by Nia Mars
Unfulfilled longing.
Huh.
I do a double take. Oh my stars. That explains sooo much!
Is that why she hates me? Because Koah hurt Delza by choosing me, and Seke is in love with Delza and hates to see her hurt?
I turn to Koah, but I don’t think he noticed anything. His full attention is on me.
When I glance at Senator Seke next, Tiam is at her side. Even though they don’t share a past, I hate seeing him with her. I bristle when he addresses her and she leans toward him, her long earlobes swinging.
I seriously need to stop noticing the earlobes. I don’t have an obsession with them. I swear.
The music ends, and Uthan appears in front of us. He holds out a hand. “If you’re not too tired, my Ava?”
I take his hand. “Could we have some refreshments first?”
The buffet lined up for us is endless and mouthwatering, table after table of exotic treats. Of course, I look at everything and want to taste everything. I wonder if that’ll ever change, if I’ll ever be able to take food for granted.
Uthan leads me down the length of the buffet while some dignitary or other draws Koah’s attention, engaging him in conversation.
Behind the laden tables, the wall of windows shows off a moonlit garden. The night is clear and star-speckled outside, but I only have eyes for the myriad platters. First, I pick food that’s semi-recognizable from my palace experience. Then I’m ready for something new. I eye the neat rows of small bowls that hold a white and aromatic liquid.
“Muga,” Uthan says at my elbow. “In honor of Ambassador Niad who’s here tonight. I’m sure you’ve been introduced. Muga is a famous delicacy on his planet.”
I lift the bowl, ready to be adventurous. “What is it?”
Uthan flashes an encouraging smile. “Fermented cat milk. It’s slightly alcoholic.”
I set the bowl back, trying not to look too hurried. Note to self: If Ambassador Niad invites me to visit his planet, I’m going to be busy.
Uthan quirks an eyebrow.
“Not in this lifetime and not in the next,” I tell him under my breath.
We take our plates, and Uthan leads me up to the gallery then out to the balcony that overlooks the night garden. I hold the bounty in my hand and gaze up at the stars that are so different here than on Earth.
“What are you thinking about, my Ava?” Uthan moves next to me, putting his plate on the six-inch wide edge of the balustrade.
“My sister.” I think about Lily a thousand times a day. “I wish I could send this plate to her.”
“As soon as we permanently defeat the pirates, I will bring your sister to you,” he promises. “The Five are in the process of combining our forces. We will begin the first major offensive against the pirates in a matter of days.”
He folds an arm around my waist and pulls me back against his wide chest. I set my plate next to his, then rest my head against his shoulder as I watch the thousands of twinkling stars in the sky. “Thank you, Uthan.”
We stand like that for several seconds before he says, “I can’t believe you didn’t take a slice of agra cake.”
“There’s agra cake?” My voice is a girlish squeal.
He laughs. “I’ll bring you a slice. I figured it was just an oversight.”
As he hurries away, I finally eat a bite, then another and another. The food is spectacular, but agra is agra. I’m addicted to the sweet fruit. I know it, and I don’t care. When the door opens behind me, I turn with a grin, ready.
It’s not Uthan. It’s Senator Seke, flying at me.
“Why can you not understand when you’re not wanted?” Her gaze is burning with hate, her feet unsteady. She might have had too much muga. She’s welcome to all of it.
“I was invited,” I tell her. “Last I checked, I was the guest of honor.”
She reaches me, and she looks so miserable, I think she’s about to cry. Some people are weepy drunks. I’m not sure what to do. We’re not exactly close enough friends for me to comfort her.
Then she moves closer and shoves me, and she’s stronger than I would have thought. My hip bangs against the balustrade. She pins me against the hard marble, and as I try to escape to the side, I knock both my plate and Uthan’s down into the garden. Shit.
I move to push Seke off, but she whacks my hands out of the way and shoves me again, harder.
Is she trying to throw me off the balcony?
I’m so surprised, a second passes before I begin to fight back in earnest. Except she’s a full foot taller than me and at least thirty pounds heavier—I think most of that might be muscle. She bends me back so far, my boobs pop out of my neckline! My back cracks. Okay, that hurt.
I kick at her while stuffing myself back into my dress, but I can’t find her legs in her voluminous mud-color gown. I hit nothing but the puffy material.
Here is the thing—I know I can take her. I could seriously hurt Seke. Years of scavenging in a hostile environment taught me how to defend myself. But she’s a senator. If I fight back with everything I have and kill her, I’m not sure what consequences that would bring. And it’s a lot more difficult to fight someone when you’re pulling your punches.
She grabs my shoulders and shakes me so hard that my teeth rattle. “Just leave! Take the ship I’m offering!”
“Seke?” The faint voice comes from behind her.
Senator Delza stands pale in the moonlight, staring at us, wide-eyed, her slim hands fluttering to her chest. Her gown, the color of desert sand, clings to her figure. “What are you doing to her, Seke?”
I move away from the railing, keeping a close eye on Senator Seke who throws herself on her knees at Delza’s feet, trying to reach for her hands, but the younger woman won’t have any of it.
The fight goes out of Seke as if someone ripped her heart out and tossed it over the balcony. Her shoulders slump. Her voice is thick with emotion as she says “For you. If she goes, if I can make Koah come back to you, I am hoping you will take me as your third.”
The raw need in her words is heart-wrenching.
Senator Delza’s face crumples as she, too, sinks to her knees. Her hands move to cradle the other woman’s cheeks, gently, reverently. “I don’t need Koah. I need only you. I love you, Seke. I think I’ve always loved you. Even when I was paired to Koah for alliance. I never dared hope...”
Their kiss is desperate and all-consuming, and for a moment, I can’t look away. Then I realize that Uthan and Koah are standing in the open doorway, staring just as hard as I am. I think they might have heard the last couple of words.
As I move toward them, skirting the women, the kreks stride toward me wearing identical hard looks. While my mind races, they escort me inside without the two women ever noticing.
On the gallery overlooking the ballroom, the two men pull me into the nearest private spot, an alcove that’s sheltered by two bushy shrubs with lavender leaves. Koah takes me into his arms and Uthan presses up against me from behind, his hands going to my hips. I’m pressed between two hard, overprotective bodies. And I finally catch my breath.
“Are you all right, my Ava?” Koah asks.
At the same time, Uthan says, “I shouldn’t have left you alone, not even for a short time. Forgive me.”
“I’m fine.” I could have taken Seke down anytime I wanted. I was shaken by the surprise, not by her actual attack. “I think I know who paid to have my display system hacked.”
Koah quietly speaks into his comm unit, asking someone—Tiam?—to unobtrusively escort Senator Seke into a private room for questioning.
“If she poisoned Taly...” Uthan begins in an ominous tone.
I cover his hand with mine. “I don’t think she has it in her to kill. She could have tried to push me off the balcony, but she just wanted to give me a scare.”
Four strong arms tighten around me.
I’m all right, I really am, but I stay in their embrace for another minute anyway, just to enjoy the lovely sense
of belonging.
Chapter Six
“TELL HER WHAT YOU TOLD ME.” Uthan marches one of the palace guards into my office the day after the ball.
Nilo, my new office assistant, pops up in the doorway behind them with an apologetic look. Technically, he’s supposed to announce visitors and make them wait in the reception area, but I can’t blame him for not being able to hold Uthan back.
I smile at Nilo to make sure he knows he’s forgiven, and he withdraws. Then I turn my attention to the man Uthan escorted in. He has dark hair and dark eyes, his nose beak-like and bent, wider at the base than it is at the tip. I’ve seen him around. I think his name is Litz.
He’s a couple of inches taller than me and holds himself in a way that says ex-military. Most of the palace guards are.
He bows deeply. “Oath Forger.”
“I think we found the poison.” Uthan vibrates with impatience as he glares at the man.
“I saw,” Litz says, then swallows, starts again. “I saw Taly hurry to your room, Madam, just before she died.”
I watch him and wait.
“She was carrying a bowl of dul.”
Dul is a small green fruit that looks like grapes. I find its slightly bitter taste refreshing. Taly had gotten into the habit of bringing me a fresh bowl every morning, so I could snack on the dul throughout the day.
“Two of the duls rolled off,” the guard tells me, his gaze stricken. “Taly caught them in the air, then popped them into her mouth.”
“Do you remember the bowl of dul?” Uthan asks me.
I shake my head. “She might have put it on the table by the time I turned to her. I had my mind on other things. Then she fell sick. Then all the glass exploded.”
Uthan runs a hand over his shaved head. “The fruit would have been swept up with the debris and discarded.”
“Yes.”
He dismisses the guard, closes the door behind the man, then turns to me and goes deathly still. “The fruit was for you.”
I was about to stand, but I collapse back into my chair. “You’re right.” I stare at him. “Taly only ate from the dul by accident.”
“Someone meant to kill you.”
My mind immediately goes to Senator Seke, but I just can’t see it. “I don’t think it was the senator.”
She confessed to the hacking, after the ball. She will pay for her lapse of judgment. She is going to lose her seat in the Zebet, the Federation’s senate. She apologized and volunteered to go into exile. Senator Delza immediately volunteered to go with her.
There will be a trial, where I can appear if I choose. I think I will and ask for lenience.
If I’m still alive.
Because someone had tried to kill me with that poisoned fruit, and nothing has changed. It’s almost inevitable that they will try again.
Uthan must be reading my thoughts in my eyes because he comes around the desk and pulls me into his arms. “I’m going to find who did this.”
I let him hold me. I even snuggle against him, my head resting against his chest. We’d slept like this nearly all night.
All five kreks spent last night in my bed. I’d been in danger at the ball, and they didn’t take it well. I slept sandwiched between Koah and Uthan who were the most upset. Uthan because he’d left me alone on the balcony, and Koah because he blamed himself for having a previous association with Senator Delza.
As I keep hugging Uthan, he says “I have more news. I identified a black market trader who sells the rare poison that killed Taly. He’s off planet, but not far. I can make it to him in a day, question him, then be back by tomorrow night.”
I pull back to look into his face. “I want to go with you.”
“Tomorrow is your first full day of appointments.”
He’s right. I want to fulfill my duties as the Oath Forger. If I’m going to do this, I want to do it right, want to do my best. I want to help settle the Federation into peace after decades of civil war.
I brush a kiss on his jaw. “I’m going to miss you. Come back safely, please.”
His lips twitch. “The guy is a small-time black market herbalist. If the other kreks couldn’t take me down all these years, I don’t think he will. I want to sleep with you in my arms again.”
I grin at him. “Don’t you think someone else should get a turn?”
“No,” he says, and then he kisses me.
The kiss is very much like Uthan himself: full of feeling, warm, sincere. It doesn’t just tell me that he wants me. His kiss tells me that he cares about me. Before I know it, my heart is racing, and I’m slanting my mouth to taste more of his.
A knock sounds behind us.
“The media secretary is here to see you, Madam,” Nilo says through the door.
He makes an excellent assistant.
“Why is your guard acting as your secretary?” Uthan steps away from me with obvious reluctance. “You need to start filling the empty positions. Do you need help?”
“I hired Nilo for the office assistant job.”
Uthan’s eyebrows snap together so hard, so fast, his golden rings are clinking. “No.”
“It’s my choice.”
“He’s a man.”
“We live in an enlightened age.”
“You’re going to spend more time with him than with us!”
“The Oath forger has many responsibilities.”
He snatches me back to him with a groan and kisses me a lot more thoroughly and possessively than before. This time, he doesn’t just give me what he knows I want. He takes what he needs.
“To make sure you don’t forget me,” he tells me when he’s done. “We’ll talk more about your office assistant when I return.”
“NILO CAN’T BE YOUR OFFICE ASSISTANT,” Koah tells me that afternoon, as if that’s that. He’s taking a turn hanging out with me in my office while Uthan has gone off to track down the poison used to kill Taly. “You can’t be locked up in your offices all day with another man.”
I give him the stink-eye. I was tired of this argument when I had it with Uthan. I’m not thrilled with having to have it four more freaking times. “But you can go off on some krek duty and be locked up on your spaceship with Captain Embrin?”
“It’s not the same.”
“It’s exactly the same.”
“Captain Embrin doesn’t desire me, and I have no desire for her.”
“Nilo doesn’t desire me, and I have no desire for him.”
“Any man only has to look at you to desire you.”
Koah’s face is an inch from mine, his indigo eyes dark with emotion. His thick, indigo hair is spread over impossibly wide shoulders. Everything about him screams ‘pissed off warlord.’ “I will share you with the other kreks, because I have no other choice. But I will not share you with any others. I will kill them first.”
The sad thing is, I expect Tiam’s reaction will be the same, and Roax’s will probably be worse. They are mostly reasonable men who can calmly discuss any number of things, but when it comes to me, they go so far past possessive, the interstellar dictionary is going to have to invent a new word for it.
Too bad for them. “My decision is made.”
A growl rumbles up Koah’s chest. “Unmake it.”
Frustrations I have been tamping down and ignoring break to the surface. Frustration that I haven’t seen my sister in forever. Frustration that Taly’s murderer is out there running free. Frustration that The Five are endlessly and forever pulling at me, filling me with strange needs just by existing. Frustration that I’ve been claimed by a destiny I didn’t choose, that I have been placed in a role I will have to play for the rest of my days.
As I stand nose-to-nose with Koah, those frustrations tip over into anger. Suddenly I’m vibrating with fury, until I’m dizzy.
“Ava!” Koah’s large hands are on my shoulders. “Ava, calm down, please. Come back to me.”
I become aware of two things at once: Tiam rushing through the door, and the floor un
der me shaking.
“Ava?” Tiam pulls me from Koah and gently kisses my cheeks. “What’s wrong?”
I need Uthan’s golden sea eyes, the serenity of floating with him in the sea of his spirit, but Uthan is not here. I shake my head. “It’s too much.”
“Then we take a break.” He lifts me into his arms. “Let’s take her out of the palace.”
As he carries me, I feel myself slipping away, until I’m in some other place. My own mystic sanctuary? If it is, it’s nothing like Uthan’s. I’m in a desert in a sand storm. It’s not home, but it’s eerily familiar. The sand is scraping off my skin.
I moan in pain. God, it hurts.
The sandstorm is endless.
“Bring her back!”
“I don’t know how!”
“Where the stars is Uthan?”
I recognize the voices, but I can’t see the men: Tiam, Koah, and Dason.
Then Roax says “You will come back to me, Ava Mine.”
It’s an order.
His tone, deep and hard, cuts through the storm, although it doesn’t fully quiet it. But his voice is something I can hang on to. When Roax uses that tone, something deep inside me wants to obey. I have that link now; I just have to hold on to it.
“Open your eyes.”
Bad idea. I don’t want the sand to fill them. It’ll burn.
“You are with us, Ava Mine.” Roax’s voice softens. “You’re safe.”
God, when that hard voice softens—it’s irresistible. It’s a voice that could probably bring me back from the dead.
Little by little, the storm quiets. My eyes flutter open.
Roax, Koah, Tiam, Dason, and I are sitting in a gaily blooming meadow on a hillside, surrounded by trees in nearly every direction. I am on Roax’s lap. They’re all hovering over me, every pair of eyes worried, every pair of shoulders tense.
I haven’t a clue how I got here. I blink. I can see the city in the distance. That has to be a good sign, right? Merim is still standing.
“Did I...”
“Nobody was hurt,” Dason hurries to tell me as they all pull back a little, giving me room to breathe. “Just a small quake.”
“But it’s time you learned to control your power,” Roax says above my head.
