But every step he took without that pain reminded him of what he was trying not to think about. And when he found himself almost admiring the way that bedamned mist swirled, he knew something deep within him had changed. He would have thought it was merely the relief from the pain, except that he had never felt such things even before he’d been injured.
What he didn’t know was if the change was permanent, or just an effect of this place.
Or perhaps the knowledge that his entire life had been a lie.
A twin.
He’d had another, as close as any two beings could be, until they were expelled into the world. A duplicate, she had said. A mirror image of himself. He wondered what it would have been like, to have had another being so close, so in tune you could communicate without words as the Davorin twins seemed to. What potential had the Coalition missed in their arrogance?
Their. Not our.
It was consistent now. He thought of them as something apart from himself. And the distance between seemed to have grown geometrically since he’d spent those days with Lana. Even now his report on the damage done in the raid on the cannon emplacements sat unsent, for he knew reporting what had happened would put the blackest mark ever on his record. Oddly, he did not care overmuch, except that if his reputation slid, his ability to stave off the destruction of Ziem would also lessen. But eventually he would run out of time; the cannons were to be delivered next week, and he would have to send the report before then or he would end up with four fusion cannons and no place to install them. Such was the damage the Raider had done. And he had noted without surprise that all he felt about that was admiration.
He looked around as he reached the hill and started up, retracing the path he had taken that day. The mistbreaker trees seemed wreathed in strands of the mist, which swirled with his passage. The gray got thinner, more transparent as the path climbed, until he could see a good way around him.
And then he heard a whisper. Her voice. Her voice, as low and gentle as he remembered. It sent a shiver up his newly healed spine.
“It is safe. He is alone.”
He stopped. And as if they had materialized out of the mist, the twins were there, running toward him. To his surprise they flung themselves at him, throwing their arms around him. To his even greater surprise he returned the action, almost reflexively, as if such a greeting from children had been the norm instead of this being the first time in his life.
When they released him and looked up, it was Lux who started it.
“We have—”
“Missed you.”
“You are—”
“Well?”
He had no words for the sensation that filled him. He only knew that it seemed to grow, expand, until he could no longer contain it. It was a warmth unlike any he’d ever felt, but it was also tinged with a horrible sense of loss. Had he truly had the chance for the kind of connection these two had, and it had been destroyed before it began?
“I am fine,” he said to them. “Thanks to your mother.”
“She is—”
“A very good—”
“Healer.”
Among the many other things she was, Paledan thought. And on the thought, she emerged from the mist. His memory, however vivid, had failed to capture her accurately. She was more beautiful, more graceful, more vibrantly alive than seemed possible. But hadn’t he learned much about possibilities from her?
She smiled at him as she approached. He did not know what made him say it, but he could not seem to resist. He gestured at the twins and said, “No such greeting from you?”
“Would you wish it?”
That voice was like a physical thing, brushing over him, until he thought it must be some lingering effect of her healing of him.
“I believe I would,” he said, sounding oddly hoarse even to himself.
“Then by all means,” she said, still smiling as she closed the gap between them. And then she was there, and her arms came around him, much more slowly, almost like a caress compared to the careening embrace of the twins.
He felt as if he was back under the sun of Clarion, with the brilliant heat flowing over him. His own arms moved instinctively again, pulling her tight against him. The feel of her, so close, slender yet wonderfully curved, set off a new kind of heat in him, so fierce it blasted the breath out of him. This was not the stream of connection he’d felt when she’d been healing him, this was something much more elemental, much more . . . necessary.
She tilted her head back to look up at him. Something in those vivid eyes stabbed at him at the same time it lured him in. It was a trap. His every instinct knew it. But he plunged ahead anyway, and his mouth came down on hers.
The warmth he’d been feeling exploded. He’d read of this, this monumental sort of need between male and female. But he had never experienced it. Had assumed himself apart from such things, assuaging the occasional need in the Coalition-approved manner at the various Legion Clubs scattered throughout the galaxy, and otherwise feeling nothing.
But the feel of her mouth beneath his, her lips soft and warm against his own, seared him more deeply than that planium shard. His head was reeling, as if the mist were indeed that poisonous thing they’d first thought it. He wanted more. No, he must have more, if he was to keep living. He tasted her, deeply, and the sweetness of it eclipsed even that surprising fruit the twins had given him.
The twins.
Even as he thought it, he heard them.
“Are you—”
“Finished yet?”
Reluctantly he pulled back. Found himself sucking in quick breaths as if he’d forgotten to breathe. And the only thing that saved his sanity was the fact that she was looking rather dazed herself. As if she was as surprised as he at what had happened, the way . . . something had erupted between them. And surprising this woman was, he somehow knew, no small accomplishment.
It took all his considerable will to look away from her. He found the twins watching them rather impatiently. But, he noted, with no surprise at all. That seemed important, although he was not certain why.
“If you are—”
“Through kissing—”
“We have—”
“Brought you—”
“More things—”
“Of Ziem.”
He risked a glance at Lana. She looked less dazed, but no less surprised. And when her arms slipped away he felt a sense of loss he could not describe.
He turned back to the twins, who were industriously emptying the small pack Nyx had set upon the ground. Towering over them seemed wrong, so he sat down on the ground beside them. They grinned at him, and he felt an odd sort of pleasure that he’d chosen the right course.
Still, he glanced around, then looked at the woman who had both ended his torture and added to it. “You came alone?”
She gave an elegant, one-shouldered shrug. And he had the sudden thought that he would give much to see her in the flowing white dress of the portrait. Not that he didn’t appreciate the sight of her slender form in the rough, close-fitting Sentinel gear she wore now. Appreciated too much.
But no weapon, he noted, quite belatedly.
As if she needed one.
He made himself look away from her. The collection the twins had brought was fascinating, not only because it contained many things he did not know about, but because of what it told them of how their minds worked. And also, he admitted to himself, it told him a bit about what they thought of him, because of what they thought would interest him.
He picked up what looked like a huge curved shell of some kind.
“That is—”
“The horn from—”
“A ramhorn.”
“They live in—”
“The mountains.”
&nbs
p; He hefted the weight, gauged the size.
“They are—”
“That big,” the twins assured him before he asked.
He glanced at Lana, then looked back at them. “Learning your mother’s gift for reading minds?”
The twins exchanged a glance.
“We hope so—”
“That would be—”
“Fun. Except sometimes—”
“With grown people—”
“Like when—”
“You were kissing—”
“We would not—”
“Want to—”
“Read that.”
“Too bad,” he said, in a wry tone he wasn’t sure he’d ever used before. “If you could, perhaps you could explain it all to me.”
They looked startled. Then they looked from him to Lana and back again. Then at each other, then back to him. And he marveled at how anyone could miss the fact that they were communicating.
“We are not—”
“Old enough—”
“Yet. You will—”
“Have to ask—”
There was a split-second longer break in the cadence, and they both looked at Lana as they finished with, “Our mother.”
He did not know how to describe the look that came over her face then. It was a sort of radiance, a kind of utter joy he’d only heard about, never seen. He thought he would carry the memory of it until he died. As if it were overpowering, she sank to the ground, completing their little group of four.
And he had the crazed, unallowable thought that this must be somewhat what it was like to be a part of what Ziemites called family.
Chapter 50
“YOU MUST—”
“Break it—”
“In the—”
“Middle.”
Paledan looked at the hammer Nyx held out and the heavy blade Lux was offering to him. Both were clearly planium. Which was technically a violation of regulations, since no one outside the Coalition was permitted to own the stuff, even—or perhaps especially—Ziemites.
But it was a measure, he supposed, of how far he’d pulled back from them that he never even half-seriously considered enforcing that regulation. He simply took the offered tools and did as instructed. The first blow cracked the fist-sized gray rock almost on a center line; the second split it open.
He stared down at another impossibility; the glint of color and crystal within the plain, stone shell was not just unexpected, it was . . . beautiful. He held it up to look closer. The crystal seemed to magnify what light there was, sparkling in contrasting shades of green and purple, when there did not seem to be enough to make that happen.
“Amazing,” he murmured.
“Secret stones, Ziemite children call them,” Lana said. “They are among my favorite things of our world.”
He glanced at her. She looked as if she were truly enjoying this. And the moment he formed that thought, he realized he was as well. And that he had never felt this kind of simple, easy contentment before.
Nyx, already eager to move on, handed him something wrapped in a cloth. It appeared to be an oddly regular pattern of some solid material, but dripping with a thick, golden fluid.
“And this is?” he asked.
“Sweet,” the twins chorused.
“You must—”
“Taste it.”
He looked at them doubtfully, for the stuff looked more like the lubricant used on machinery than anything.
“Here,” Lana said, in that husky voice that made him suck in a breath. She reached out and touched a slender finger to the viscous fluid and held it up to his lips.
He hesitated, but the temptation was too much. He licked up the bead of gold. And he could not say if the blast of sweetness was from the proffered treat or simply the taste of her skin. All he knew for sure was that he wanted more. He wanted to do what he had just done to every inch of her. He felt the blast of a kind of hunger he had never known, a hunger to touch, taste, savor. He even wanted to stroke the line of the scar on her arm with his tongue, for he knew a bit about pain survived.
For a moment they simply sat, gazes locked, until a slight cough reminded him the twins were waiting expectantly.
“It is . . . as promised,” he said. “Very sweet.”
They grinned. “The buzzers—”
“Make it.”
“Buzzers?”
Their eyes widened. “You do not—”
“Know of the—”
“Buzzers?”
“I do not,” he answered. “At least not in this sense.”
“You should because—”
“They can sting you—”
“If they—”
“Are afraid.”
“As many things can,” he said, again wryly.
“We will—”
“Find you one!”
With the exclamation they scrambled to their feet. They glanced at Lana, and added, “We will—”
“Be careful and not—”
“Get stung.”
She smiled. “I assumed you would be.”
The smiles they gave her then put that glowing joy back in her expression again. Then they darted off, disappearing into the mist. He stared after them. And the realization he’d come to suddenly overwhelmed him.
“What you told me,” he said, half whispering, “is the truth.”
“I know,” she said gently.
“How? How did you know I was . . . half of two?”
“It is there, Caze. The knowledge, the connection, is buried deep, far below conscious knowledge, perhaps below knowledge at all, but there.”
“Do you know anything of . . . the other?”
“No,” she said, sounding sad. He turned to look at there then, and saw that the emotion was real, for it showed in those vivid eyes. “There was only a trace. Only enough to know he was a duplicate. And that he lived to be born. Which,” she added as she glanced back at where the twins had vanished, “is what I think you wished to know?”
He nodded slowly. Tried to imagine Nyx without Lux, or the opposite, and failed completely. It was impossible. “They slaughtered him, this other half of me,” he said, his voice low and harsh.
“And thought it right,” she agreed.
It is not right!
The exclamation echoed in his mind so loudly he almost shouted it aloud. And when he looked at her again and she nodded, he thought she had somehow heard it anyway.
“I must thank you,” she said softly after a long, silent moment.
“Thank me?” he asked, startled, the only thing coming to his mind the kiss he still hadn’t quite processed himself.
“That is the first time they have referred to me as their mother.”
He studied her for a moment. “That is very important on your world.”
“Yes.” She turned her gaze back to him. “And for now at least, your world, too.”
He didn’t want it for now. He wanted it . . . forever. And that realization stunned him more than anything ever had. Except that kiss.
Perhaps it had been a fluke, an accident of timing. Perhaps it had just been building; perhaps he had ignored the need for too long. Perhaps if he took the break he was due and visited the nearest Legion Club—assuming he could overcome his dislike for the usage of collared slaves—this would be sated and go quiet again for another year or two.
“Are you wondering if it would be the same again?” she asked softly. He drew back sharply. She read the motion correctly. “I’m not reading your mind. Merely wondering the same myself.”
“Then . . . we need proof.”
“Of course we do,” she said, and this time it was she who leaned forward and pressed her
lips to his. And in the first instant, he had his proof. Heat billowed through him until he thought he must be shaking with the force of it.
He was lost in the surging sea of rippling sensation when a sound from above finally bored through it. A moment later his comm link crackled to life announcing the arrival of a ship from High Command.
Brakely’s question was clear in his voice.
“No,” he answered. “I am on my way.” He snapped off the link.
“You did not expect this?” she asked.
“Using your powers again?” he asked.
“No,” she said, sounding a bit surprised herself. Which left him with the even more unsettling thought that she read him so well without any inexplicable power necessary. But the most unsettling of all was the strange notion that that idea pleased him.
“I must go.” He said it with regret. He got to his feet, sensed her watching him as he moved. “Your miracle holds,” he said.
“I was not watching for that, although I am pleased.” At his lifted brow she colored slightly. And he found that pleased him as well. “You move with such grace.”
Something hot and urgent slammed through him. And he knew by the answering heat in her gaze that she felt it too. And he wished, he who had long ago discarded wishes as useless, ridiculous things, that they had time and privacy here and now to pursue what had sparked between them.
“Give me more,” he said before he thought.
Her color deepened, and he realized his words could be interpreted more than one way. And then it hit him that he meant it in all ways.
But he had no time, not now.
“You said I need only ask.”
He saw it register, knew she realized what he meant. And she nodded. He had expected her to touch his arm, as before, but instead she reached up and cupped his cheek, then slid a slender finger along his jaw line. For an instant he froze, remembering when she had rendered him unconscious for transport. But this was . . . was . . .
He felt as if he’d been hit by a blaster. Heat and chill, tightness and expansion, all impossibly gripped him at once. It was all he could do to breathe, and even that was coming raggedly. He stared down into those bottomless blue eyes, the eyes that had haunted him for so long, realizing that as vivid, as captivating as the painted version was, they were nothing to the original. The real woman of the painting was so, so much more. And he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life—the life she had given back to him—searching out all the facets of her.
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