The Breaking

by Imogen Keeper

  It seemed to involve a combination of buttering Torum up and convincing him that she wasn’t a threat, but after that… He had no clue. What the hell came next? It made him nervous.

  She’d proven herself capable, damned capable, and he was proud of her, but enough was enough.

  Torum mixed another of his vile protein drinks and stomped over. Ajax knew the drill. He tilted his head back and opened wide so Torum could dump the crap down his gullet.

  It was disgusting, to put it mildly, like a combination of dust and blood all mixed together, thick and acrid, but his stomach was hungry, and he had a feeling he would need the energy.

  Feola eyed the concoction with narrowed eyes.

  Torum poured another batch, and Ajax’s gag reflex kicked in. He held it in his mouth, waiting for the urge to vomit to subside as Torum moved over to Feola.

  “Open.”

  She wrinkled her nose and shook her head.

  “Open.”

  With a morose glare, she opened her mouth.

  Torum poured the liquid into her mouth, and she promptly coughed it up, spitting it out onto Torum’s boots.

  Torum hopped backward, giving her a disgusted look.

  Feola kept gagging, which only made Ajax’s stomach heave. He managed to keep the fluid in his mouth…

  “It’s this pregnancy,” she panted, raising her shackled hands to wipe her mouth. “I’m sick all the time.”

  Ajax spat his own vile fluid out over the blue flowers on the powdery ground in front of him.

  Torum cocked his head.

  “You’re what?” Ajax couldn’t clear his head.

  Feola sat up on her heels. “Oh, Ay-shocks. What a terrible way for you to find out. I’m pregnant.”

  He should be a better man. He should have felt elated, joyous. Instead, the first numbing thought to cross his mind was to wonder if the baby was Utto’s. The sadistic fuck.

  “How far along are you?”

  “Not far. I only just missed my cycle.”

  Ajax narrowed his eyes at her. He knew her well by now. The way her eyes widened, and she froze for a split second before speaking. She was lying. He finally exhaled.

  “Aren’t you happy?” she asked in a shaky, soft voice.

  Ajax nodded, at a loss for words.

  She chattered with Torum as he finished packing up supplies. Or rather, she chattered at Torum. Torum didn’t seem to know what to make of her.

  Ajax didn’t, either. She was a bundle of complexities.

  She went on about baby names and the advantages of girls over boys, as Torum herded them into an awkward march.

  Ajax worked out the order a plan would have to take. Take Torum out. Use his thumb to remove the shackles. Take Torum’s ship. Contact Tam. Get off this miserable planet.

  It was the details that were the problem.

  His father, a politician back on Argentus, had said the same thing over and over again as Ajax and his brother had been growing up. Be weak when you are strong. And strong when you are weak.

  About two miles into their walk, he stumbled over a thick ridge of the little blue flowers, dropping to his knees.

  Feola ran over to help him rise.

  Ajax shook her off.

  He stumbled again a few yards later, earning a dour glare from Torum.

  Again, Feola helped him rise.

  The fifth time he stumbled, he didn’t rise, not even with Feola’s help. Torum cursed. “Stand up. Or I kill you. I don’t need you.”

  Ajax just panted and drooled pathetically into the dust.

  Torum rotated his rezal on its strap, so it hung behind his back, and walked over to where Ajax lay. Out of the corner of his eye, Ajax watched him hesitate. He placed his hand under Ajax’s elbow and pulled. Ajax let him pull him into a kneeling posture, his head reeling back as if he were struggling to breathe.

  He collapsed back to the ground, watching through lowered lashes as the other one wavered.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Laugher called.

  Torum just shoved Ajax in the shoulder, hauling him back to his knees, where Ajax sagged, limp in Torum’s grip.

  After a moment, Laugher tossed his weapon over his shoulder and stomped over to stand beside Torum. “What’s his problem?”

  Torum shrugged and reached for his canteen, leaning forward, finally within range. It was the closest Torum had let his face get.

  Ajax slammed his head forward. The hardest part, the solid knot at the top of his forehead, connected with the softest part of Torum’s nose.

  Torum flew back, hands flying up to cover his nose, and Ajax was on his feet. He slammed his foot forward, connecting first with Laugher’s groin. A second hard kick to Torum’s temple, and the man’s eyes shut.

  Laugher fell forward, and Ajax kneed him in the face. It all happened fast. In a blink or two. Barely more than a couple of quick breaths.

  Feola scrambled forward, grabbing Torum’s rezal. Laugher bucked, rising to his feet with a shout.

  Three things happened all at once. Feola shouted. Laugher lunged. And the rezal fired.

  It echoed long and loud.

  Laugher fell to the ground, eyes wide with shock, hands coming up to press over the bleeding hole in the center of his chest. He barely even made a sound before he fell to the ground.

  Dead.

  Feola dropped the rezal to the dust. A cloud rose up around it.

  Her lips shook. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  Still being cuffed was a bitch.

  “It’s okay.” He moved over to her, wanting to move her away from them, wanting to pull her close.

  She tugged away, shaking her head, mouth a tight line. She knelt and pressed Torum’s thumb against the top of her wrist shackles.

  The metal springs broke free.

  “Hurry, Ay-shocks. Bend down so we can get yours off.”

  Within a matter of minutes, he and Feola cuffed Torum’s arms behind his back and confiscated his weapons. Ajax rotated his shoulders, stiff and sore. Silence spread between them, thick and pulsing. He didn’t know what to say, so he just said the first words that came to him. “You aren’t really pregnant, are you?”

  “No.”

  He should have been relieved, and he was, but there was something else there too. Maybe just a quick flash of disappointment.

  Ah, shit. He was screwed.

  39

  Please don’t make me go back.

  Feola chewed her lip, studying Torum’s sleeping face. His eyelids fluttered for the barest flicker of a second, and then his shoulders bucked. He did not look happy. He twisted, thrashing, trying to pull his arms out of the shackles.

  She stood over him, using her body to shade him. “I’m sorry. You’ve actually been fairly kind to us.” He whipped a partial circle on the dusty ground, and she took a quick step backwards.

  Ajax stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder, drawing her closer, his eyes locked on their prisoner. “Can you stand?”

  Torum snarled, a steady stream of spitting curses erupting from his mouth. His face was bruised across his temple, and dried blood streaked and matted into his hair.

  “Are you nauseated? Is your vision clear?”

  “Fuck you,” Torum grunted.

  “Get up,” Ajax said. “And I’ll give you some water.”

  Torum’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth turned down, but he staggered awkwardly to his feet. His broad shoulders arched back. To his credit, Ajax didn’t smirk.

  “It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You want water or not?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Ajax did smile then. “Open.”

  He poured water into Torum’s open mouth while she scanned the horizon. Nothing in sight for miles. They’d left the grove of trees and the river behind them, and the plain with its clusters of white leaves and blue flowers had given way to hard, cracked soil. They’d walked for a few hours. She
did not want to spend the night out here, so far from the river.

  “Where’s your ship?” Ajax’s voice was as calm as ever, and she drew in a deep breath, taking comfort in his stolidity.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Okay. So we’ll kill you now.” Ajax shrugged. “We can live here for as long as we need to until our people come for us. Your ship can help us get them here faster, but if you won’t help, we might as well kill you and look for it on our own.”

  “You won’t kill me.” Torum’s gaze settled on her. “She likes me.”

  It was true. She’d developed a vague respect for the man. He could have been far crueler. She squatted down beside him. Ajax’s hand on her shoulder was firm, keeping her from getting closer.

  “I don’t like you. But I’d hate to see you hurt. You were kind to us, sort of. Or you could have been less kind.” She glanced at Ajax, then back to Torum, still struggling with his bindings. Something about his eyes, dark and glittering. She’d seen them before. In a crowd. One pair out of a thousand. “Torum, you were there.”

  Torum’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. It was enough of a confirmation. The lights had been dark, but she’d suspected for a while that he’d been the strange specter who’d watched their performance at the club on Pilan.

  Ajax made a weird sound next to her, shifting on his feet.

  “You were following us even then. You saw what we did on Pilan to get away. I’d perform naked before a thousand men again if it guaranteed I’d never have to go near Utto again. I…” She couldn’t finish. Her throat closed at the thought of the dead man they’d left behind, under a grove of silver trees. “Do you know what my mate did to me?”

  He froze, his eyes slipping past her face, settling in the distance.

  “Did anyone tell you why I ran away? Probably not. I ran because Utto used to hurt me. He’s a big man. Like you. He didn’t usually leave marks, at least not where anyone could see, but he knew how to hurt me. And I was stuck there, alone and scared, because I needed his serum. I was his slave.”

  She studied Torum. His eyes didn’t change at the word slave. If he’d been deeply involved in the business on Pilan, he’d have known about the slaves. He’d have reacted somehow. But his face didn’t move, which made her think he didn’t actually work for the Upranimus family, that he was a mercenary soldier of some sort.

  “And then his cousin came to visit.”

  Ajax’s fingers tightened on her shoulder.

  “And Utto let him touch me. He didn’t want to, but Rennie had power over him. Rennie found me in the bathroom the day I planned to escape. He—he wanted me because it was a way to show his power over Utto. Like I wasn’t even a person. Just another slave to be used by them.”

  Torum looked away.

  “I killed him. I stabbed him in the back as he walked away from me. He touched me—he told me to get myself ready for him and come into the bedroom naked so he could have sex with my body. He was bigger, and if I had resisted, he’d have beaten me. So I killed him.”

  A hot gust of air lifted her hair, and the sun burned into her back.

  “I saw the way you acted when you thought I was pregnant and sick. You’re not a man who likes to see women uncomfortable. Please. Don’t make me go back to a man who hates me.”

  A long silent moment passed between them. Ajax didn’t try to offer comfort, and for that, she was profoundly grateful.

  “I’m sorry about your partner,” she said after a long moment.

  “Fine,” Torum said after a long moment and lumbered to his feet, big body swaying, balance impeded by his shackles.

  * * * * *

  Torum’s ship was nothing like the Tribe’s spacecraft. Ajax had seen a few Vestigi ships but never this close before. It was an older model. Probably an old decommissioned craft put out to pasture, but still, its foreignness made it exotic.

  A fresh wave of boyish wonder had him reaching out to stroke a hand along its sleek, black hull. Their ships were rounder, and unlike the Argenti ships, they weren’t reflective. The Vestige didn’t have camouflage capabilities—at least not in wide use. So their ships were dull and dark to blend in with the night sky.

  It was beautiful, though, slim and flat, like a massive disk.

  He glanced at Torum, whose dark eyes gleamed.

  Ajax inclined his head toward the ship. “Open her up.”

  Torum hesitated for a long moment. The two faced off, eyeing each other.

  “Excuse me,” Feola’s accented, musical voice trilled. “It’s hot out here. Do you two plan to stare into each other’s eyes all day? Because I’d like to know now. I could just go find a seat in the shade on the other side of the ship and wait.”

  Torum glanced at her, and Ajax didn’t care for the gleam in his eyes when his gaze landed on his mate.

  His mate. The thought made him smile. She was his. His.

  His smile widened.

  Feola blinked at him, in her sweet, perfect, blinky, pink way, and the grin on his face spread. “Are you okay, Ay-shocks? Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I’m fine.” He turned back to Torum. “Are you going to make me break your nose again?”

  Torum rotated his jaw a few times.

  Feola cleared her throat. Threw up her hands.

  Finally, Torum stepped toward the ship and pressed his thumb over a small pad on the side. A hatch opened, metal grinding against metal.

  Ajax nearly held his breath. He’d never been inside a Vestigi ship.

  It was… cool.

  He let his eyes roll back as a gust of cold air rushed through the open circular hatch. He gestured for Feola to go first and then Torum so he could keep an eye on him.

  Icy air blasted against his face. Ajax sighed and whipped his shirt over his head. “Close the hatch.”

  Torum seemed to have already reached the same conclusion, because, with the awkward two-handed motions of his still-shackled hands, he was already shoving his thumb into a pad inset into the wall.

  The hatch slid shut, and the sweat all over his skin evaporated, cooling his hot skin. It. Felt. So. Good. He tossed his head back and just breathed in the cold air.

  Feola was staring at him. So was Torum.

  “What? It’s hot out there.”

  Feola nodded. So did Torum.

  “Where’s your communication device?” Ajax asked.

  Torum did the staring thing again, and Feola sighed, wandering off down the halls, poking her head around corners.

  Her voice echoed along the walls. “I found the bathroom. There’s a bathing chamber.”

  Lust spiraled in his chest, pulling at their Bond, and with it, something more. Sadness maybe. She needed him.

  Ajax studied Torum. Then the shackles. The ship had two vertical support bars at the rear of the hull. He rejected those. Loops hung from the ceiling, exactly like he imagined their warriors might hold to steady themselves right before a drop.

  Ajax pulled his rezal from his holster. “On the deck.”

  “What?”

  “On the deck.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not leaving you out here unsupervised, and I’m going to join my mate in the bathroom.”

  “Come on, man. What are you going to do? Blindfold me? Hogtie me?”

  “Unless I cut off your thumb.”

  Torum’s black eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”

  “You’d be surprised what I’d do for one minute alone with her that I didn’t have to worry about someone interrupting.”

  Torum lowered himself to his knees slowly.

  “Face down.”

  “This hurts.”

  “You’ll live.” Ajax rolled his still-stiff shoulders. There was no way laying on top of his hands for a minute would hurt as much as having his arms cuffed behind his back for three days.

  He found rope in a closet off the main passageway and tied knots around Torum’s ankles, crossing and double-crossing. If Torum struggled, they’d only get tighter. Th
en he blindfolded him with a strip of fabric from the sweaty shirt he’d pulled off.

  “This fucking smells. Get your sweaty shirt off me, migane.”

  Ajax almost smiled at the use of the Vestigi word. It wasn’t very inventive, but it was insulting. It meant the hairs around an asshole. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Torum shifted. Ajax cocked his head and selected one of the straps from his rezals. He looped it behind Torum’s arms and hauled him to his feet.

  “Where’s your brig?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Ajax had to laugh. “You’ve got a great vocabulary, you know that?”

  Torum scowled, but didn’t speak.

  It took a few minutes, but he located the entrance to the brig. No lights. Whatever. The guy wouldn’t die, though it rankled locking a man in his own brig, even with his hands tied behind his back.

  Ajax slammed the hatch and double-checked the lock.

  Just in case, he took all the weapons with him and went off to find his mate.

  40

  Heal me!

  Won’t you please, please heal me.

  Feola floated on the surface of the water. It was warm and smelled clean, like the fresh breeze in the forests of Triannon after the rain.

  Stretching her arms over the water’s surface, she combed her hands across the bubbles, gathering them closer. The room was dark; not much more than a dull gleam of pinkish-purple light glowed across the ceiling.

  Peaceful.

  More peaceful than she deserved.

  That man must have washed in this tub. Not Torum. The other one. The one she’d killed. The one with a flashing white smile. The one who had laughed even after she’d hit him in the head with a knife and knocked him unconscious beneath the trees by the river.

  Her eyes burned, and she clenched them shut, tightening her hands into fists until her nails bit deep. Who had she become? Ruthless. Heartless. A killer.

  Her throat tightened.

  She sank beneath the surface, letting the water wash away her tears.

  Underwater, she opened her eyes, watched the purple lights dance overhead. Ajax’s head moved into view, and she popped up.

  He dropped to a squat, looming above her, studying her with narrowed eyes. Whatever he saw, it tightened his jaw, firmed up the line along his lips.