by Celeste Raye
The words made her heart ache, but they also reassured her. They had avoided death the day before when the bombs were raining down, but all death was inevitable. Every being and every single thing died eventually. There was nothing they could do about that.
But to live having known love?
That would make it all worthwhile.
She said, “You do not trust your brother, do you?”
“Half brother.” The terse words were followed by even harsher ones. “No, I don’t. I don’t trust his motivations and I don’t trust his agenda. Drake has always had his own agenda. He’s always worked well within other’s agendas but only so that he can direct them toward his own. So no, I don’t trust him.”
She considered those words. “You don’t like him either.”
His sigh was heartfelt. “It’s hard to like him. His mother was not mine. My mother was not dead, nor was she divorced from my father. They were together when he strayed. For some reason, he always preferred Drake. I know, because I’m an adult now and I can see things differently, that that was mostly due to the fact that my mother insisted that I was a sickly child and kept me in bed or in the hospital and he was a healthy boy, and one whose mother encouraged him to fight and take up training even as a toddler. I believe our father saw me as weak and him a strong, and strength is something that my father always admired.”
Those words made her hurt all over again for him. “I see. I knew a girl whose mother insisted that she was sick. She actually broke her child’s legs to keep her from being able to walk so that people would believe that the girl couldn’t walk. There’s a name for that kind of disease, but I don’t know what it is.”
His fingers traced over her cheeks, his fingertips rough against her soft skin. “I don’t either. My mother never went that far but probably only because she didn’t think of it.”
They lay there in silence. They would leave in the morning, and whatever else they had to say to each other they would say it simply by holding each other in this moment of peace and quiet. Their hearts beat against each other’s chest. Tara could feel the warmth of his skin, proof that blood still flowed freely in his veins and that he was alive, and she could smell his unique and masculine scent as she pressed her face into his chest and closed her eyes.
Whatever lay beyond the Speakers door, it was something that they would face together. Stand or fall, they would be together.
Fear was there, right at the edges of her mind and heart, but she ignored it, settling herself deeper against his body and listening to his breathing as he drifted into sleep. She studied his face, doing her best to memorize every inch of that beloved visage in case something happened to take him away from her.
Tralam.
The Speakers door and the universe that lay beyond it. The universe that the Federation coveted so much that they were willing to ruin the universe which they already ruled to have it.
All the pieces of the puzzle were together now, and all that there was left to do was to seek out the door and cross its threshold.
Stand or fall.
The halls were quiet. The sound of machinery whirring and chirping to itself sounded through the empty corridors of Tralam. The wind blew in through shattered windows and heaps of leaves and other debris rustled together, lending a ghostly sighing noise to the tune played out by the machinery and the wind.
The sound of footsteps, soft and muted, moving along the old and broken floors sent tiny vermin scattering away from their nests within the piles of debris and toward the shelter of deeper shadows and cracks within the walls and floors.
A sour smell rose heavily from outside and blew in through the window, which rattled brokenly within a frame that held ancient writing in a language long since forgotten. The wind picked up, and its mournful wail grew louder as it careened into blind intersections and found itself trapped there.
They came: the weapon, the assassin, the thief, the healer, the warrior, the captain, and the one whose mind could turn the machine on full tilt again for the first time in untold ages. The wind beat harder against the windows and walls and roof, as if it sought to break through and level warning upon those that lay waiting.
Leading them all forward was the betrayer, his footsteps steady and certain as he led his accomplices toward their fate.
And last but certainly not least, and still a babe in the making, was the half-human creature whose voice would tell its mother what to do when they breached the sacred inner chamber that would be either the tomb for all of them or the crucible for a dead universe.
Tara sat up, one hand clutching at her throat as the dream shredded and broke all around her. Her hands flew out and banged into empty space. She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness as she looked around for Blade, but he was gone. She stood, her naked body glowing in the dimness. She hastily donned her clothes and made her way to the small doorway of the shelter. She pulled it open and peered outside. Blade stood under the moon, his head tilted back in his hair blowing slightly around his face. She walked up behind him and placed one hand on his shoulder. The dream had left her feeling sick and dazed, and she wasn’t sure if it had been just a dream or something else. The solid contact of his skin under her hand helped her to ground herself into reality again.
The night lay soft and gentle; the wind bore a faint floral scent now that all of the pyres had finally stopped burning and the rubble below the city had caved in over the fires burning below it and trapped the fire there.
She asked, “Can’t sleep?”
His smile was rueful. “It seems you cannot either.”
She wanted to tell him about the dream because it felt important, but at the same time, it was just a dream. Her imagination had always been overeager. She had been thinking of those books that she had pilfered and read from the library, and many of them had the same eerie setting as the one she had just dreamed up.
It would do no good to tell them about it. It meant nothing. She cleared her throat, “It’s hard to sleep knowing that tomorrow we go to find a place that people say doesn’t exist, but somehow does.”
His laugh was real. “True. But I was just too hungry to sleep.”
She sighed. “There’s not enough food. I don’t know how the people are going to survive without some assistance.”
He said, “They are coming in from the places that escaped being bombed so terribly and still have food; they are bringing with them supplies. They should arrive tomorrow. And the ships still have printers. They’re able to put out just enough to keep people from starving until they can have better.”
She said, “What will we do for food on the journey?”
He tilted his chin toward the sky. “There are planets outside the fight zone who are well-equipped to supply the ship. We will stop by a few of them, I’m sure.”
There were too few outside the fighting zone now. The Federation, like an animal cornered and trapped, had begun killing off planets it thought might hold alliance with the rebels. It was the worst thing that they could have done because now planets and systems who had sworn to stand with them found themselves outraged and horrified and afraid that they would be next. Their only protection had been to join with the rebels, and so they had.
The Federation, the dictatorship that was so willing to kill everything rather than lose its hold, was the one thing that could not be allowed to stand. If that meant going to a place shrouded in myth and secrecy, if it meant dying while trying to use whatever was there that might stop the Federation, then that was what they would do.
There was no choice at all, and maybe there never had been a choice.
Maybe fate was real, and maybe fate had put all of them in each other’s path just so they could go to Tralam and find whatever was there.
So be it.
The dream came back to her, and she shook it off again, telling herself it was just her imagination running wild on her and that now was not the time to let that happen.
She wound her fin
gers into his, and they leaned together, shoulder to shoulder and their heads meeting. Overhead the sky was prickled with stars and the full moon. The silence, still as the grave she was sure she would soon find herself in, became too much to bear. She said, “Do you know what I was just thinking?”
He said, “No. Tell me.”
She said, “I was just thinking that until I met you, my life was flat and stale. I had no idea that I wasn’t even alive. Oh, I was drawing breath, and I was eating and sleeping going about my job as was my duty. I was enjoying what I had, but what I had wasn’t real life. It was just a shadow of it.”
He turned to her, and his hands rested on her shoulders as he turned her to face him. His lips came down on hers, and he gave her a soft short kiss that he broke off far too soon.
He said, “I would die for you. If it comes down to it, I will die for you, and I would hope that you would have enough sense to go if we find ourselves in a situation where only one of us can survive. I can die knowing that I saved your life but I can’t die knowing that you died because you would not leave me. Swear to me that if we find ourselves in a situation where only one of us can live, you will go.”
No. She could not do that. She could not live without him. She searched his face. His expression told her that he needed this promise to be made. That this promise was what would bolster him. She said, “I swear.”
Not to leave you. To be there with you in your final moments. To love you forever even if it means I die beside you. That’s what I swear to.
Overhead, the sun began to peek above the horizon, casting a golden nimbus of light along the outer edges of the world. Morning had come, and with it had come the burden that was the quest they had agreed to take on.
Birds began to sing. They stood there not moving as the others slowly made their way out of their shelters and stepped up beside them. None of them spoke. There was no need to. The ship was a hundred yards to the right, and their duty also lay in that direction.
Tara realized then that Blade wore the same skin-hugging suit that he had worn the first time she had met him. That he wore his armor told her everything she needed to know about just how dangerous this thing that they were going up against was.
Sun broke and spilled sunlight tinged with an ominous red light across the people who gathered there. Shivers broke out and ran up and down Tara’s skin at the sight.
As one, they turned and began walking toward the ship, still silent. Margie held Jeval’s hand tightly. Talon and Jessica checked each other’s weapons. Marik and Jenny carried bags filled with medicines and as Tara watched Marik lifted a hand and placed it on the back of Jenny’s neck for just a brief second.
Renall had stayed behind in order to help get the city’s shattered systems backup in place so that the survival of its citizens would be more assured. Drake was there, though. He strode directly ahead of all of them. Tara studied him covertly. He was taller than Blade, and slightly less broad of shoulder and chest, but equally lean of hip and waist. His hair was the same jet-black color, and his face bore a striking resemblance to Blade’s, but there was a sense of aloofness and reserve about Drake that was not present in Blade.
Blade did not trust his brother.
Drake trusted none of them.
How she knew that, she was not sure, but every instinct told her that this was a thing that was not based on trust, but on duty, and that if anyone was the betrayer she had dreamed of, it would be Drake.
That made her shiver again, and she swore a silent vow. If Drake did anything to harm Blade, she would kill him herself and do it without a shred of guilt.
They reached the ship. They walked up the short steps through the bay doors. Tara paused and turned around. Death and destruction was everywhere, but there were also survivors there, all of them eager and willing to continue the fight. All of them eager and willing to rebuild the city and to make it into something better than what it had been before. That gave her hope and a determination that she had not known she could have. She would not fail these people. She could not fail them.
The bay doors closed and the ship shuddered and then began to lift upward off the ground, its engines vibrating and its outer walls tightening into place as the shields went up.
Blade’s arm went around her waist and pulled her closer. They stood there together at the windows watching as the planet fell away into the distance and the darkness of space surrounded them.
The ship zoomed into the first of a series of wormholes as it headed toward its uncertain destination.
Book 6: Drake
By Celeste Raye
Chapter 1
Tralam. The fabled place of old.
It was likely all a bunch of bullshit, but he had to try to find it. If that place held the key to destroying the Federation and ensuring life would continue, he’d go, but damned if he wanted to—especially considering the crew he was traveling along with.
Drake paused in the act of pulling a clean tunic over his head as that thought hit home. He didn’t trust a single one of the beings he was traveling with, and he knew that was not unwarranted. He knew the supposed secret of Tralam, even if they didn’t, and he was in no mood to share it.
He was definitely not interested in getting close to the people he was traveling with because he might have to kill them, each and every one of them to boot.
That included his half-brother, Blade. Blade, outlaw and traitor to the Federation. At least they had that much in common.
His life had been spent between being proudly claimed by his and Blade’s father, the now deceased General Bates, highly decorated officer of the Federation and womanizer who’d had two sons by two different women. That in and of itself was not so unusual. What had been unusual was his having done so while wed to Blade’s mother.
Drake had spent most of his childhood being shunted aside and when Blade and his mother had learned of his existence, things had gotten very bad for him. Drake’s mother had died in a tragic accident, and General Bates had decided to bring Drake into the home he shared with his wife and legitimate son, to hell with the consequences.
Blade, who’d been known as Dirk back then, had been unamused. He’d also been a boy whose mother had constantly insisted he was ill and forced him into inactivity. So Drake, who was hale and hearty and eager to be a good son, had found himself in heavy competition with his sibling.
And when their father had taken Blade to the woods, the dangerous and isolated woods, and dropped him off, Drake had been torn between being terrified his sibling would never make it out of there alive, and hoping he wouldn’t.
Blade had. He’d found the first seeds of the powerful man and dangerous enemy he would one day become during that ordeal, and while it had marked and scarred him physically, it had also destroyed whatever shot the two of them might have had at being friends.
Bates had begun to favor Blade after that, saying he had something better than just courage—he had will. Drake had will too, but unlike Blade, he’d never had the chance to prove it. He had begged to be taken and left in those woods, but their father had slapped him across the face so hard it had crossed Drake’s eyes before telling him to never repeat another man’s glory and to find his own.
Tralam. Whatever they found there would either put his name in the history books as a hero—or forever mark him as the villain.
Either way, it would be his glory.
The knock on the door to his small cabin aboard the ship broke off his thoughts. He called out a gruff, “Enter,” and the door slid open to reveal Blade, his black hair shining and his body armor molded to every enviable muscle and line of his body.
They looked alike. Same height, same coloring. Same black hair and wide shoulders, same dark eyes and heavy brows. But Blade had that scar right above his eye and Drake’s scars were hidden below his clothes and his skin. Drake was taller, by a mere two inches, and his lips were fuller, his nose longer and straighter.
Blade eyed him. “The wormhole nears.
”
Drake’s gut tightened. Were they really doing this? He’d been all the way to the wormhole before, but never past it. What lay on the other side was a door, and one he would not be able to open without the others. He needed all of their skills to enter that place.
He would not need them to exit, however.
Drake said, “I know. I can feel it. The grav-pull is so strong it feels like it’s trying to suck me through the sides of the ship.”
Blade’s eyes were hooded. All the old animosity still hung between them and Drake could feel it as Blade said, “Me too. You’re needed on the bridge. There are no navigation systems that can take us where we need to be.”
Drake nodded and finished tucking his tunic into his trousers. His boots, no longer polished but still fine leather, already rested on his feet and weapons sat in the belt around his waist.
Blade spoke again, his tone menacing. “Is there anything we need to know?”
Drake’s smile was bland, innocent. “If there was, I would have said it already. I need you, remember?’
Blade snorted. “I do remember. I just do not know if I believe you need us for anything except a ride in.”
Drake didn’t flinch. “I see.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
“Not with my life.”
“I can understand your feelings. Now, should we get to the bridge?”
It was an impasse, and Drake knew it. He also knew that he had to do what had to be done, regardless of how he felt about it.
Chapter 2 - Drake
His dark hair hung in his face. His eyes, also dark, bored into hers as his body positioned itself over hers. Lornia’s legs parted. Her fingers moved along supple skin, satin over steely muscles. The feel of that skin under her fingertips made a hard gasp escape from her throat. Her hips bucked upward as his fingers slid between her legs, stroking her wet sex with an expertise that sent shivers racing all along her spine and made dewy perspiration come up all over her body.