by Roxie Ray
“And until then, the lords here all hate me because I won’t play baby factory for them, and the ladies hate me because they think I’m here to seduce all the men.”
“There are plenty of men on Lunaria,” Bria reminded me. “More than enough to go around. If the ladies are annoyed, that’s not your fault. You never asked for all this attention, and it’s not like you’ve been going around flirting with anyone who lays eyes on you.” Her smile returned, small but sly. “Except for Haelian, I guess, but you two were thick as thieves from the start.”
Thinking of things like that made me smile a little too. Bria was right—I hadn’t been flirting with anyone other than Haelian. He’d made it clear to the other lords that they weren’t welcome around me as soon as he realized I was getting attention that I didn’t want.
I opened my mouth to thank Bria for making me feel better, but before I could speak, the guard that Bria had handed Kali off to returned to his post—only to immediately unlock the front doors of the suite and pull them open without prompting.
Bria and I exchanged a look of panic and confusion. What? Kloran had been pretty explicit that he wanted those doors locked and guarded. I assumed he had given that order for a reason.
Bria spoke up first, thankfully—I was so flabbergasted to even find words.
“Close that at once,” she snapped at the guard. “Do you have any idea what Kloran will do when he—”
Her voice died off as a Lunarian woman appeared in the doorway, though. She was beautiful—that was the first thing I noticed about her. She had thick, raven-black hair that tumbled in sleek ringlets all the way to her waist, and her orange skin was so pale that she could have passed as human if it hadn’t been for her height, her claws and the way her sharp white fangs flashed from the saccharine smile on her ruby lips.
“Announcing the Lady Idria Brixta of High House Brixta,” the guard who had unlocked the door said as he dropped down to one knee and bowed low. The guard on the other side of the door did the same as Idria swept into Bria’s suite like she owned the place.
Immediately, Bria was on her feet with her hands on her hips.
“Lady Idria,” she snapped. I could practically feel the rage flowing off of her. It looked like Kloran wasn’t the only one who had a temper. “I would say it’s pleasant to see you this evening, but you seem to have forgotten your manners. Or is this how noble Lunarian women behave now? Dropping in unannounced and bursting through other people’s doors at any hour of the night they like?”
Bria had a point. I hadn’t liked the look of Lady Idria from the first moment I laid eyes on her, and it wasn’t just that creepy smile of hers that had me on edge. How had Kloran’s guards even known that she was on her way? And more importantly, why had they disobeyed Kloran’s orders and unlocked the doors to let her in?
“Oh, do not be so old-fashioned, Bria.” Idria moved across the room like a gust of wind decked out in a red gown and emerald jewels. No—not a gust of wind. A freakin’ hurricane. “I merely thought I would stop by to see what all the fuss was about.” Her eyes fell on me, and suddenly, I was completely frozen in her stare. Her irises weren’t like a normal Lunarian’s. Instead of purple, all I saw was deep, dark black. “Your name is Sawyer, is it not? I believe my brother called on you when you first arrived here on Lunaria. He was quite disappointed to be turned away.”
I tried to think back to the callers that I’d had on my first day on Lunaria. Vaguely, I remembered red and green banners approaching across the palace’s courtyard—or at least, they had been until Haelian had kissed me. Before the kiss had ended, they’d disappeared.
“I don’t think I even spoke to your brother,” I told her—because I hadn’t. “Sorry if I disappointed anyone. If I would’ve known…”
“Of course,” Idria said—but that last part of what I’d said wasn’t true, and I could already tell she wasn’t buying it. “Regardless, as soon as I heard that the doors to your suite had been defaced, I thought it would be best for me to come over and ensure that you were not too shaken. Such a terrible crime,” she simpered. Geez. She was really laying it on thick. “You must feel so unsafe here now.”
Bria moved in front of me, putting herself between Idria and me. That was sweet of her, I guessed—but she was shorter than both of us, and newly pregnant to boot. All things considered, I probably would have preferred to handle this myself. But Bria was obviously just as fierce as Kloran when she wanted to be, and she’d been on Lunaria for a lot longer than I had. She must have known something about this Idria lady that I didn’t.
“Sawyer feels perfectly safe here,” Bria said sharply. “We thank you for your visit, but the hour is late. You should probably go.”
“I will leave in due time,” Idria assured us. Something told me due time to her meant whenever she damn well pleased, though. “First, though, I must inquire—Sawyer, have you thought any more about the offer that has been made to return you to your home? After being made to feel so unwelcome here, you must be simply aching to return to Earth where you belong.”
Bria’s hackles were already up, and my own indignation was starting to rise, too.
“She’s not going anywhere, Idria,” Bria snapped. “And I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“How did you even know about the message on my doors?” I blurted out. Bria shot me a dirty look over her shoulder for asking, but to be fair, it was a good question. We’d only just discovered the message ourselves. I doubted that word could have possibly traveled that fast.
“Lady Idria’s family has ties to the Lunarian intelligence division,” Bria explained. “She’s very well connected. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hears about most things before they happen these days.”
Idria stared Bria down for a moment, then let out a loud, over-the-top laugh.
“Oh, Bria. You are simply hilarious.” The sparkle of Idria’s compliment didn’t quite reach her eyes, though. Instead, she turned back toward me again. “Is it true then, Sawyer? You intend to stay here on Lunaria for the foreseeable future?”
I opened my mouth before I was even sure of how to answer. Sure, when I first saw the graffiti on my doors, it had popped into my mind that maybe I ought to just go home. But now…
Now, I felt like me going home to Earth was exactly what this Idria woman wanted to hear. And after I’d spent my entire engagement to Aiden giving him and everyone else exactly what they wanted from me…
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m staying. Definitely, absolutely staying.”
As the words left my mouth, there was something satisfying about the way they made Idria twist up her face in disgust. She’d been smiling so awfully since the moment she walked in, it actually felt kind of good to be the one to wipe that smirk right off her lips.
“I hope you don’t come to regret that,” Idria said, almost sing-song in tone as she turned and took her leave.
As soon as she was gone, Bria and I both let out breaths I didn’t think either of us realized we’d been holding.
“I think you just made an enemy, Sawyer.” Bria nodded at the guards, who finally closed the doors once more.
“I think she might have been my enemy before I even knew her name,” I countered. “Is she always that—”
Before I could finish my thought, I was cut off by a piercing wail that cut through the air all around us like a knife. From the next room, I could hear Kaliope start crying again in response to the sound. And just before Bria turned to race toward the Kali’s room, I watched all the color drain from her face.
“Bria?” I called after her. “Bria, what’s happening?”
“Warning sirens,” Bria yelled over her shoulder. At the door to Kaliope’s room, she paused and waved me toward her frantically. “Come on. Follow me. Now, Sawyer.”
“What? Warning sirens for what?” I asked, already on my way over to her.
“Rutharians.” Bria said the word like it was a curse. In Kaliope’s room, she scooped the baby up i
nto her arms and I grabbed a diaper bag. “Hurry up. We don’t have much time.”
“Rutharians, here? Coming to Lunaria?” My head was still spinning as Bria grabbed hold of my wrist and dragged me back out into the living room. Our guards were mysteriously gone. At a bookshelf—or what had looked like a bookshelf, at any rate—she waved her hand across a row of spines and suddenly, the shelves disappeared and a door shimmered into existence in its place. When it opened, it revealed a steep staircase illuminated only by a strip of glowing blue light on either side of it as it descended into the darkness. “But surely you guys have like, anti-aircraft missiles for something like that, right?”
Bria pulled me into the stairwell and shut the door behind us, then shook her head. When I met her eyes, her face was contorted with fear—real, actual fear.
“We do,” she said. “But if the warning sirens are already sounding, it’s too late.”
“How—”
“They’re not coming to Lunaria,” Bria whispered. “They’re already here.”
22
Haelian
The warning sirens sounded as I sped through the marketplace. When their ear-splitting cry hit me, my heart stopped cold.
Impossible. Lunaria was not a defenseless, unprotected planet. Our military prowess on land, sky, and space was famous throughout the galaxies. We were not some backwater people with only pitchforks and torches to defend ourselves. Our technology was advanced. Our atmosphere was guarded by automated systems that should have blown any unapproved craft from the heavens long before it came anywhere close to our cities or our people.
But when I looked up to the moons, I saw a dark shape cut across their silver glows. Not a full dreadnought, but a large enough ship that I knew we would be in for bloody fight. When I saw the direction it was taking in its descent, my heart froze over solid and dropped into my gut like a gold coin tossed into the plunging flow of a waterfall.
It was headed for the palace. On the one hand, I knew that could be a fortuitous break. The grounds would be teeming with guards, many of which were in either Kloran’s employ or my own. When it came to doing battle with Rutharians, there was rarely any such thing as a fair fight, but at the very least we would not be outnumbered there.
On the other hand…
The palace was where Sawyer was. Where Bria and Kaliope were as well. The barracks were far enough away that summoning a true military presence to the palace’s grounds would take longer than the battle itself would run. Kloran was not likely far away, I knew, and had surely abandoned his mission with the politicians as soon as the siren had reached his own ears. Nion would arrive with Gallix and Ronan not long after us—and, if we were lucky, if his loyalties to his command were as strong as I hoped, with Apex as well.
Best-case scenario, there would be six of us and a palace full of highly trained Lunarian guards to protect all who were inside the palace’s gates.
Worst-case scenario…
I pushed the hoverbike to the top speed its engines would allow and rode onward, banishing that idea from my mind. I could not think of worst-case scenarios right now. My mate was inside the palace, as were Kloran’s wife and cub. Worst-case scenarios could not be entertained if I wanted to fight brave, furious, and true. In the heat of battle, I would have to brawl and kill as though we had already won. Any other option was too horrible to bear.
The Rutharian ship landed in the courtyard just as I blasted through the palace’s gates. I could hear the churning of dirt beneath its patchwork metal hull as it plowed a trench through the grounds, marring the grass and turning up soil.
Immediately, my hopes of matching their forces were dashed. There were no guards at the gates. No men rushing down the palace steps with swords and blasters in hand. Instead, descending the steps with a handful of men in tow was a tall, dark-haired Lunarian female dressed in red. I caught a glimpse of her smile as I raced past.
Idria. I should have known that wherever there was trouble on Lunaria, she would not be far away. The direction she and her men took as they reached the base of the steps gave me no hope that they would be of any use to us in this skirmish. In fact, they seemed to be headed in the direction opposite of the Rutharian ship—fleeing to save their own skins, with no regard for those they were leaving defenseless in their wake.
If before I had possessed an inkling that Idria and the intelligence division were not to be trusted, now I all but knew it. Her smile told all. Good fortunes to you, Haelian Mihor, that smile said. You will surely need them.
When I reached the courtyard, to my relief, I spotted Kloran running toward the ship at full speed. Already the ship’s boarding ramps had been lowered. A wave of red-skinned berserkers poured from the ship’s mouth. I leapt from my bike without allowing it to slow first. It skidded across the gravel of a pathway as I abandoned it to launch into a sprint of my own.
For now, it seemed, it would only be the two of us against the entire Rutharian horde that had just landed. I caught his eyes, burning with fire and blood, as we raced into the fray.
Outnumbered. Alone. And with the lives of those we loved most held within the palace at our backs. The only defenses between the palace’s walls and the berserkers would be the two of us.
There was no such thing as a fair fight with the Rutharians, but this one, it seemed, would be even less fair than most.
I bared my claws anyway. Pulled back my lips to snarl at the oncoming forces with the sharpness of my fangs. The odds were against us, but Kloran and I did not fight based on something so insipid as chance. We fought with tooth and nail, blood and glory. And the things we fought for, I knew, we sought to protect with far more passion than an entire planet full of Rutharians could ever seek to take.
Kloran’s body shifted to a blur as he swept the front line, claws slashing and a wave of Rutharian blood spilling as each berserker fell. From the other side, I took the next row. My talons sank between ribcages, swept sharply up through the soft skin of Rutharian necks. One berserker lowered his horns as I met him, aiming to gouge me in the stomach with his pointed tips, but I spun at the last second, throwing him off balance. I used that momentum to grab hold of his horns and twist his neck around. He dropped to the ground at my feet, twitching—but he did not rise again.
My heart thundered in my chest like the hooves of a frenzied herd of beasts against packed dirt. My blood ran hot as sweat beaded my brow. Every berserker who met me, I ended with swiftness. Each time I caught sight of Kloran through the fray, I saw that he was doing the same.
This was what we had trained our whole lives for. First, in the fighting pits, then on the battlefields of foreign planets in defense of peoples less suited for bloodshed than we were. But as the Rutharians kept coming, wave after wave, I knew this could not continue for much longer. Never before had it just been the two of us against such numbers. We were but two generals warring against more men than I had mind or reason to count. With each berserker we had to stop and kill, we were losing ground.
And if the tide of battle did not change soon, we would not be fighting in the courtyard for much longer. We would be spilling Rutharian blood on the palace’s steps instead, then in its halls—then in the very rooms where our mates and Kloran’s cub were meant to be hidden safely away from the horrors of the fight.
But just as I was beginning to fear that we would lose the courtyard, something shifted in the ranks of the Rutharians before us. I caught a flash of green hair and the shine of an unsheathed blade, cutting down a row of Rutharians from behind—Nion. Red-fleshed bodies were tossed skyward with reckless abandon as Gallix and Ronan launched themselves into the battle as well. And as an entire column of Rutharians were dropped to their knees in what looked to be a single blur of orange skin and black hair moving so quickly, it was almost invisible, I realized that even Apex had joined our fight.
Six loyal Lunarian men against an entire ship of Rutharians. We were still outnumbered, but suddenly, I felt a little more favorably about our od
ds.
The fight could have gone on for hours. Days. Years. The only way I had to tell time was the unending glow of the moons overhead and the seconds between taking one Rutharian life before moving onto the next. But slowly, I could see that we were making headway. The space between facing off with our assailants was becoming longer, more staggered. For once, we were no longer losing ground—we were taking it instead.
Kloran claimed the last of the Rutharian forces, a young pilot whose horns were no longer than the length of my palm. I could not pretend not to delight in the way the pilot’s eyes flashed with fear as Kloran took him by the neck and snapped it cleanly. It was a quick death, but a necessary one. We all knew the price we might have paid if even one Rutharian had been allowed inside the palace. There could be no mercy for these snakes. If it had been the Rutharians who had claimed victory, we knew they would not have shown any to us—or to our people.
A quick, clean death was the greatest mercy we could allow.
I glanced around me, chest heaving and lungs on fire. To my left, Gallix was on all fours as he loomed over a Rutharian body, still beating away at it like he had not yet realized the man was dead. Behind him, Ronan was nearly black with blood, his head turned skyward as he folded all four of his hands in prayer. Kloran lowered the young Rutharian pilot’s body to the dirt at his feet, then ran a hand across his face to wipe his mouth clean of the black blood that marred his lips and fangs. And just there, on the tree line, I caught a glimmer from Apex’s eyes before he disappeared into the night. I suspected that it was against Idria’s wishes that he had arrived to aid us. By the time I thought to give chase to him and question him on Idria’s own involvement in this, he was gone. Vanished. As though he had never taken part in the battle at all.
It was Nion who had taken the worst of the skirmish. I searched around for him frantically. For a moment, I thought perhaps he, too, had taken his leave. But then, I spotted a sprig of green hair atop an entire pile of Rutharian bodies. Kloran caught sight of him at the same time and we both rushed to his side with haste.