The Rising Gold

by Ava Jae

  “I agree. And if we work together, no one else has to get hurt. All we’ve wanted from the beginning is your cooperation.”

  I grimace. “The thing is, what I said to you way back in Enjos hasn’t changed. I still need time to stabilize everything before I can move on to making major changes. I want to help you, and the Remnant, and humans worldwide, but I need your patience.”

  Rani snorts. “You spent our patience a while ago.”

  “Of course I did.” I run my hand through my hair and take a deep breath. “Look, we both need to make some compromises for this to work. I can’t dismantle the monarchy system that’s kept the peace for generations and I’m not going to. But we want the same thing: for humans and Sepharon to be treated equally here, and I think we can get there if we work together.”

  “And how do you expect us to trust you enough to work with you if you’ve broken the only promise you made to us?”

  I shake my head. “I haven’t broken my promise; I swore to work with you and that’s what I’m trying to do. But you can’t expect me to fix everything all at once—and you’ve only made it harder because you’ve given me more to try to fix before I can even think about changing laws for the better.”

  Rani scowls. “Then your priorities are fucked. Equality for humans should be on the top of your list—”

  “They are,” I answer. “Along with fixing the nanites before people around the globe starve, and learning how to fucken govern so I don’t make mistakes that will leave people dead, and trying to keep the territories peacefully together, and eradicating the disease you unleashed, and—”

  “Okay,” Rani says quickly. “Enough, I get it.”

  “I don’t think you do.” I step toward her, scowling. “You have to run a faction, so you know what it’s like to be in charge of people. But you have no idea what it’s like to have an entire fucken planet counting on you, everyone with their own opinions about how to rule and what to prioritize. You don’t get it, and you have no idea how much harder you’ve made my job.”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel bad for you—”

  “I’m trying to make you understand I haven’t been ignoring you and I haven’t broken any promises, I just haven’t had a chance to even think about changing major laws to help humans because I’ve had too much to deal with at once.”

  Rani crosses her arms over her chest and looks about a breath away from snapping my head off, but she stays quiet.

  I sigh. “I’ve heard you, and I’ve heard the Remnant. I know things have been hard, and you’re tired of hiding, and I don’t want you—any of you—to have to hide anymore. I think we’re getting there, but you have to give me the time to do the work.”

  “How long?”

  It’s the first time she’s shown even a consideration to the whole time thing. Does that mean she might actually cave? Don’t hold your breath yet. “Five cycles,” I say. “I know it seems like a lot, and I’m not saying I won’t get anything done before then, but humans are already free now to start with. I want to prioritize making half-bloods legal and end our targeted executions. I want to give people a chance to live without worrying every set might be the set they’re found out and killed.”

  “But in the meantime, you won’t be doing anything on the government level,” Rani says flatly. “We want representation, Eros, not empty promises.”

  “I know,” I answer. “I do, really. So I want to add a human representative to my Council.”

  Rani’s eyebrows shoot up. “You … do?”

  I nod. “I don’t know who yet, but I was thinking I’d announce it and let the people choose some—”

  “Take Shaw.” I blink as Rani steps closer. “I’ll agree to your terms—five years with the promise of working together, if you take Shaw as your representative.”

  Shaw is pretty literally the last human I would want to work with every damn set. He’s obnoxious, too biased toward Rani, and honestly, way too used to giving out orders.

  But I have to make some compromises if I want this to work.

  I sigh and extend my arm. “Fine. Agree and deal done.”

  Rani takes my arm and shakes it, once. “Done deal.”

  55

  Kora

  The Remnant underground base is a maze. A dingy maze, with flickering lights hanging on string-like wires against the sandy walls, and deep shadows painting every corner. We take more turns than I can ever hope to remember, pass door after identical door of black metal, and nod at the occasional person who passes us by.

  I’m grateful Lira is here—how would I have ever hoped to navigate this labyrinth without her help? The truth is I likely wouldn’t have been able to, and stumbling around down here not only without any direction but without a disguise half as good as what Lira put together would have guaranteed our failure.

  “I don’t know how you manage to remember how to get anywhere down here,” I whisper.

  Lira laughs lightly. “You get used to it. Though I’ll be the first to admit it can be confusing—I still take a wrong turn every once and so.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” To be true, I think it’d surprise me more if she didn’t make any mistakes down here. Are there multiple floors? That’d be even more confusing, if there were layers to this maze. But before I can ask, Lira stops at her bedroom door, which looks like every other black, circular door.

  “So we’ll wait in your room until we hear?” I whisper.

  Lira hesitates, then nods and rests her palm on the door. It rolls aside with a grinding sound, then we enter the room and the door closes behind me.

  It takes me a moment to parse what I expected—a small room with a bed, some kind of storage for clothes, maybe a mirror, nothing lavish—to what is in front of me: a large room with rows of desks and seating and glasses, and large glasses hung on the walls at the end of the room, full of people who all turn to look at us.

  This is—not a bedroom.

  A man with skin like Jarek’s and a shaved head walks down the center aisle with a smirk, clapping slowly. “I have to say, I’m impressed,” he says in Sephari.

  Lira answers him in English and they have a conversation I don’t understand as the man glances at me and Lira gestures at me and the room is eerily silent otherwise. My skin prickles with stares. With a cold trickle crawling down my spine. With my heart pounding just a little harder, just a little faster.

  Something isn’t right. Lira said we were going to her room, and this is clearly not her room. Did she change her mind? But if she changed her mind, why didn’t she tell me?

  Unless she didn’t change her mind.

  Unless this—bringing me here—was her plan all along.

  I cross my arms over my stomach and touch the knives stored under my shirt, at my sides. The weapons I didn’t tell Lira about because I didn’t think it necessary. Because even though I wanted to, I suppose I didn’t trust her completely. Because maybe Kala, or fate, or something else whispered in my ear something wasn’t right.

  Because right now, something isn’t right.

  After several moments of tense conversation I can’t understand and the stares nipping my skin and my heart thrumming with every breath, the man turns to me and smiles.

  “It’s good to finally meet you in person, Kora. Lira’s told us lots about you—and you were dating Eros for a while, right?”

  I don’t answer. He seems to know the answer anyway, so there’s little point, and I’m not sure I want to grace anyone with a response right now, not when I’m relatively sure there isn’t a soul in this room not plotting against me.

  I look at Lira. She bites her lip and—incredibly, almost looks apologetic. “Everything will be fine,” she says. “I promise.”

  As if I could believe a word that comes out of her mouth after this.

  So I suppose Uljen was right. I’ve walked right into a trap. And Lira led me there with a smile, and promises, and Kala I trusted her. After everything I finally brought myself to
trust someone and she betrayed me. Although I suppose, as I felt a need to bring my knives, I didn’t really trust her completely. Not that that lessens the blow any.

  I really can’t trust anyone.

  “Oh, how rude of me, I haven’t introduced myself. Name’s Shaw.” The man grins a predatory smile. I don’t move. “So with that out of the way, tell me, cuz I’m real curious—what was your plan? You come down here with Lira, who you’re actually thick enough to believe would betray us, all covered in paint and shit to pass as human and … then what? You kill me? Was that the plan? Did Eros send you?”

  “I don’t know why you don’t ask Lira,” I answer. “Seeing how she came up with half the plan herself.”

  Shaw laughs. “Of course she did.” He grins at Lira but she just looks away, arms crossed over her chest.

  “To be true,” I say, “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do anything.”

  “What, so you came down just to visit? Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

  “It was a backup plan,” Lira says softly. She doesn’t look at me, which is probably a wise move on her part because I’m sure the glare I’m giving her is less than pleasant. “For if things don’t go well with Rani and Eros’s meeting.”

  Shaw laughs. “Well, looks like we were on the same page, then, seeing how you’re our backup plan, too.”

  “Killing me won’t solve anything,” I say evenly even as my breath shakes.

  “Maybe not,” Shaw says. “But threatening to kill you will make Eros hesitate, and actually killing you will sure feel nice after all the shit you’ve pulled.”

  Lira’s eyes widen. “What? You said it’d be a bluff! We aren’t killing her!”

  “Did I?” Shaw shrugs. “I don’t remember saying that.”

  Lira glares at him. “You fucken liar—”

  “Oh, c’mon, Lira.” Shaw rolls his eyes and looks at her. “You didn’t really think we’d just let her walk out of here, did you? After everything she’s done, you can’t possibly think she doesn’t deserve to get hers.”

  “She’s gotten better! She’s been making changes—”

  “Fucken suns in the sky, Lira, you’re unbelievable—”

  “I’m leaving,” I say loudly. Lira and Shaw both look at me, Lira looking like she’s just been slapped and Shaw like I just told a great joke. He even snickers.

  “That’s cute that you think that, but you’re not going anywhere.” He nods to someone behind me and I lower my hands to my sides, pulse drumming in my ears as I wait.

  My back prickles with the knowledge of someone approaching. Deep breaths. I’ll stay calm. I’ll focus on one step at a time. I won’t let anyone take me.

  Someone grips my shoulder—I spin around and ram the heel of my palm into his nose. It crunches as he screams and drops to his knees, hands over his face as blood pours between his fingers. Two more men approach me from either side, one with a baton that crackles lightly—energized—and the other with a phaser.

  I breathe deeply as the man points the phaser at me. “Put your hands above your head where I can see them.”

  I bring my hands up by my ears, watching him as he steps closer, as the crackle of the baton behind me grows louder. Then I scream, fake a lunge toward him, and duck. He shoots—the shot flies above my head and hits the man behind me. The dropped baton rolls beside my foot and I grab it and swing it at the man with the phaser, up and between his legs. It connects with a buzz—the man makes a high-pitched strangled scream and crumples in a ball on the ground.

  “Stop it!” Lira is screaming. “Leave her alone—Shaw, no!”

  A glint of silver to my left—a knife—I swing the humming baton high and connect with a skull so hard the impact reverberates into my shoulder.

  Shaw’s eyes roll to the back of his head before he drops like a rock.

  And the room goes very quiet and very still.

  “Oh god,” Lira says. “Oh god, oh god, oh god—” She drops to her knees beside Shaw and checks for a pulse.

  “Kora?” says a voice in my ear, and with a start I remember the comm. It’s Deimos. I completely forget we were connected. “Kora, Eros and Rani have made a deal. Go home and do not engage the Remnant, understand? Everything is okay.” He laughs quietly, full of air and disbelief as I watch Lira desperately check for signs of life. “Kala, I can’t believe it,” Deimos says softly in my ear. “We actually did it.”

  But as Lira looks up at me, she doesn’t have to say it. The truth is evident enough.

  Shaw is dead.

  56

  Eros

  As Deimos and I cross the sandy distance between where I’d stood talking to Rani and our port, I can barely believe the lightness in my chest. I’d been too afraid to dare to believe we could negotiate successfully, that we could solve this nightmare with a conversation. I hadn’t wanted to be disappointed when it invariably went wrong, when I had to make decisions I didn’t want to because I’d been backed into a corner with no other way out but through.

  But it didn’t happen. I didn’t need Kora’s backup—Deimos is calling her off right now. I didn’t need a second plan because for fucken once the primary plan actually worked. And stars, it feels so blazing good.

  Deimos stops walking and I glance back at him, my smile still glued to my mouth.

  But Deimos’s smile melts off his face. He touches his ear and looks at me, wide-eyed. “What did you just say?” he hisses to the comm.

  My stomach twists. I step toward Deimos as he pales a shade and shakes his head slightly, and I don’t know what that means, I don’t know what’s going on, but this—this obviously isn’t good.

  “What is it?” I whisper. “Is Kora okay?”

  If Kora got hurt trying to help us—

  “Oh, Eros,” Deimos says softly, just as someone screams. Rani, crossing the sands toward us with murder in her eyes and storms on her shoulders.

  “What happened?” I say quickly. “Tell me now.”

  “I-I don’t know,” Deimos stutters. “Kora says they attacked her and in the process of defending herself—Shaw is dead.”

  My blood goes cold. Kosim and Fejn reach for their phasers, but I lift my hand. “Naï, let me handle this. Don’t hurt her. She’s … her brother just died.”

  Kosim and Fejn grimace, but they don’t pull out their phasers and they stay behind as I step toward Rani, my hands up in surrender. “Rani, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

  Her fist juts out so quickly I’ve barely registered something coming toward me before pain explodes across my jaw. I stagger back, hands raised, dodging her second and third swings as tears stream down her face.

  “You fucken traitor!” she screams. “I made a deal with you and you killed him!”

  The next time she swings I catch her fist, then her other fist as she tries again. “Listen to me. I’m so sorry for your loss, but I didn’t order anyone’s death, I swear to you—”

  Her knee jolts up and I move in time to not get hit where she was aiming, but a knee to the stomach hurts nearly as bad. I double over and drop her fists, dodging another strike as I stagger out of the way. “I don’t want to hurt you!” I force myself upright even as the pain echoes in my stomach. “Rani, please, we have a deal—”

  “Fuck you and your deal!” she screams. “Deal is off! I will never work with you, you fucken mutt!”

  That word hurts worse than any punch to the stomach or jaw. And I shouldn’t care, it shouldn’t matter that it came from her, because she may have given birth to me but she’s not my mother, she’s never been my mother—but it aches, deep, to hear it. From anyone, but especially from her.

  Then she pulls out a knife and lunges toward me with a scream. I dodge to the side as she swipes and catch a glimpse of—

  My heart drops to my stomach.

  Lejdo is aiming a phaser at her.

  “Naï!” I lunge in front of Rani as the burst rips through the air and a force like a kick with a metal boot rams into my chest.
<
br />   The suns are rising orange and red but for a mo they almost look gold. A gold rising over me as sands warm my back and every breath licks my lungs with flames. As screams fill my ears and for once they’re not mine because I can’t get enough breath to make a noise that loud, that agonized, that terrified, and then Deimos is crouched over me and brushing my hair back and he’s saying stay with me, please Eros, don’t go and we’ve been here before except then I was waking up to his tear-streaked face and this time his hand is in mine and I’m fading.

  The world goes a little gray. A little dark.

  “Stay with me. Eros, please, I’m begging you. I need you. I love you. Eros, please …”

  57

  Kora

  “What did you do?” Lira screams, though she’s just an arm’s length in front of me.

  I don’t know how to answer. I was defending myself. They were attacking me, and I fought back, and he had a knife, what was I supposed to do? Let him stab me?

  But I can’t bring myself to say the words, to defend myself, because a man is dead and the baton that killed him is still buzzing in my tight grip.

  I wasn’t trying to kill anyone. I just wanted them to let me go. I needed them not to touch me. And they had weapons, and outnumbered me, and …

  Someone grabs my arm and yanks it hard behind my back, twisting my wrist and forcing me to drop the baton. I wince at the pain but don’t fight it.

  “What do we do with her?” the person who grabbed me asks. His grip is strong but his voice is soft.

  “I-I don’t know.” Lira furiously wipes at her face, but it doesn’t do much good because she bursts into another sob a moment later as she runs her hand over Shaw’s head, cradling his corpse in her lap.

  “We should kill her,” a woman says, glaring at me from across the room. “Life for a life.”

  Lira shakes her head and says a fluid string in English. As the conversation explodes in the room, as these grieving strangers decide what to do with me, all I catch are names: Rani, Eros, Kora.