by Kit Rocha
It spread out effortlessly before him in weeks and months, the perfect expression of his methodical quest for efficiency. The desire was back, stronger than it had been on the night of his initiation. The drive to draw out the best in each of them. To customize his training for each Rider. To shore up their vulnerabilities and play on their talents. Maximize their chances of survival.
He would find satisfaction in it. He might even grow to enjoy it. The camaraderie, the companionship. The brotherhood, every relationship forged serving as another thin stabilizer. None of them as powerful and soothing as Kora, but put together…
For the first time, Ashwin could see the hazy outline of something so forbidden, he’d never bothered to imagine it.
A life.
Maybe this was the answer the Base had known all along, the one Kora had sensed because she understood the way not just bodies, but hearts worked. The Makhai soldiers didn’t have to be cold and isolated and precariously stable, their conditioning maintained through pain. They were simply more efficient that way.
More controllable.
He could feel it already—the slow realignment of his priorities. Whatever the Base doctors had done to his DNA had sharpened and deepened his survival instincts. His capacity for protective rage transcended anything that occurred naturally in the human species. The Base had to make it impossible to subvert a Makhai soldier’s loyalty, because if you could...
The line between monster and hero was so, so thin. And it pivoted around loyalty.
Ana was sweating, her limbs shaking by the time Ashwin called a halt to their practice. But she’d broken through his guard twice—once to deliver another sharp kick to his hip and then with an unexpected punch that had split his lip and left him reassessing how much work she really needed on her upper-body strength, after all.
She was good. He could make her great. He could make them all great. And as Hunter strolled forward to take Ana’s place, Ashwin crossed that invisible line in the sand and decided he would.
If he couldn’t stop Kora from running into danger, he could make damn sure she had a superbly trained army ready to follow her.
»»» § «««
It was disheartening, really, to learn that loving art didn’t necessarily mean you were any damn good at making it.
“That’s much better,” Maricela said brightly as she surveyed the misshapen lump in front of Kora.
“No, it isn’t,” Kora shot back, stifling a laugh. “And you’re a terrible liar.”
“It doesn’t have to be perfect to be better.” Nita winked. She’d stripped down to her tank top, tied up her hair, and hiked up her skirt to make it easier to work the pedal on her potter’s wheel. The lump of clay in front of her had been misshapen only moments ago. Now it was a smooth pillar that she coaxed taller with absent ease. “It takes practice. You didn’t start your career performing surgery, I’d wager.”
“Well, you would lose that bet.” The memory rose, unbidden. “The first time my father put a scalpel in my hand, I was twelve years old.”
“What?”
“It’s not like it sounds. By that age, I’d been through more training and simulations than most fourth-year students.” Kora wet her hands and squashed her clay back into a round ball. It actually looked better that way. “But it’s a lot to expect a kid to handle, literally having someone’s life in their hands.”
“It is.” Nita dipped her sponge into the bucket next to her and dripped water over her clay, her gaze unfocused. “I mean, I grew up with responsibilities. We all did. But the only life-or-death power I had in my teens was over my horse.”
It had been difficult. Kora had spent more than one sleepless night sequestered in her bedroom, crying into her pillow to muffle already silent sobs. Slowly, she learned to compartmentalize the pain, and then to control it. Now, it only overwhelmed her on rare occasions—like the day that Jaden died.
“This was your—what did you call him? Your adoptive father?” Maricela asked.
“Yes.” Kora abandoned her clay in favor of watching Nita ply hers. It rippled smoothly beneath her skillful hands, responding to her slight, guiding touches. “He was doing what he felt was best for me, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. I enjoy my work, and I had a life in the city that most people would envy.”
Maricela snorted indelicately.
“However.” Kora pinned her sister with a pointed look. “I can’t say I was sorry to leave. I’m happy to be right where I am.”
Maricela’s consternation melted into fondness, and just as quickly into mischief. “Especially now that Ashwin is here.”
Nita dripped more water onto her clay, which was slowly taking the shape of a wide bowl. “When I asked Zeke and Bishop to help move my potter’s wheel into the courtyard, Zeke mentioned that Ashwin didn’t make it back to the barracks until dawn.”
“Really?” Maricela threw down her tools, the milagro she was sculpting forgotten. “Well, I wonder where he could have been.”
The surest way to disappoint her would be to refuse to talk about it, but Kora saw no reason to hide the truth. She wasn’t ashamed of anything. “He stayed with me last night.”
Nita laughed and flicked water at Maricela. “That’s it then, isn’t it? You’re going to be high on the power of love to conquer all for weeks. Months, maybe.”
Maricela put on her best affronted expression, though her twinkling eyes ruined the effect. “Excuse me, but I happen to consider that a universal truth, not a platitude.”
“Hopeless, deathless romantic,” Nita shot back, and shook her head at Kora. “You’ve ruined her forever already, so you might as well tell us all the magical details. So we can live vicariously.”
Okay, maybe she did have something to be ashamed of. “I don’t know what that means. I’ve never discussed my sex life with anyone before.”
“Hey, that’s okay.” Nita smiled at her encouragingly. “Want me to go first and show you how?”
“By all means.”
“So, about...oh, two years ago? We had a drifter show up on the ranch looking for seasonal work.” Nita dipped her hands into the water and resumed smoothing the edges of her bowl. “He was tall and blond and had this smile that made my stomach do flip-flops because you just knew he was trouble. And after about three weeks of flirting whenever we crossed paths, I just happened to come back late from riding along the river, and he just happened to be in the stables and offered to help me with my horse.”
Nita’s smile turned into a wicked grin. “So the next thing I knew, he had his head under my skirt and I was biting through my wrist trying not to scream loud enough to bring half the family running. Because the things that man knew how to do with his tongue? I’m pretty sure they were illegal.”
Kora’s cheeks grew hot. Maricela gasped, but the sound quickly turned into a giggle. “Oh, I remember him. I didn’t know you two were lovers.”
“Well I don’t know if I’d go that far. I mean, does it count as lovers when the only conversation you have is when he’s tracing the alphabet against your—”
Maricela gasped again and muttered something in Spanish.
But Kora’s thoughts were on a different path. “What happened to him?”
Nita shrugged. “He made enough to move on, so he did. I think he was headed up into the mountains, to one of those survivalist communities. We both knew it was never going to be anything more than what it was.”
It was a vastly different view of sexuality than what Kora had seen growing up—not that anyone on the Base had ever discussed it with her. But you couldn’t exist in a society, in a culture, without absorbing its beliefs, even if you disagreed with them.
In Eden, sex was a necessary evil to be used only for procreation, and even that was severely restricted. In reality, people in the city enjoyed sex as much as anyone else, but that enjoyment was often hindered or twisted by the lessons handed down by the former city leaders.
The hypocritical city leaders. Many of Eden’s f
ormer councilmen had maintained second homes in Sector Two, near the brothel district, where they could avail themselves of the prostitutes’ services at their convenience. While they were making speeches about virtue, they were having all the sex they wanted—sometimes with people who weren’t at liberty to refuse them.
It was disgusting.
Here, in Sector One, people had sex for lots of reasons—companionship, fondness, love, even just for fun—but no one used others for their own satisfaction without providing it in return. Or, more importantly, without their consent. They were free to do as they pleased, and the only caveat was that they should treat others as they themselves would want to be treated.
Kora still wasn’t sure she knew how to exist in a culture that freely celebrated sex, but she was familiar with the rest of it—empathy and consideration and compassion. And she couldn’t give Nita and Maricela a scandalous story, but she could offer her own truth, in her own way.
So she did. “I’ve been in love with Ashwin for almost three years.”
Maricela rested her chin on her hands, heedless of the wet clay still caking them. “A forbidden romance.”
“Hardly.” He had been her patient. She’d known her objectivity had been compromised—it always seemed to be compromised, especially compared to the other doctors on the Base—but she hadn’t realized how much until she was long gone. Until she was here, crying into her pillow at night again because she thought he was dead.
Nita was watching her with a different sort of fascination. “So you weren’t even involved with him back then?”
“I was his doctor. And he was…” Makhai. Untouchable. “He came in once with a laceration he’d sutured himself. The standard of care would have been to remove the sutures and repair it myself. I refused, because it had been a few days, so the wound had already begun to heal. Reopening it would have been unbearably painful for him.”
They watched, silent and still, waiting for her to go on.
“He wanted me to do it anyway, and it wasn’t because he was a stickler for adhering to protocol. I got the feeling that he didn’t want me to get in trouble because of him, and that was...new.” New and confusing and exhilarating. “I knew that I thought about him way too much. But that was the first time I ever considered that he might think about me, too.”
“Did you know then?” Nita asked softly. “That you loved him?”
“No, I’m slow.” Kora swallowed a laugh. “I finally figured it out last night.”
“By the Saints.” Maricela patted her on the shoulder. “I was going to deny it, but I guess you are slow.”
The laughter bubbled out, and Nita joined in as she returned her attention to the bowl forming in front of her. “You’d think we’d have love figured out by now. But even here in Sector One, where it’s the heart of everything, most of us can’t put our fingers on where it starts or what it means.”
They quieted as footsteps echoed on the tile. A moment later, Ashwin and Ivan walked around the edge of a wall and into the courtyard, and Kora’s heart flipped into her throat.
It didn’t make any sense. She’d seen him hundreds of times, thousands, and now in far more intimate situations than this. But it was like seeing him for the first time.
His hair had grown longer. A bit more and it would spill down over his forehead, and her fingers already itched with anticipation at the thought of brushing it back. He seemed...easier than usual. Just as casually dressed, but more relaxed.
Then she saw his busted lip.
She forgot all about the clay covering her hands as she stalked toward him. “What happened?”
He blinked, then lifted a hand to his mouth as if he’d forgotten. “Oh. Ana. I was teaching her how to get close to a taller opponent, and she surprised me.”
“Oh.” The sudden knot in her stomach eased. “You were sparring.”
“Yes.” He caught her wrist and studied her clay-caked fingers. “You’re...sculpting?”
“Badly.” She tried not to blush, but when did that ever work? “I think my artistic sensibilities begin and end with enjoying other people’s creations.”
He brushed his thumb over the dried clay clinging to her palm, seemingly oblivious to their audience. She cleared her throat, broke away, and plunged her hands into the bucket of cool water waiting at her workstation.
Ashwin watched for a moment before dipping his fingers into the water. His thumb grazed the back of her hand, rubbing in a slow circle to work the dried clay from her skin. The contact was electric, her response immediate, and she forgot all about Ivan’s dubious stare, Maricela’s unabashedly fascinated one, even Nita’s slightly wistful gaze.
She sucked in a sharp breath, trying to get enough air into her lungs, and shivered. Ashwin’s fingers slid over hers, slick under the water. It was innocent and erotic, all at once, and the dichotomy made her head swim.
He didn’t say anything, just stroked her hands until the clay was gone, then kept stroking them. Gentle. Precise. Not quite as innocent, not when his thumb trailed along her index and middle fingers, coaxing them apart in what had to be a deliberate echo of more intimate contact.
Her shiver turned into a shudder. Her skin heated, her nipples tightened, and her fingers trembled under the water. It would have made her feel vulnerable, exposed—if she’d been the only one. But Ashwin stared at her, his pupils dilated, his breathing fast and shallow, and a temptation too great to ignore gripped her. She looked down, her gaze drawn inexorably to the front of his jeans—
Maricela cleared her throat.
Kora jerked her hands out of the water and dried them hastily on her shirt.
“I was just—” Nita’s cough sounded suspiciously like a laugh as she used a wire to cut her bowl free of the wheel and transferred it to a wooden board. “Ivan, come make yourself useful. I need to bring this to my kiln.”
Ivan’s gaze flicked to Maricela.
“Yes,” Nita groaned, rising. “She’s coming too. Aren’t you, Maricela? And Ivan will protect you if anyone jumps out of the trees and tries to murder us.”
Maricela scoffed. “That part’s easy. It’s the smiling that’s hard, right, Ivan?”
His lips didn’t even twitch as he lifted the board from Nita’s hands. “I’ve heard that smiles can kill, Miss Rios.”
“Only the really good ones.”
Nita rolled her eyes and waved her hands, urging them forward. But on her way past, she winked at Kora.
She stifled a sigh. “I guess we’ll have to get used to that.”
“Hmm?” He reached for her cheek, swiping his thumb in a gentle circle. “How did you get clay on your cheek?”
“Art is messy.” She leaned into his touch. “Especially when you suck at it, I guess.”
“Were you enjoying it?”
“Very much. Mostly spending time with Nita and Maricela.” She squinted at his wounded lip. “What about you?”
He rubbed her cheek again, soothing this time. “I’ve always been good at training people. I find it...satisfying. I think I can help the Riders become better fighters.”
And they could help him discover what it was like to be part of a community. “Good.”
“Gideon said you needed an escort to go to Sector Four this afternoon. I told him I could take you.”
“Four—oh, my God.” She’d forgotten all about it. “That’s right, I gave my word.”
A tiny furrow appeared between his brows. “Is something wrong?”
“Not at all.” It seemed like forever since she’d promised Rachel that she would come back for the twins’ one-month checkup. It was like her life had been neatly split by Ashwin’s reappearance—there was ancient history, everything that came before, and there was now. “You’ll like this visit. You’ll get to see an old friend.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ashwin didn’t have the heart to tell Kora that the last time he’d seen Lorenzo Cruz, the man had shot him.
Perhaps he should have, though. Bec
ause when Cruz opened the door and caught sight of them, the man stiffened with a tension that Ashwin could only hope was imperceptible to Kora—the tension of a soldier trying not to lunge for a hidden weapon.
“Kora,” Cruz said mildly, his watchful gaze still locked on Ashwin. “It’s good to see you again. I know Rachel will be relieved you’re here. Isaac’s been keeping us all up with a cough.”
“Babies make all kinds of noises,” she said easily. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but I’ll be extra thorough.”
“Is that Kora?” another voice called. Cruz let go of the door as a second man pulled it wide. Ace Santana was leaner than his lover, with longer hair, a wicked glint in his eyes, and not a fraction of Cruz’s self-control. “Holy shit, it’s the crazy murder motherfucker.”
Kora’s expression froze.
“Ace.” Cruz smiled. “Why don’t you take Kora to the nursery so she can soothe Rachel’s nerves? Ashwin and I can catch up.”
Ashwin touched the small of Kora’s back. “It’s okay. I’ll be right here in the hallway if you need me.”
“I could say the same about the nursery,” she muttered, then followed Ace down the hallway, her medical bag in her hand.
When she was gone, Cruz stepped into the hallway, crowding Ashwin back far enough to allow him to shut the door. Even knowing Cruz had done so to protect his two lovers and his newborn infants, Ashwin felt the familiar prickle of protective anger along his spine.
He didn’t like having Kora on the other side of a closed door.
“So,” Cruz said, his voice still mild. “You found her.”
At Ashwin’s lowest point during the war, he’d gone crawling to Cruz. The memory was uncomfortably vivid, even if the churn of desperate, unchecked emotions that had gripped him had the hazy distance of a dream. Everything had hurt then, and his instincts had driven him toward the one person he was sure could fix him.
But Cruz had hidden Kora away—at Ashwin’s request—with the promise he wouldn’t tell Ashwin where she was. And when Ashwin had come ready to beat the truth out of him, Cruz had calmly shot him in the leg.