Nine years passed in a blink of an eye. Kai managed just fine, most of the time. All right, so he wasn’t always on the right side of the law. Make that never. What did they expect of a child without a family or any friends out there? He stole stuff to survive, making a point of only taking from those who could afford the loss.

It had served him well until now. Today, his luck had run out.

Damn, he hated being in chains. Hated it. It served as a reminder of a past he didn’t wish to ponder. Something in Kai boiled under the surface. With some effort, he kept it under check. No, he told it firmly. Never again.

It had been close to a decade since he’d made use of that part of him, but he wasn’t about to forget the lesson he’d learned that day. Using magic wasn’t a solution, not for anyone who wanted to live in peace. And where he was, in Vratis, home of the warlord of the entire Ratna Belt, it would simply have been suicide. Thieves were imprisoned; that beat what happened to mages.

Kai lifted his gaze to his hands, tied high above his head in a familiar, and uncomfortable, position. They’d used energy-field bonds, the good stuff. He wasn’t going to break out of those easily. The door to his cell was flimsy in comparison, a simple lock he could pick with just about anything sharp, long, or pointy. Old-fashioned. It suited the rest of the edifice, built in the old days.

Ratna was one of the first conglomeration of systems the Evris had found when they’d left the original world they’d come from, over a thousand imperial years ago. They’d shaped it like the temples of old, with high halls and curved domes letting in light. Whoever was in charge of the decoration of the cells was old school; the structure had been modified as little as possible. Modernized, not compromised.

It said a lot about his race as a whole. So unwilling to embrace change, evolution. Stuck in the golden old days.

Kai smiled and tugged on his energy chains, observing the ceiling. Bingo. The bonds might be unrelenting, but the foundation wouldn’t hold if he applied the right amount of speed and force.

He bent his knees and got ready to jump when a noise caught his attention.

Kai turned to the main doors beyond the bars of his cell, feet away. Guards. He adjusted his stance, regaining an inconspicuous position.

There were too many guards for little old Kai. At least a dozen. If he considered that they could be taking precautions because they suspected who—what—he was, he kept his concern well hidden.

One of the guards opened his cell and stepped aside to let the others pass. The rest of the guards parted, and Kai frowned in confusion.

They hadn’t been here for him at all. The guards encircled someone else. A child. A boy between eight and ten years of age perhaps. His bald head drew attention to his strange eyes. Kai looked into them and felt something stir in him. Not quite fear. Not quite wariness. But there was no doubt, he needed to be careful of that child.

One of his eyes was blue, the other amber, practically gold. Both were intensely focused on him.

No. Not a boy at all, he realized. The child wore plain, asexual, simple clothing, and the lack of hair had fooled him at first, but it was a girl.

Not that it mattered. Her sex didn’t change the fact that the girl was dangerous.

One humorless laugh escaped him. So much for the law everyone across the lands of Ratna diligently complied with. Their sector and the Imperials had an interesting dynamic. Everyone knew the Imperials wished they could completely claim their sector, but they didn’t try. While small, the Ratna Belt was a powerful multi-planet kingdom, isolated and well protected. Still, their uneasy peace was based on the understanding that the warlord of their sector still had to obey one of their laws. Just one.

As the Wise of the Imperial Council demanded, the warlord ordered that every magic user be killed. And yet, good old Enlil kept one mage under his own roof.

Kai knew, from the bottom of his very soul, that the child was a mage. She wasn’t even attempting to hide it. He felt power emanating from her. So much power.

She also knew him for what he was. Her steady, intense gaze had seen right through him, to his own essence. And she was going to tell them. That was why she’d been brought to him. No doubt, they used the child to identify and eliminate rogue mages.

«You’re smarter than you look.»

He heard her voice directly in his head; her lips didn’t move. Her expression remained unreadable.

“Untie him.” Out loud, she sounded cold and severe, while there had been a gentleness to her tone when she’d addressed him in his mind.

No child should have quite so much authority. None of the guards thought to disobey. Seizing a control screen, one of them input his code, and the bonds disappeared.

Kai rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck.

“Thanks.”

The child tilted her head. He knew his mistake right away. He’d made it sound like she’d done him a favor, perhaps even thought of his comfort. And he realized, before she even moved, that she was going to make a point of proving that she hadn’t.

Her hand reached out, and violently, without so much as a warning and with no way to stop it, Kai was pushed down to his knees; his head bobbed down. Her mystical hold on him was lifted immediately. That had been a warning. Kai remained on his knees. He was right at her level that way, looking into her face.

He focused on her, trying to understand it. Her.

“What am I to search for?” she asked.

One of the guards explained, “He stole a speeder. When he was chased, he evaded our best men. We wouldn’t have caught him if the owner hadn’t had an infraction for unlawful parking the previous day. The vehicle was tracked.”

Kai had to shake his head in distaste. Being brought down because of a parking ticket was a brand-new kind of pathetic.

“I’m not usually disturbed for petty theft,” said the child.

He imagined she wasn’t. No, this child probably sat next to their lord in his council chambers and spent the rest of her time meditating on the fate of the world.

He could be mistaken, but he would have sworn he saw the phantom of a thin smile on her lips for a fleeting instant.

“He was too good. Lord Enlil wants him scanned.”

The child nodded before stepping toward him. She took her time. One step, then she lifted both of her hands. Another step. An intake of breath. Then, she reached out and slowly touched each side of his face. Barely. A featherlight touch.

It felt like a punch in the gut. Kai had to fight the darker part of himself harder than he ever had before. His magic wanted to lash out and recoil from those soft, warm hands.

His body stayed put. Then the real torture started.

He didn’t scream. He breathed in and out, hard, in sync with the child, as vision after vision flipped through both of their minds.

Little Akai Lor of Hora crawling away from danger in the cold. Him crying that night, alone. Cursing his stars. Hunger. Darkness. Fear. Images he didn’t recognize. Some he never wanted to see ever again. Others….

His mind stopped spinning, focusing on it. On her.

In this vision, Kai stood even taller than his current considerable height, and he was also older. Rougher, perhaps. He was bearing an expression that had never marred his features, yet it seemed as solid as anything he’d ever seen. He was at peace. Finally, finally at peace. And all because of her. The female in his arms smiled softly. Her sky-blue eyes looked at him as though he’d just come down from the stars and offered her the entire world.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever beheld, despite the scars. She had a few, none more noticeable than the raw and ugly one starting on her shoulder and running down her arm. She hadn’t covered it. Tattoos had been marked on her skin around it, as if to emphasize it. There was a jewel on her forehead, as bright as her eyes.

The female was heavily pregnant. With his children, he knew. Twins. He’d call them—

The child removed her hands from Kai, taking the vision away. He practically cried out, ready to beg for more. Just another second.

That was his future. And the child was going to take it all away. She was going to turn to the guards and tell them he was a threat. A mage, and a dangerous one at that.

Kai had never been as afraid.

«Please.»

He implored without shame, tears in his eyes.

The child turned away from him and started walking out. He had half a second to despair.

“He’s no one,” said she, lying smoothly, with a carefully feigned indifference. “Just a simple, irrelevant thief.”

Kai continued watching the child as her guards hurried to follow her. While someone tied his hands back toward the ceiling, still he watched her back. She left the cells without sending him one glance.

The child had lied through her teeth, he knew that. She knew that.

Because in the vision, he’d been wearing the warlord’s robes.