“Sure.” She started to move slowly toward the exit, wondering where she saw it last.
“Quickly, Sam, the council opens for petition in twenty and I need to remember my speech,” he shouted at her.
* * *
As she reached the door, one of Travis’s attorneys, named Erik, stopped her. Sam liked him a lot more than the other sour-faced legal counselors. He was a lot younger and able to muster up a smile when he came to their apartment to work with Travis for ungodly hours on his quest to free Amber.
“Do you want me to go back for you?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” she said brusquely and felt a twinge of guilt, for he had tried a few times to engage her in polite conversation. However, Sam wasn’t looking for any new friends.
She moved a little faster, back down to the center of the Decagon Trafoda, past the moving visitors, and onto the transporter. She raced to the section recently given to Rheese: four streets of mostly vacant apartments and no restaurants or facilities yet. She was sure that as soon as they settled it would grow, although it would take a while to catch up with the opulence of the others. She entered the quiet building, went straight to their apartment, and picked up the yellow notebook of loose papers that had Travis’s urgent handwriting on it. He was the only one who still had reams of paper, something not many of the other nations used anymore. He said it helped him think in ways that the shared technology provided by Throm did not. Sam couldn’t remember a night when she hadn’t passed the study to find Travis either poring over his notes or sleeping upon them.
Today would not be the first time he approached them to save Amber, but it was the day he would hear feedback on the accusations he had lobbied. Sam did not hold much hope about their response. She had to wait for another transporter to swing by the Rheese quarter and signaled frantically when her wrist monitor showed her that she would be late. If Travis didn’t get his notes, he would be worse than usual to deal with and she struggled to quell the usual rise of depression when she thought of speaking to him or dealing with his moods.
Finally, one lowered and she slipped on board, finding an empty seat and ignoring all those around her. She tucked her hoodie even more firmly about her face so that nobody asked her questions, like how it felt to be new to the federation or, worse, if she knew the girl who was splashed all over the Diogel tabloids.
The first human partner of a Thromian.
Travis’s ex-fiancée and the current wife of the Royal Prince of Throm.
Wrexel.
* * *
Sam moved swiftly, taking her hoodie off as she ran up the stairs, the folder in between her teeth as she tried to tie the shirt around her waist. She was steps away from the entrance when she tripped over her own feet and face-planted in front of the Thromian door. Travis’s notebook skidded out of her hands and fell open, distributing his meticulous notes and photographs of Amber all over the floor. Humiliation and horror burnt her cheeks as she began to scramble on all fours to frantically pick up the papers until her hand bumped into large ones helping her with the task.
She looked up slowly, dreading the face she would find, knowing that hands this size, elegantly tapered for the reveal of claws, belonged to a Thromian. The scourge of all eternity. She moaned beneath her breath when her eyes locked on his, for she had just humiliated herself not only in front of a Thromian but in front of one of the heirs to their throne.
The one whom nobody remotely female could look at without feeling slightly faint.
The one in charge of all Thromian federated issues upon Thee Isle on Illohi.
Shihlo of Throm.
* * *
Dark blonde, tall, mesmerizing blue eyes, absurdly handsome and currently smiling at her in sympathy. She recoiled and his eyes dimmed with a look of pity, but he remained crouched at her side, gathering her wayward papers until they had a pile between them.
“Thank you,” she squeaked, trembling hands knocking his own steady ones as he held the papers out to her. He looked at the photographs of Amber and lifted his eyes back to hers, a slight frown on his face. “Do you know her?” His deep voice rumbled over Sam and she sank to her knees, not only because she was tired of crouching but because he was so enigmatically attractive that she couldn’t hold herself up without her knees shaking.
“Yes.” The soft, wispy voice nothing like her own. “She was to be my sister ... sister-in-law.”
He put the photograph on her pile of papers and stood up, clasping her elbow to help her stand with him.
“Why are you not in an education program, child?” he asked when she continued to stare at him like a gaping fish. Even with a frown, he was angelic, but that didn’t excuse his tone.
“I’m nearly nineteen,” she said, a little affronted at being called a child. She was past school-going age and too stupid to consider university in the advanced Diogel.
He paused. “You should tell your brother to focus on petitioning for educational foundation support for those who are your age instead of chasing after lost causes.”
He tapped the photograph of Amber. “This case is closed,” he said firmly.
“That would be a waste of time.” She bit her lip when the sarcastic retort slipped out and prayed he hadn’t heard.
“Why?” He stopped walking away and she cringed.
“Do you feel you have nothing to learn in your new solar system?” He misunderstood her comment.
“I meant telling Travis to give up would be a waste.” She scooped the papers into the folder and tucked it under her arm. “Thank you again.”
He held out his hand then in a human greeting.
The kindness of the gesture wasn’t lost on Sam. “I am Shihlo,” he offered.
No shit.
There wasn’t a being in the universe who wouldn’t recognize him or his brothers.
“I am Samantha Anders.”
* * *
Travis partially blamed her when his petition was mockingly rebutted by Shihlo minutes later. He rattled excuses. He hadn’t had time to prepare properly. His papers had been a mess. She was impossible to live with in their apartment, constantly distracting him with noise. Sam lowered her eyes and apologized. Travis had a low opinion of her and nothing she could say would change it. There were days when she would look at a photograph of herself as a spunky teenager with a mischievous gleam in her eye and a world of adventure to embark on and wonder if she would ever feel like that again. For a while, when Amber was still Travis’s fiancée, she had begun to slowly mend the pieces of her broken self, but then Wrexel had taken Amber and nothing had been the same again.
Losing your fiancée to a terrorist couldn’t be easy, but Travis never considered that she had lost Amber, too. Sam wasn’t entitled to sympathy. Not once in all the nights she had cried herself to sleep had he passed her door to ask if she was okay. He blamed her for their parents’ death and he blamed her for Amber leaving him.
“You knew Amber was going to speak to Wrexel that night to plead for Earth. You could have woken me up. I could have stopped their meeting.”
You could have stopped her from bargaining for all of Earth with her own body?
Travis didn’t stop to consider that Earth would have been destroyed with all the people still on it if Wrexel hadn’t gotten his way. All he cared about was the loss of Amber and his pride. So Sam kept to herself on Thee Isle and tried to ignore every look of blame Travis lobbed her way.
* * *
Days later, dejected by his constant anger and blame, which was consistently directed at her, Sam had reached a point where she was no longer able to find even the smallest measure of joy. Travis had a little too much to drink, which was oft the case of late, and his anger felt like blows on her small body. When he finally passed out on the couch in the afternoon, she ran from the apartment to her favorite outdoor park and sat gulping in air, unable to stop the barrage of tears that flowed without sound down her face. She jumped when the Yimmyrd Revan slid onto the bench beside h
er.
She looked up at him in embarrassment and tried to pretend it wasn’t as bad as it appeared but the depth of her sadness became so overwhelming, she crumbled. His hand covered hers and when his healing light touched her, she broke down in chest-heaving sobs that echoed in the quiet park. There was no point in hiding the truth from Revan; the Yimmyrd were mind readers unless you forbade them, which she had yet to do. Somehow, knowing that he understood every minute of her internal pain helped. He never looked at her in pity despite all that he knew; he always looked at her with understanding and love, which she desperately craved.
He cupped her cheeks and willed her to be calm as his shadow of self, the essence of his pure soul, crossed over her. Sam was able to breathe normally again as his peace covered her nerve endings with a butterfly touch.
“You feel like warm sun on a cold day,” she sniffed.
“You need a respite,” he replied. “And today it will come, for I will take you back to the Illohi mainland with me.”
Sam stared into his rimmed eyes, lost in the profound wisdom she saw, and prayed his words were true.
“I can go there?” This was news to her, for she believed Illohi was open only to Yimmyrd, their wives, and those related to their wives.
He nodded. “Yes, of course you can. I will get you an entry pass and you will spend the weekend with my family and Reema. Reema could do with Earth company, too.”
After Revan’s imprisonment on Earth, he had taken a young Earth female to live with his family.
“I’ll have to ask Travis.” Her eyes were downcast, for whilst Travis hated her presence, he also believed that he needed to protect her from causing harm to herself.
Revan was firm. “No, it will be done.”
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