Fractured Suns

by Theresa Kay

  He nods. As much as it breaks him to do it, the decision brightens his eyes. I see hope mixing in with the rest of the emotions churning there. Then he backs up to sit on the bed and rest his head in his hands.

  Harrison glances back and forth between us, then shrugs and leads me out the door and back down the hallway.

  When he sees me in the doorway, Gavin’s expression shifts from surprise to confusion. He probably wasn’t expecting me back quite so soon. He gives Harrison a questioning look. Harrison shrugs. Not much for talking, that one.

  Bringing his focus back to me, Gavin says, “I take it you are no longer under the impression that your friend is being mistreated?”

  I ignore the question. “I have a proposition for you,” I say. I stride across the room until I’m standing directly in front of his desk. “Let Flint go and you can have me.”

  His eyes bug out and he rocks back in his chair. After a couple false starts, he finds his voice again. “As appealing as that might be”—his eyes flick downward and back up almost as quickly as a hint of redness creeps into his cheeks—“I don’t think that is something I can accept.”

  Oh crap. The reason for his shocked expression rockets into my brain and warmth flows into my face. “That’s—that’s not what I meant. I’m not—you’re not—I don’t think—” Just shut up now. I slam my hand over my mouth and take a step back. My legs collide with the chair behind me and I plop down into it. Rather ungracefully, too.

  His lips quirk up in amusement and he leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk with his chin in his hands. “Okay, now I’m curious. Please explain this proposition of yours that has gotten you so flustered.”

  The heat of my embarrassment unbalances me. So does the now obvious flirtatious glint in his dark eyes. I’m in way over my head here. Any eloquence, confidence, or anything remotely resembling coherency gets shoved aside as I stammer out, “I’m half E’rikon and I have powers.”

  Whatever he was expecting me to say, that was not it. All expression drops from his face and his wide-eyed gaze goes over my shoulder. He nods, and there’s the sound of the door closing and a lock clicking into place, then a scraping noise behind me as Harrison brings another chair across the room and sits down beside me.

  Gavin reclines in his chair, crosses his arms over his chest, and stares at me. “Explain.” The cordial, easy-going boy is gone, replaced by the no-nonsense, hard-nosed man from outside the wall. The transformation has my head spinning for a moment.

  I clear my throat and look over at Harrison. For help? For reassurance? Whatever it is, I don’t find it, and my gaze swings back to Gavin.

  “It’s safe to speak in front of him. I’d trust him with my life,” says Gavin, misinterpreting what my sideways glance meant.

  I’ve never actually sat down and explained this to anyone in detail, and now that I’m sitting here with two sets of eyes glued to me, I know why. This is intensely uncomfortable, and being the center of their attention has anxiety buzzing along my limbs.

  I clear my throat again, not only trying to dispel the nervousness clogging it, but to give me time to gather my thoughts. “My mother was an E’rikon. She—”

  “Impossible,” mutters Gavin. “They’ve only been around for a decade, and you’re certainly no child.”

  At least his interruption is good for something. Irritation flows into my next words. “They’ve been settled here for a decade. They started arriving before the Collapse. A kind of site research.”

  Gavin opens his mouth and takes a breath as if he’s about to speak, but then he lowers his chin and nods at me to continue.

  “My grandmother was pregnant when she arrived with the research team. My mother was born here on Earth, met my father, and then died in childbirth with me and my brother. My father raised us alone at a secluded cabin about five miles outside the wall. He disappeared a few years ago, and then it was just me and Jace for a while until we moved to Bridgelake.”

  I pause and release a long, slow breath past my lips. It’s this next part that’s going to be a little harder to explain. “When the E’rikon took Jace, they left one of their people behind. He helped me travel to the city and get inside and…” My voice trails off when my eyes start to burn.

  Condensing Lir and everything that happened between us into just a couple of sentences feels wrong. I only spent a few weeks with him, and I only know those parts of him he wanted me to, but the connection we shared was special. Or was it? Doubt slithers in on a whisper in the back of my mind. Rym implied the bond could have formed simply from our physical proximity, and with Lir’s kitu disabled… No. It doesn’t matter. He was there when I needed him, and the connection was there to anchor me earlier. But that was the first time he accessed the connection since he broke the bond, or at least the first time since I saw him in person. He said he loved me and then he left me to fend for myself and…

  Now is not the time to think about this. I dig my fingernails into my palms and push back the tears.

  “The E’rikon took Jace because they’re under the impression that he—that we—are some sort of weapon they can use to their advantage.”

  Gavin leans forward, his brow furrowed. “Their advantage for what?”

  “A war. They call it the human initiative. I don’t know exactly what that means, but the first stage has already started.”

  “Are you…?” Harrison says in a rumbling voice from beside me. “A weapon?”

  Green blood and scales swim behind my eyelids, along with spinning knives and my fingers pressed to temples. “Yes,” I whisper. “I don’t want to be. But the things I can do… there’s really no other way to describe them. And I don’t even know the full extent of it yet.” I open my eyes and press my nails deeper into my palms. “My brother is in danger. Please. Let Flint go to him, help him, and you can use me against Dane. Whatever I can do, it’s yours.”

  I bring my still burning eyes up to meet Gavin’s. I expect greed. I expect triumph. But pity? Concern?

  “Holmes, go fetch… something. Go fetch something,” he stammers.

  “Yes, sir.” Harrison stands and exits the room.

  As soon as the door shuts, Gavin rises and walks around the desk to sit in the chair next to mine. I’m watching my fingers twist together in my lap when his softened voice pulls my attention to his face. “My superiors would cry treason and call me a traitor to the human race, but I don’t think your offer is one I can accept. Not when this is what it does to you. I’d be grateful for your help, and I would love it if you’d share your knowledge, but it’s not in me to force you to do anything.” He shakes his head and sighs, his shoulders slumping. “They’ll be here any day now, and they can’t find you here, not if you ever want to live a… normal life. I’ll order Flint’s release. You may go.”

  “But…”

  “I will not be the one to force you to do something that will leave you with more guilt and pain than you already have. I’ve been watching…” When his eyes meet mine, there’s a fire there, a blinding pain. “I am not proud of some of the things I’ve done, but I’ve done what’s needed. Bringing order is not something that can be done completely without bloodshed. Holmes and Larson—they’re my best friends, my only friends, and even they don’t know how it eats at me. The killing. The death. But you… you can see it, can’t you? You know how it feels to have blood on your hands. Because I can see it in you.”

  My annoyance and my irritation with him thaw, and the warmth of camaraderie fills me. I don’t know the person in front of me now. He’s not the guy from the wall, he’s not the laughing flirt, and he’s not… he’s not looking at me anymore. He’s staring down at his hands with a blank look. They’re clean, his nails short and shiny. Not a speck of dirt. But he’s right. I do know how it feels to have blood on your hands… and it never seems to really come off.

  But I’ve had a wise old priest to help me, his chattering words drowning out the pain, washing me clean again. I didn’t listen th
en, but now Peter’s words have meaning, and they leak from my lips as if they’ve been waiting there for just this moment. “The first step to making peace with it is forgiving yourself.”

  Dark eyes filled with regrets and guilt finally rise to meet mine. “Have you forgiven yourself?”

  I can’t hold his gaze and I can’t lie. “No,” I say.

  A sardonic chuckle. “Well, aren’t we the pair then.” He tilts his head to the side and slides his hands over mine where they are resting in my lap, giving them an understanding squeeze. He opens his mouth, but before he can say anything more, a screeching, ripping, roaring pain slams through my head.

  It is everything. Fear and pain and anger and despair scatter through my mind, stabbing into my body from my head to my toes. It’s a cry for help, a battle cry, and a cry of pain all mixed into one.

  It is Jace.

  RYM AND I ARE relaxing on the couch when my limbs go rigid and I am jolted by a sudden mental assault. Without the link, I have not been bothering to shield my mind from intrusion. Not even the kiun has been able to reach into my head, and I thought myself safe from this kind of intrusion. I was glad for that assumption during the brief brushing of minds I had with Jax this morning.

  Earlier, when the broken remnants of the bond flickered, I was shocked. After so much silence, so much loneliness, the sudden connection was jarring—but so very welcome. I tried to reach out to her, but I was still too weak and Jax’s emotions overwhelmed my efforts. I felt the fractures in her psyche. Faint and small, but there. All I could do was offer my comfort—and hope that was enough to hold her together until I could find her again.

  But what is happening now is entirely different. The simple cracks from before are gaping holes of blackness. Hungry, screaming, ricocheting from her mind to mine. There is a third person in this twisted circuit too, someone I can only assume is her brother. Jax’s thoughts are concerning, but his absolutely terrify me.

  Jace clearly has a shikiza as strong as his sister’s, and he is pushing a roiling mass of emotion into her head—it seems without realizing he is doing it. The raw power from him—the raw power from both of them—is like nothing I have ever felt before. I am simply an observer to the spreading fissures, pulled into this by Jax for some unknown reason, one she probably does not even know, but they will kill each other if this keeps up. There must be something I can do.

  I slam one hand down on my arm, wrap my fingers around my kitu, and throw my head back with my eyes closed. This has to work. I grasp at the connection to Jax as if it is a rope, but it is a slippery thing and I cannot seem to find a grip strong enough. She has to let me in.

  Jax! Let me help you!

  She is too lost in it all to respond and I am left fumbling in the dark.

  Her memories assault me in a slide show of ups and downs. Two tiny red-haired children jumping in a lake. A tall man with dark brown hair and the twins’ same hazel eyes. Her first rabbit kill. A silver ship. Jace being taken. And me… Our entire journey to the city replayed in tiny snippets. Firelight. Woods. A snake. The first kiss, the one she pressed to my lips right after I realized what was happening between us. It is solely on instinct that I focus my attention on that memory.

  A sliver of the bond lives there, within the day when I first felt it, and as I pull it into focus and reach for the feeling of it, the frayed connection brightens, flares, and ignites. The bond reasserts itself between us, balancing out the gush of darkness from Jace and allowing me to put everything I have into helping Jax push him out.

  It is not easy. Even with the two of us against him, Jace is winning. He has apparently had some sort of rudimentary training, and his shikiza knows how to find the chinks and cracks to slip through. Every one of those weaknesses in Jax is based in her love and loyalty to her brother, things I do not share, and things I will not let be her downfall no matter how she may feel about what I have to do.

  Jace is more powerful than me, but I have the advantage of a lifetime of knowledge. The power he is using is E’rikon and he was raised as a human.

  First, I draw on the newly mended bond to wrap around Jax, isolate her, and use my portion of it to block Jace. No matter how strong he may be, nothing matches the intensity of the relationship between bondmates. The bond is many things: sustenance, companionship, connection. But it is also protection.

  The inability to block out a bondmate can be a weakness, but it is that component that allows me to shut down Jax’s connection to Jace without her approval. Not that she is fighting against me right now. Wherever she may be, she has most likely already lost consciousness.

  The connection takes times and effort to close, and Jace fights against the narrowing of the flow. It is not until it is barely a trickle that I feel the other presence there. It may be Jace’s power, Jace’s mind, and Jace’s darkness, but there is someone else controlling it. I receive just enough information to determine the identity of this person before the connection slams shut completely.

  Jastren Reva.

  A jolt of surprise shoots into me before the connection is slammed shut the rest of the way—from Jace’s end.

  I open my eyes and the room is dark around me. How long have I been out? I’m lying in Rym’s bed again and he is standing to the right with his back propped against the wall and his arms crossed.

  “What. In the blazes. Was that?” He straightens and takes two steps across the room.

  I chuckle. As exhausting and perhaps a bit frightening as the experience was, I cannot ignore the awed elation that fills me. The words flow out in a near whisper. “The bond is back.”

  “What?” His jaw drops open and he cocks his head to the side as if he is examining me for mental deficiency. “That’s not possible.”

  Closing my eyes, I search it out. It is still present, still whole, and still connecting me to Jax with gentle waves of color and light. She is sleeping, or more likely, still unconscious… but she is there.

  “Earth to Lover Boy…” Rym’s loud voice comes from just beside my ear.

  I open my eyes and swat him away. “You and I both know how little the impossibility of something applies to Jax.”

  He nods and shrugs. “True.” Running a hand over his face, he exhales. “But what are you going to do now? This does complicate things a bit.”

  “Complicates things? How would it…” I do not even need to ask the question before the pieces come together and I provide my own answer: with the bond back in place Vitrad can use me to get to Jax. Much like it seems Jastren is doing through Jace.

  I was too busy protecting Jax to gather much information in the encounter. Wherever she is, she and Jace are separated. And then there is Jastren. How did he survive the bombing? And how does Jax know him? Because it was clear that she did, beyond their familial relation. Has she been working with him? Could she have been foolish enough to trust him? And Jace? How did he get into that state? I cannot imagine Jax would have let anyone influence her brother like that. Unless she does not know.

  “When she used shikiza on you, did she know what she was doing?” I ask.

  “Well, I did not exactly have time to ask… but no. She seemed completely oblivious, as if it was more instinct than conscious decision.”

  “She has no idea… She does not know what he is…” I shake my head slowly as the realization stuns me.

  Rym lets out an exasperated noise. “She has no idea about what? What are you talking about? You are not making any sense, cousin.”

  “Jax. Somewhere along the way she crossed paths with Jastren Reva. He has her brother.” I kick the blanket away and stand. “I need to find her. I have closed the connection for now, but if he gets back in… he could destroy her. Jace may already be gone.”

  “Whoa. Wait a second here. What about the plan? What about the announcement? What about taking down my father? The extension will start tomorrow unless we stop it. Granted, that will not affect Jax, but…” He throws his hands out to the sides. “You cannot simply ru
n off to her rescue. She has handled herself this long. She can wait.”

  Rym is correct. There is no way to deny that fact, but still, every instinct in my body screams at me to run to Jax. Or maybe it is the months I have spent alone in my head that lead me to crave the connection like a drug. Does she really need me to save her? Or am I simply trying to convince myself of that so I have an excuse?

  I place my hands on Rym’s shoulders and meet his gaze. “My first duty is here. With the bond reinstated, I can speak with her through the bond and explain what is happening. But whether our plan succeeds or not, I will go to her once everything is done. If only to get Stella away from here should things not go as planned.”

  Rym nods and takes a step back, agitation clear in his rapid hand gestures. “How do you know Jastren is involved in this? I was under the impression he did not make it out of the research facility.”

  My hands clench into fists at the sound of his name. However he is involved, it cannot be good. He is not the type to have anyone’s best interests at heart but his own. “He was there. With Jace. In her head. I do not know what his goal was, but it appears that Jace has had at least some training in how to use his enhancement.”

  “Training? That did not happen overnight. Where has Jastren been the past few weeks? Has he been with them?”

  “I don’t know,” I snap. His question brings up an interesting point. Why did Jax not mention him when she was here?

  Rym paces back and forth across the room. “Look, I know how you feel about her, and with the bond back… It goes both ways, you know. She has access to you now. How do you know she has not had the capability to restore the bond all along? What if she is working with Jastren? How do you know—”

  I shake my head. “Because I know. She cannot… she would not hide things from me.”

  “How well do you know her? Yes, I realize she was—or is—your bondmate, but we do not know for sure how that works on her end. There are so many things, improbable if not downright impossible, that she has done, abilities she has demonstrated. I knew she was hiding something when I went out there. She was so close all along, but she never made the effort to reach out to you before now? And why now? For all you know, she has lied to you since the beginning. She is—”