Everything was coated in a soft, spongy moss. And it smelled like... something Sigil could not put her finger on. Running her hands over the ground, she found the sensation calming, friction releasing enough fragrance she could taste it on her breath. Sun warm on her face, wind teasing the strands of hair fallen free from the rope Karhl had woven, tangled, and were continually smoothed by the large male keeping her planted with an armored arm around her middle.
Before them, Jerla slept, curled up on the ground with Arden at his side.
The Herald stared openly, smiling to himself as he surveyed the woman resting pliant against the Lord Commander.
“All is well now. Your little Jerla is content.”
Twisting fragments of that strange moss between her fingertips, Sigil looked up to meet golden eyes. Unsure if she should comment on the residual sadness infecting the Tessan, she only hummed.
The child had not been expecting her first appearance days ago, oblivious to the amount of high-rank officials congregated when he came out to play on the palace’s forested terrace. His spirits sank at the sight of her. After the first moments of their awkward reunion, after the boy’s hesitation and a smiling Arden’s assurances, Jerla told her again that he didn’t want to go to the sands, that he would be good.
It hurt her to hear him so worried he might be cast away. So Sigil behaved exactly as Gethman had suggested—aware that very Admiral watched keenly from the sideline. Eyeing the wooded space, Sigil found it as detailed, even in its wildness, as her rooms. The garden, if it could be called such, was staged as a primeval forest, made to look as if sprouted from the palace itself. Treetops competed with the roof, vines hung, verdant moss creeping up plant life and veiling rocks.
Unsure, Sigil had muttered, “Did you know I can climb higher than anyone here? I can do tricks and I never fall.”
The boy challenged at once, disbelief in his inky-eyed squint. “You can’t do tricks.”
“She can,” Arden whispered, leaning down to reach the Tessan’s unshelled ear. “The Imperial Consort can fly.”
Karhl’s grip on her wrist eased, even he played along. “Show him.”
Offering Jerla a place on her back, feeling a yellow tail coil tight around her middle, Sigil took flight. It may have been some time since her last performance on the silk in Swelter, but her arms knew the dance, and she was supernaturally fast. All the way to the top of the trees she climbed, taking her squealing cargo to peek out of the foliage.
It was as she assumed. The entirety of the palace was surrounded in ocean, with nothing else but endless blue to be seen in all directions.
No wonder they’d let her run free. There was absolutely nowhere to go.
Jerla’s arms around her neck tightened, the child mystified. She jumped, he shrieked in delight, and Sigil took him swinging like a monkey through the branches.
Earning the renewed admiration of a child was in parts simple and horrible. Jerla’s shining black eyes stared up with wonder, but not as he had before. It was almost as if she were no longer a real thing—as if she’d become something magical and treacherous—an idol Jerla respected and feared.
Easing down in mirror of the sleeping child, Sigil pressed her cheek to the moss. She felt Karhl follow suit to stretch comfortable at her back, and stared at yellow scales. “He’ll never love me like he did before.”
Arden sighed, though his smile did not falter. “Did you want his love after all? I thought I’d been mistaken in telling him of your wonders, how you’d chosen him—how you’d saved him.”
Gentle castigation from Arden seemed odd. It was Sovereign who loved to correct her, Arden who gave her whatever she wanted, and Karhl who strove to make her feel safe. Defensive, Sigil said low enough not to wake the boy, “You think you are very clever, don’t you?”
His grin broadened, Arden chuckling softly. “I fall short now and then.”
“So which one of you is going to slip into conversation how Jerla’s trials parallel those of Converts? That I must be careful what I say to humans?”
Arden outright laughed. “Look who is the clever one.”
“Then you will tell me adults are not as resilient or forgiving as children. That I must act like some queen and pretend they don’t deserve my pity.”
Gold eyes darkened, amusement replaced with a shallow echo of exasperation. “Pity for what? Humanity thrives. Conversion lengthens human lifespans, makes the population resistant to disease and eager to function as a unit—an inoculation against their inborn inferiority and stimulus to their faulty evolution. We give them purpose. And let’s be honest, Sigil. What do you know of humans anyway?”
The Converts she’d come across in the past had only sent her into an uncontrollable rage. She’d killed them, or ran from them if she’d found the willpower to do so. The only Converts she’d seen close up while free of the compulsion were Karhl’s altered warriors who guarded her on Pax. They had seemed nothing more than drones lacking personality—cold-blooded and loyal to the cause the universe was wary of inciting. There was a reason free-humans fled Conversion, refused it, or rebelled.
Sigil could only express her feelings by stating the Irdesian axiom. “Convert or die...”
Shrugging, Arden sprawled and enjoyed the sun. “It is unfair that you judge a people you have never met. Irdesian society would adore you if you would let them, just as Jerla longed to adore you. It is no different, Sigil.”
***
Sleeping beside Karhl greatly reminded Sigil of sleeping beside another. The Lord Commander was warm and bulky, preferring to pull her flush against him, so his bicep might serve as her pillow. The weight of him felt so familiar that sleep came hard. Sigil had never been much of a dreamer, and what flashes she had in Karhl’s weighty embrace were mish-mashed, lacking continuity or purpose. But there was one ongoing theme that slipped in to distract and annoy—Sovereign.
More than once she’d awoken to see him standing over where she slept confined in Karhl’s bulging arms. In the muddled dark, the emperor would sigh, leaning down where he did nothing more than press a kiss to her forehead.
Nightly, he broke her sleep. And when awake, she continued to feel his absence, unsure why he watched from the shadows but separated himself from her in the light. Frustrated with the game, Sigil confronted Karhl, demanding an end to the evening visitor.
Standing like a simpleton, Sigil listened as the Lord Commander communicated her vision was impossible.
Sovereign was off-world, far from the Water Palace, sitting the throne on Irdesi Prime.
“Should you wish to go to him, the journey can be arranged.”
“Why would I go to him?”
He gave no answer, but sea glass eyes ran briefly over the female body before him, looking a bit longer at the untouched place between her legs. The Lord Commander had kept his word. They’d shared a bed only to sleep, and aside from the thick, nightly reminder of his erection nestled in the cleft of her buttocks, sex was never initiated... at least by Karhl.
She’d been the one to wake with her smiling lips pressed to his neck, her hands all over a body her sleep-drugged mind told her was another. He’d been Que in scent, in touch, even in his massive pierced organ she dipped into clothing to grip.
For a moment it had been real enough she’d purred, “How I’ve missed you, Que,” only for a great weight to roll her to her back, for Sigil to find herself restrained, recognizing the hardening cock she’d been stroking belonged to another.
Karhl had not taken advantage. He had only stopped her, giving her time to collect herself and fully wake. “Young one, I am not Que.”
When her face flamed in shame, he’d said nothing, just tightened his arms in their coil about her body, and rubbed her back leisurely. When they’d gone to bathe, she’d swam the distant length of the warm pool in an effort to create privacy. He had not followed. But when she’d looked to see why, she’d found Karhl’s muscled back bowed, the giant bracing one hand against the ice. His other hand furiously stroked the very purple cock she’d awakened and refused, until Karhl spurted against the freezing mosaic walls, his face screwed up and jaw open.
Sigil had watched what he’d done, her mouth agape, ignoring his clenched buttocks and sculpted musculature in favor of gawking at the scented fluid that ran in thick dribbles down the wall.
Looking over his shoulder, sea-glass eyes found his audience. He turned so she might see him, the ladder of studs that ran down a furiously red cock still clinging to the lingering drips of come. Her reaction had been almost as strong as if Sigil had felt Sovereign’s teeth at her neck. Three sharp pangs made her throb down below, and had she not been submerged, her labia would have been visibly glistening with arousal.
The next day as she bathed, Karhl had done the same—hand bracing against the ice, stroking himself to a groaning eruption she found she could not look away from. And the next, and the next. By the fourth day, she had eased near enough to watch the individual veins pulse in his dick, to know he liked to knead his balls when he ushered forth so much fluid.
When she approached, Karhl did not spurt on the wall. Instead, he gathered his semen in his cupping hand, watching his female stare riveted as he rumbled, “Come here. It need not be wasted.”
Had she not been growing edgier by the day, Sigil might have denied his offer. Instead she climbed from the water. Dripping, she waited, and groaned perversely when he scooped the creamy discharge on two thick fingers to press deep into her pussy. Over and over, Karhl repeated the action, running out of his offering before she could come all over his hand.
It was her bobbing fingers flicking an aching clit that finished off the exchange, Sigil hardly aware of what she was doing until the ice at her back and the heat hard against her chest registered. She caught herself licking his palm clean, panting and greedy to taste the tang that teased her nostrils each morning.
Karhl could have fucked her right then, and disordered as she was, Sigil would have let him. Instead he cupped her cheek, smiling gently when the female mewled.
Sigil would have sworn he was going to kiss her, her head even tilting back in anticipation. But then nothing, only an exchange of breath, and long strokes down her flank. “Jerla is waiting.”
What he’d given her, when her body had time to settle from its near frenzy, had lessened the encroaching itch. So much so, the next morning she stood waiting, exercising great willpower to keep her hands at her sides and not fist his magnificent cock until white scented globs might squish out between her fingers. He performed for her, and when Karhl’s palm was full, he used his fingers again to deposit his come between her thighs while Sigil squirmed over his hand and crooned.
Overexcited, her pussy clenched around his wiggling fingers and too much semen slipped out to spatter the floor. Seeing what was wasted, knowing she had no right to use him in such a way, Sigil found she’d prefer to use another.
“When is Sovereign scheduled to return?”
Karhl began to pull her towards the pool, continuing with their day as if nothing untoward had transpired. “He will not return, but awaits you at the capital.”
***
Unlike the weather system surrounding the Water Planet where Sigil was sequestered, gloom encased the Imperial Epicenter. Irdesi Prime was built atop the ruins of the Alliance’s Governmental Bastion—a location staked for its defensible perimeter and not its beauty. Due to storms in the upper atmosphere, the twisting sky was in a constant state of flux, offering little visibility from space and muting the light. The dimness made the terraced architecture carved into the mountain range drab.
Though the city had been renamed and modernized, it still bore an earthy ugliness to it. But in the night that wild sky grew beautiful, the upper atmosphere shimmering with mica as if Irdesi Prime were trapped under fracturing crystal. Like swirling sands, that cloak hid the orange lurking moon from view. But on the rare clear nights, the birthplace of Sovereign, his Brothers, and Sigil could be seen hanging bloated and scarred on the horizon.
Converts considered moon sighting over the Capitol a bad omen, Adherent’s superstition fed to a species easily swayed by crafted religion and tales of the fantastical.
It was almost cause for Sovereign to postpone Sigil’s expected arrival. But chances that she even knew that moon was Condor were slim.
Sunlight faded further, the horizon taking on a shock of silver, the brightest fleeting glow Irdesi would feel all day. Rising from the tiered city, a hum began amongst the Converts—a sign of dusk, a programed response every citizen, every pilgrim sung out in collective.
It was meant to be a beautiful moment, ruined when the man at Sovereign’s side opened his mouth. “Rumor has spread through the ranks. The long awaited Imperial Consort returns to us at last.”
Rumor spread because it was spread by Adherents, the flash in Sovereign’s eyes when he looked to his Brother castigating. “Based off a few pleasant meals in her presence, you believe Sigil to be tamer than she is. If you demand too much of her, if you think to put her in front of the masses before she is ready, she will lash out at you.”
Dryden was many things, if not optimistic. “Her lamented treatment of Jerla was properly shifted to reflect the Converts’ position in her life. The lesson played out perfectly—she is cautious of herself in the child’s presence now. Arden even reports the Tessan innocent makes her smile. How much different are humans?”
“You will do as commanded, Brother.” There was no question when the Emperor wielded such a tone. “Humans have hurt her, they have hunted her... she will not respond favorably to Convert attention. She hardly responds to attention from her own kind. And you forget, she chose the Tessan child before we found her on Pax. What her reasons were she has yet to fully admit.”
There were few in the Brotherhood who would dare question Sovereign’s authority, but High Adherents had been chosen because their love to the cause was immaculate. Dryden dared, “If she were to know what Converts were, I believe her opinion on the matter would alter drastically.”
“Hear me, Dryden.” Without taking his attention from the sky, Sovereign addressed the long ago assassin turned priest. “Sigil is not ready to learn what you propose. In fact, if she were to discover it, I believe she would rampage through your temple, killing the devout first.”
The High Adherent did not agree. “You and your secrets, Sovereign. You would keep her ignorant...”
“I would keep her content.”
“How cold you are...”
How cold indeed. The very thing he fought to break in Sigil had festered in his own kind—indoctrination. Sovereign took the severity from his brow, and sighed. “Do not fall into your own dogma. Sigil is not a deity. She’s a damaged creation that was crafted to hunt us down, one by one, and kill us.”
Immediately, Dryden countered. “Her improvement has increased dramatically. The implant functions. Aside from her attack on you, there have been no further incidents. Yet you would keep her under glass and away from her duty to us all.”
“You know why I do it!” How Sovereign hated looking from the skyline where Sigil’s ship was set to enter dangerous territory to face the religion standing at his side. “You dare press a topic in which I have yet to disappoint? Not once have I neglected the Brotherhood’s needs or scorned your expectations. Furthermore, I offered true sacrifice for you all, and in exchange, the Order will obey the course I decide is best for her.”
The collective had agreed, which is what irritated Dryden when he had to repeat the obvious. “When she feels your baby grow inside her, Sigil will forgive you and understand why it had to be done.”
The heart of the issue was so much deeper than the simplicity of stating recent history. “I raped her so none of you would have to. I showed a goddess she was made of glass, and the divine scorn being ripped from their skies.”
Dryden’s eyes were a shade of green so catching it was impossible to miss even the slightest movement of his attention. They turned towards Sovereign, the High Adherent daring much to reply, “Beautifully said. Shall I alter the canon?”
A slow creeping smile grew nasty on Sovereign’s beautiful lips. The air about him spiked, and if murder had a scent, they both would have breathed the Emperor’s intent thickly. “Though you are my Brother, my comrade, and my family, I find in this last century that my aversion for High Adherents’ company grows.” They stood toe to toe, Sovereign the clear superior as he crooned the smooth-skulled killer’s ancient title, “Enforcer First Rank, do not force me to remind you of your actual position... which is not the one dreamed up with ritual, chanting, and prayer.”
Serene, seeing a flash over the high grey buildings of the south sector, Dryden smoothed his robes. “My greatest duty is to remind you of yours. That is why you created the Order, dear Brother.”
A warning look poured impending doom over the lesser being, Sovereign cautioning, “One more word, Dryden, and I will see you set in the tombs. Corths could take your place, and he would not threaten Sigil in greed or impatience.”
Words were offered, hubris replaced with devotion. “You mistake my motivation. I speak as I do only out of love for her.”
Stepping closer, fingers itching to close over an insubordinate throat, Sovereign spoke the truth. “And that love which captivates you will only harm her. You do not know Sigil, and your bootlicking devotion will disgust such a creature. You would be wiser to emulate Karhl’s approach. Seven days of respecting her boundaries, and she is already comfortable with his moderated attention.”
And there they were bound to disagree again, Dryden pointing out Karhl’s obvious flaw. “But she has not taken him into her body. Another should have been chosen. Karhl reminds her too greatly of Que... Sigil resists out of loyalty to her dead lover and places herself at risk by refusing to mate him.”
The outcome of Karhl’s wisdom, Sovereign admired. It was brilliant. “And now she is coming here... of her own free will. She is coming to me so that her new esteem for Karhl can prosper. She is coming to me so I might be used as the instrument to deaden her compulsion, a desperate attempt not to tarnish something fragile with the Lord Commander. And so you see, when she chooses to lay with Karhl, it will be only because she desires to.” The last words were almost bitter. “How fortunate he is.”
Dryden seemed to consider, the arch of his eyebrows growing flat. “Was that his strategy all along?”
“Of course it was.” Squinting at the flash off the skyline, Sovereign saw the cruiser descend through the upper atmospheric storm. “Karhl will be the first she loves. Remember that should you think to challenge your superior’s wisdom. The Lord Commander has succeeded where your aggression would have ended with the woman devouring your heart—literally. That is a lesson you may add to canon for all Adherents to witness and follow.”
The vessel sped nearer, the High Adherent grinning as if he had not heard his emperor’s final warning. “She comes.”
***
Sovereign had placed his faith well.
The emperor found Sigil dressed in the black of Irdesian uniform. Symbolic white paint smeared from her eyes, chalking her forehead, to matte into tightly bound hair. Intricate markings ran down her neck—warning she claimed the highest possible rank, that she was a warrior, and incredibly dangerous.
How the Lord Commander had convinced her to wear high military apparel, Sovereign could not imagine. Nor could he have anticipated the hungry look she bestowed his direction when she caught his scent on the wind.
Even with the massive moon rising behind her, everything was going so well.
Sigil stalked from the vessel—Karhl at her side, Arden at her back—and exercised no hesitation in meeting the Irdesian Emperor on the ramparts of his bastion. Her attention was not on the city her people had conquered, the gathering of Brothers at Sovereign’s back, or even the chill in the air. It was on the new eye sitting pretty in Sovereign’s skull.
Pride stinging, she did not want to state her reasons for coming. Instead, Sigil hardly blinked, breathed a bit too hard, and walked forward until her lips smashed into a mouth parting in greeting.
Her reaction seemed too perfect—the impatient tug of her hands in his hair, the way she growled for more when Sovereign’s tongue pushed in to taste her. But it ended abruptly, Sigil frozen, eyes staring forward but seeing nothing.
“Welcome to Irdesi, to your home, Sigil.”
She hadn’t registered his greeting. Instead Sigil pushed Sovereign off and hissed, “Do you hear that?”
Something wasn’t right. And that something was the craggy soldier standing at attention amongst the elites. He was no different than the others flanking the walkway from ship to palace. Eyes forward, shoulders at attention, he stank of conversion, of sameness. But elite Converts of that level did not sing inside with the same furious need for violence towards Sovereign that she did.
It only took a tick of time, a blur of movement, and she stood before the offensive mind—the human who dared covet revenge, who thought murder towards the Emperor that was hers to kill.
A beefy throat was in her clutches, the startled man’s toes fighting to scrape ground as Sigil hoisted him high. “YOU REALLY THINK YOU COULD TAKE SOVEREIGN’S LIFE? YOU CANNOT EVEN GET OUT OF MY GRIP!”
The human did try, beating at her arm, his face growing red while madness broke out on the landing. Planting a foot, Sigil prepared to throw the unwelcome competition off the lofty walkway so she might enjoy the view of his body plummeting down into oblivion. But an arm circled her middle, throwing her off balance.
If she could not throw the human, she would just tear him to pieces. Yet when she tried to reach forward, Sigil found her hand held back, demands growled at her ear. “Release the traitor, young one.”
Release what, the bleeding throat she dug her nails into?
Possessive of her prey, confused, hungry, fighting for her limbs, it took the strength of more Brothers than Sigil could register to get her to drop the human. Then lips were on hers, a delicious tongue in her mouth far more pleasing than the feel of coppery human blood on her fingertips.
She drank of him, of Sovereign, and forgot about the Convert gasping for breath at her feet.
Sovereign was stroking her neck in a way that felt sublime, cooing that she could be calm, that she had done well, that she was safe. Orders were shouted, Karhl’s baritone coarse in the background, the Lord Commander demanding the prisoner be healed and dissected piece by piece until the corruption was identified and purged from the ranks.
Over and over came the foul term, Unsalvageable.
When Sovereign gave her a moment of breath, when his grip on her nape tightened to the point she came awake, Sigil saw what she’d done. The human lived, Arden single-handedly subduing the raving Convert while more soldiers poured out of the grey walled bastion.
Shrinking, Sigil found shelter waited in the large mass of the Lord Commander at her back.
His eyes were on her leg. “You’re wounded.”
Sigil felt nothing, but skewered straight through the limb was a blade. And she felt nothing because it was poisoned with a toxin that would kill any human, but do little more than make her leg useless for a time. “Certax.”
Kneeling, Sovereign pulled out the dagger, gripping the hilt to the point his fingers shone white. “Karhl is going to escort you to your rooms where there are no Converts and you will be utterly safe. Do you understand me?”
The soldier had only stabbed her in desperation. No, his song of murder was only for the Emperor. “How did a Convert of that level become Unsalvageable?” And why the fuck had she rushed to kill something so weak when it did little more than think a threat towards Sovereign?
“You need to go inside, beloved.”
Her face fell, full of disbelief. “You don’t know...”
Absolute, dangerous, Sovereign did not attempt to conceal his anger. “I have ways of finding out.”
This was not why she’d crossed space. She had not come here to be embroiled in Irdesian schemes. “I came here-”
Instantly softer, the emperor offered reassurance. “I know why you came here. I will not leave you waiting long.”
She wanted it over now. “I have waited five days.”
Sovereign took a small step nearer, running his thumb over her mouth. “Seven days, Sigil. And you are doing well. I am very proud of your progress.”
Unacceptable. He needed to fuck her and get it over with so she could leave Irdesian lunacy and return to her solitude surrounded by water. “I don’t want a pat on the head!”
Cold outrage mutilated the beauty of Sovereign’s expression. “Sigil, you will go into the safety of your rooms at this very moment.”
Her legs dragged over the ground, Karhl ushering her physically out of the mad swarm of Brothers and elite convert soldiers, out of the dark, and into a thicker cloying blackness.