by Ava Jae
“Hi,” the smallest boy says. “What’s your name?”
“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers, Aren,” the girl says.
“You’re also not supposed to say each other’s names in front of strangers,” the tallest boy says, frowning at the girl.
“Oops.”
“Kora,” I say. “My name is Kora.”
The girl looks up at me. “I like your dress.”
I glance down at what’s left of my gown. It’s a miracle it covers me anymore, considering how tattered and torn it is. It’s ruined. “Thank you,” I say. “How do you speak Sephari?”
“Our Uncle Eros and Daddy taught us,” the girl says, standing up straight. “We were practicing, that way we can—”
The tallest boy covers her mouth and frowns at me. “What are you doing in the middle of the desert … in a dress?”
I hesitate. But I can’t think of a good reason not to be honest to them, so I open my mouth just as something warm and hard presses into the back of my head. The dull hum of a phaser buzzes in my ears. A woman speaks to the children, but I don’t understand what she’s saying. They do, however, and they nod and scamper off somewhere behind me.
I don’t move. Someone whispers behind me, then the pressure of the phaser disappears.
“Turn around,” a man says. “Slowly, with your hands where we can see them.”
I do as he says, and face three rebels—two women and a man, all dressed in similar layered, loose clothing. The women are armed with phasers and the man carries a knife as long as my forearm.
“Who are you?” the man says in fluent Sephari. Before Eros, I was under the impression that rebels didn’t speak our language, but that’s clearly not the case. How many of them speak Sephari so fluently? Furthermore, how did they learn our language to begin with? As we don’t speak their tongue, it would seem, as far as languages go, the rebels hold a distinct advantage.
The only advantage, as far as I know.
“I am Kora Mikale Nel d’Elja,” I say, holding my hands out. “Avra d’Elja. Or … I was.” The three narrow their eyes; maybe sharing that bit of information was not my most intelligent move, but it’s too late now. I clear my throat. “Do you have water? I don’t know how long I’ve been wandering, but I’m very thirsty.”
The man says something to one of the women, and she tosses me another flask. I drop the one the child gave me and just manage to close my fingers in time around the new flask. I empty that one as well.
“Eros sent me,” I add, and the man frowns.
“Avra.” His gaze runs from my eyes down to my toes. “As in, the ruler who ordered the slaughter of our people.”
My stomach twists. I can’t very well deny it, though—the truth is mirrored in the sharpness of his gaze and the tightness of his lips. “I was led to believe your people attacked me first. It would seem I was mistaken.” I’m not sure he’ll believe it, but it’s the best defense I have. I can only hope that if Eros was able to accept it, his people will, too.
“A convenient story,” he says. “But not a believable one. Our people have never entered the city, let alone started any violence.”
The scarred skin on my arm prickles like miniature pins pressing into me. I picture the pale man with his knife and wild beard, but it’s hard to reconcile the assassin next to these people. Eros was right—his people are deeply bronzed by the sun, and the man’s face is clean and his hair kept trim, not unlike our military.
But then where did the assassin come from?
I nod. “It would seem I was deceived, and for that I am truly sorry. If the decisions I made were based on false information—”
“If?” The man steps toward me and quirks an eyebrow. “If you thought for a second we’d waste precious lives trying to start a war that could only end in the destruction of my people, then I promise your information was off.”
Eros’s disapproving gaze echoes in this man’s eyes, and my heart sinks. I try not to think of Eros, who I left behind. Of the bloodstained sand and tears streaking paths down his ash-coated cheeks when I pulled him from Jarek’s grasp so many moons ago.
I was so wrong, but there’s nothing I can do to give back the innocent lives I’ve taken.
“I can’t make this right with words,” I say softly. My knees hit the sand and I pull my shoulders back and meet the man’s eyes. My voice shakes and my whole body trembles—I don’t want to do this, but I pray Kala will honor it nonetheless. “If taking my life will help to right my wrong, I will not fight.”
This is the right thing to do. This is what Kala would want; this is what honor demands. Blood for blood.
But none of that calms the panicked sea rising inside me.
He watches me for a long moment, his dark eyes searching mine. The redblood influence in Eros is more obvious than ever—in the wideness of his eyes, the single true color of his irises, the silent strength in his face and posture.
In his hesitation, when most Sepharon men would have executed me on the spot.
Finally the man turns and says something to the women I don’t understand. It must be an execution order—I’m going to die—but then they holster their phasers and step toward me. One offers me a hand and helps me to my feet. The other passes me a black hood, presumably so I don’t see where I’m going. They nod at the hood. I must put it on and go with them, but the thought of wearing it and being at their mercy steals the heat from my blood. And yet, I don’t have a choice. I’m already at their mercy.
I just wish I’d been able to apologize to Serek and see Eros one more time before the end.
My body shudders with every breath. Every beat of my heart. My pulse. I try not to blink—when I blink, my eyelids fill with liquid weight and stay closed.
The pain—
screaming—
cold—
burning—
My throat is raw. Every muscle burns with strain. My skull is filled with acid, the space behind my eyes inhabited with miniature red-hot nails. I stopped feeling cold forever ago—I stopped feeling anything but agony forever ago.
I think they’re just going to let me die here. I think I’m going to blink and I won’t be able to open my eyes again, not even when the chaos begins, not even when the pain becomes unbearable and rips me to pieces. I don’t know why I’m hanging on. I don’t know why I’m still fighting, why I stand slumped against this wall, why I try to take a breath, take a breath, keep my eyes. Open.
My legs are wet with sweat and urine and the room reeks of me. Of things I don’t want to think about. Of Dima’s dry blood on my face.
I close my eyes—open them again. Quickly. The room is white and the floor is slick and clean except for the spot around my feet, where it’s stained purple and yellow. I’m too tired to be embarrassed. Too tired to care that, at any moment, they could come back and kill me. Use the knife, this time, when I won’t have the energy to try to fight back.
I want to forget. I want to be empty again, to feel the numbness that kept me floating through the first few days of this torture. But now that I’ve remembered Kora and Serek and everything that brought me to this dungeon, it’s like my brain has decided to punish me for not sleeping and, while my nerves tear apart my body, the memories riot in my mind.
Why am I protecting her? I am protecting her, I think. I told her how to find the Nomads, I told her where to go to find the ones who live and breathe sand. But I’ll never admit it to Dima, I’ll never betray her. Or my people. I don’t even know if she made it, so maybe I have nothing to protect her against anyway. Maybe she’s already dead in the desert. You won’t survive long out there without food and water and a sense of navigation. And Kora didn’t have any of those.
She’s dead. She must be.
But I still won’t say. Because Kora may be dead, but my people and what’s left of my family—Jessa, Mal, Nia, Aren, and the unborn baby—are not, and I won’t betray them even now. Because maybe, just maybe, Kora isn’t dead. Because mayb
e every second I buy her is a second more she has, because maybe, even though I don’t want to care, even though I shouldn’t care, even though she doesn’t care, I do.
I care about her, and it’s stupid, and I hate it, but I do.
Maybe I’m an idiot and maybe I’m protecting someone who couldn’t care less what happened to me, but I will not break because I won’t be the reason that Kora or Jessa or Mal or Nia or Aren or that kid dies. I’ll protect them with my last breath.
I hold on to that determination with everything I have left, which isn’t much. But it’s something. It’s something to cling to, while the rest of me falls away.
Someone is in my tomb.
I didn’t hear the door open, I didn’t see the guards enter, I didn’t even notice Dima come in through the door with a thick bandage on the side of his head and murder in his eyes. He has the knife again, but this time he means to use it. This time it’ll be my blood staining the floor.
“Disgusting,” he spits. “You’re no better than an animal.”
I keep waiting for the kick of adrenaline, the burst of hot energy that at least for a few mos keeps my eyes open, but this time it doesn’t come. The world slides slowly to the left and my focus swims in and out. Dima seems to sway back and forth as he steps toward me, like his body is made of jelly and every step makes him wobble. I focus on keeping my eyelids open.
He steps around the stains at my feet. Wrinkles his nose and brings the knife behind my ear. I should have expected this, I guess. I bit off half his ear, now he’ll cut off mine.
Maybe I’ll bleed out and this nightmare will finally be over.
Dima grabs my jaw and presses my head against the wall with his free hand. “My patience has worn thin. You’ll tell me where my sister is, or I’ll begin with your ears.”
“Hard to answer questions when you can’t hear,” I rasp. My voice sounds like sandrock coated with desert. The tip of the knife stings my scalp. Digs into the skin behind my ear. Warmth drips down the side of my neck and onto my shoulder, but the pain isn’t as intense as I’d expected.
“The location, half-blood. Now.”
I want to spit at him, but my mouth is dry. A lifetime ago, I would have had another witty response ready. A whole arsenal to choose from, ready on my tongue. Or an insult, something just to make him angry.
But now. Now I’m staring at the spittle around Dima’s lips and the sharpness of his canines. Now I’m thinking it’s strange we have the same teeth, humans and Sepharon.
He slams my head against the wall. My eyes flutter, vision sputters in and out like a dying engine. Something hot and prickly creeps across my skull. I think it’s pain. I think it barely matters, because my body turned to liquid agony ages ago.
I laugh. Or try to—the sound comes out dry and cough-like and I taste rust as I smile. Dima’s eyes narrow and he squeezes my jaw harder.
“I don’t see the humor, half-blood.”
“This must infuriate you,” I choke out. “You know if you kill me, you’ll never find Kora. But there’s nothing you can do to me that will make me tell you.”
His fingers are shaking. His face flushes and his eyes narrow, sharp as daggers. I’m sure he’s going to do it. He’s going to take that knife and plunge it into my heart.
Maybe he just needs a little more convincing.
“This half-blood has beaten you.” I’m grinning. Or at least, I think I am. “You will never break me.”
He screams. The knife slices along the side of my neck, leaving a burning trail in its wake. The tip jabs into the soft part beneath my chin and something slams behind him.
“Stop!”
Dima is shaking from head to toe, but he doesn’t move. The knife bites my skin and somehow I am still smiling. If I have the power to do anything, it’s die with a smile on my face and infuriate Dima for the rest of his life. That thought alone is enough to seal my lips with a northward turn.
“Release him,” someone says. Someone else is here. Someone other than his guards, who would never order him around. “As betrothed to the former Avra, I take ownership of this servant.”
I don’t remember passing out. I don’t remember sleeping, or dreaming, but I must have done both, because I wake.
I’m lying on a seat more comfortable than any bedroll I’ve ever used, and I’m wearing my uniform pants again. The air is cool, but pleasant, unlike the refrigerator of the white room. The distinct hum of an engine and something else—soft music, with lyrics spoken so quickly I don’t bother trying to understand them—drifts around me.
I open my eyes. Blink again and again, until my tears clear away the blurriness. Someone says, “He’s awake, el Kaï.”
“Is he? How are his vitals?”
Someone dressed in black and gold leans over me and holds a semi-transparent octagonal screen over my face. “Stable. He took well to the nanite serum—his brain function and cell energy levels are nearly restored back to normal, and his body’s nutrients and sustenance needs have been replenished. He’ll need more rest and nutrient-enhanced meals, but he’s recovering well.”
I’m in a port of some kind. A port with several rows of bench-like seats with backrests facing each other in pairs, tinted windows with a digital readout flashing down the glass in gold unreadable letters, and a smooth, synthetic black leather interior. The man with the screen is sitting beside me, and his hip brushes against my hair.
Some kinduv blurry privacy force field thing—like the one I saw in the infirmary forever ago—separates our cabin from the driver up front, and there’s a large digital map on it, with a blinking gold dot moving slowly across it. I can’t read any of the labels, so I have no idea what it says, but my guess is it must be our surrounding area. I squint at it, but I’m not even sure what to look for—I’ve never seen a map of Safara, or even Elja, for that matter. We always navigated with the stars, landmarks, and knowledge of the area, but it was too dangerous to write it down, in case we were ever caught. Last thing we needed was the Sepharon getting their hands on a drawn map of all of our locations.
Serek is watching me from the row facing mine. His gold-ringed eyes seem soft. Almost concerned. But he wouldn’t be concerned about me—he barely knows me—so I must be reading him wrong.
I start to sit up, but the man with the screen holds a hand on my forehead, pressing me to the seat. “Best if you don’t—” he starts, but I shove his hand off my face and sit up. The rows twirl around me and I grab the door for support. Blink slowly as the world stops spinning.
Serek looks amused. “Welcome to the world of the living. You’ve been asleep for quite some time.”
“Which is to be expected,” the man beside me says. “Considering you hadn’t slept in six sunsets.”
Six sets? It felt like six cycles. I glance out the window to oceans of scarlet sand. Home. The man sitting beside me, who I guess is a sortuv doctor, hands me a black water bottle. I drink without asking, and nearly groan when cool, slightly sweet water hits my parched tongue. There isn’t very much—just enough for two long pulls, but I feel instantly better after drinking it. I hand back the bottle and face Serek, who is still twisted in his seat, watching me.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I was hoping you would tell me,” Serek says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to be the prince of Safara or something?”
He chuckles. “Being Sira-kaï doesn’t equate to expert of the southern deserts. I believe you are far better acquainted with these lands than I am.”
That’s probably true. “Where are you trying to get to?”
He pauses. “Dima seemed to strongly believe that you know of the former Avra’s location.”
I glance out the window and grimace. If I was in Dima’s dungeon for six sets and slept for suns know how long after that … surviving in the desert that long takes training and resources she didn’t have. I didn’t even give her halfway decent directions.
“You know as well
as I do she’s probably dead,” I mutter.
“Perhaps. Unless someone with knowledge of these sands told her of a safe place before she escaped, as some seem to believe.”
I school my expression. Keep focused on the waves of red sand passing us by. “And what do you believe?”
“That she’s alive. And that you know where to find her.”
I lick my lips and turn back to him. “I nearly died protecting that information. I hope you don’t think just because you saved my life, I’m going to give up whatever I know freely.”
Serek nods. “I’m not going to threaten you. I don’t believe in unnecessary shedding of blood, but I do believe you care for her—perhaps as much as I do—and you do not wish to see her harmed.”
I snort and turn my gaze to the window again. Heat crawls up the side of my neck and my stomach is doing flips and I’ve never been so grateful for my training. Whatever I feel for Kora is none of his business. I keep my arms loose and my breathing even and I smirk at Serek and meet his eyes again. “If you really believe that, you’re even more delusional than Dima.”
A sharp glare prickles the side of my face, but it’s not from Serek—it’s the doctor. I don’t pay him any mind, and neither does the High Prince. He watches me with a soft, calm gaze that reminds me way too much of the way Nol would look at me when I told him I didn’t care what the others said. That their leers, jokes, and beatings didn’t matter.
A patient sadness.
“You knew full well what Dima’s men would do to you if you were taken, and yet you sacrificed yourself to allow Kora to escape. I don’t believe that to be the loyalty of obligation.”
I lean back in my seat. “It would have been a waste if we were both taken. It only made sense that at least one of us escaped.”
Serek tilts his head slightly and raises his eyebrows. “Then why not save yourself? Your odds of survival were much higher than hers, I would think. If we’re looking at this logically.”