CHAPTER 10
Planet Calluvia
“His Highness Prince Seyn’ngh’veighli of the Third Grand Clan wishes to see you, Your Highness,” Borg’gorn announced.
Harry looked up from the 3D model of Earth. He was supposed to be updating the database with the new information he had learned about humans, but instead he’d ended up staring at the 3D model of the planet for something like half an hour. Or rather, at a small island on it.
“Let him in,” Harry said belatedly, straightening up and looking at the door. He couldn’t wait to see Seyn. They were the same age and had grown up together. Harry had always considered him his closest friend. Seyn was also going to be family in less than two years when he turned twenty-five and his childhood bond to Harry’s brother became a marriage bond. When Harry had returned from Earth, he had been so disappointed to learn that Seyn was off-planet and wouldn’t be back for a while. He had wanted to talk to someone he could fully trust and Seyn was the only person he trusted not to judge him.
He smiled when the door slid open and Seyn strode in, as graceful as ever.
Seyn’s green eyes lit up when he saw Harry.
“Harht,” Seyn said, reaching out with his mind to Harry’s. Suppressing the urge to hug his friend, Harry embraced him back telepathically. Seyn’s mind had always felt as silver as Seyn’s hair, with a familiar edge of excitement and impatience. Seyn was always in motion, a social butterfly who liked meeting new people and making lots of friends. If he loved, he loved fiercely. If he hated, he hated just as fiercely. Being rather mild-tempered, Harry had always thought it must be exhausting to be Seyn, but lately... he understood him better. Much better.
“I was starting to think you’d been kidnapped by the barbarians on Sol III,” Seyn said, grinning.
Harry frowned and gave him a telepathic smack. “Humans are not barbarians. Don’t be a snob. And I’ve been back for ages already. Not my fault you were off-planet.”
Seyn scrunched up his nose and smiled sheepishly. “Ugh, I was being a snob. Good thing I have you to tell me when I act snobbish and top-lofty.”
“Ksar must have rubbed off on you,” Harry said with a tiny smirk.
Now it was Seyn’s turn to give him a telepathic smack. “Don’t even joke about it,” he said with a scowl, flopping down on the couch next to Harry. “You have permission to kill me the day I start acting like Ksar.”
“Sorry,” Harry said, knowing that it was a sore subject for Seyn. He patted Seyn’s shoulder. “He’s not a monster, you know.”
Seyn scoffed. “He’s your brother. Of course you’d say that. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that asshole.” He looked at Harry curiously. “What’s wrong, Harht?”
“Harry,” Harry said. “I got used to the name and I like it very much.”
Seyn just nodded. “So, what’s wrong? You give off some really negative vibes.”
Harry sighed, waved his hand to remove the 3D image of Earth and opened the security settings of the room.
“What are you doing?” Seyn said.
Harry silently turned off the cameras and looked at his friend. “I don’t have the bond to Leylen’shni’gul anymore.”
“What—Are you serious?” Seyn said, wide-eyed. Of course he was shocked. It was unheard of.
Harry nodded. “I felt it gradually weaken on Earth and then it kind of broke, I think? Just the night before my parents recalled me, actually.” He fought a blush, remembering that night, and said quickly, “I thought the bond might rebuild when I returned home, just like my other telepathic links to my family, but it’s been twenty-two days and nothing has happened. I don’t know what to think.”
Seyn was frowning. “Have you talked to Leylen’shni’gul? Does she still feel the bond on her end?”
Harry shook his head. “She’s still in that boarding school on Meniiuf II. No communications are allowed unless it’s an emergency.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if I should tell anyone.”
Seyn raised his eyebrows. “Why not? I’m sure the mind adepts will just reestablish the bond. I mean, it’s been in your mind forever; it shouldn’t be hard.”
“I...” Harry bit his lip and glanced around the room, paranoid that someone would overhear. “I’m not sure I want the bond back.”
Silence.
When Harry dared to look at him again, he found Seyn staring at him.
“Okay,” Seyn said slowly. “Who are you and what have you done to my best friend? You always made fun of me when I bitched and whined about my bond to your brother, and now you suddenly don’t want the bond, either? You never had a problem with Leylen’shni’gul.”
Harry sighed. “It’s just...” He ran a hand through his hair. “I feel so much better without it. I feel like I was half-blind all my life. All my senses are better now.” It was true. The world felt much more vibrant, the colors brighter, his senses heightened, his telepathy much stronger. He felt better, stronger, more. He’d never been against the bond before, but he hadn’t known what he’d been deprived of. And now he couldn’t imagine going back to that.
On the other hand, if he got bonded again, maybe he would stop feeling so... terribly achy on the inside. Apparently negative emotions were much stronger now, too.
“I don’t get it,” Harry said. “Why does the bond make our senses worse? We’ve always been told the bond improved us.”
Seyn looked away, his pale brows drawing close.
When he spoke again, his voice was tentative. “I’ve heard some rumors when I was on Planet Bienr last year... I thought they were bullshit, but... maybe they weren’t.”
“What rumors?”
Still frowning thoughtfully, Seyn played with a lock of his long silver hair. “They have these legends... of the Contact with our ancestors. They were scared of them, Harht. They claimed that some of our ancestors could kill with their minds.”
Harry started laughing, but when he noticed how serious Seyn was, the laughter died in his throat. “Surely it’s not true?” he said.
Seyn shrugged. “It’s been thousands of years. I always thought it was fucking weird that our history books were so hush-hush about the decades between the Great War and the Bonding Law. The Contact with Planet Bienr happened around that time, too.”
His brows furrowed, Harry considered it. It was true that the sixty years between the end of the Great War and the introduction of the Bonding Law were barely documented. What was well known was the fact that the biological weapons used in the war affected the population greatly, making women infertile and worsening the quality of men’s sperm. Desperate to save the population from going extinct, Calluvian scientists started an experimental genetic program that aimed to fix people’s reproductive systems. It had fixed it, but due to limited testing, there had been unforeseen consequences. The genetic experiments had caused mutations of various kinds, bringing back extinct physical traits and affecting people’s telepathy. The historical database didn’t have much detail, only mentioning that the non-physical mutations disappeared when the Bonding Law had been implemented. According to the Council’s reports, the disappearance of the telepathic mutations was just an unexpected side effect of the childhood bond.
“But what does that have to do with the bond dulling our senses?” Harry said, bringing his knees up and hugging them. Since his return home, he found himself constantly craving the comfort of physical touch humans gave so freely. While Calluvians did touch each other, they did it mostly behind closed doors and far less frequently than humans, preferring telepathic touch. Harry wondered if this newfound craving for physical touch had to do with the absence of the bond. He tried not to think of another reason for his need for physical comfort. Thinking about it hurt.
Seyn hummed, looking contemplative. “Telepathy is our sixth sense. If the side effect of the Bonding Law was the disappearance of telepathic mutations, it makes sense the bond affected our other senses, right?” Seyn’s lips thinned. “And when the Council realized that the bond messed with people’s senses, of course they kept it hush-hush. That’s probably why they force the stupid bond on us so young—babies are too young to remember and notice that something is off.” He shook his head. “But it’s a bit ridiculous to go to such extreme lengths to protect us from forced bonds, isn’t it?”
Harry bit the inside of his cheek as something occurred to him. He said slowly, “What if it’s a lie that the Bonding Law was introduced to protect us from forced bonds? What if the bond was invented specifically to get rid of the telepathic mutations?”
They stared at each other.
“If you’re right…” Seyn said. “If you’re right, of course the Council wouldn’t care about small side effects like dulled senses as long as the mutations were suppressed too.” He sprang to his feet and started pacing the room. “I knew the bond was stupid, but I had no idea it was actually messing up my body in more ways than one.” He suddenly stopped and whirled around, facing Harry. “Do you think I can do it, too? Go to a very distant planet like Sol III and get rid of my bond to your ass of a brother that way?”
Harry sighed. It didn’t sit well with him when Seyn spoke so ill of his brother. “I don’t think it’s that simple,” Harry said. “If it were that simple, everyone who traveled to distant planets would get their bonds broken.”
Seyn shook his head. “The transgalactic teleportation was improved just seventeen years ago. Up until that point, we couldn’t travel that far. And you said your bond had broken completely only after months into your stay on Sol III. I don’t think any Calluvian ever stayed for so long on such distant planets. Until you.”
Harry had to admit Seyn had a point. Up until very recently, they couldn’t travel to such distant planets like Earth using teleportation. Their knowledge of Earth had been largely based on what their ally planets that were located closer to Earth knew about it, and the information hadn’t been updated in a very long time.
“You can hardly disappear for months,” Harry said. “And you have no idea how to survive on Earth.”
Seyn waved his concerns away. “If you could do it, I’ll manage just fine.”
Harry gave him a telepathic smack. “Hey!”
Seyn laughed. “You know I’m right. I’m surprised you didn’t get yourself killed or starved. You’re too damn naive and kind for your own good.”
Harry pouted. “I’m not. I was a very believable human. I learned how to use a coffee-making machine in ten minutes!”
Seyn gave him a blank look. “I have no idea what you just said,” he said. “But anyway. It’s decided: I’m going to Sol III—I mean, Earth.”
Harry sighed at the look of utter determination on Seyn’s face. “You know, it upsets me that you hate my brother so much and are willing to do anything to get rid of the bond to him. Why don’t you want to become his king-consort? It’s a huge honor and you’ll really be my family, then.”
Seyn’s expression softened a little. “Harht, don’t take it personally, okay?” he said. “Just try to put yourself in my shoes. Would you want to be bonded for life to such a cold, mean bastard like Ksar? Do you know he never smiles at me? Never! He always looks at me like I’m an annoying little bug beneath his feet. Hell, he ignores me most of the time! That is, unless he’s criticizing me for something—”
“But—”
“And that’s not all!” Seyn said. “He completely blocks me out of his mind. You know all the stuff people say about the bond being a path to your bondmate’s mind? It’s bullshit, as far as our bond is concerned. He has never touched my mind. Whenever I try to reach out to him, I run into that ugly impenetrable wall that makes me feel dizzy and sick. Why would I want to be bonded for life to such a person?”
Harry sighed. Yeah, he could see where Seyn was coming from. Ksar wasn’t much for telepathic affection, even with his family. His mental shields were constantly up and he never let anyone inside.
“If you get your bond dissolved, Ksar will be bondless again,” Harry said. “He’s been waiting until you reach the age of majority as it is.”
Seyn scoffed. “It’s hardly my fault his first bondmate died. Lucky girl.”
“Seyn!” Harry said reproachfully. “Death is no joke.”
Seyn said defensively, “I’m not joking. Death is preferable to the fate of being Ksar’s bondmate. I wasn’t even born then. It’s not my fault Ksar has to wait until I reach twenty-five. He’s too old for me anyway.”
“He’s just eight years older,” Harry said. “If you get your bond dissolved, he’ll have no other options. Everyone else is matched up.”
Seyn didn’t look particularly sympathetic. “He can always get bonded to some poor baby and wait until it grows up. It’s what they did to me, isn’t it?”
Harry sighed and gave up. It was no use to argue with Seyn about Ksar. And to be totally honest, Ksar didn’t make it easy to defend him: he really was extremely cold with Seyn and criticized everything he did.
“Fine,” Harry said. “Let’s say you found a way to get to Earth and stay there for months. Let’s say you got the bond to Ksar dissolved. What are you going to do, then?”
Seyn looked him in the eye and smiled. “I don’t know. But I’ll be free to make my own choices. I’ll be free of him. I’ll be free to do whatever I want.”
Harry felt a rush of longing so strong it made his chest ache. To do whatever he wanted... It’d been twenty-two days.
“What was that?” Seyn said, frowning at him. “Are you okay?”
Harry took a deep breath, trying to control himself better. He knew he was projecting negative emotions, had been for days.
“I met someone on Earth,” he said, looking down at his hands. “We’ve become… very close. I miss him so much.” The words felt so inadequate compared to the ugly, fierce longing that was twisting and hurting his insides.
“Oh,” Seyn said. He flopped back on the couch and put an arm around Harry’s shoulders. Harry leaned into the touch eagerly, but to his disappointment, the physical comfort did nothing to satisfy the longing eating him from the inside out. He wanted Adam’s arms, not Seyn’s.
“Wait,” Seyn said. “If you aren’t bonded anymore, can you feel sexual attraction?”
Harry felt his cheeks burn. He looked at Seyn’s eager face. “You’re shameless. You shouldn’t be wondering about such things.”
“Bah!” Seyn said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s natural. It’s the stupid bond that turned us into sexless beings.” He scowled darkly. “You know, I’m surprised the bond allows us to have sex at all. Actually, if the technology of artificial wombs had already been invented at the time, I’m sure they wouldn’t have even bothered to give us back the ability to have sex.”
Harry opened his mouth to tell him not to be ridiculous, but he closed it when he realized that Seyn was likely right. The Council had made a single amendment into the Bonding Law fifteen years after the law had been introduced. The bonding ceremony at the age of twenty-five wasn’t in the original law. The Council probably hadn’t expected that the childhood bond would suppress the brain’s sexual arousal centers along with areas affecting telepathy and other senses. Harry now wondered what the mind adept performing the bonding ceremony did to fix the couple’s sexual arousal centers without changing anything else about the bond. It sounded complicated. Was the ability to feel arousal the only difference between the childhood bond and the marriage bond?
“It almost makes me wish the technology of artificial wombs still didn’t exist,” Seyn said. “Then they wouldn’t have bonded me to another male.”
Harry rolled his eyes. Of course it was about Ksar. It always was. Seyn never missed the opportunity to bitch about his bond to Ksar and the unfairness of it.
When Harry noticed the curious look Seyn was giving him, he said, “What?”
“Is it true that humans still have such things as heterosexuality and homosexuality?”
Harry nodded. “Heterosexuality is considered the norm there.”
Seyn pulled a face. “That sucks. Though, it would be great to be given options instead of being bondmate-sexual. It’s a pity your bond broke so late and you didn’t get the chance to explore your real sexuality without the bond bullshit.”
Harry carefully avoided Seyn’s eyes.
“Maybe we should go to Earth together,” Seyn said suddenly.
Harry’s heart skipped a beat. But he forced himself to shake his head. There was no use getting his hopes up. “Don’t be silly. No one would let us go. Don’t you think I didn’t try? The trips to pre-TNIT planets are regulated by the Ministry of Intergalactic Affairs. Special exceptions can be made, but there must be a very good reason. Considering that the Lord Chancellor of the Calluvian branch of the Ministry is Ksar, good luck trying to convince him that you have a good reason to visit Earth.”
“Dammit.” Seyn looked at Harry. “Can’t you talk to him? He might be a high-handed ass, but he’s your brother.”
Harry winced. He had been avoiding Ksar as much as he could after his return home. Ksar was too observant. He was a pretty strong telepath, and Harry was scared he’d notice the change in Harry’s telepathy—notice that Harry’s bond was gone.
“Ksar won’t sanction it if there’s no good, rational reason,” Harry said. “So I didn’t even try talking to him about it after my parents said no.”
“You still have more chance to convince him than I do,” Seyn said. “At least he doesn’t hate you.”
“He doesn’t hate you, either,” Harry said unconvincingly. He wasn’t actually sure Ksar didn’t despise Seyn: he was definitely at his worst around Seyn.
“Right,” Seyn said with a snort. “You’ve always been a terrible liar. I’m surprised that humans didn’t suspect anything. I guess you’re lucky they don’t believe in aliens.”
Harry tried to smile but couldn’t, suddenly remembering his conversation with Adam about aliens. “Some of them think there are aliens out there, but they don’t actually think they look like humans. They have really weird misconceptions about aliens.”
“Humans look like us, right? Can I pass for a human?”
Harry eyed Sean critically: his long silver locks, wide green eyes, straight nose, wide mouth. Seyn was taller than average, his body athletic but somehow dainty and graceful too. He was considered very beautiful by Calluvian standards. Harry couldn’t say he’d seen a human who looked like Seyn, but then again, he’d seen only a tiny part of Earth.
“I think so,” Harry said. “But it doesn’t matter. We aren’t going to Earth.”
Seyn grinned. “Wanna bet?”
Harry should have known better than to bet with Seyn on anything, because seven days later, Seyn sent him a message that said, “Get ready and come to my house at ten in the evening. We’re leaving.”
Harry stared at the message, his heart beating somewhere in his throat.
He was going to Earth.