CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SYREK

He met the Ykine behemoth head-on, rearing at the last moment so he could rake his talons across its maw. Syrek pressed his weight down, pinning the monster beneath his bulk while he snapped at it with his fangs.

It seemed strange to be in this new shape, but his Virtue of the Avowed form felt familiar, like a limb that had fallen asleep and then tingled back to life. Even with the pain of his ripped muzzle, he felt comfortable. At home. At peace.

Across the hangar, he heard Clez’s throaty yowl, but he kept his attention focused on the enemy. If she was spitting obscenities, she was fine. Clez could manage. She always did. The Ykine bucked, sending Syrek staggering back.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a second behemoth collapsing. Clez leaped off its head, rolled and surged to her feet, her knife clasped in her hand as she raced toward him. Behind her, Mara charged toward the battle, armed with a metal rod. Her oversized overalls and wide eyes gave her the appearance of a child lost on the battlefield.

Don’t be foolish, Mara! Stay back.

The behemoth took advantage of his lack of concentration. It shot a leg forward, the hook on the end angled toward Syrek’s eye. He jerked his head aside. The claw hit the armor of his neck and slid along his body until they hooked under one of his scales, jerking it out of place.

The tip dug into his flesh, and Syrek roared. Sensing his weakness, the Ykine behemoth pressed on, driving the tip further into his flesh. Hot blood poured out, coating the floor. Syrek slipped and fell.

The Ykine scurried closer, raising another limb. Syrek dodged again, and this time the claw slammed down into the ground beside his head. With his shoulder pinned, he struggled to move. He swung his tail, trying to gain leverage, but his smooth scales slid across the metal floor.

“Back off, bug-face!” Clez bounded over the Ykine’s back. She drove her knife into the joint of its leg and twisted. Her taut muscles strained and she ripped the blade through the limb, severing it.

The Ykine recoiled, and Clez slipped forward. She hit the floor in front of Syrek, the wind knocked from her. Syrek moved as quickly as he could, trying to regain his feet. If he could shield her with his body, she could recover.

Move, Clez! Move!

It was too late.

The Ykine’s mandibles clamped down on Clez, and a horrifying crunch filled the air. No!

His cry was echoed from his side, where Mara dealt with a swarm of Ykine workers. She stood frozen in place, watching Clez’s corpse dangle from the Ykine behemoth’s jaws. Syrek snapped his tail, sending a few workers flying, and Mara returned her attention to the workers.

The Ykine made to throw Clez’s body aside, and as it revealed its neck, Syrek leaped forward. His fangs latched onto the Ykine’s neck. Syrek threw his weight to the floor, bringing the Ykine’s head snapping toward the metal. It struck the floor, and, like Clez, lay there stunned for a moment.

However, Syrek wasn’t finished. Still holding onto the Ykine, he rolled, until the creature was trapped on its back, between himself and the floor, driving the spikes on his back into its flesh. Sometime, during the movement, the Ykine had released Clez’s corpse, but Syrek could no longer see her body. All he saw was the red of his rage, filling his vision.

“Syrek!”

Mara’s voice snapped him from his berserker trance, and when he looked down, the Ykine was a mess of torn limbs and thick brown fluid. Syrek staggered back, taking in the battlefield around him. Nothing moved. Mara had handled the Ykine workers he missed, and Ukali and his guards had vanished.

He dropped his Virtue of the Avowed, moving from his warrior shape and size back to his Latent form. His injured arm dangled at his side, and pain pulsed through his body with every beat of his hearts. When he staggered, Mara darted forward and shoved her shoulder under his arm.

“We have to get out of here,” she said. “That airlock door won’t hold forever.”

“Ukali?” Syrek frowned when his voice slurred.

“He locked himself inside the Sykorian ship.” Mara led him to the door of the hangar. On the other side, he punched in the access code, and the giant door closed with a whine.

Mara dragged him to the hover quad and lowered him onto the seat. “Tell me how to work this thing.”

After a minute of explanation, Mara bit her lip and started up the machine. After his hard ride to the hangar, the engine complained, hissing and popping as the machine rose. Smoke began to rise from back compartment. With agonizing slowness, they crept forward.

The hover quad died outside the storage yards. Mara cursed at the machine, and kicked it several times, but it lay listlessly on its side. “Piece of junk!”

“We have to find a safe place to wait,” Syrek said. “Somewhere defensible.”

They found an empty storage room, and Mara lowered him into a corner full of sacks of insulation before shutting the door. She engaged the deadbolt and hurried to his side. She hissed at the mess of blood and scales on his shoulder.

“That looks nasty,” she said. She pulled the ribbon from her hair, and wound it around his shoulder, avoiding the strap of his Promise Stone.

“It’ll heal,” Syrek said. “We Ennoi are tough to kill.”

Mara shrieked when the speaker in the room crackled.

“Syrek? Can you hear me?”

Ancain. Bless his descendants for centuries to come. “I can hear you.”

“Syrek?” Static filled the air before Ancain’s voice returned. “Okay, we cannot see or hear you. We spotted you entering the storage rooms, so we are broadcasting over the speaker system in that area. The Ykine are attempting to escape the hangar. I’ve got the ship on high alert. Stay put. We’re sending a rescue team to recover you and Mara.” With a crackle, the speaker went dead.

“How do they know?” Mara said.

“Watching from the bridge,” Syrek replied. “It’s how I knew you were in danger.”

She turned to face him, and his heart sang at the expression on her face. “You came to save me.”

He raised his hand to her, and she stepped forward to take it. “I could not do anything else.”

“Clez…” Mara cleared her throat. “Clez said I was your Avowed. What does that mean?”

Syrek stilled, felt the pounding of his second heart. He pondered the question for a moment. “It means you are my soul, and I am yours.”

“Oh.”

“To the Ennoi, it is the highest honor bestowed upon us, by Fate, by the Moon Goddess, by destiny, by whatever belief you hold about the universe. Every Ennoi lives for the day when they meet their Avowed and their second heart begins beating. To the Ennoi, it is the greatest gift.”

Mara puffed out her breath and slid down the wall to sit beside him. She took his uninjured hand in hers and laced her fingers through his. “So, what does that mean? To you.”

He sighed. “To me, it is the greatest burden.”

Her fingers stopped moving across his skin, but she didn’t release his hand. “Why do you say that?”

The fact that she was willing to hear him out seemed to underline her suitability. She was strong and fierce, as any good Ennoi mate should be, but she was kind and considerate, and cautious, as any suitable mate for him should be.

“Talk, Syrek,” Mara said. “We don’t have all day.”

That made him smile. And tenacious.

“My mother was my father’s Avowed. She was a candy maker on a distant colony. He was the most vicious warlord in Ennoi space. When they met, they knew, knew, they were each other’s Avowed.”

“But…?”

“But love is not enough. They were too different. She thought she could change him. He refused to be changed. When he was exiled, he took Mother and Cyndrae, my older sister, with him. That went against the terms of his exile, but Father was never one to consider the rules.”

“What happened?”

“I was born,” Syrek continued. “And my mother realized that any son of clan Ennoi Zathris would grow to fill the role of the Ennoi Butcher, just as my father had, and his father before, and his father before. A chain of Ar’Zathis males, stepping into blood-drenched boots, and leaving their marks on the world.”

Mara squeezed his hand. “You’re different.”

“Because Mother chose to run. She took Cyn and me away from Haven, and ran as far as she could on her meager resources. We lived on a quiet farming planet called Anxwar for several years, until I became old enough to braid my own hair and cook my own meals. In the morning, I would take my breakfast to the front steps and watch the sun rise, before coming in for lessons with Mother and Cyn.”

“It sounds lovely.”

“It was not. It was filled with fear. Every day, Mother worried we would be discovered. Then, one day, her fears came true. Father found us.”

He closed his eyes, remembering his mother’s curved back as she lay against Zathlassan’s boots, begging for freedom, begging for her children, begging for herself. He never heard her voice again after that day.

“He took us back. All of us. He made Mother a slave. Kept her in chains. Cut out her tongue. Muzzled her in metal, so all she could do was sip fluids through a straw. He made sure that every day, Cyn and I were treated like the children of royalty that we were. And every day, she suffered.”

He kept his eyes on the floor, hating himself for not looking at Mara’s face. Yet he didn’t want to, not until he finished his story.

“Every day, she suffered, and every night, Cyn and I would sneak out of our rooms to visit her. She would gesture to us, telling us what she wanted. Some nights, she wanted to brush our hair, like she would by the fire on Anxwar. Sometimes she wanted me to read to her. Over the years, the three of us developed a secret language of hand signs. Until…”

“Until?” Mara’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Until one day, Mother got sick. All of Haven became infected, but the healthy recovered. Only Mother did not. Cyndrae went to Father and demanded she be allowed to find Ennoi medicine for Mother. He agreed, only because if Mother died, so too would he. Cyn returned to Ennoi space. She found a healer. She… She fell in love with him. He was her Avowed. That’s Cyn’s luck. The first Ennoi she meets and that is her soul mate.”

“She stayed?”

“She returned. Without her mate, but with medicine. She nursed Mother back to health, all while Mother protested. She refused to swallow the medicine, so Cyn injected it into her arm. She refused water, so Cyn had medics hook her up to saline drips. Despite her best efforts to die, Cyn wouldn’t let her. Mother healed.”

“That’s good.”

“Father saw the error of his ways.”

“So, this story has a happy ending!” He could hear the smile in her words.

“Father realized Mother could not handle such harsh treatment. He moved her to a luxury suite, and chained her to the wall there. He also realized Cyn and I were sneaking out to see her, so he posted guards on her door. He guarded her day and night, to keep her healthy and strong. He took her from one prison to another. This one just had comfortable cushions on the bed. The bed where he tried to conceive a second son with Mother, just in case his first one turned against him.”

“Oh.” The unspoken implication sank in. Mara took a moment to think before she spoke again. “What happened?”

“They day she discovered she was pregnant, she killed herself with a shard of broken ceramic through the eye.”