Ignition: Alien Ménage Romance (Phoenix Rising Book 2)

by Amelia Wilson

  Alaia’s face was grim as she responded, “It’s been less than a single lifetime, but it feels like an eternity. And you’d be surprised how quickly you can acclimate to things when death is the only alternative.”

  They walked through a narrow tunnel whose walls were smooth and glassy where the laser chisels had melted the stone. The floor of the tunnel had that melted look, as well, but someone had scattered fine gravel over it to make the footing less treacherous, which was increasingly necessary as the path continued to angle down deeper under the ground.

  “Just how far are you taking us?” Sera asked. “And did you call anyone? How do they know they’re supposed to meet us?”

  Nima looked annoyed, and she muttered something beneath her breath. Alaia said, “They will be notified once we’ve gotten you to the hub. As for how far we’re going… well, a long way.”

  “With the others know to meet us there?”

  “They will soon enough.”

  Sera was less than enthusiastic about Alaia’s answer, but she held her silence.

  One of the soldiers scooted ahead of them in the tunnel and rounded a blind corner while Nima held the party back. Beno spoke in Sera’s mind. ‘Scouting for intruders. We must be getting close to an entrance point.’

  There was a long, anxious moment, then the soldier returned. He nodded to Nima, and they continued along their way.

  Once they went around that blind corner, the floor leveled out into a wide, shallow room. A set of heavy blast doors with a biometric lock stood to one side, and another set of blast doors without a lock stood on the other. Alaia went to the locked doors and pressed her hand against a flat piece of glass set into the wall beside them. A beam of light coursed over her hand, scanning the fine whorls and variations in her skin. There was a soft click, and then the door slid into the wall, moving aside and letting them continue on.

  They stepped through, and Sera gasped in surprise. The floor immediately fell away into a massive chamber. Empty, open space gaped all around them, as far down as she could see and as high as her sight could reach. The chamber itself was crisscrossed by supported tracks and accessed by a honeycomb of doors and little balconies, some of them precisely carved out by laser tools, some looking as if they’d been chipped out of the bedrock by hand.

  “Ehglasir mines,” Alaia told them. “Bruthesans had mined ehglasir for millennia, long before they even harnessed the power of electricity, let alone computers or space travel. Some of these tunnels predate their first contact with any other civilization. They were first excavated during the Bruthesan Darkness.”

  She was confused, and she asked her bond mates, ‘What is she talking about?’

  Theyn answered, ‘Ehglasir is a precious metal, soft and malleable as gold but red in color. The Bruthesan Darkness was the term for a time period when volcanic eruptions covered the planet with a heavy cloud layer. It trapped volcanic gasses on the surface of the planet, and to survive, every creature was forced to live underground. There was a time when the Bruthesans were exclusively a subterranean people…but that was hundreds of generations ago.’

  The archaeologist in her was intrigued. ‘That is fascinating.’

  ‘I wish I still had access to the library we had in the palace on Ylia,’ he sighed. ‘You would have found so much there. We lost so much when our world was destroyed.’

  She had never stopped to consider the cultural losses that Ylia’s demise had caused, but now it made her think. She imagined the Earth in Ylia’s place, and she was stunned by everything that would vanish in such a destruction. Every masterpiece of art, every symphony, every ballet, every film… every sculpture and every book was ever written on every subject… all of the graves and palaces and magnificent creations that humanity had ever accomplished, all gone, all just shadows in someone’s memory…. And this was what Ylia had been reduced to, just memories. The amount that they had lost was suddenly clear to her, mostly because she had never really given it any thought before, and the scale was staggering.

  ‘Damn the Taluans,’ she thought fiercely. ‘Damn them for what they do.’

  Beno nodded. ‘Indeed.’

  Nima went to the edge of the balcony where they were standing, and she pressed a button in the rail. The metal bar lifted of its own accord, folding itself out of the way, as a soft hum echoed up from the cavern far below. A large hovercar rose to the level of the balcony and stopped, its hatch open and waiting. Alaia stepped inside and beckoned the others to follow.

  They boarded the hovercar and sat in silence as Nima took the controls. She guided it through the maze of mine shafts and tunnels, twisting and turning through a circuitous route that Sera had no hope of memorizing. Kira became bored and fussy during the trip, and her parents took turns holding her, trying to keep her entertained while the featureless rock walls skimmed by. They flew for hours, it seemed, and finally the tunnel that they were in angled upward toward the surface. Nima gunned the engine, and they burst out of the mouth of the abandoned mine and into hot, dry air.

  The sun was blinding, and the desert heat was a misery. Kira began to fuss in Theyn’s arms. Nima coaxed a little more speed out of the vessel, and they headed toward an outcropping of red sandstone that stood on the horizon. It was a system of mesas and valleys, all carved by water that had evaporated long ago. The rocky landscape was beautiful in its own austere way, not too unlike the Painted Desert in Arizona, but with fewer colors.

  A deep black slash appeared on the side of one of the tallest mesas, and Nima headed their craft toward it at high speed. The engine complained at the effort it was being asked to put forth, and the hovercar shuddered beneath their feet.

  “Do you have to go so fast?” Sera asked.

  “Yes. The faster we go, the less chance we have of being spotted by a Taluan patrol, or by Taluan telemetry.” She swerved around a jutting rock. “If they see us, they’ll blast us into atoms.”

  “Yeah, let’s not do that.”

  The hovercar entered the darkness of a crevasse between two buttes, the roar of the engines bouncing off the rock walls until Sera’s eardrums vibrated with it. Kira fussed in her father’s arms, and he did his best to comfort her. Beno ran a hand over his face, wiping away sweat and concealing the briefest flash of an expression of impatience.

  Nima accelerated through the space between the two towers of rock, swerving and careening around them until Sera thought she was going to be most inelegantly sick on the floor of the hovercar. Abruptly, the craft stopped, and a sliding hatch opened in the sandy floor of the arroyo. When the opening was wide enough, she dropped the hovercar down into the darkness.

  It took some time for Sera’s eyes to adjust to the change in light, but the coolness of the underground passage was an instant relief after the unforgiving oven that was the Bruthesan surface. She took Kira from Theyn and held her as the baby transitioned from fussing to full-on crying. She patted her little back and made soothing sounds, but her child’s cries were loud and echoed wildly against the cavern’s sides. They entered another mine, or perhaps another section of the same mine complex they had been in before. The hovercar swooped through more tunnels until suddenly they burst out of the tunnels over a vista Sera did not expect.

  They soared into the top of a cavern that was wider and deeper than any cavern she had ever seen before. The ceiling of the chamber was blanketed by bioluminescent lichen that bathed the whole cavern in surprisingly bright blue-green light, giving the cavern the illusion of being under water.

  On the floor of the cavern was a city, built in the Ylian style with towers and graceful arches, the streets laid out in a precise grid formation. Hovercars sailed along in a sedate and orderly traffic pattern, and from her perch high above the city, she could see people, maybe by the hundreds, milling about. It could have been any prosperous town on any planet, with a sizeable and thriving population. She couldn’t believe her eyes.

  The hovercar angled out toward the very back of the cavern, opposite t
he tunnel they had used to access this place. Tucked against the glowing, lichen-covered walls was a gleaming palace, smaller in size than the one on Itzela but built in the same design. They flew over the front wing of the building and into the courtyard, where a group of soldiers were performing martial drills with impressive precision.

  Alaia finally spoke for the first time since their hovercar trip had begun. “This is the heart of the Resistance.”

  “Who lives in the palace?” Beno asked.

  “Now? His Royal Majesty, his Companion, his Selected and his child,” she answered.

  “And before?” Their bond mate turned to face her, his green eyes slightly squinted in distrust. “Who have we displaced?”

  The priestess smiled thinly. “Me.”

  Beno sounded scornful. “You’ve been living in this palace? Wasn’t the temple good enough for you?”

  Theyn chided, “Don’t be rude.” In her head, though, Sera could feel his amusement with their outspoken mate.

  Alaia turned her back on Beno and addressed the prince instead. “There have been no members of the royal family here on Bruthes for many years. I was keeping watch over the place. Consider me your steward.”

  “And now that the royal family is present?” the blond prince asked, the light in his blue eyes seeming to grow a little brighter.

  “Now I will be happy to see you in the place you belong.”

  Nima set the hovercar down gently just outside the portico in the rear of the palace’s main wing. Sera stepped out with Kira first, happy to be away from the Ylian woman and her piloting stunts. Theyn followed close behind her, then Alaia and Nima. Beno brought up the rear. His presence behind her seemed to make Nima nervous, which pleased Sera to no end. Beno enjoyed it, too.

  There were double doors that opened automatically as soon as they approached, swinging open like a waiting embrace. A scent like incense and flowers wafted from the bright blue interior. There was a blue carpet on the floor, running from the double doors into the wide hall beyond. More blue adorned the walls and raced in a delicate tracery of veins through the marble columns. Golden sconces, each one equipped with a bright artificial light, looked like miniature suns studding the walls all around the hall and into the rooms beyond.

  “It looks like the real palace,” Theyn whispered, a pang of homesickness in his voice. “My mother’s palace, I mean.”

  “It was modeled on it,” Alaia said, nodding. “We recreated the royal dwelling to our best ability, trying to bring each detail back to life. Your reaction tells me that we succeeded.”

  He nodded. “It’s smaller, but otherwise very much the same. Well done.” He cleared his throat and pushed his momentary sorrow away. Sera envied his emotional control. “I assume that the layout is the same as the palace on Ylia?”

  The priestess nodded. “In every way.”

  A full-blooded Ylian female entered the hallway through a single door at the far end of the chamber. She was tall and statuesque, with a feline strength and grace that made her look like a predator. Sera took an instinctual step back from the newcomer and bumped into Beno. His hand went to her shoulder, and she relaxed into him, grateful that he was there.

  The woman bowed deeply, then knelt before them, her head bowed. She wore an elaborately embroidered green robe that rustled when she moved, but under it was a tight black leather catsuit. To Sera, she looked like a superhero who had been surprised while changing into her costume.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, her voice husky. The sound affected both Ylian men on a sensual level, and Sera looked at them in annoyed surprise.

  ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Just two words and you’re both amped up?’

  They didn’t answer her. The woman spoke again. “I am Rai, and I am here for your pleasures. I will see to it that you and your family have everything they need, and everything they desire.”

  ‘For your pleasures?’ Sera asked Theyn. ‘What is she, some sort of sex slave?’

  ‘She is a ruafa,’ Beno told her. His gaze was irritatingly riveted by the kneeling woman.

  Sera was too curious not to ask. ‘What’s a ruafa?’

  ‘A sacred seductress from the temple of Eija.’ He glanced at her, and he had the good sense to look embarrassed. ‘Eija is a pleasure goddess. Just because we have difficulty breeding doesn’t mean that we aren’t still sensual creatures. Eija is about the pleasures of the flesh, simply put. Her priestesses are immaculately trained in all things sensual, from sex to music to the preparation of food.’

  Sera pursed her lips. ‘Goody.’

  Theyn’s mental voice said, ‘Don’t be jealous, Sera. She’s no threat to you.’

  She huffed softly, feeling all of her post-baby insecurities flaring up. ‘Let’s hope not.’

  Rai spoke again. “It will be my honor to escort you to your chambers and give you ease after your travel. I will comfort you until dinner is prepared, and after, if you so wish.”

  “Thank you for your service and graceful offer,” Theyn told her, betraying no hint of the arousal he was feeling. For the first time, Sera hated being connected to him, mind-to-mind. “That will not be necessary. I have my Companion and my Selected. I need no other ease.”

  The ruafa bowed her head again. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

  Alaia softly told her, “Go.”

  Rai rose in one fluid motion, her yellow glowing eyes cast down to gaze upon the floor. The group was silent as she left them, going back the way that she had come.

  “It didn’t occur to me that the traditions of Eija would have survived the cataclysm,” Theyn told Alaia. “It seems like a useless vanity in the presence of the threat we face.”

  The priestess sniffed, “The day we lose our cultural traditions is the day we lose our identities as Ylians. You should accept her, Your Majesty.”

  Theyn gave Sera a quick glance and a smile. “I have no need of her services. None of us do.”

  “Of course. As you wish.” She folded her hands in front of her. “I’ll see to it that an appropriate meal is prepared for you and the royal family. Would you like to dine in your private chambers?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I would.”

  Alaia inclined her head toward him in a show of obedience that Sera was certain she didn’t feel. “Would you like me to have someone escort you?”

  “If this place is modeled on my mother’s palace, I know the way.” He smiled wistfully. “You don’t forget the place where you grew up.”

  She seemed disinclined to let them wander off unsupervised, but they all knew that there was no graceful way she could prevent it. The priestess smiled thinly.

  “Well,” Alaia finally acquiesced, “just don’t leave the palace without letting me or Nima know. It’s still dangerous out there, and the people might become too… excited… by the sight of a member of the royal family.”

  Theyn took Sera’s elbow gently in his hand and told the priestess, “I wouldn’t dream of it. This way, my love.”

  His hand was only there to direct her, not to control her, but she pulled away, prickly. He wisely let her go.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Theyn led the way through a surprisingly circuitous set of hallways, each one as gleaming white as the last, all of them bedecked with floral-inspired blue decorations. Beno strolled along behind them, clearly familiar with the route, his thoughts silent but his feelings humming. Sera could feel both a sense of warm familiarity prompted by the place and the still-tingling rush of pure lust that the ruafa had caused. In her arms, Kira cooed and babbled, her little hands reaching out toward the vases full of multi-colored flowers that they passed.

  “Don’t,” Sera told her. “Some of those might be poisonous.”

  Her words seemed to startle Theyn. Through telepathy, she could hear the murmur as his botanist’s mind ran through the names of the flowers, right down to genus and species, and he said, “None of them are poisonous to Ylians, but that’s a good point. She’s a hybrid. What isn’t
dangerous for you or us might end up being harmful to her. It’s hard to know how our genetics combined.”

  She was feeling churlish. “You don’t say.”

  He looked at her with a frown but held his peace.

  They made one last right turn, then came face to face with a double door that looked as if it had been carved from chalcedony. It seemed to shine with a light all its own, its soft purple-blue translucence somehow magical. Theyn’s breath caught in his throat, just a tiny hitch, as he put his hand against one of the doors. It hummed, then a sound like a chiming bell filled the air. The door slid open, not being swallowed by the walls like most of the Ylians’ pocket doors, but swinging on its golden pin hinges to allow them entrance.

  The room that waited for them was a combination of ancient Rome and Star Trek. Reclining couches upholstered in soft white surrounded a central fountain, where holograms and water sprays combined to create beautiful, ephemeral works of art. Two couches sat together, corner to corner. Between the two bolsters was a hovering table, round and made of the same material as the door with a tiny golden bannister around the outside edge. The tableau was repeated on the other side of the fountain with two more couches, and another table floated there. Both tables bore crystal vases filled with delicate white flowers whose scent perfumed the entire room.

  ‘My mother’s favorites,’ Theyn said, his mental voice soft as a whisper.

  Beno nodded. ‘Yours, too.’

  Kira squealed with delight as the water in the fountain splashed, sending holographic jewels scattering until they vanished into the same thin air from which they had been formed. The little girl clapped.

  There was a balcony behind the couches, and from the scent of the warm breeze, it overlooked a garden. To their right was a sitting area, with a large white musical instrument of a variety that Sera could not identify. Another purple-blue door stood closed to their left.