by Cara Wylde
“How did you end up on the Black Laverna, anyway?” asked Kay.
Pippa smiled bitterly. “Yeah. That was my mistake. My mom and I lived in a small apartment, which I had to sell to get money to book a trip to Uthea. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I couldn’t live there anymore, and Uthea seemed like the perfect place to start anew. A small planet at the other side of the galaxy, with climate similar to Terra’s, but with harsher lands. I wanted to do something with my hands. Plant vegetables, work the fields... physical work that would help me disconnect, leave my past behind, and keep my energetic abilities away with sore muscles and soundless sleep at night. Except... the money I got from selling the apartment wasn’t enough to book a trip with one of the more reputable interstellar agencies. That’s how I ended up on the Black Laverna. I genuinely thought the Captain was offering an honest service at a more affordable price. One of his guys told me that the travel conditions wouldn’t be great, but I would get to where I wanted safely. Well, that turned out to be a big fat lie. So, here I am.”
Kay nodded. “That’s how the slave trade works. They either kidnap you or deceive you into boarding their ships. There are no traders on Iarna, and never have been. Not even when the climate was favorable and the planet was rich. Some Iarnians do buy slaves from Sephara and Innoth, but the practice is mostly frowned upon.”
Pippa didn’t say anything. She would be off this planet soon, so why bother. They had their ways, and her home galaxy had its own ways. Realistically, all she could do was start an awareness program once she reached Uthea, and shed light on what happened outside of the Milky Way. She and her people had to come up with ways to protect themselves. It could be the start of a bigger, more proactive movement.
Trev stood up and gave her the book he’d been holding.
“It contains the Prophecy of the Heart, the original text and the English translation. Inside, you’ll also find the story of how the Heart of Iarna was found in one of our richest mines and brought to the surface. The miner who found it wrote it, and he wrote the Prophecy, too. It is said that he channeled the message from a higher being, maybe from Goddess Mara herself. I don’t know what to think about that...”
Pippa laughed. “You’re a priest, Trevkon. If you don’t know what to think, then what do you expect from the other Iarnians?”
“You’re right. Just like Kay and Ash, I was born during the eternal winter. Until today, I had never seen the Heart of Iarna glow with life. I like to think that I was a believer before, but now I know that I am a true believer. You made that possible.”
Pippa smiled and stood up. She hugged the book to her chest.
“I will take good care of it, I promise. Now, can I, maybe, read it up in my room, where it’s nice and cozy?”
The light, playful tone of her voice dispersed all the remaining tension in the room. Ash asked her if she could walk on her own, and Pippa assured him she was fine. They all headed back to the hidden door that opened right inside the tunnel and started the long walk to the villa. Pippa thought she’d be super happy if this was the last time she had to walk this dark, cold corridor that almost made her feel claustrophobic. She let out a sigh of relief when she saw the stairs leading up to the door in the basement up ahead, but then she also spotted the Iarnian soldier guarding it. She figured he was one of Ashtar’s men.
“What’s wrong? Why are you here?” Ash asked him in a language that was not English.
Trev stepped closer to Pippa and acted as her personal translator.
“I thought you’d want to be warned beforehand. There are three Sepharans upstairs, in the living room, waiting for you.” He tipped his chin toward Pippa. “And for her.”
“How do they know she’s here?” Kay stepped forward.
“We didn’t tell them about her. We didn’t tell them anything, nor confirmed their suspicions. They’re looking for her, and they said they have reasons to believe she’s here. That’s all I know.”
“You did good. Thank you.” Ash patted him on the shoulder, then turned to Pippa, Kay, and Trev. “It sounds bad, but we don’t know how bad it actually is. Let’s keep our wits about us and deal with this quickly. Pippa, you should stay here. Hide in the tunnel.” He motioned for the guard to step by her side. “Protect her with your life.”
They didn’t waste any more time. The last thing they wanted was to raise even more suspicion.
CHAPTER TEN
Ash
Ashtar walked ahead, with Kayvor and Trevkon two steps behind him. When they reached the living room, the three Sepharans waiting for them stood up and greeted them politely. Ash welcomed them into the triad’s home and asked them how he could help. Although his blood was boiling with anger and fear that anyone could have taken Pippa away, he did his best to hide it. Diplomacy was the way to go, unless the circumstances demanded otherwise.
“We’re looking for one of my slaves,” the short, green-skinned Sepharan who seemed to be the leader of the party said. He wasn’t Sepharan by birth, as the people of Sephara looked just as normal as the Terrans and the Iarnians, but he’d relocated there in his youth. Even though he came from a neighboring galaxy, Sephara had embraced him for his commerce skills. “She’s Terran. Red hair, blue eyes, a bit of a rebel.” He smirked. “Our intel tells us she landed on Iarna a few nights ago.”
“And what makes you believe she’s here, in our home?” asked Ashtar.
The green alien held his gaze for a long moment. When Ash didn’t budge, he smiled as nicely as he could.
“For one, we did the math and concluded the escape pod must have landed somewhere in these mountains, which makes Kriva the closest city to the spot we’ve come up with after some rough calculations.”
“Did you check?”
“Oh, we certainly tried. The snow has covered everything. We’d have to dig and search for days, and we just don’t think it’s worth the effort. Instead, we went to Kriva and asked around. At the Angry Cerber, an old friend told us about you, General, and how Trevkon B’haduc and Kayvor V’tal dragged you out of the bar one night, and the three of you headed toward the mountains. It sounded odd to me, you know. A late-night adventure into the mountains of Iarna... in such weather...” He spread his arms as if to show them that he wasn’t hiding anything and that had been the soundest conclusion he could have come to. “Is she here? Her name is Philippa Steele.”
“She is.” Kay stepped forward, pushing Ash aside and squeezing his arm subtly to let him know that he had everything under control. “Ashtar, please bring Pippa in.”
* * *
Kay
“You’ve had my slave all along, and you didn’t bother to let me know?” The Sepharan’s tone of voice had changed noticeably.
“We weren’t sure whom she belonged to,” said Kay. “When we found her, we barely managed to pry the doors of the emergency pod open. She was half dead, so our main concern was to take her to safety. We didn’t have time to look around the pod, and when we realized that we should have, it was too late. What you said before is true. The snow has this awful tendency to bury everything around here.” Kay smiled. He was being sarcastic, and he hoped the green-skinned alien realized it. He hated that he had to be so hospitable toward three Sepharan slave traders, so if he could throw in a sarcastic word or two, it made him feel better. “I myself was going to reach out to your Society the very next day after we found her, but then... something came up.”
Ash had brought Pippa in, and she was standing there, in her fluffy pajamas, her blue eyes sending daggers at the man who’d practically kidnapped her from Earth.
“What came up?”
The green-skinned bastard spared her one glance, then ignored her completely. He seemed very interested in what Kay had to say, and that raised a red flag for Pippa. She took a deep breath, relaxed her shoulders, and forced her eyes to focus three inches above the alien’s head. Even after all this time, her abilities worked perfectly. She could see and sen
se his energy field, and once she pushed further, she started getting small glimpses of his thoughts. “Oh no,” she thought. “Kay is going to say the wrong thing.” Without hesitation, she stepped forward and placed her hand on his arm. She didn’t care that her gesture might look weird to the Sepharans.
Her unexpected touch took Kay by surprise, but he hid it well. He looked down into her eyes, and he didn’t know why, but he felt like what he was going to say would put all of them in danger. Was she using her abilities on him? He had no time to think about it. The slave trader was waiting for an answer.
“We decided that we wanted to keep her,” Kay said. “As a wife for our triad.”
“Oh.” The Sepharan relaxed, but not entirely. “It took you long enough to decide, then.”
It was Trev’s turn to step forward. “I believe you know who we are. I am a priest of the Temple of the Heart, Ashtar is a General in the Iarnian Army, and Kayvor is the son of Councilor V’tal. The reason why we waited so long to take a mate for our triad was because we wanted to choose the right one. Philippa Steele is a Terran, so that makes her a great candidate. However, we didn’t want to make a rush decision. We needed a few days to evaluate her. I hope you now understand why we wanted to wait before we got in touch with her... master.”
The Sepharan nodded. “Well, now that we’re here and the mystery of whom you can buy her from is solved, maybe I can interest you in other options? She isn’t the only Terran we have.”
“She’ll do,” said Ash. He could barely contain his anger and disgust, and the fact that Kay was moving so slowly with closing the deal annoyed him to no end. He couldn’t understand why they all had to be so courteous toward a slave trader. Sepharan or not, the likes of him should have never set foot in their home. The Coalition... With each day that passed, he hated the idea of the Lichora Coalition more and more.
“I’m sorry you had to come all this way,” Kay said. “If you have a contract and you can tell me how much we owe you, I can get your money right away.”
The green-skinned alien studied the four of them for a long moment, then sat down on the couch and motioned for one of his guys to begin the sale process.
“All right, let’s do this. Might I ask you one last thing?” When Kay nodded in approval, he continued. “How did you know you would find her in the mountains that night?”
“We didn’t. Trevkon has a passion for astronomy, and that night he was observing the stars. He saw the pod land, and we went to investigate. We didn’t know what or who we would find.”
* * *
Pippa
She couldn’t believe that had just happened before her eyes. It was over now, and the three Sepharans were out of the house, probably on their way back to their planet, even. They had made it obvious that they didn’t enjoy Iarna.
“Why did you stop me?” Kay asked. “I wanted to tell him the truth, and you knew it. Were you reading my thoughts?”
“Not exactly.” She shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “I was reading your energy. And his. I got this strong feeling that the Sepharans wouldn’t jump with joy if you told them that you found a solution to your problem and that you could end the eternal winter.”
Kay cocked an eyebrow.
“I think she’s right,” Ash said. “Didn’t you pay attention? He said he found out about our little adventure in the mountains from an ‘old friend’ at the Angry Cerber. That means a spy. Sephara has spies on Iarna.”
“But why?” Trev wondered. “Why wouldn’t they want us to heal Iarna when they know how rich our soil is? We’re an agricultural people. We can feed the entire galaxy.”
Kay chuckled darkly. “Yes. We can feed the entire galaxy at much more decent prices than what all the planets are forced to pay now. This makes more sense than I’d like it to make.”
“So, what now?” asked Trev. “Do we do it even though we know it will piss them off?”
“Yes. They can’t blame us.” Kay turned to Pippa. “You did well. Thank you. If we had told them what our intentions are, they could have stopped us. That snake would have gone to Sephara, told their Council of Four about the Prophecy of the Heart, and the Council would have made it everyone’s problem, not just Iarna’s. And everyone’s decision. As things are, we’re going to do what we know is right silently, and they will have to deal with it.”
Pippa nodded enthusiastically. She looked at Kay for a long moment, then at Trev and Ash.
“You guys bought my freedom back before I even helped you. It means a lot to me.”
Ash laughed out loud. “Oh, don’t get too excited.” He winked at her to let her know he was kidding. “We own you now. So, you’d better make that piece of rock glow again, or...”
“Or what?” Pippa smiled mischievously.
“Or you got yourself a triad, Terran.”
She bit her lower lip to stop herself from saying something stupid. Or, maybe, it wasn’t that stupid, after all. Ash had proved himself in bed, Kay had just showed her he was trustworthy, and Trev... Well, Trev was just sweet Trev. Would a triad of her own really be that bad?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Trev
He felt restless. Pippa had been in her room for the past couple of hours, reading the book. Kay had gone to see his father and tell the Council of Four about her and how there was a great chance that she could end their trials and tribulations. Ash was somewhere around the house, intentionally avoiding everyone. What was he supposed to do? He’d made some calls and announced all the priests of the Temple of the Heart about the miracle he’d witnessed, and now they were making arrangements for the next day. The Temple needed a good cleaning and dusting, and the courtyard needed to be cleared of snow again. As much as Trev wanted to join his brothers, he couldn’t. He couldn’t focus on anything else but Pippa Steele.
After pacing back and forth like a lion in a cage, Trevkon cursed under his breath and headed to the kitchen. He needed a good excuse to go up to her room, and food was the best one he could come up with. He asked one of the cook assistants to prepare a tray full of goodies, and when it was ready, he took it upstairs.
“You can go now,” he told the guard by her door, as he knocked. Now that Pippa was on their side and had no plans of running away, he didn’t understand why they couldn’t let Ashtar’s men go. Extra protection in case the Sepharans figured out something they shouldn’t and came back? “It’s me, Pippa. Can I come in?”
Instead of an answer, she let him in herself. When she opened the door and greeted him with a huge smile, Trev almost dropped the tray. She was wearing a rather tight sweater with a long, warm skirt, and she’d pinned her fiery red hair up in a messy hairdo. Her blue eyes held his green gaze, and it seemed like they were both lost in each other for a long moment. This was the first time they were alone since he’d showed her his study, and Trev felt his cheeks burn slightly at the memory of her body pressed against his.
“I thought you might be hungry,” he said.
“I am, thank you.”
She took the tray from him and placed it on the bed, next to the open book. For a while, Trev watched her in silence. She ate and read at the same time, too eager to go through the entire text and annotations on the Prophecy to stop for a peaceful meal. On the one hand, he didn’t want to interrupt her, and on the other, he didn’t know what to say, either. For the time being, he was happy to just be there, with her, and observe her from afar. The way she poked at her food as she got distracted by a certain line, how her lips wrapped around the fork when she took a bite, how she chewed slowly and methodically... The cute way in which her brows furrowed and her lips pursed when she got to a part that she needed to read twice. Trev should have never rejected her when she’d come to him. What an idiot he’d been, and now it was probably too late.
Out of the blue, Pippa looked up at him, a sweet smile playing on her lips. Trev straightened his back and mentally slapped himself. This woman could read his energy field if she wanted
. She probably knew what he was thinking even before he formulated the thoughts.
“I’ve figured it out,” she said. “I know what I have to do, but...”
“But what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think I’m strong enough. You see, back on Earth I used to work with crystals of all kinds and varieties. I knew their unique properties, I knew what they could assist me with, and it was easy to cleanse them, program them, and recharge them.”
“I... I don’t understand how that works.”
Pippa closed the book, sat up, and crossed her legs under her. The long skirt rode up just enough to reveal her ankles.
“Crystals are like... I don’t know... technology in miniature. Except, it’s natural technology. Your red stone works the same as the crystals I’m familiar with, but its energy is stronger and more complex. Add to that the fact that since it was discovered, it has practically held the energy and vibration of the entire planet on its own. Although... I have a feeling that it’s not the only red stone buried inside the mountains of Iarna. There should be more. It cannot be unique. This is just the one you happened to find.”
Trev shook his head. He couldn’t hide his confusion.
“All right, but it doesn’t make any sense. Our planet was fine before we found the stone.”
“And nothing changed after you found it?”
He thought for a long minute. “I’d have to check in with our historians, but as far as I know, the lands did get richer and more fertile.”
“In time, its powers were drained until it eventually fell into a deep sleep.” Pippa held up the book. “What I understand from the text you said was channeled by the miner who discovered the stone is that once you took the first one out of the ground, its powers doubled, while the powers of the ones left in the ground subsided. Your long-term solution is to find the other stones and bring them to light. Apparently, you either leave all of them in the ground, or you bring all of them to the surface.”