It takes every ounce of my remaining strength to watch as Aren gets into my vehicle, as the auction staff member shoves her into the open door and tells her to shut up. I want to get out and clout him on the head for that, but I can’t.
Everyone in the capitol knows my face. Everyone in the capitol wants to clasp my hands and buy me a cup of freykka and listen to my tale.
Listen to how I assassinated the fiercest warlord in the quadrant. How I murdered both the rebel leader Noxu and his spoiled son Ingzan.
I am a hero.
Funny, because I don’t feel like one. I feel like a coward. Letting the peacekeepers take Aren. Killing the rebel leaders from up in the air rather than face to face in righteous combat.
The auction staff shuts the vehicle door and I set the course for my dwelling outside the city. It’s the only place I can go.
When the vehicle glides into motion, sweeping over the narrow city streets and navigating through the crooked turns, I take down my hood and look at her.
“Are you hurt?” I ask. She’s sitting next to me in the vehicle. I want to slide over next to her, so close that her hips and shoulders press into mine.
But if I was her, I would be looking for a knife. I would want to finish the job that I set out to do back in her dwelling on Yrdat.
“It’s… holy void,” she says. “I thought…”
All at once, her body is wracked with sobs so violent I fear she might cough up one of her lungs. I slide across the seat and take her into my arms, feeling her distress pour out of her like the caustic, acidic rains of her home planet.
“I am so sorry,” I say. “I’ll spend the rest of my life atoning for how I’ve treated you. I am not fit to be your mate, but I feel our bond is true and unsevered. I will do everything in my power to ensure your happiness. If you wish to return to Earth—”
But I can’t finish my sentence. She slugs me on the arm. Her tiny fist is pitifully weak and I would laugh were the circumstances different.
“Don’t you dare,” she says. “Don’t you dare leave me again.” She looks at me, her eyes shiny with tears, but there is a smile on her face. I kiss that smiling mouth, her soft lips parting, the tip of her tongue dancing with mine for a brief moment before she pulls back.
“I have acted shamefully,” I say. “I broke my oath to the Imperial Guard. I broke my promise to you—the promise that I would keep you safe. I let two other males take away my bonded mate and put her up for auction. This is the most cowardly, dishonorable thing a Zalaryn male can do. I have failed you.”
“You failed me?” she says, as if she cannot understand my shame. Maybe she can’t. Humans are odd creatures with an even odder social structure. “The peacekeepers used lethal force to take me. And even still, you clobbered one of them so badly that his ear didn’t stop bleeding all the way to the auction house. He even spit out a tooth when we got there. What were you supposed to do? Keep fighting until they killed you? Then what? Then I’d still be inside that horrible place, waiting to be purchased like a hog at the farmer’s market.”
“A Zalaryn Warrior should fight to the death to protect what he holds dear. His king, his fellow warriors—and his bonded mate most of all.”
“That is honorable,” she says. I can tell she is choosing her words carefully, so she does not offend me. “But it is not altogether practical. I’m glad you let them take me, because if you were wounded or killed or in the dungeon, you’d never have been able to come back for me.”
She caresses the side of my face with her small, cool hand. It feels so good, like she’s washing away the taint of my past. Clearing the way for our new future together. I take hold of her hand and kiss the knuckles. She crawls into my lap and for a while I just hold her, not believing that I have her safe in my arms again. It’s more than I’d hoped for.
More than I deserved.
Her kind words. Her beautiful face. Her kiss. They’ve lifted the burden of my guilt—and I begin to entertain the notion that I did act rationally.
Or, at the very least, the fates that guided me to Aren in the first place were not so easily discouraged. They guided me on a long and looping, treacherous course—but a course that was always going to lead back to her.
“I thought you were Ingzan,” she finally says. We’re outside the capitol and the landscape is bare: nothing but scattered brush and the red, rocky, hard-pan that covers most of our planet.
“Ingzan?” I say, confused. “I can assure you, he is dead.”
“In the auction house, they said I’d been purchased. They said there was a comm from the Screaming Talon. That there was a transmission of coin from his personal account.”
“Indeed there was,” I say, smiling. In a way, Ingzan bought her after all.
I tell her how I went back to New Pallas and sneaked aboard his ship. “He was on the ship, and got the best of me when I was flying towards the rebel camp. He put a knife to my throat.” She gasps and pulls down the collar of my hooded tunic. There are still flakes of dried blood on my skin. I haven’t had time to wash. “He was behind me, the knife at my throat, and began to slice. I was strapped into the pilot’s chair. There was no way out.”
“So what did you do?”
“I stayed right where I was,” I say. “And hit the button to open the emergency escape hatch. He was sucked out of the ship as fast as you could sneeze.”
“So, he’s dead?” she asks, as if the thought of him returning for her would cause her many sleepless nights.
“I’d already broken past the New Pallas atmosphere,” I say. “There is no way he could have survived the fall.”
“Does that mean you were really high in the air?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. I cock my thumb behind us. “The height of the Imperial Fortress? That’s seventeen stories. I was at least 20 times that high.”
“Twenty times?” she says and I can see her relax.
“Where are we going now?” she says.
“Home,” I say.
“Your home?” she says.
“No,” I say. “Our home.” I turn her head gently so she is looking at me. “I will never leave you. I’ll never let anything happen to you. Even if it’s irrational, I will fight until the last beat of my heart—because what I feel for you is not rational. It’s hot and wild and comes from here.” I take her hand in mine, and place it over my chest so she can feel my beating heart.
“I feel it too,” she says, and after a moment, she moves my hand to her chest. I feel her heart beat, much faster than mine. “Since we…” her cheeks turn red and I feel her heartbeat speed up. “… were in your chambers together, I’ve felt an overwhelming, hot, bright ache for you. You say it’s bonding, or hormones, or chemical reactions between our genetic material…”
“It is not that,” I say. “That’s what the healers call it. That is what those of my species who have not experienced it call it. You know as well as I do what it is: it is love. I love you, pure and simple.”
“I love you too—but there’s nothing simple about it,” she says. “If what we’ve just been through is your idea of ‘simple,’ then I don’t want to ever have to deal with anything complicated.”
The vehicle approaches my dwelling. I deactivate the force field and slow the vehicle.
“We’re here,” I say. “And it is simple. I love you. We’re connected now in a way that can never be unbroken. Our destinies are intertwined, like the fibers of a rope. I can’t think of me without thinking of us. It actually simplifies things quite a bit.”
As we exit the vehicle, I see there’s the flickering yellow light of a lantern inside the dwelling. We are not alone.
I open the door and see Xalax, High King, and his Obsidian Queen Resa, standing in my dwelling.
“Fifty neus,” I say. “And fifty nights.” I hope he doesn’t notice the tremor in my voice. He’s my childhood friend, but right now I’m fearful of his edict. Right now, he is the High King—and I am an oath-breaker.
“Fifty-one,” he says, “to you and yours.”
“My bonded mate,” I say, gesturing to Aren, “Aren, this is the High King Xalax and Queen Resa.”
“Queen?” she says, her eyes gaping wide. I suppose to her it must be odd to see another human female—to learn that the High King of the Zalaryn race is bonded to a human. Seeming to remember that she is in front of royalty, she does a funny bow—bending at the knee and lifting up the corners of her tunic. It must be some human gesture of respect. At least I hope it is. “I am honored, your highness,” she says.
“I knew you would come here,” Xalax says. “I’m taking Resa back to the Imperial Fortress. Thanks to you, the rebels are sufficiently crushed. It should be safe to bring her back.” He puts a protective hand across her stomach. I know she is with child—the heir to our planet nothing but a tiny thing the size of a bean.
“I am honored that you entrusted the Queen’s safety to my ancestral home,” I say. I know that’s not the real reason he’s here.
“Thank you for the hospitality, Droka,” Resa says to me.
“There is one piece of business,” Xalax says. Of course. The date of my trial? The conditions of my exile? Which foot I want to be hung upside-down by when they hang me from the Magneto Spire and slowly boil my insides with electro-magnetic waves?
“Yes, my King,” I say.
“We are long friends,” he says. “But you must know that I have no choice but to uphold the laws of our people. You have recently provided a great service to the planet, but that is no matter. Each male must account for his actions and face the consequences.”
“Yes, my King.” I hold on tight to Aren’s hand. She squeezes it back.
“It is my Imperial edict that you are now formally relieved of your duties as Captain of the Imperial Guard.”