by Nia Mars
Tiam makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. “You can try here.”
I press closer to Roax.
“What if I hurt someone?” What if I hurt them?
Koah watches me. “You need to practice. Better try here than accidentally lose control back at the palace.”
I stay where I am. “The power only comes when I’m angry.”
“Who made you angry?” Roax demands.
Koah’s gaze cuts to him. “I told her she can’t have a male office assistant. She’s put Nilo into the post.”
Roax huffs. “Of course she can’t.”
That’s enough to push me to my feet. I raise my hand to tell him where he can put his chauvinism, but before I can say a single word, power shoots through me, up my arms and out my fingertip, up to the sky like some rocket going straight up into the stratosphere.
My mouth falls open as I stare after it.
The men around me hold their breaths for several seconds before Dason says, “I don’t think she shot down any airships.”
Stars. I collapse back onto Roax’s lap. He puts his arms around me. I’m not sure if it’s to comfort me or to restrain me.
“I didn’t know she could do that.” Tiam looks at me, dazed.
I’m trembling, but I don’t want to be weak. I want to be a strong Oath Forger who can protect the people she’s supposed to protect. I look up at Roax. “Should I try again?”
“No!” the men say as one, and Roax’s arms tighten around me.
“Where am I going to practice?”
Koah answers. “We could take you to an uninhabited mining planet.”
Tiam shakes his head. “It’ll still have satellites in orbit.”
“Better she shoots down a satellite than a transport ship,” Koah tells him with a one-shouldered shrug.
I stare at them. Better I don’t shoot down anything!
“In the meanwhile... Let’s try not to unnecessarily anger her.” Roax is suddenly the voice of reason.
Have I slipped into an alternate universe?
His dark eyes narrow at me. “That doesn’t mean we’ll do whatever you want. Don’t test me, Ava Mine. I will keep a tally.”
Chapter Seven
THE TOPIC OF NILO AS MY OFFICE ASSISTANT is officially dropped. I have won a minor battle. Admittedly, probably only because my uncontrolled power is a much bigger issue at the moment. Still, I’ll take my victories where I can get them.
I spend the rest of the day back at the palace, answering invitations, deciding on amounts for donations, and confirming the media secretary, then agreeing to some interviews the next week. Apparently, the people of the Federation haven’t had enough of me yet. All their broadcast stations are clamoring for Oath Forger stories.
I’m still not a fan of public appearances, but I don’t mind the interviews. People want to know about me, and where I come from. I’ll get to tell them about Earth, why it’s important to save it from the pirates, why it’s important to save all the planets of the Frontier.
Would I rather be out there tracking down Taly’s killer? Yes. But I’m the Oath Forger. I want to be a good leader. And I think a good leader is one who fulfills her duties. What I’d rather do must come second.
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but that doesn’t seem to trigger my power like anger does. All is well at the palace.
Except that I miss Uthan. The more time I spend with The Five, the more I crave their presence. Knowing that Uthan is off planet leaves me unsettled.
I can’t shake off that feeling even while we share a celebratory dinner in the garden with Olipha. She passed another round of exams, so we celebrate her success with academy stories from everyone and lots of laughter. She was blinded by an assassin over a decade ago, so her achievements are even more impressive. I couldn’t be more proud of her if she were my own sister.
That night, I lie between Koah and Tiam, but Dason and Roax are also in the bed. With Uthan away, I feel the need to have the others around me even more.
I can’t sleep.
I twist and turn.
Koah puts a hand on my hip. Tiam presses up against me from the back—two men with bodies that whisper to me in the night. I squirm against Tiam, and he groans. Then he presses his warm lips to the soft spot where my neck meets my shoulder.
Koah’s hand slides up my side then stops and hesitates under my breast. Only his thumb moves, caressing, leaving a hot trail in its wake.
As that heat spreads to the rest of my body, a soft sound escapes my throat. Dason shifts against my feet.
“Enough!” Roax slaps the mattress. “She’s not ready for all of us yet. And it will be all of us, if you go any further.”
I can’t breathe. There’s too much tension in the air, even when Tiam and Koah pull back from me. I can still feel the heat radiating off their bodies. I want to press myself against one, or both. I don’t, because I know Roax is right. I’m not ready.
Yet when I finally do fall asleep, my dreams are filled with images of naked, tangled limbs. In the dream, it’s easy. In the dream, I feel safe and cherished. I can more than handle it. I enjoy it. When I’m with the kreks in that dream, together, we somehow make a whole. It’s a wonderful dream.
OUR ‘WHOLE’ IS BROKEN the following day.
Dason bursts in while I’m working in my office. “Uthan!”
I’m already on my feet. “What happened?”
“On his ship in the med unit. At the military port.” The words rush out of him. “They don’t dare transfer him. He’s in bad shape.”
“I want to see him.” I hurry out the door, my guards behind me, and Dason is right there, too, falling in step next to me as we rush down the hallway toward the back exit.
“I tried to lick him. It didn’t work.”
Dason’s krek power is healing. His distant ancestors were beast masters. Their magical beasts could heal with their saliva. They’d become extinct generations ago, but not before passing their mystical abilities to their masters.
Dason’s healing power saved my life before, when the glass ceiling of my bedroom exploded, slicing me up badly. If even he couldn’t help Uthan...
We fly in Dason’s personal transport pod, along with four guards, two of them mine, two of them his.
My hands grip my knees so hard, my knuckles are white. Uthan can’t die, is the only thing I can think. Yet, if they can’t transport him, he must be on the edge of death.
Guilt drowns me. I haven’t accepted him yet. If I had... Maybe the connection would have made him stronger.
I can’t lose Uthan. I can’t.
The static helplessness of sitting in the pod is driving me crazy. I want to do something more than just tap my foot on the floor, dammit.
Dason, sitting next to me, puts his arm around me and draws me to his chest. Because he’s younger than me and tends to act submissively to me, sometimes I forget how large and strong he is. I lean into his strength.
“Do you know what happened? Was he shot? How was he injured?”
“He followed the herb merchant to a meeting with pirates. He was discovered. The pirates had a fourth-level mystic.”
Stronger than Uthan. Uthan is seventh-level.
“He fought the mystic?”
Dason nods. “That’s what his guard said. Uthan took six men with him. All but one were killed. Uthan only made it back because the guard activated the emergency protocol after they crawled back onto Uthan’s ship.”
Thank the stars for emergency protocols. I make a mental note to learn more about them. “How do mystics fight?”
“I’m not sure, Oath Forger.”
We sit in helpless, maddening silence. Cold spreads through me, stark fear for Uthan.
“Do you think he’ll die?”
Dason’s arm tightens around me. “If he’ll come back for anyone, it will be for you.”
Please. Please. Please.
Time stretches miserably. A lightyear passes before I’m finally standing next to U
than on his ship. Then kneeling next to him, because my legs won’t hold me up. It’s so much worse than I could have imagined.
Blood is beaded on his body. His golden eyebrow rings are caked with it.
He’s in a different kind of med unit from the ones I’ve seen before. It’s like a coffin. He’s lying on the bottom part, while the top is suspended above him, less than two inches from his face, all made of some white space-material. At least a dozen wires and tubes run from the machine to him.
“Why hasn’t he been cleaned?” I snap at the medic who’s monitoring the machine.
She’s about my age, skin with a greenish tinge, eyes larger than normal on Earth. She looks as worried and frustrated as I feel, enough so that I regret my outburst the next second.
“We can’t stop the bleeding. I’m sorry, Oath Forger.”
Only then, when I look closer, do I realize that the blood is beading up from Uthan’s pores. He’s literally sweating blood.
“His heart is very weak,” the medic tells me. “Any disturbance, even the slightest shock, and it might stop.”
“Are you familiar with injuries that can be caused by a mystic?”
“Only a little, Madam. They are rare enough that we don’t see many cases.”
“How is it different from a weapon’s injury?”
“There’s a mental component to it,” she tells me, her tone and expression apologetic that she doesn’t know more. “And all our machines work only on the physical.”
A hole opens up in my chest and grows and grows, a cold abyss of fear. I hold Uthan’s bloody hand and stare at his bloody face. And then I beg him. “Please come back to me.”
It’s clear that he’s not here. Some vital part of him is someplace far away. Maybe his soul is trapped. Or maybe he doesn’t want to come back. My heart breaks.
I try to think of something, anything that could entice him to return.
I bend my head to his ear. “Uthan, Krek of Dier, Head of the Gefel Alliance, I accept you. I am your Oath Forger.”
I lean my forehead against his temple. I don’t care if I get his blood on me. I’m your Oath Forger. I’m yours and you’re mine. Come back to me.
He doesn’t stir. He doesn’t so much as flinch.
I swallow back my tears. Where are you, Uthan?
Can he be...
Is he on his island?
If he is... I squeeze my eyes shut tight and try to go to him.
Nothing.
I imagine a warm ocean, the water painted golden by the rays of the sun. I imagine floating. Azure sky above. Below me, I imagine a hard, muscular body, the warmth of Uthan’s skin.
Uthan?
There’s nothing but silence. No, not silence, the whirring of machines.
The mirage in my mind won’t work. Maybe I can’t go to Uthan’s ocean without Uthan. I try again, anyway.
I imagine the ocean, the sky, Uthan and I floating. Then I imagine us swimming to shore, walking out onto the sand. The lush jungle past the narrow beach. I try, with all my might, to hear the cry of the birds.
The picture comes together, then wavers, then disappears. I bring it back.
It’s more solid this time, more real. Except, Uthan is not next to me. I’m walking out of the water, but he’s already on the beach. He’s crumpled into a bloody heap, naked. He is deathly still.
I rush to him and drop to my knees on the wet sand. I grip his blood-soaked shoulders to keep him from slipping away, from disappearing. “Uthan!”
I watch his chest, but I can’t tell if he’s breathing. I raise my gaze to his face. His eyelids don’t twitch, don’t flutter.
When I look past him for a second, I gasp at the sight of the jungle. It’s not like I tried to imagine it, the lush green that I know from previous visits.
The trees are dying. Even the lianas hang dry and lifeless. No bird song. No sound of life, only the sound of the ocean licking the shore, more aggressively than when I’d been here before. As if the water is about to eat the island.
I glance back at Uthan. The water is up to his waist. I need to drag him up the beach. I grab him by his wrists. God, he’s heavy. I pant and heave.
Within minutes, the water follows us. I move him again. Soon we’re at the edge of the woods. The beach has already disappeared.
If we stay, we’ll drown. But what does that mean? If we die here on the island, will we die in real life, on Uthan’s spaceship?
I think I might be able to go back, the same way that I got here, by visualizing where I mean to go, as long as I don’t wait until it’s too late. Except, no way am I leaving Uthan.
I grab him under the arms and drag him into the woods, away from the rising water, but only progress a few feet before I have to lay him down again. There’s no path this time. Roots, fallen trees, tangled dead lianas are everywhere. He’s too heavy for me to drag across an obstacle course.
“Uthan! Wake up!”
No change.
I lie down next to him and fold my arms tightly around him, wrap a leg over his. Come back to me. Come back to me. Come back to me.
The waves are licking at our ankles.
I squeeze my eyes shut and think of my own inner place, the inner desert I visited only once before. Sand. Wind. Dry. These are all things that are easy for me to imagine. Easier than Merim. Merim is still new to me. The desert that surrounds Dallas Colony on Earth, I know intimately.
Gritty sand under my feet. No sun above, just a hazy light. Too much sand in the air to truly see the sky.
For a moment, I’m there, but then, once again, I can feel water. Uthan’s ocean has reached our waists.
Sand. Sand. Sand.
I draw a deep breath. The water laps at our necks.
Another deep breath. It’s my last. Water covers my face as I cling to Uthan.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to feel dry sand.
Then it’s there. Rough sand under my bare skin, blowing over my face. I have sand in my nose and my eyes. I smile like an idiot. Now I have sand between my teeth.
I don’t care.
We are in my desert. Uthan is still in my arms. I kiss his bloody lips.
“Uthan, Krek of Dier, Head of the Gefel Alliance, I accept you,” I shout into the wind. “I am your Oath Forger.”
His eyes flutter, then open. The blood stops beading up on his face.
He looks around, moving only his eyes, squinting against the sand. “Nice place you have here.”
His voice is so rusty and weak, it breaks my heart. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“What is this place?”
“Some version of Earth as I know it.”
“Makes sense.” He draws a shuddery breath. “My ocean, or a version of it, is on my home planet. I lived on the island as a child. You recreate what you know.”
“So I made this?” I wasn’t 100% sure.
He nods.
“Can I make something else?”
“Try. If you’ve just recently created the place, it might not have yet fully become real inside you. Try for something nicer. Mystic sanctuaries are not usually this hostile. It does defeat the point.”
I hang on to him tightly, close my eyes, and think of the palace garden at Merim. Green trees. Soft grass. A fish pond. The waterfall and its pool.
I paint the picture in my brain over and over until I can hear birds singing, until I feel soft grass under us. My eyes snap open. I sigh in relief. Uthan is next to me on the grass.
I grin at him. “Can you sit up?”
He struggles, so I help him, and then keep my arm around him even when we’re both sitting. The blood has dried on his skin and my clothes. The crimson is slowly darkening to brown. We are far from a pretty sight.
“How about washing off in the water?”
I stand first, then pull him up. His movements are unsteady. He leans on me heavily as we hobble forward. Even when we reach the water, we don’t let go of each other.
“It’s the palace garden.
” He looks at me with wonder. “You’re bringing me back to life.”
“That’s the idea.”
His golden gaze searches my face. “It’s not one of the Oath Forger’s powers.”
“Ask me if I care.”
He flashes a weak grin. Then his eyes flutter closed, and his knees buckle, and he crashes into the water, unconscious.
I grab him and pull him up until his face is above the water. Stars, he’s heavy. In my desperation, I scream, “Tib! Help!” before I remember that Uthan once told me that I should never ask Tib for a favor.
I think it’s okay. We’re in an imaginary garden. I doubt Tib heard me. Or if she did, I doubt she’ll bother responding. She’s a spirit, above human drama, except for the small bits she finds entertaining.
But she comes. Except, this time, she’s a him, a glorious, magnificent man in his prime, glowing with power, walking through the waterfall. Naked.
I’m so spell-bound, I can’t even groan at that last detail.
The only reason I recognize Tib is because his eyes are exactly the same as they were in female form: bottomless and all-seeing.
He stops. He stands still for an endless moment, then, slowly, without taking his gaze from me, he bends and blows his breath on the surface of the water.
Goose bumps pop out on my skin. Uthan stirs in my grip. When I pull on him, he comes up, finds his feet and leans against me. He’s holding most of his own weight.
The blood is gone. His eyes are open. When he says, “You shouldn’t have done that,” his voice is stronger than before.
“If there’s a price, I will pay it.” I glance toward Tib, but he is gone. There’s no trace of him left.
Like before, I feel bereft, as if I’d give anything to have him take me with him. I swallow hard and shake off the feeling.
Uthan kisses my brow, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth. His arms go around me as he kisses my lips. “You accepted me. You are my Oath Forger.”
“You heard that?” I ask between kisses, smiling against his lips.
“I can feel it.”
When he picks me up and carries me out of the water, I protest and try to squirm out of his grip. “Wait until you’re fully recovered!”