Rayne's Return (Hearts of ICARUS Book 3)

by Laura Jo Phillips

  Con opened the door for them, then closed it before hurrying ahead so he could open another door not far from the master suite. Landor carried her to the bed where pillows had already been arranged for her.

  “Bathroom first, please,” she asked quietly.

  “Of course,” Landor said, changing direction. He set her down in the bathroom and left, closing the door behind him. A few minutes later she opened the door and he hurried to pick her up again.

  “The food smells wonderful,” she said after Landor set her down on the bed.

  “Give us just a moment to get a plate ready for you,” Con said from the table where he was helping Ari unload two large trays.

  “I’d like to sit at the table if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” Landor replied, pleased by this small sign of her growing strength. He picked her up again and carried her across the room to the table.

  “I think I could have managed a few steps from the bed to the table,” she said.

  “You can start walking tomorrow,” he said, lowering her to a chair. “After you’ve recovered from the healing session.”

  “I’m holding you to that,” Rayne said, watching the men arrange the food on the table, fill glasses with juice, set out plates, utensils and napkins. Once they were all seated with heaping plates of food in front of them, and a tall glass of what appeared to be a chocolate shake next to her juice, silence fell while they ate enough to take the edge off their appetites.

  Rayne wasn’t sure why, exactly, but she had the strangest feeling that, aside from the egg that morning, this was the first real food she’d eaten in a very long time. She ate slowly, taking her time and enjoying each bite thoroughly, but she still felt full far too soon.

  “Rest a bit,” Landor suggested, watching as she set her fork down with a wistful expression on her face. “You really need to drink that glass of sasuna before going to bed tonight. Two would be better.”

  “I’ll start with one,” she said, reaching for the glass and taking a sip. “This is good,” she said, then took a larger drink. When she set the glass back down, she saw the worried expressions on their faces. “Don’t worry. I’d drink every single one without complaint even if they didn’t taste good.”

  “Good,” Landor said, “Because they want you to drink four glasses a day minimum. Six if you can manage it. We brought in a chiller and stocked it with sasuna, so you’ll always have plenty on hand.” He gestured to a corner of the room near the table and she nodded after spotting the chiller. “You also need to eat real food three times a day.”

  “Wow, that sounds like a lot,” she said, eyeing the tall glass doubtfully. Then she shrugged. “So long as there’s no need to drink them fast, I should do okay.”

  “How would you like a little good news?” Landor asked.

  “Good news is always welcome no matter its size.”

  “This is Con’s news to tell.” Rayne looked expectantly at Con.

  “The Armadura is now fitted with Blind Sight,” he said. “It’s been thoroughly tested, works perfectly, and no one knows about it save your parents, the Tigrens, and Khurda.”

  “That is good news,” Rayne said, then frowned. “Are you certain that Khurda will refrain from telling anyone about it? If the little blue thugs get so much as a hint that a Jasani ship even has Blind Sight, they’ll scramble every single one of their space stations and we’ll never find them.” She gasped softly as she realized what she’d just said.

  “Little blue thugs?” Con asked.

  “Yes, that’s what I called them,” she said, trying not to think about her answers before saying them. “They never told me anything about themselves, so I just thought of them as little blue thugs. Someone else was surprised by that too, but I can’t remember who.”

  “Are these little blue thugs the Doftle?” Landor asked.

  “I think so,” she replied, then nodded once. “Yes, that feels right.”

  “What was that about space stations?” Ari asked.

  “Oh,” she said, her eyes widening in surprise. “That’s right! I wasn’t on Buhell. I was on a space station orbiting Buhell.”

  “Why a space station?” Con asked.

  “Security,” she said, once again saying the first thing that came into her mind. “If anyone gets too close, they just move. With Blind Sight, they can never be found.”

  “They have Blind Sight too?” Landor asked.

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Then how will we find them when we get there?”

  Rayne opened her mouth, but it seemed the answers had stopped coming. “There must be a way, otherwise this is all for nothing, but I can’t remember what it is.”

  “You will,” Landor said without a trace of doubt in his voice. “We’ll just have to be patient.”

  Rayne nodded and sipped her drink again. She put the sasuna down and picked up her fork. “I think you should consider checking your crew for Controllers.”

  “We already have,” Landor said. “Considered it, I mean. Our physician is working on a method of conducting a search without making it obvious what he’s looking for. Have you remembered something more on that subject?”

  “No, but it keeps nagging at me. I have a strong feeling that you should do this before you tell everyone where we’re going.”

  “We won’t be sharing our final destination with anyone for a few days yet,” Landor said. “But we’ll do what we can to move a Controller search along more quickly.”

  Rayne nodded, took a bite of her baked potato and chewed while she tried to think of another topic. The first one that came to mind was the one she’d spoken with her mother about, but she wasn’t ready for that so she chose the second one she thought of instead. “Now that I’ve been healed I really want, and need, to build my strength and stamina up as quickly as I can. Any suggestions on the best way for me to do that?”

  “We have a wide selection of music on the ship’s mainframe, and you’re free to use one of the training rooms as a dance studio,” Ari said, surprising her. “The blade room might work best as it has mirrors and a hardwood floor. It won’t take long to have the barre installed.”

  “You have a barre?” Rayne asked in surprise. Ari just nodded, as though every Jasani war ship had a ballet barre in their equipment hold.

  “Dancing is too strenuous to start off with,” Con said. “I spoke with Kyerion on the subject and he suggested that you begin by walking slowly, either up and down the corridors or on a treadmill, no more than half a mile to start with. You don’t want to burn up the calories your body needs to repair itself, but you do need some mild exercise.”

  “Thank you, Con,” she said, speaking carefully because her lips were suddenly numb. She stared at the food on her plate without seeing it as her mind raced, putting together bits and pieces of a puzzle she hadn’t even been aware existed till this moment.

  “Rayne?” Landor asked.

  “How do you know that I like ballet?”

  “You’ve always liked ballet, since you were a child,” Landor replied.

  “We know a lot about you, Rayne,” Ari said.

  “Do you?” she asked, as she began moving the food around on her plate, although she no longer had a desire to eat any of it. “Like the fact that honeysuckle is my favorite scent?”

  “Yes, like that.”

  “Or that my favorite color is blue? Like the master suite.” She wondered why she hadn’t caught this stuff before. It was so obvious. “What else do you know about me?”

  “We know that you write music, and that you’ve sold several of your compositions,” Landor said. That shocked her into glancing up at him. She didn’t think anyone outside of her immediate family knew that. “Our favorite is a beautiful piano sonata performed by the Intergalactic Philharmonic’s star pianist, but we have copies of everything you’ve written that’s been recorded, and we listen to them all the time.”

  “We have a piano onboard, in case you wish to play,” Ari a
dded.

  “We know that you love anything chocolate,” Con put in, “and that you love dogs, cats, and horses, but don’t like talking birds.”

  “The little buggers freak me out,” she said, not realizing that she’d bitten the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood until she tasted it on her tongue.

  “We also know that you’ve never come across a computer system that you can’t make sit up and do tricks for you,” Landor said with a note of pride that she missed completely.

  When she continued to stare at the plate in front of her, Landor reached across the table and touched the back of her hand lightly, hoping that she’d look up. She looked at his fingers on her hand for a long moment, then back to her plate. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I’m just…I don’t,” she paused and took a breath. “How…no, why do you know so much about me?”

  “You’re our berezi, Rayne,” Landor replied. “The one woman created just for us. We’ve waited nearly three centuries for you. There’s never been anyone or anything that holds more interest for us than you, and there never will be.”

  Rayne could hardly breathe around the enormous lump in her throat. She saw that she was holding a fork in one hand and couldn’t remember why. She set it down with deliberate care, her eyes still glued to her plate as a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions spun through her mind.

  Landor wished he could tell what she was feeling, but her shield was up, her head was bowed, and her eyes were down, so there was nothing giving her away. “Please tell us what we said that upset you?”

  “I’m just…surprised,” she said in a choked voice that they had to strain to hear. “More than surprised.”

  “Surprised about what?” Landor asked.

  Rayne gathered her courage and raised her head so she could see all three of them. They stiffened at the stark pain in her eyes. “I thought you’d just discovered I was your berezi last night, when you found me on the mesa. But from what you’ve just told me, it’s quite clear that you’ve known for a long time.”

  “Yes, we have,” Landor admitted, wondering how they could have made such an enormous mistake. But what was done was done. “We discovered you were our berezi when you were fourteen years old.”

  Rayne’s head jerked as though his words had physically struck her. Fourteen. The last time she remembered seeing them had been when they’d realized she was meant for them. “I have no memory of this.”

  “That’s because we never told you,” Landor said. “You were a child, Rayne. We had to wait until you grew up.”

  “I’ve been grown up for a while now.”

  “Not really,” Con said. “You just graduated from college.”

  “College has nothing to do with this,” she said, frowning at him. “According to Jasani law I’ve been an adult since I turned eighteen. That means you’ve had four years to tell me.”

  The three of them exchanged silent looks before Landor responded with heavy reluctance. “We just thought it was best, Rayne.”

  “Why?”

  “Even if we’d told you, you still would have needed to finish your schooling,” Con said. “Nothing would have changed for you either way.”

  “I disagree. Salene knew that she was the Gryphons’ berezi for three years before we graduated. That knowledge made her happier than I’ve ever seen her, even though it had never been her dream to find her Rami as soon as she came of age.”

  “We did what we thought was right, Rayne and whether it was or not, we cannot change it now,” Landor said.

  “I understand that, but it still doesn’t explain why you chose not to tell me,” she said, refusing to let them put her off. “I want to know.” She watched as they exchanged looks yet again. “Please.” Landor looked into her eyes and saw how important it was to her.

  “Before you appeared on the mesa last night, we’d never been in your presence for more than a few minutes at a time since before you were fourteen,” he began. “We kept our distance for our sake, as well as for yours, but our curiosity about you was insatiable. We learned as much about you as we could over the years, which is why we know so much about you now. But the one thing we never suspected was how talented you are at hiding. Even now, when we can easily see how upset you are, we feel nothing but a sense of peaceful calm coming from you.” Rayne frowned, uncertain where he was going with this, or why an uncomfortable roiling sensation began growing inside of her.

  “In our experience, only children spend the majority of their time in a state of contentment, punctuated by occasional fits and spurts of high emotion. That, and the fact that we’d never reacted to your scent except for one brief moment yesterday, during the wedding. Those things indicated to us that you were not yet ready for us to claim.”

  Rayne bit her lip hard as a sensation of cold started at the top of her head and trickled down over her face before spreading to the rest of her body. Shock, she thought. She was experiencing some form of mild shock.

  Con held up one hand, interrupting Landor. “Let me tell this part, please,” he said. Landor nodded, and Rayne turned her head slowly so that she faced Con on the other side of the table even as she wondered whether or not she wanted to hear any more.

  “Last night, before you reappeared on the mesa, we were looking for you,” Con said in a low voice, not quite meeting her eyes. “We climbed up to see if you were there, but the area was deserted, or so we thought. I allowed my frustration to get the best of me, and I made a comment or two about your immaturity that I should not have made.” He looked up and, finally, met her gaze. “I know you don’t remember it, but I’m sorry anyway, Rayne. I called you an immature child, and it was not only wrong of me to say, it was also untrue.”

  Rayne could only nod her acceptance of his apology because she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. When Landor opened his mouth to speak again, she decided that she’d heard enough for the time being. She held up one hand, a silent plea for him to stop, which he did.

  “I think I’d like to go to bed now, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Or, if you want to finish your meals, I can sleep somewhere else.”

  “No, Rayne, that’s not necessary,” Landor said, keeping his voice gentle. When he saw Con open his mouth, he shook his head sharply. Con closed his mouth, though it was obvious he wasn’t happy about it. Landor turned his attention back to Rayne. “We’ve installed a security system on this room, and we’ve woven a shield all the way around it, including the bathroom, just as we said we would. You’ll be perfectly safe in here on your own. Do you need help with anything before we leave?”

  Rayne shook her head, keeping her eyes on her hands which were now folded in her lap. “Con and Ari unpacked the things you’re mother brought over so if there’s anything you can’t find, let us know,” Landor said as he placed a vox on the table beside her plate and stood up. “This is preprogrammed with our private numbers. All you have to do is say one of our names if you want or need us for any reason.”

  “Thank you,” Rayne said, her hands clenching into fists now. Every second they delayed was more difficult for her to get through. She listened to Ari and Con stand up, and then begin to walk toward the door. They both paused behind her, and for a long moment she was afraid they’d touch her. If they did, she feared she would shatter into a million pieces. After a few seconds they continued walking, and she allowed herself to breathe again.

  “Please try to finish the sasuna,” Landor said softly from somewhere behind her. “Don’t forget, there’s more in the chiller if you can manage two.” She nodded slowly. A moment later the door closed, and the lock clicked as it was engaged. She waited a few more seconds, then looked up to be sure that she was completely alone. Only then did she allow her tears to fall.

  ***

  “That didn’t go very well,” Ari said as they stood together in the corridor outside of Rayne’s room.

  “No, it certainly didn’t,” Landor agreed.

  “We shouldn’t have le
ft things like that,” Con said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “We should’ve stayed until she understood why we did what we did.”

  “I don’t agree,” Landor said. “She indicated she didn’t want to talk any more, and we will abide by her request. This is about what she needs, Con. Not what we want.”

  Con nodded reluctantly. “You’re right, of course.”

  “She’s been through a lot in the past twenty-four hours,” Landor continued. “The least we can do right now is give her a little breathing room.”

  “What will we do in the meantime?” Ari asked.

  “I intend to light a fire under Pip and get that Controller search moving,” Landor said. “Rayne thinks it’s important, and that raises a red flag in my mind.”

  “Khurda and I were talking about breaking through Blind Sight systems and he gave me some data he’s been working on. I think I’ll feed it into the Armadura’s mainframe and see what I can do with it.”

  “Excellent idea,” Landor said. “Ari, would you object to keeping an eye on Rayne’s door? I think it would be best if she doesn’t know you’re watching. I told her she’s safe, but I’m afraid that if she sees you, she’ll doubt it’s true.”

  “I’ll put a micro cam on my door which will give me a view of her door on my hand terminal. That way I can watch her from inside my room and she’ll never know. While I’m doing that, I’ll continue my search for the Doftle.”

  “Sounds good,” Landor said. “Give one of us a call when you get tired.”

  “Of course,” Ari agreed. He stood watching as his brothers headed up the corridor toward the elevator, then turned to unlock his own door directly across the hall. He had a feeling that it was going to be a long night.

  ***

  Rayne didn’t know how long she sat at the table crying, but it was long enough that when her tears stopped flowing it was because she had no more, not because she felt better. She understood now why she’d felt so sad about the Bearen-Hirus. She’d waited her whole life for the one male-set meant just for her, and when she’d finally discovered their identities, it was only to learn that they didn’t want her. Even though the memory was gone, the pain and sadness she must have felt after hearing them talk about her must have been so strong, and so deep, that it had surpassed memory and embedded itself in her heart.