by Sara King
But the visions kept bombarding him, shattering his defenses. They kept getting stronger, more violent, and they didn’t appear to have an outside source. They must be coming from within, he thought, confused. He saw the visions emanating from her throat, her heart, her liver, her womb, her core… About the only rama unaffected was her mind-rama, and it was completely shut down, the terror and images spiraling up from the lesser ramas making it lock itself away, leaving the lower ramas of instinct and emotion in charge. Above it, the soul-rama had withdrawn, leaving the body to stagnate in its own emotions without the guiding hand of previous lifetimes of soul-knowledge.
Without a healthy window into her spirit’s great wisdom and calm, she was trapped in the growing cycle of panicked silver gi building and spiraling within her lower ramas, crashing within her like a full-force hurricane.
She was rocking back and forth, now, babbling something under her breath.
On instinct, Dragomir closed his eyes and found the humming crystalline core that was his center. He sank his mind into it, allowing the terror rushing through him to disintegrate under its power. Then, gathering this calm, he gently reached out to her with his heart-rama, surrounding her with the tranquility, peace, and love that made up the essence of that energy center.
He tried to forge a new link—not the dormant one, which he knew was in danger of exploding into being with the slightest touch—to feed his gi inside her body, but with her ramas all cinched shut on the tornado within, all he could do was give her external peace. He concentrated on that, flooding her au with gentle, reassuring heart-rama energy. The color changed from panicked flashes of sickly orange, red, and brown, to a warm gold as his own energy began to seep into the outer edges of the au, then slowly spread deeper, until it was touching the edges of her physical body.
Her rocking slowed, then finally stopped. Dragomir let out a pent-up breath as he felt as the ramas slowly stopped pouring their poison into her being. A few moments later, her heart rama unfolded a tentative petal. Then another. As gently as he could, Dragomir brushed it with the golden energy of his core. A tiny, needle-sized passage opened within it, and the emaciated, emerald-laced gi link he had seen before jumped to push energy through it, into her center, instinctively trying to re-activate the neglected rama with a flow of emerald gi.
The other connection, Dragomir’s, the bigger, dormant one, had started to almost keen with the intensity of its hum, almost painful to Dragomir’s mind as his soul ached to make the connection and help her. Life, it seemed, wanted him to seal that connection and surrender to her. For whatever reason, this royal, like that pretty gray filly, had been chosen for healing.
No. He actually had to avoid looking at that massive channel in his mind’s eye, just to keep from getting sucked in at the need buried there. Life had guided Dragomir to this woman, but he would help her on his own terms. He would not be surrendering to a royal, opening his heart to one of the invaders of this planet. After Meggie, he would rather die.
But he was a healer, and the healer in him instinctively wanted to help this woman. To do that, he had to figure out what was going on. Avoiding the massive, dormant connection lest he accidentally trigger something he couldn’t take back, Dragomir gently grabbed the tiny green tendril woven through the rama’s petals and used it as a tether to carefully ease his consciousness into the swirling energy beyond.
He was staggered by what he found.
Unlike the screaming visage of terror that her body portrayed, the woman was a well of depth and passion. He saw the loving, nurturing experiences of thousands of rich lifetimes stored within, all caged by the cold, brutal set of memories that had erupted only a moment ago. Her trust, her love, was bound. He tested the cage gently, found it firm. The ramas themselves were utterly choked with the visions that plagued her, but he could find no outward connection that could be producing the images other than the emerald gi-line. Troubled, he backed out of the heart-rama and turned to follow the emerald strand to its owner.
An old soul. One who, like this woman, had experienced many, many lives in the past. A man…
Dragomir froze when he realized which man. He was ringed so heavily in worry and fury that there was no mistake. It was the green-eyed general who had took him from his home, humiliated him, and whipped him bloody. The shock quickly launched Dragomir back to his body, and he jerked with the impact.
They’re siblings, he realized.
Victory had felt her mind shutting down, her consciousness disconnecting from the sensations roiling within her body, when it had suddenly felt as if someone had taken a warm blanket and draped it over her shoulders. She froze, checking to make sure the brute hadn’t moved.
He remained where he was, tethered at the end of his chain, head down, his manhood pointed at the floor, eyes closed.
She sucked in a shuddering breath as she felt the warmth spread around her, easing the pent-up pain in her chest. She slowly let her breath out through chattering teeth, feeling the panic slowly drop away.
When she looked up, the man was watching her again.
Instantly, his blue eyes widened and his heavy jaw flinched as he lowered his gaze, biting his lip.
Victory felt a surge of panic try to rush through her again, but it seemed sluggish, less insistent. The fear lasted a few heart-pounding moments, then slid back to where it had come from. Her alarm faded faster than ever before. She once again found the courage to look at his body.
He was every bit as big as she had first feared. Easily six and a half feet, with heavy muscles padding his bronze chest, shoulders, arms, and torso. When she brought herself to bring her gaze downward, she found that, with his arms shackled behind his back, his nakedness was displayed for her there, hands useless to hide it. Like his body, his genitals were large and brown, and rested gently upon two great thighs. His highly-defined calves led into strong ankles, around each was a sturdy band of metal, linked together by a short chain.
Victory knew he was aware of her perusal because he bit his lip and looked away, the side of his face that she could see flushed in shame.
For the first time in years, Victory felt a rush of triumph. Unlike so many times in her past, when she’d been stripped, fondled, licked, entered, this time she was the one who could look. She was the one who could do as she wished. He was the one absolutely helpless to stop her.
Excitement and anger overcame the last vestiges of Victory’s fear. She stood up, slowly. At the movement of the chain, the man’s eyes flickered, but he kept his head down.
He’s mine, Victory thought, a thrill of vicious anticipation rushing up her core, riding the back of a furious need for vengeance. I can do anything I want with him.
He met her eyes, then, and there was understanding, there. And fear. “When did you start having the visions?” he asked softly.
All of her newfound confidence shattered instantly at the sound of his crude native tongue. Victory jerked away from him, yanking the chain tight between them, making him grunt with the strain on his neck. She screamed, out of instinct, and yanked again, turning to scramble for the bed.
“I’m sorry!” the man cried. “I’m so sorry. Please.” He stumbled after her.
“Stop talking!” Victory shrieked, climbing backwards over the bed, putting it between them.
The man hesitated at the edge of the bed, looking down at the obstacle with trepidation. Even as big as he was, with as little room the chain gave his stride, he would have trouble crossing it.
Victory huddled at the edge of the chain on the other side, dropping to the floor once more, taking comfort in that small barrier between them. What do I do? she thought, her entire body shuddering with fear and adrenaline. The panic was spiraling upwards again, and her breath was beginning to come in fast, short heaves. With the panic, came the memories.
Victory cringed as she once more found herself chained to a pole, her back cold against the wet ground, a warm body pressing into her, licking her face, twisting her
breasts, calling her his ‘imperial slut.’ She let out a miserable whimper, trying not to watch the flashing memories, unable to stop herself.
She was on her stomach in the dark. Her head was covered, her hands lashed behind her back, her ankles tied. She was still wearing the red and black Imperial Academy uniform she had put on that morning for the two-month, sixteen-jump journey to the Core. She remembered a jolt in the ship, fire, a horrible shrieking sound, and the sound of men’s voices, yelling. Gunshots, her bodyguards dropping around her…
The warm-blanket sensation wrapped her once more, restoring that sense of security she hadn’t felt since that first, horrible night.
Across the bed, the man got to his knees, then lowered himself to his rear, back against the bed. At first, Victory’s panic surged again at the movement, but when she realized she could no longer see him, she slowly relaxed, leaning her ear against the edge of the mattress.
Somehow, the bed between them helped to alleviate some of her fears. The tightness in her chest was no longer an overwhelming, all-encompassing terror. Instead, it began to settle in her gut once more, taking the images with it. Within the next few minutes, Victory’s breathing and heart-rate slowed, until she was simply staring at the delicately-embroidered blanket, following the silver and gold patterns with her eyes.
She watched the antique dials on the cherrywood grandfather clock as several hours went by, the two of them separated by the width of the bed. Victory heard absolutely no sound on the slave’s end, and wondered if he was asleep.
What am I going to do? she thought again, miserable. Just looking at the brute sent her into an uncontrollable spiral of pain and memories. And somehow her father wanted her to spend weeks like this? Months? It wasn’t possible. She would die of heart failure before that.
Victory heard the man shift on the other side of the bed and she froze, her eyes riveted to the chain as it moved slightly over the covers. When it stopped, she let out the breath she had been holding and balled her trembling fingers into the blankets in relief.
“Sorry,” he said, as if he could feel her spike of panic. “I had to move. My hands—”
“Stop talking,” Victory bit out in the native tongue. She hadn’t had to use the language of her captors for two whole months, and when she did, every muscle in her body began to shake, remembering.
He fell silent, but only for awhile. Softly, he said, “When did your visions start?”
Victory froze. Visions?
“I think I might know what’s happening,” the man ventured. “Sometimes past lives resurface into current ones, interrupting the flow of—”
His words choked off when Victory grabbed the chain and yanked it, hard. “Be quiet,” she snarled.
“I can help you,” the man said.
Victory felt a desperate surge of hope, warm and unusual in her chest, but then dashed it aside in anger. “Quiet.”
“I really can,” the man whispered.
Victory yanked the chain again. “I own you, slave,” she snarled. “I told you to be quiet.”
And he was.
A half hour before dinnertime, there came a polite knock on her door. A maid’s voice called tentatively, “Supper will be in the great hall in thirty minutes, milady.”
Victory’s stomach tightened, but she said nothing. She had learned to live with hunger. She could out-wait her father.
Twenty minutes later, another knock. “Dinner will be in ten minutes, milady. Will you be joining us?”
“No!” Victory screamed, adrenaline powering her lungs. “Leave me alone!”
Fifteen minutes later, another gentle knock on the solid wooden door. “They are eating, milady. Your lord father the Adjudicator has decreed that you shall not eat unless you do so at his table.”
“Leave!”
She heard footsteps bolt down the hall.
Dinnertime came and went, and Victory never moved from where she squatted beside the bed. Sure enough, as promised, there was no more knocks on her door. Victory relaxed her head against the bed with a whimper. Hours passed like that, and she fell into a light doze.
“You were a slave in another life,” the man said softly, making her jump. “You were on a ship, headed to a school, when your ship was attacked. You spent many years humiliated and scorned.”
Victory jerked awake and frowned. Her family had taken great pains to keep her capture a secret. The fact that someone had told a humble slave, and a native, at that, was degrading. Probably yet another ‘lesson’ her father had decided she needed to learn. “Shut up.”
But he kept talking. “For some reason, you were a great prize. They took you to large meeting-places and let everyone there laugh and spit on you while others violated you. They raped you and rubbed rotten fish into your skin. They chained you to a post and left you out in the cold, to face the elements in rags. You probably died like that, because that’s where the memories end.”
Victoria tensed. She had never told anyone about the fish.
“I think this must have been your last life, because it is so powerfully connected with this one,” the man said softly. He rustled on the floor, the chain jerking against the bed. Then he was kneeling, his big body large enough to allow him to look over the lip of the bed at her. His blue eyes were kind. “It’s also probably why you’re a princess in this life. The wheels of Spirit make beggars out of kings, and emperors out of slaves. You experienced one extreme, thus you were given the other. The spirit thrives on contrast. It helps us to grow. It is the Cycle.”
Victoria huddled further beneath the side of the bed, out of sight, her heart hammering. “I told you to be quiet.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” the man said softly.
Those words were like razors in her mind. Instantly, she saw a blue-eyed man hovering over her, a knife in his hand.
“Shhhhh,” he said, kneeling beside her bound body. He unzipped her Academy jacket and pulled it aside. Then he slipped his knife under her Academy blouse. “I’m not going to hurt you, Princess,” he whispered, the scar on his lip puckering with his grin. She felt the cold back of the blade press into her skin, heard the fabric rip…
Victory screamed and started clambering backwards, snapping the chain taut as the blue-eyed man’s foul breath filled her face. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again, as his filthy hand found her breast, kneaded it. “Shhhhh.” She screamed through the gag as he slid his hand toward her pants.
“That man isn’t real!” her slave shouted, over the bed. “He’s meaningless to you! He’s from another life!”
His booming voice shattered the stench of the scarred man’s cloying breath and Victory, seeing herself back in her room, laying on the thick woolen carpets instead of on the cold metal grate of a raider’s ship, sucked in a huge breath and let it out in a long, horrible sob, sinking into the floor.
A loud knock sounded on the door, and her head Praetorian’s commanding voice shouted, “Is everything all right in there, Princess?”
Victory hunched on the floor, whimpering, the remnants of the vision draining with her tears.
The Praetorian captain opened the door, then looked inside. Seeing Victory curled on the floor, Lion quickly stalked inside, unsheathing her blade. An instant later, her blade was pressed against the slave’s throat, and Victory felt the belt around her waist tighten as the man tensed backwards to the end of his tether.
“Did he hurt you, milady?” the gray-haired Praetorian demanded. “I heard shouting.”
Victory whimpered and pushed her face into the floor, rocking it back and forth, allowing the intricate weave to soak up her tears. She knew, beyond a doubt, that if she allowed Lion to kill the man, her father would see to it she would be chained to a corpse for a few years, instead. If only that didn’t seem the better alternative…
For a long time, Lion stood there, looking from Victory to the slave, then back. Finally, she bowed deeply. “I apologize for the intrusion, milady.” She sheathed her swor
d and stalked back outside.
“No,” Victory whimpered. “Come back.”
Then the door was shut, and she was once more alone with the slave.
Victory squeezed her eyes shut and sobbed into the rug.
“When did you start having the visions?” the man asked, for the third time.
“What visions?” Victory asked in misery from the floor.
“Like the one just now, with the man cutting open your blouse. When did they start?”
Victory froze, every muscle in her body going utterly still. She twisted slowly on the floor, then carefully got to her feet, every single hair on her body prickling with goosebumps as she turned back to look at the slave.
The man was sitting up, watching her.
“You’re a Psi,” she whispered, on a surge of horror. She backed to the end of the tether, staring at him.
The man nodded, slowly, blue eyes searching hers.
Her breath tightened in her chest. Long-term space travel—jumps, in particular—produced strange effects on stored embryos and sperm, and the original colonists to Mercy, over five hundred years ago, had found their destination planet to be uninhabitable, and had struck out on a desperate-man’s voyage deep into the galaxy back when long-term space travel was still a new and dangerous frontier. Consequently, when they by chance found a rocky planet with a habitable atmosphere, they dipped heavily into the cryogenic genetics database to help replace the numbers they had lost on the voyage.
Due to that, Mercy had left an overabundance of Psi, as well as Kin, Shi, and other unnatural human-base mutations. Once the original Liberated Assemblage of Planets sponsoring the colonies failed, almost four hundred and fifty years ago, Mercy was left to survive on its own, and the Psis were allowed to reproduce in the gene pool. When the Imperium emerged, three hundred and fifty years after that, it began re-claiming the colonies that had survived.