it, but I really can’t. No one can. It’s something that just is. We share a bond, and the bond lasts forever.”
Cade continued a step behind Ersia, pushing a root out of his way to keep pace. The root, to his surprise, was wet. Cade examined his hand and wondered where the root could possibly be drawing water from. “Forever?” Cade questioned. “In what way?”
“Well,” Ersia started, trying to make what she was about to say sound as natural as possible, “when we die, we stay on Monaskis. Our bodies are buried in the ground, and our spirits become one with, you know, everything. And we can find the spirits of those who are no longer with us in the Chamber of Memories.”
Cade squeezed his eyes tightly, just for a moment, and shook his head. Though he didn’t think what Ersia said was a lie, he had a hard time believing that it could possibly be true—that you could just go to this chamber and visit any of the people you’d lost.
“And that’s why you stay?” Cade quietly asked. “So when you die, you can join the Chamber of Memories?”
“That and so we don’t leave our loved ones, and all those who’ve died over so many generations, behind.”
Cade went to speak, but no words came out. Thoughts of Tristan and of his parents flashed across his mind. Memories, snippets of lives he’d once lived—first with his entire family, then with just Tristan—that seemed so very far away. The remembrances were accompanied by profound sorrow, and Cade knew that he’d give anything—anything in the entire galaxy—for just five minutes with his family. If fulfilling his desire meant remaining in the shell of his ancestral planet, he’d never so much as leave its atmosphere.
“You don’t believe me,” Ersia said after a drawn-out moment of silence.
“No, no, it’s not that,” Cade said. “It’s just—I wish there were a Chamber of Memories everywhere. I wish…” He had to pause and fight back the sadness he felt growing within him. “There are some people I wish I could see again.”
A sad smile flashed on Ersia’s face. “I know. Anyone would feel the same, and that’s why we stay hidden. We have to protect this gift at all costs. Which means when you leave, I expect you not to go blabbing about what you see. Got it?”
Cade nodded. He understood.
“Come on,” Ersia said, leading them forward again. “We’re not far.”
Cade took a deep breath and bottled up the longing he’d begun to feel, longing for things that could never be returned to him.
“So, what’s going to happen in the chamber?” Cade asked. “What have people learned from Wu-Xia? What’s he like?”
Ersia stopped. She turned and looked at Cade, pity flooding her eyes. “Ummm … this is where things get awkward. I didn’t want to tell you this before, but … no one’s ever spoken to Wu-Xia in the Chamber of Memories. Ever.”
Stifling a stream of obscenities, Cade had to grab hold of a vine to keep himself upright as vertigo began to overwhelm him.
“Are you telling me he’s not in there?” Cade asked, unable to conceal how crestfallen he felt.
Ersia shrugged uncomfortably. “Maybe. We really don’t know. It could be that his connection to the chamber was severed after what he did to the planet. Or maybe he is in there and he’s just not talking to any of us. Maybe only the Paragon can interact with him now. We just don’t know.”
Cade sighed. “If only there were a Paragon around.”
“Oh, have heart. After all, you got me to come around,” Ersia said, slapping Cade’s bicep in a way that was meant to be encouraging. “Now come, we’re here.”
Ersia turned and held her lantern high, revealing a tall, narrow door covered in green and yellow lichens. Cade swore it looked like the door itself was pulsing, like it had a heartbeat of its own.
“The Chamber of Memories,” Ersia said, pushing open the door. Stone scraped against stone, causing a rumble that echoed down the tunnel. As
the door opened, soft light escaped from the sliver that was created. “Only one person can enter at a time.”
Cade stepped forward and looked at Ersia; not knowing what to say, he remained silent as he walked toward the chamber.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Cade,” Ersia said as Cade passed by. He turned and saw something in her that he couldn’t pinpoint. Like pity, but not. Sadness, he thought. Like a kind of remorse.
She didn’t believe he was going to find Wu-Xia, either.
But Cade couldn’t turn back; he had no choice but to follow this path wherever it led. The chamber, warmer than the tunnel that led him there, seemed to beckon him inside. Cade had slipped past the threshold without even realizing it, and he felt the power of this place all around him. His nerve, for a moment, flinched, and he thought to turn back. It was too late. Cade turned around just in time to see the door closing.
He was trapped.
CHAPTER NINE
Though Kira still bore the scar of her father’s attempt to kill her when she was just fifteen years old, she’d always contended that the emotional damage of what he’d done to her had healed long ago. From early adolescence on, Ebik was hardly in Kira’s life, electing to instead dedicate himself to Praxis’s military service. From what Kira’s mother had told her, Ebik served his planet with distinction, and it was his valor, in part, that won Akima’s heart. But it was power that did Ebik in. In one of her uncharacteristically candid moments—Kira’s mother had shielded her daughter from the tragedy of her marriage—Akima reasoned that Ebik hadn’t always been bad. She believed with unwavering devotion that he hadn’t married her for her position as a Baron; he’d married her out of love. But then he changed. He craved Akima’s power; it made him sick. Akima, in turn, internalized a great sense of guilt for what her power—given to her by birth, not choice—was turning her husband into. Those feelings worked in concert to wither the tree of their love down to its roots.
Lost in this dynamic was Kira. Too occupied with the political machinations and maneuvers that earned him relevance within Praxis’s government, Ebik cast his daughter aside. Having received a dose of power, Ebik lusted after more. And nothing—not even his family—would stand in his way.
When her own father sliced Kira up, the physical pain was deep and profound; the emotional toll, though, was superficial. A decade removed, what bothered Kira most wasn’t her father’s attempt on her life; it was everything he’d done leading up to that point—his blackhearted mission to usurp his own wife’s birthright—that’d taken so much from Kira.
Kira was supposed to be a Baron once she became an adult and her mother decided it was her time to step down. Unlike her father, Kira was never infatuated with the position itself; she didn’t look forward to becoming a Baron for the sake of becoming a Baron. Still, Kira grieved all the things she’d hoped to do for her planet once the duty was passed down to her. She imagined her tenure as Baron as being an extension of her mother’s and the legacy she’d been working so tirelessly to foster: a legacy of charity, benevolence, and justice. Even when the dark times came—when Ga Halle began her rise to power and started changing the face of Praxis—and Akima’s work became more difficult, Kira understood that it also was more vital. The onus was on Akima, Kira, and people like them to push back against the darkness before it consumed too much of their world. Little did Kira or Akima know that their own father and husband was helping to manufacture the black clouds that blotted out the light in their sky.
Though Kira survived Ebik’s assault, she’d been stripped of her future and her identity, and in her darkest moments, she was nearly broken by all the good she’d hoped to achieve that would forever be left undone. That’s what made Kira’s heart twist in her chest. Ebik had robbed her, Akima, and all of Praxis of something that he’d had no right taking, and Kira wouldn’t rest until that crime was rectified.
But Kira couldn’t explain all of that to Kay. She had no desire to bare her soul to someone she hardly knew, let alone someone she hadn’t decided if she could trust or not. When he asked what she was doing back on Praxis, she kept it simple:
“I’m here to free my mother and put that last living Baron back in power so she can save this planet. And then I’m going to make sure Ebik stays out of her path the only way I know how.”
“And how’s that?” Kay asked, smiling because he knew the answer.
“By showing him the mistake he made ten years ago bringing a triblade to a blaster fight.”
They were seated in what passed as the strategy room in the underground bunker Kay and his soldiers had claimed on the outskirts of the capital. Kay was lucky to know this refuge existed. A leftover from Praxis’s preindustrial age, these bunkers once housed the labor force that’d been conscripted into building the planet’s urban center some three hundred years prior. Praxis had enslaved its own lower class and forced them into brutal labor under miserable conditions, and everyone assumed that any vestige that remained of that dark time had long been destroyed. They were wrong. Kira shuddered when she thought about the workers who’d been forced to live below ground, cramped into this space and only allowed outside when they were called on to perform backbreaking work. She also wondered how many times the soul of her planet had to be saved from itself. Twice too many, at the very least, she ruefully thought.
Kira stood from her dusty metal chair, her nerves too tangled in a ball to let her rest for long. She was still coming down from the heat of their battle and escape, still unsure if she could trust Kay and his rebels, and, most of all, anxious to get to her mother. The room was drab with hazy light casting over the flat auburn surfaces and walls; maps of the city and Praxis’s local strategic positions were tacked up behind Kay’s head, but they didn’t lend much in the way of pleasantness to the space. It was a dark, dank, underground pit. But Kira wasn’t there for pleasantries anyway.
“What about you?” Kira asked. “Why are you here? Why are you, of all people, taking up arms against the Praxian power structure?”
“Oh, you want to listen to me now?” Kay teased.
“I’m generally more willing to listen to what someone has to say when I’m not holding a gun on them,” Kira said. “So, yeah, I’m all ears.”
Kay leaned over the table, taking a deep drink of the root whiskey he’d poured for himself. His eyebrows perked up, and he winced as the burn raced down his throat.
“Give me a drink of that,” she said, pulling the bottle away from Kay’s hand.
“Nothing settles having people trying to kill you like pouring that rocket fuel down your gullet,” Kay said, raising his glass to Kira’s for a toast.
She apprehensively clinked her glass against his, then took a drink. It was just as terrible as ever, and she loved it.
“So, you going to talk or keep me in suspense?” Kira asked.
Kay chuckled as he poured himself another drink. “Look, let me just be clear about something, okay? And I don’t mean any offense, but I really don’t care what you think of me, my soldiers, or what we’re doing here. I’m not going to fall over myself trying to convince you of what’s in my heart. I’m not. You and your friends have been welcomed here out of respect for your mother. Otherwise, we’d have left you in the streets where we found you. This isn’t a game, and we don’t take risks.”
“You’re welcome for that time I saved your life, by the way,” Kira said with a cynical laugh.
Kay sucked in a deep breath and sneered as he forced his gratitude out of his mouth. “You’re a good soldier, there’s no doubt. But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone here has put their lives in my hands, and bringing you and your friends here might be putting them at risk. You don’t trust me? Well, I don’t know if I can trust you.”
Kira smirked. “How’d you get here, Kay?”
Kay smiled in return, though his expression was laced with bitterness. “Same way you got here: the maniac you call a father.”
Kira filled her drink aga
in, then she filled Kay’s. “May he die horribly,” she said, lifting her glass.
“And may at least one of us be the cause,” Kay said, tapping Kira’s glass.
They swallowed their whiskey down, and Kay continued, “You know most of my story. Ebik took me under his wing when I was a kid. Taught me strategy, combat, weapons—then he fast-tracked me through the military ranks, getting me all the way up to the rank of Warden. Which is exactly where he wanted me to be.
“If you know Ebik, you know he doesn’t do anything unless there’s something in it for him. He played me with so much ease and so little remorse, I still can’t believe it. The years we spent together—he’d become like a father to me—were a lie. I meant nothing to him. He was just putting me in position to help him get what he wanted.”
Kay paused and ran through the process of pouring himself, and kicking back, another drink. He offered Kira another, and she shook her head.
“As the Barons’ Warden, my job was to be chief of their personal security. I set up patrols at their homes, I arranged guards to accompany them on trips, you name it. My team was with the Barons at all times. But we were more than that, because the Barons had a lot of problems between them. A lot of grudges, a lot of bad blood going back years and years and years. So not only did we protect them from any outside threats, but I was in charge of internally policing each and every one of them. That’s how I came to be of value to your father.”
Kay moved to pour himself another drink, but Kira grabbed his hand. “Don’t let him make you weak,” she said.
For a moment, daggers shot out of Kay’s eyes as he sneered at Kira’s audacity. But his anger was just a flash, and his expression quickly softened. Kay put down the bottle and continued.
“Ebik trumped up a bunch of charges against your mother,” he said. “Treason and conspiracy against the crown, in particular. The proof he had … there was no proof. Nothing that showed how Akima was doing a single thing that qualified as unlawful. But I trusted Ebik, and if he said that someone was a threat to Praxis and the other Barons, it had to be true. And with that in mind, I was obligated to act.
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