“Easy for you to say. You get to go outside,” I retorted. What right did he have to belittle me, when I was essentially a prisoner in his family home? “You have no idea how hard it is to stay cooped up in this place all day, every day, with no real way to exercise, and not much on the entertainment front. Sometimes you have to improvise!”
Sarrask’s eyes narrowed. “Well, it certainly looks like you’ve found something to distract yourself with,” he said, nodding pointedly at Ronad. “I bet the pair of you are really good at improvising.” A nasty look that made my heart clench passed across his face.
I glowered at him. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know exactly what that means, Riley,” he spat back, running a hand through his hair. “If Navan does bother coming back for you, he’s more of a fool than I thought. You don’t care about him at all. Look at you, parading around with that defiler! Two minutes away from Navan, and you’re already getting cozy with someone else!”
Ronad took a step forward, but I held out my arm, keeping him back. I didn’t need anyone to fight my battles for me, especially not where Navan was concerned. Sarrask had clearly decided he didn’t like me, but I wasn’t going to let him talk that way about my love for his brother.
“Let’s get a few things clear, Sarrask,” I began coldly. “Ronad is a friend, and that’s all. He still loves your sister, whom he didn’t defile—he loved her. He loved her the way I love Navan, and that kind of feeling comes once in a lifetime. So don’t you dare start making comments about something you know nothing about. I can’t help the fact that you’re jealous of people who actually have a heart, but you can keep your nose out of my business! I didn’t ask to be separated from the man I love, and I won’t have my feelings for him called into question by anyone. Do I make myself clear?” I stood my ground, my eyes burning into his.
Ronad took another step forward. “Naya is the only one I’ll ever love. You know that. If you speak about her memory like that again, you’ll wish you’d kept your mouth shut,” he added, folding his arms across his chest.
For the briefest moment, I saw something flicker across Sarrask’s eyes, and, to my surprise, it looked like respect. “Duly noted,” he said simply, a wry smile tugging at his lips.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked, eager to change the subject. I needed to calm down before the vein in my temple exploded.
Sarrask sighed. “I’m on lunch and thought I’d pay Mother a visit.”
“On lunch from what?” I pressed, realizing he was the only brother whose occupation I didn’t know.
“I’m a geologist. I work at a lab in the city, researching the mineral properties of stones that get brought in from other planets,” he replied, taking me by surprise. I’d expected him to stay tight-lipped, but, then again, that kind of job didn’t sound like something that needed to stay very secret.
“Huh. Not what I was expecting.” The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them.
He frowned. “Why? What were you expecting?”
I gave an embarrassed shrug. “I’m not sure, I just didn’t have you down as a geologist. Although, I’m sure it’s fascinating stuff,” I said lamely. In truth, I actually did think it was interesting, but I had a feeling Sarrask didn’t want to hear my opinion on the subject.
“Anyway, I thought I’d come and see her while I had an hour to spare. She wasn’t doing too well the last time I visited, and I had to run off midway through seeing her,” he explained, almost candidly. “To be honest, I’m worried she’s deteriorating. She’s never been this bad before, and I’m pretty sure it has something to do with you two.”
“Us?” I asked, incredulous. Lorela barely noticed me, and she certainly hadn’t been told the truth about my relationship with Navan. Jareth knew, but I didn’t think it was the kind of thing he’d share with his sickly wife.
“Your presence at the house agitates her,” he went on, focusing solely on me. “I might not like having him around, but it makes her happy to see Ronad. Even so, she can’t afford to have that kind of excitement; she’s not strong enough for it.”
“Surely, it’s better that she’s happy? Your mother’s illness is a mental one, as far as I can tell. If she can be surrounded by things that improve her wellbeing, that can only be a good thing,” I challenged.
He grimaced. “That’s not what I’ve been hearing from my father. Before you two came here, there were no night terrors, no fever, no physical side to her mental illness. Now, by all accounts, they’re present, and they’re getting worse. You two are the only thing that has changed.”
“Is your father here? Maybe we could talk to him about it,” I suggested. Ronad nodded in agreement, but Sarrask shook his head.
“He’s never here anymore, and he definitely wouldn’t want to talk with you two about my mother’s sickness. All he cares about is—” He stopped mid-sentence, his cheeks reddening. I guessed he’d said more than he meant to.
His words made me frown. If Jareth wasn’t home, and Kaido was still happily ensconced in his laboratory, then the only other person who could have been outside the main door to Jareth’s alchemy lab was Sarrask. I had no idea where that other door was, but I imagined it was hidden away somewhere. In which case, what had Sarrask been doing wandering around so close to it? Had he been looking for a way in, too? Had he found the main entrance to his father’s lab—boldly going where no Idrax child had gone before?
“Are you sure Jareth isn’t home?” I asked again.
Sarrask glared at me, although he quickly looked away. “Yes, I’m sure. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see my mother.” With that, he turned in the opposite direction from the one he’d been headed and mounted the staircase up to Lorela’s bedchamber.
Maybe he couldn’t get in through that entrance, I mused, watching him go. Maybe that’s why he came this way, to try and find a different route. After all, why else would he have been heading for the basement?
“You as hungry as I am?” Ronad asked, interrupting my train of thought.
“Ravenous,” I replied. We made our way toward the kitchen. “Do you think it was Sarrask, creeping around outside Jareth’s lab?” I asked, wanting to share my theory.
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, who else could it have been?” I reasoned. “Kaido was busy, Jareth was out, Lorela was in bed… It had to have been him. Do you know where that other doorway leads?”
Ronad shook his head. “We could never find the main entrance, even as kids. Jareth always kept it secret. I doubt even Lorela knows,” he said. “To find out where it leads, we’d have to go the long way again.”
“Do you think we should?”
He gave a tight laugh. “I think we got lucky today, but I’m not leaving this house without Naya’s journal. I don’t know when we’ll do it, but rest assured, we’ll go back there one day soon,” he promised. “As for Sarrask, I’ve got no idea what he was doing creeping around, if it was him. Maybe he was looking for something, too.”
“Like what?” I pressed, prompting another laugh from Ronad.
“You ask a lot of questions, kiddo, but I only know as much as you.”
White stools circled the central island of the kitchen. I perched on the edge of one and watched Ronad flit around the room, gathering a bowl of food for me to eat. I’d offered to put it together, but he’d waved me away, demanding I sit. Kaido had been keeping my fruit and vegetable stocks replenished, and it seemed like creating a meal for me had become something of a novelty task for the younger inhabitants of the Idrax house—not that I was complaining.
“What are all those machines for?” I asked, gesturing toward the unusual objects that stood on the workbenches, which bordered the kitchen walls.
Ronad looked up. “They’re used for distilling, mixing, and infusing blood cocktails and other blood recipes,” he said with a grin. “I think there’s even a centrifuge in there somewhere. Used to be, anyway. Lojak wa
s always super picky and hated the taste of plasma; he always had to have it separated out of his meals.”
I almost laughed at the idea of a coldblood child wanting to have his meals altered, the way a human child might refuse to eat peas or broccoli. No matter how much I thought I knew about Vysantheans, I was constantly being surprised.
“Okay, so what are we going to do about the device under Lorela’s bed?” I wondered, as Ronad put a plate of fanned-out fruit in front of me. “Whoa, impressive knife skills!” I glanced down at the rainbow of shapes, then up at Ronad, who wore an expression of pride, his grin widening.
“I thought I’d try something different today,” he said.
“Well, it’s definitely fancy.” I chuckled, digging in.
“With Lorela, I was thinking I could give her a vial of sleeping tonic. It should put her in a deep sleep for a couple of hours, though I’ll have to be careful with the dosage.” He downed a vial of blood. “I think I’ve still got an old bottle of it tucked away, from when I used to drug Bashrik so I could sneak out to see Naya.”
I burst out laughing. “You used to drug Bashrik?”
“He’d have tried to stop me from seeing her if I hadn’t!” Ronad replied defensively. “Besides, it never did any permanent damage.”
“Well, not that you know of,” I teased, biting into a slice of a large blue fruit. “Anyway, why do you think there’s a pay device down there?”
Ronad shrugged. “If Jareth built those tunnels as an escape route, then it makes sense that he’d hide some pay devices, forged papers, food, clothes—that kind of thing—in case they need to make a quick getaway,” he said. “Plus, he wouldn’t be able to take his own pay device with him. It would have to be an unregistered, temporary one, loaded with a certain amount of money. That way, the system couldn’t trace any payments back to Jareth.”
I nodded, intrigued. “Do you think that’s what’s under the bed?”
“We have to hope it is. Now, you stay here while I go and get my little bottle of sleepy-time goodness,” he insisted with a grin, throwing his blood vial in the recycling container before leaving the room.
I stared out the window, watching clouds drift across a lavender sky as I worked my way through the colorful plate of fruit. My mind turned toward Navan and the others, wondering how they were doing. It seemed that was all I ever thought about, these days. We had a gargantuan task to get through the following day, and I was barely fazed by it—my own safety didn’t matter, as long as my friends and boyfriend were okay.
Besides, we still had the money to get before we could focus on anything else. And, with Sarrask up in Lorela’s room, there was nothing we could do about that until he left.
* * *
Just under an hour later, I was starting to think Sarrask was never going to leave. Ronad had already gotten the bottle of sleeping tonic from wherever he’d been hiding it all these years, and the pair of us had been playing a fierce game of I Spy. However, he’d just stepped out of the room to search in the cold-store, which branched off from the main kitchen, his stomach apparently still rumbling.
I was playing my own game, in the solitude of my mind, when Sarrask reappeared at the threshold to the kitchen. He glanced around cautiously, before turning his gaze to me. He looked like he was going to say something, his mouth opening and closing like he was a beached fish, when Ronad emerged again. Immediately, the expression on Sarrask’s face changed to one of surprise, his mouth closing shut in a tight line of silence.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, wondering what was going on. Was it Lorela? Had something happened to her?
Sarrask nodded. “I just thought I’d come to let you know that I was leaving,” he replied, his tone cold. “I suggest you stay away from my mother. She needs to rest. She doesn’t need the two of you agitating her.”
“Understood,” Ronad said, forcing a pleasant smile onto his face.
“Okay, well… I’ll be going, then,” Sarrask said, turning on his heel. A few minutes later, I heard the front door open and close with a slam.
“Now I feel bad,” I murmured, getting down off the stool.
Ronad sighed. “It can’t be helped, Riley. I don’t want to aggravate her condition any more than you do, but we need to get that device without her knowing what we’re up to. Besides, maybe the deep sleep will do her good.”
I flashed him a doubtful look. “I hope so.”
With both of us in reluctant agreement, we headed upstairs to carry out our mission. Ronad had decanted the sleeping tonic into a smaller vial, which he’d slipped into his back pocket.
“Did you get the dosage right?” I whispered, dreading what might happen if he hadn’t.
He nodded. “If anything, it’ll be too weak. Let’s just hope it buys us the short time we need.”
“Let’s just hope it buys us the cab ride we need,” I countered.
After all, retrieving the payment device would probably be the easy part.
Chapter Six
Ronad knocked softly on the door to Lorela’s room, his face anxious. I lingered behind him, not knowing how Lorela would welcome me this time. We hadn’t talked much during my last visit, with Seraphina being the main event, but I hoped to get a little more recognition on this occasion. She might have been sick, but that didn’t change the fact that I was her son’s girlfriend. She would have to come to terms with that, one way or another.
“Man, I hate visiting the parents,” I whispered, trying to make a joke to calm my nerves. My meetings with Navan’s parents rarely went how I wanted them to.
Ronad grinned. “You’ll do fine. Jareth’s the scary one, remember?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely convinced. From my limited knowledge of boyfriends’ parents, the mother was always the one to watch out for. Even Jean hadn’t been immune to it, silently judging every date who came to pick me up from the house. Navan had miraculously managed to win her over with his charm, but he was pretty much the only one who’d achieved it—and he hadn’t actually been my boyfriend back then. I doubted she’d feel the same warmth toward him now, after my disappearance, but I hoped one day I’d get the chance to reintroduce them. For now, I had the memory of him standing at my door, introducing himself to my adoptive parents. It felt bittersweet.
“Come in!” Lorela’s feeble voice finally called from the other side of the door.
Ronad opened it and stepped inside, with me following close behind. Lorela was propped up in bed, a tower of pillows stacked behind her. She smiled as she saw Ronad, her gaze resting on me for no longer than a second. Once again, it seemed my presence wasn’t important. After all, as far as she knew, I was Navan’s pet—a plaything he’d picked up from some distant part of the universe.
“How are you feeling today, Lo?” Ronad asked, using a nickname I’d never heard. It suited her, making her seem less frightening, somehow.
She reached up her trembling hand to touch his face as he took a seat on the mattress beside her. “I feel better, my sweet boy. How are you? You look so unwell,” she remarked, frowning. “I’ll never get used to the sight of you like this. I just don’t understand why you’ve done this to your beautiful skin.”
“We’ve been over this, Lo. You don’t need to worry about me or my skin. I’m fine,” he assured her, holding her hand.
I walked around to the other side of the bed and sat down in a spare chair, folding my hands awkwardly in my lap.
“Why have you brought her?” Lorela asked, turning her gaze back toward me. This time, her stare lasted longer than a second. In fact, I could feel the full length of her scrutiny as she let her eyes drift across me.
“She is Navan’s partner, Lo,” Ronad explained, offering me an apologetic glance. “She’s staying here until Navan comes back for her.”
Lorela shook her head defiantly. “No, no, no, Ronad, you have it all awry!” she proclaimed. “My sweet child, you were never the sharpest tool in the drawer, though your heart was always the kin
dest. You must have things mixed up again. This creature is Navan’s pet; she is not his partner. Seraphina is his partner, remember?” She gave a soft laugh, as though Ronad were being stupid.
I thought about defending myself, but realized there wasn’t much point. No matter what I said, Lorela wouldn’t believe me.
“He is engaged to Seraphina, Lo, but this is—”
Lorela didn’t let him finish. “I have been thinking a lot about the upcoming nuptials between that exquisite young lady and my son. I know they have not always seen eye-to-eye, but I am certain they will be happy with each other, once they are wed. It is always the way.” She sighed wistfully. “Why, even Jareth and I were not always the perfect couple, though you would not think it to look at us.”
“You weren’t?” Ronad prompted.
Lorela chuckled softly. “Rask, no! The first time I met Jareth was at the ceremonial fountain, seconds before we made the vows that would eternally bind us together. Our parents were the ones who forged the arrangement, and we had to obey.”
“You didn’t know him at all?” I gasped, unable to stay quiet.
She shook her head. “I didn’t even know his name until the master of ceremonies told me what to say,” she whispered, strangely conspiratorial. “I loathed the very sight of him. I cried the whole day, knowing I would never get to marry Virado Hargen—a man I was already hopelessly in love with, who loved me too. Or so I thought.”
I watched her, baffled. At least Navan and Seraphina knew each other, but to enter into a marriage with no idea of who the other person was… It seemed totally outlandish to me, especially on a planet that was advanced in so many other ways.
“Anyway, the vows were made, the contract sealed, the ceremonial water consumed, and we were bound together for life,” Lorela continued, smiling to herself. “Back then, I did not know how sweet, and generous, and brave he was. No, I did not know how lucky I was until much later. Now, my Navan and that rare beauty, Seraphina, they are one step ahead of us! They are friends already and will be in love in no time at all!”
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