by May Sage
Still, compared to a female who’d seen centuries, she supposed she was.
“Your misgivings, forget them. You’ll take many men through the night.”
She hadn’t believed it at the time. But finally, she found Baz and dragged him to her room as fast as her poor limbs would carry her. She knelt in front of him and took his length in her mouth, making him hiss in pleasure. Krane had said it was about taking their energy after release; she needed it now. Nalini wasn’t the obedient type. She didn’t feel like actually having sex with anyone, so that seemed like the best course of action. She worked him up with her tongue, and, after five minutes, the warrior exploded in her mouth.
Nalini froze, the most delicious, addictive rush of power coursing through her body, making her tremble in ecstasy, not unlike an orgasm of her own.
It didn’t last. The next second, it had passed, and she still felt depleted. Hungry.
That night, she learned to do as she was told, sometimes. And she enjoyed it.
Twenty-Two
A New World
They left on the morrow, after she’d repaired their hyperdrive. She’d never tell Krane, but now that it was all over and done with, she was glad that she’d disobeyed. Glad of that wild night with five males, and glad of knowing herself a little more. She’d always been a little shy with males, not quite confident. No more.
The real challenge would be not imaging a certain pair of eyes when she closed her eyes during sex. Someday, she might manage. It was always so damn awkward as soon as she opened her eyes again, and found the wrong person below her.
“Where to now?” she asked.
“I,” Krane replied, “am going to the Council. You’re heading to Nimeria.”
“Nimeria,” she repeated, frowning.
“Aye. Enlil’s loyalists have a base there, and they’re recruiting for simple hands. You could even go back to loading cargo.” He winked. She frowned some more.
What was the point of the last year if he just wanted her to go back to doing what she’d been doing then? And for loyalists, too. That made no freaking sense. She didn’t feel one way or another about the group that had rallied against Kai, but she knew Krane had no love for them.
Still, she gave the old male the benefit of the doubt. He’d led her right so far.
“If it would do any good, I’d say come with me. I’m going to be right in a viper’s nest, and I could use an ally. But Nalini, you’d be a hindrance.”
Well, that hurt.
He further explained, “You aren’t interested in politics, in the greater good, and anything like that.”
She couldn’t exactly protest: he had a point there. She just hadn’t realized he was completely done with her.
“You’ve shut yourself off from the rest of the world since you were seventeen, Nalini. You hid where you wouldn’t see what either side is doing. You don’t know the first thing about Kai Lor Hora, or his enemies. So, go to the loyalist base. Keep your head down. Observe. Make up your own mind. When the time is right, you can decide for yourself where you want to stand in this war.”
“I don’t want to be in a war at all.”
He seemed downright exasperated. “Nalini, I like you, kiddo. A lot. So it’s with a lot of affection that I’m saying this. The entire galaxy is at war, and you’re gonna get pulled in someday, however far you ran. Continue fleeing from the shadow of a dead man, until you get kidnapped, killed, or worse. Grow the fuck up. Enlil is gone. He isn’t after you anymore.”
“But Kai is. He wants my powers, my vision. He wants…”
“You have no idea what he wants. And you have no idea what’s happening out there.”
“I see plenty,” she argued.
Krane seemed exasperated by this point. “You see battles, you see deaths, but you don’t know why any of it is happening. You can’t see the forest for the trees.” He sighed. “Remain ignorant and stubborn if you so wish, kiddo. Or be stronger than this, better than this, and go to Nimeria.”
Irritated, she glared, but his words ended up hitting the mark as the seconds passed. He was right. She might not like it, but he was right. She had no fucking clue why either side was fighting; for power, she guessed. Beyond that, she was ignorant.
Nalini nodded, slowly agreeing, and Krane smiled, before uncharacteristically pulling her into a very brief hug.
It felt nice. Warm.
“You’re in control now,” he told her. “Infinitely better at reading what you need to see. You’ll see. By Goddess Light, in time, you’ll know exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
She smiled at the older man. “It sounds like a farewell.”
“It is.” Ian winked. “For now, anyway.”
He bent and opened his arms up to Kronos, who also went for a short and highly reluctant hug. He was too cool for hugs.
“You take care of each other, kids.”
“Sure,” Kronos replied, shrugging. “No one else will.”
Nox, who still wasn’t sure about Nalini, was good enough to let her stroke him behind the ear before following the Wise Councilmaster into the Zonian. In no time, the ship was flying out.
Nalini was confused by the strength of her own feelings as the male left her behind. She’d never had this before. Someone older, wiser, who was helping her for no other reason that the fact that he cared about her – whatever he said about ulterior motives. And she’d mourn the loss of her friend and mentor.
She wasn’t the only one who’d regret leaving.
“I’ll miss it here,” the teenager mused, stealing a last glance at the beautiful world they were leaving.
Nalini forced herself to speak. “You really can stay, you know.”
It was the best thing for him. Staying here, in this place where he was taught better than anywhere else in the world. Where he wouldn’t ever be hunted for his magic. But when Rani had offered Kronos a place in her land, the boy had refused.
Nalini was selfish enough to not insist he stay. What was she supposed to do without him?
“Don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t survive a week by yourself. You can’t boil water.”
She pouted. “You said my last soup was edible.”
“I lied. Poured it into a plant pot. The plant died.”
Nimeria wasn’t a bad place, overall. Nalini and Kronos might even have been impressed, had they not spent a year in a true paradise. Kronos lamented the absence of dragons, and Nalini wished for more abs and triceps.
The very thought of joining the loyalists, as Krane had suggested, was distasteful to her. He was right; getting involved in any sort of politics went against her every instinct. She woke up in the morning intending to do something about it, and then found a pretext to stay away. Homeschooling Kronos. Tending to her plants. Attempting to cook something that they could eat without grimacing; in this, she always failed.
There was money aplenty in an account bearing her name now; Krane had in fact made good on his word. He paid her for her year away, quite well. As she hadn’t had any cause to spend any of it, they were comfortable without her needing to earn their bread. Still, she earned some coin; she couldn’t help but notice the female who was always coughing when she passed by her little terrace on her way back from her work each afternoon. One day, Nalini offered her a draft, and each day that weak, at the same hour, she had one ready.
Her long hours with nothing else to do than reading in her youth had paid off; she knew the properties of most plants, and while her garden was an occupation she enjoyed, her practical mind had made her seek plants for their use rather than their esthetic.
Soon, the town whispered of a pretty healer who’d managed to shift Pera’s endless cough, where all else had failed for years; they came to her door again, just like they had in Fruja.
That’s how, although she never found it in herself to seek out the loyalists, the loyalists came to her.
The tall male who knocked at her door was handsome, and Nalini thought she recognized some of
his features, although she would have been hard-pressed to place him. Had she been more intrigued, she might have scanned his mind. She wasn’t.
He watched her in a way that didn’t quite sit well with her; not just like he liked what he saw; it was as if he also felt entitled to take it if he pleased.
“How can I help?” she asked.
The male explored her small place, ignoring her question, and picking up random things like he had the right to.
“I hear you live here alone with your son.”
She could have rolled her eyes. Kronos was thirteen now, and, while she was twenty-five, people often assumed that she was younger because of her small frame and her diminished height compared to other Evris females. It was the first time anyone had accused her of having born the boy.
“It’s just me and Kronos, yes.”
He seemed pleased. She was losing patience.
“Is there a point to this interrogation, sir?”
Catching her irritation, the male finally consented to stop putting his paws on her things.
“My apologies. I was sent by Seraka Mayn,” he said, like the name was supposed to mean something to her. It sounded vaguely familiar, but Nalini’s memory had a tendency to obliterate things she found of little importance.
She blinked. The stranger clarified, “General of the loyalist armies and lord of this system.”
Ah, that guy.
“And what could he need with little old me?”
“The general has put a call through for additional troops. We are, amongst other things, looking for healers specifically. We’ve heard talk of your skills. Given that you’ve moved to this specific planet recently, we assumed that you may be against the current government.”
The male was slowly approaching her, taking detours, zigzagging through the house. If she wasn’t a 100 percent certain that she could have mopped the floor with his face with blinders on and one hand tied behind her back, she might have felt threatened. As things stood, he only disgusted her.
Nalini considered her options. She was itching to tell him to go fuck himself, but Krane’s words haunted her. He had been right: she didn’t know anything of these loyalists. And she knew even less of Kai’s rule. Her one brush with it had caused Kronos’s death; since then, she’d stayed the fuck away. Staying in her little house, in the village, far from them, wasn’t going to suddenly open her eyes.
Ignorance was weakness. So, yes, she’d observe them for a time. Making her own mind up about the things happening in the world wasn’t a bad idea.
“Why, yes. I’m positively against the current government,” she lied.
She simply knew nothing of it, and it was past time to change that. Looking at it through the eyes of its enemy was step one.
“If you were to join our cause, you’d have to reside in the base, for your safety; it’s not far from here. There are training and instructional facilities on base for your child. You’ll be well taken care of and paid fairly.”
The sleek snake was so close she could smell his cologne now. She’d need to keep her distances from him, or she’d kill him. Slowly.
“Great.”
She walked away, heading to her kitchen, and started cleaning up, making it clear she was busy, and putting as much distance between them as she could.
“A transport can pick you up as early as tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. Well, better get packing.”
Twenty-Three
Loyalists
Nalini wasn’t sure if it had been Ian Krane’s goal, but by the end of her first week in the Nimerian base, she was ready to enlist with the other side of the conflict. Had he appeared to her right then and asked her to join him, she would have jumped to stand next to Kai.
These males, and the rare few females who followed them, needed killing. Badly. They didn’t value lives. Not the lives of anything that wasn’t Evris, or the lives of animals or children who didn’t have the right name.
There were slaves in the base. Slaves. People from other sentient races, like Krarkens and Valuas, as well as Evris who’d been sold to them, or had committed a crime of some sort. Slaves kept in chains, barely fed, rarely allowed to wash, expected to work during their every waking hour. Needless to say, they received no payment for their labor.
Nalini had never seen any slave before that day, not with her own eyes. There had been some in Vratis when Enlil had ruled, but none had been deemed good enough to even step foot in the warlord’s palace. She knew slavery was a terrible thing, but she never understood how evil it really was until she saw their eyes, devoid of any hope. Practically devoid of life. Somewhere in her mind, she’d just believed slaves were lower paid workers. A lower class, but not so very different from her. How wrong she’d been.
They worked from dawn to dusk without more than a short break when they were permitted to eat—probably so they didn’t faint. It wouldn’t do to delay the completion of their jobs, after all.
Their clothing was nothing but rags. Females wore very little at all.
“We can’t stay here,” Kronos said one night. “You’ll kill someone. And I’ll help.”
She nodded. They needed to go, but it wouldn’t be as easy as that. Now that they’d been enrolled, their departure would be seen as defecting. There was no doubt that the vile snake always watching her would make a point of catching her, and, who knew, perhaps put her in chains once he had.
He’d finally introduced himself. Veli Par Hora, he was called.
Nalini had laughed in his face, to his confusion, of course. Kai’s brother. Half-brother, in any case. That explained why she vaguely recognized his features. He was slimmer and pastier than Kai, and his face was longer, but there certainly was a similar air. That should have made him attractive, yet the knowledge only made him appear more repulsive to her.
Thankfully for her sanity, she was kept busy. The shitty fighting ships the soldiers piloted had terrible shields, which meant a lot of them came back bruised and burned—or didn’t come back at all. They’d gone for a higher number of ships instead of purchasing fewer, safer ones. Of course they had.
Tending to the wounds of these Evris was a bittersweet occupation; she’d never met anyone she didn’t wish to help. But the cause they’d received these wounds for, that she couldn’t support.
She was exploring the natural tunnels in the belly of the cavernous base one day when she felt a presence behind her.
She started, half expecting Veli, who was never far, sniffing around her like a wolf in heat, but it was one of the soldiers she’d patched up a few days earlier.
“Hey. I see the arm is better,” she said, pointing to his now bandage-free limb.
“You did good.” Heio Su smiled at her. Then he gestured to the tunnel she’d planned to explore. “Don’t go that way. We’ve closed off the entrance, but there’re beasts you don’t want to see on the other side. Sometimes, they claw some passages through. Takes ten men to put them down.”
Nalini lifted a curious brow. “What sort of beasts?”
If he’d meant to scare her, he’d failed. If one didn’t take dragons into account, she’d never met an animal whose mind she couldn’t control. She couldn’t force them to like her, but their simple minds were easily breached. That’s what she’d done with the firebirds so long ago, and when she’d first encountered Nox, before approaching him, she’d breached his mind to ensure he wouldn’t strike her, a precaution she always took with dangerous things.
“Nekos,” he replied. “Felines as tall as you.” He smiled, holding his hand up to his pecs to show their height. So, yes, roughly her size. “They’re deadly, and they like to play with their food, too. When they take someone down that tunnel, we hear screams for hours.”
Nalini winced.
“Some are smaller—the males, we think. No one got close enough to them to check which ones have a pecker.”
She looked down the corridor again. “Why are they in here?” she asked. “Don’t they nee
d access to prey? I can’t imagine there’s much to feed beasts in the mountain. Except the occasional loyalist.”
Heio laughed. “Their den is somewhere in these caves, but it leads out.”
How fascinating. She smiled and purposefully walked away from the tunnel, firmly marking its position in her mind.
This was her way out.
Now she just had to convince Kronos to let her lead him toward a flesh-eating monster’s den. Should be a piece of cake.
“Are you certain?”
He couldn’t act based on rumors and hearsay; there was a chance he wouldn’t act at all, even if the intel Hart reported was, in fact, true.
Kai had fought relentlessly; he now controlled seven of the nine systems of their sector. All of his enemies had allied themselves and conglomerated on the last two. One, Ederia, was inhabited by the civilians who wished to stay away from the worlds he was building, away from magic and from war. Their prerogative. Still, his eyes were on the peaceful system for one reason: he strongly suspected that it was where Nalini had chosen to hide. It fitted what he knew of her.
The other system, Draks, was the opposite. Its main planet, Nimeria, was the stronghold of the loyalists who wished to restore their previous rule, reinstating slavery and butchering mages. They called it the natural order of things.
Kai stared at the hologram before him, showing both systems.
They were populous, some three billion inhabitants per planet—Evris and other races, too. A fair few Kretians—the blue-skinned, smooth, and short bipeds who rivaled their race in intelligence and surpassed them in cunning. They were merchants by trade and could be found in every system throughout the galaxy.
Kai liked them well enough.
“The Imperials are readying for an attack as we speak, that much is clear. It is my understanding that the emperor has purposefully dispatched his own cousin, and the order wasn’t given in a Council session. As a royal, Vuler has the power to take it upon himself to lead a war if he so wishes. That way, the Imperials can pretend to have nothing to do with this.”