The Weaver (The Vrix #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Goldflame Tunnel buzzed with activity as Rekosh strode along it. Vrix both male and female, young, old, and everything in between talked, worked, and played. The goldworkers’ forges at the far end of the tunnel spread warmth even from this distance, bathing the rough-hewn stone in an orange glow that made the shadows deeper, darker, and colder, but those shadows held no menace. The clanging of tools and the hissing of flames and molten gold echoed off the walls, layering with the vrix voices to create a web of sound.

Certainly, there was no shortage of work to be done here. By decree of Queen Ahnset tes Ishuun’ani Ir’okari, all Takarahl would soon gleam with hints of gold, a display of its dwellers’ indomitable spirits. In accordance with that order, The Queen’s Fang—the female warriors serving as the city’s elite guards—had relinquished many of their heavy, impractical gold adornments, providing abundant material for the goldworkers to refashion.

Ahnset sought to elevate Takarahl as a whole. The practice of enriching only those closest to the city’s ruler had died along with the former queen, Zurvashi .

Under Ahnset’s leadership, Takarahl was almost unrecognizable. Rekosh knew the tunnels themselves were the same, but the light seemed brighter, the air fresher, and the stone more welcoming than ever.

The silk hanging over the entrances of the dens Rekosh passed rippled with Takarahl’s gentle airflow. Like the stone around them, the cloths were dingy and soot-stained, far removed from the vibrant colors they had once been. But at least they were whole.

That struck Rekosh as fitting. Bitter, yet fitting.

A group of females sat in an alcove ahead, painting clay pots. Such sights made Rekosh’s spirit swell with joy and pride. He and his friends had not left Takarahl with the intention of changing it forever, but it was undeniably different now.

“…not what I have heard,” a female was saying as Rekosh neared them.

“You cannot accept all that Jiras says as truth,” replied one of her companions, whose hair hung in a mass of thin braids.

“But he has been told that her followers remain in Takarahl. They hide in the burial chambers, in chambers deep and long forgotten.”

“And how would anyone know, if the chambers are long forgotten?” demanded the female with the braids. “How would her followers have known to hide there at all?”

Despite his eagerness to finish what he’d come here to do, Rekosh slowed his pace, drawing the hide-wrapped bundle in his lower right hand closer to his body. Many such rumors whispered amongst Takarahl’s dwellers had only the most tenuous connection to the truth, but that made them no less valuable. Knowing what other vrix believed was often as important as knowing what was true.

“I do not know,” said the first female, “but Jiras said no living vrix has ventured so deep since Queen Takari herself walked the city. ”

A third female huffed, setting down her pot. Yellow paint stained her big hands. “Only spiritstriders delve so deep, and we should beg the Eight to ensure that those pale things are never roused from the depths.”

“There are not truly spiritstriders beneath Takarahl, are there?” the second female asked. “Those were just stories our mothers and sires told to make us behave. Were they not?”

“I know nothing of spiritstriders or forgotten burial chambers,” said the last of the group, a larger female with a dark brown hide and pale green eyes, “but I know Urshar, whose broodsister Ulkari was one of Zurvashi’s Fangs. She claims her broodsister and the remnants of Zurvashi’s followers are out in the Tangle, awaiting a chance to avenge their fallen queen.”

Rekosh drew to a halt near the females, taking hold of the tattered end of a piece of silk hung on the tunnel wall. He lifted the frayed cloth as though examining the damage done to it.

But his attention remained on the females’ conversation. Such rumors were not new. They’d been whispered in both Takarahl and Kaldarak, and warriors from both cities had been vigilant in the moon cycles since Zurvashi’s fall. But Rekosh was far away from his tribe—from Ahmya—now. Even at his fastest, he’d be hard-pressed to reach Kaldarak in less than four days.

The distance between Rekosh and those he cared about while potential threats lingered in the jungle was, at best, distressing.

And he knew of the Fang who’d just been mentioned. Ulkari. He was sure he’d seen her in Zurvashi’s army at Kaldarak when the old queen was slain…but he could not recall her fate.

“Queen Ahnset has remained in Takarahl all this time, helping us. Why would her enemies await her in the jungle if they mean to strike?” the first female asked .

“They are too few to attack Takarahl,” replied the female with paint-stained hands.

“Is it not whispered that Ketahn crept into Zurvashi’s private chambers unseen? He was but one,” the female with braided hair said.

“But who else could have done so? None in her Claw could match Ketahn.”

Rekosh released the silk and turned to face the females. “It is because Queen Ahnset did not slay Zurvashi.”

Their eyes fell upon him, and he recognized the intrigued light in their gazes, the unmasked interest. The faint but enticing scent that wafted from them only added to it.

They desired him.

His human friends called such scents pheromones , which were meant to trigger reactions in other creatures. The pheromones exuded by female vrix could often stir arousal in males regardless of their true interest—even if the male despised the female.

And he already felt the first flickers of it even now, much to his irritation.

“So you truly believe Zurvashi was slain by one of those…strange creatures?” asked the female with braids.

“I know she was,” he replied.

“How could you know ?”

“He witnessed it with his own eight eyes,” said the green-eyed female as she placed her pot aside. “I know you. You are called Rekosh, yes? The weaver?”

He bowed his head and spread his arms. “I am.”

“You are Rekosh?” asked the first female, looking him over again with a glimmer in her red eyes. “You are even more attractive than the stories say.”

The scent of the females’ want intensified, flooding his senses and making heat skitter beneath the surface of his hide. Despite his disinterest, despite turning all his willpower against the effects, his hearts quickened, and his stem pulsed behind his slit. His claspers pressed subtly but firmly inward, keeping his slit closed.

This was not what he wanted, not at all. These females were not who he wanted.

“One of our greatest warriors,” said the female with braids.

“And I have heard he is quite skilled with silk,” the green-eyed female added with a trill as she drew herself straighter.

Though he did not regret listening to their conversation, speaking to these females had been a mistake. Rekosh hadn’t had time to spare to begin with. He certainly couldn’t waste any more of it.

And he had no interest in battling these accursed pheromones.

The female with paint on her hands slid a foreleg toward him.

Rekosh sauntered backward before she could touch him and sketched a bow. “Please, your words are far kinder than I deserve.”

She chittered softly. “I recall my elder sister mentioning she used to speak with you from time to time. A handsome weaver from Moonfall… Do you?—”

“Is it true you are a friend to the queen?” asked the first female, drawing a glare from the one who’d been speaking.

He’d encountered such interest often enough, and his manner of speaking typically didn’t deter it. Now that he’d taken part in Zurvashi’s downfall, many females would see him as even more desirable a mate. But none of them had ever caught his eyes. No female had awoken that same interest in him.

Not until he’d first glimpsed Ahmya, the small, soft, delicate creature who roused every protective instinct within him, whose scent stirred a consuming desire he’d never experienced, whose every touch made him crave more .

Ahmya, who was the mate of his hearts.

Ahmya, who he had not seen in nearly a moon cycle.

Forcing his mandibles to remain in a neutral position, he pressed both sets of forearms together, creating a vertical line, to signal his apology. “Forgive me, but I must go. There are important matters I must attend, and I have already delayed overlong.”

The green-eyed female’s mandibles sagged. “Must you go already?”

“I must. Perhaps I will return another day. I am sure there are a great many words we could share, many of them far more pleasant than talk of the dead queen.”

“Will you offer me your word on that?”

He chittered and retreated a step. “That, I cannot offer. I will not make a vow I cannot keep.”

Such as the vow I made to protect Ahmya from harm? The one I failed almost immediately afterward?

The females made disappointed hums as he turned and strode away, but he did not slow, did not glance back. Not even when one of them said, “I wonder if he is doing the queen’s bidding.”

“Perhaps,” the green-eyed female replied. “But I believe he has kin here.”

“He does? Who?”

Rekosh strode faster, putting enough distance between himself and the group to ensure that their voices were overpowered by the other sounds echoing along the wide corridor.

What little information he’d gathered still held some value. That made it worth his discomfort, did it not?

Would that I could say the same of what is to come.

Finally, he reached his destination. To most, it would’ve been just one of many dens along the tunnel with a dingy cloth hanging across the entryway, indistinguishable from the rest. But Rekosh dreaded this place .

Every step of this journey had strengthened his urge to turn around and leave. His limbs were taut, the fine hairs on his legs bristled, and his hearts thumped; escaping the females had not eased his tension. His body was reacting as though he were about to engage in battle.

What could he possibly hope to accomplish here apart from delaying his return to Kaldarak and his tribe?

Apart from delaying his reunion with Ahmya?

He raised the bundle and stroked his thumb across it. His greatest work was within. A creation crafted with such intense passion and artistry that it had nearly been enough to make him give thanks to the Eight.

But the gods had no hand in it. Ahmya had been his inspiration, his purpose. The dress was for her, because of her, and the only thing in all the world that surpassed its beauty was Ahmya herself.

“And still, it will not be enough,” he rasped as he lowered the bundle.

There were causes worth fighting for, worth bleeding for, worth dying for. Battling Zurvashi had been worth all the risk and more. But coming to this den…it wasn’t a cause, whether noble or otherwise. This wasn’t a necessary fight. He didn’t need to be here at all.

His mandibles twitched closer together as he shifted his rear legs back. Telok and Urkot awaited him, eager to depart. They all wished to reach Kaldarak before Ivy birthed her broodling, which would happen any day. He should not have kept them waiting this long.

As he began turning away, the silk curtain was swept aside from within the den. A vrix with dull red markings stood in the large opening—a male neither quite as tall nor as thin as Rekosh.

Forcing his mandibles to relax and willing his hearts to ease, Rekosh faced the elder vrix .

Raikarn’s eyes widened. A tremor coursed through him from his headcrest down to the tips of his legs, and he drew in a shaky breath through his nostril slits.

Rekosh’s fingers flexed. Despite the tunnel’s sounds having not diminished, his world was silent and still until words emerged, unbidden, from his throat. “Greetings, sire.”

Raikarn rushed forward, rising as he cupped the sides of Rekosh’s face and tipped their headcrests together. “Thank the Broodmother, the Protector, thanks to all the Eight!”

His sire’s voice was thinner than Rekosh remembered. And though there were old, familiar notes to his scent, they were overwhelmed by the lingering smells of unfamiliar vrix, smoke, and soot.

Rekosh could not decide how he felt about all of that—or whether it made him feel anything at all. He fought the urge to recoil from his sire’s touch.

“When they whispered of what Ishuun’s brood had done, that you had fled Takarahl with them, and that Zurvashi was hunting you…” A faint growl sounded in Raikarn’s chest, more relieved than anything. “But you are alive. You are home.”

“Alive, yes.” Rekosh drew back, though his sire did not release his hold.

“Come. We need not speak out here amidst the noise.” Raikarn all but dragged Rekosh into the den.

Rekosh didn’t resist. It was cooler inside the den, and the tunnel’s sounds were muted once the thick silk curtain fell into place behind him, but his tension and restlessness did not fade.

Raikarn released Rekosh and stepped back. The two vrix studied each other in the soft blue glow of the crystals on the walls.

“You look worn,” said Raikarn, mandibles drooping.

Rekosh chittered. “And you look old, but I had not intended to make mention of it. ”

“I have spent moon cycles wondering whether you lived, and you jest?”

Anger stirred in Rekosh’s gut, sour and hot. “Considering all I have endured alongside my friends, I would say I have more than earned the right to jest.”

Huffing, Raikarn turned away. His shoulders sagged, and his movements were stiff as he stepped deeper into the den. “I cannot imagine, Rekosh. I cannot imagine what you have faced, just as I cannot imagine what your mother must have faced.”

Rekosh’s hearts constricted. He clamped his jaw shut and held his mandibles apart, if only barely.

“Nor can I understand why, even after all we suffered, you chose to face the Tangle, the thornskulls, and the ire of the queen…” Raikarn spun back toward Rekosh, suddenly seeming smaller and weaker, his hide duller. “But it matters not. Takarahl has a new queen, our lives are a little better with each day rather than a little worse, and you are home.”

“Sire…” Rekosh shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, what he should have said, not due to a lack of words, but an overabundance of them. Years of thoughts he wished he’d voiced fought to get out at once, so numerous and substantial that they formed a lump in his throat.

After taking so many risks, after overcoming so many dangers, this was too difficult for him?

“Your siblings will be thrilled to finally meet you,” Raikarn continued. “All they have had are my old stories, and you were always the better spinner of tales, even as a broodling.”

Your siblings.

Rekosh stilled his fingers before they could squeeze the bundle any tighter. He drew in a slow, steadying breath. “I am not certain that would be for the best.”

Raikarn chittered gently and brought his forearms together in an apologetic gesture. “Forgive me, Rekosh. You have traveled far to return to Takarahl, if the stories are true, and you must be tired and hungry. We have meat stored. Eat with me.” He skittered across the den to a shelf laden with clay pots and woven baskets.

Releasing a slow breath through his nose holes, Rekosh studied his surroundings. This was a brood den, spacious and lived in. Fluffed silk and woven blankets lay along one wall, where Raikarn slept along with his mate, Eshkhet, and their broodlings. How old were the little ones now? Five years? Six?

Small playthings carved from wood and stone or crafted with cloth and stuffing lay scattered about the chamber. Again, something clenched around Rekosh’s hearts, and a long slumbering pain pierced his chest. The den of his youth had often looked like this, before…

No. Not now, not here.

“Where did she put it?” Raikarn muttered as he rummaged through the containers on the shelf.

Rekosh glanced down at the hide-wrapped bundle in his lower hands. “I have come for a purpose, sire.”

“Of course you have,” replied Raikarn distractedly. “The threads of fate were tangled, but they have finally led you back to where you belong.”

Rekosh’s mandibles nearly snapped together. He did not look away from the bundle, not immediately, and his mind’s eye filled with the image of what it contained.

The dress he’d woven for Ahmya. The finest work he’d ever produced. When it came to this dress, the threads of fate hadn’t been tangled at all. They’d been woven—delicately, intricately, masterfully. And they had guided his hands in this work.

“Oh, they have led me to where I belong. I finally know it,” Rekosh said softly.

Raikarn opened a jar and angled it toward the nearest crystal, eyes narrowing as he peered inside. “We have had our disagreements, but I have ever known you would one day understand. ”

When Rekosh looked up, his gaze fell not upon his sire, but the wide stone slab carved into an alcove on the far wall. The tools and materials arranged atop it belonged to a goldworker. Adornments and pieces of jewelry in various states of completion lay there too, many of them displaying elaborate details and designs.

He could not help but notice that many of the tools on the right side were the same as the tools on the left, just larger. Sized for the hands of a female.

Sized for Eshkhet, the goldworker who Raikarn had taken as his mate ten years ago.

Nothing in this den hinted at the life Raikarn had left behind. Nothing in this den suggested that he’d once performed different work, that he’d had a different mate, that he’d been sire to a different brood. No needles and thread, no loom, no tools for sewing or weaving. No chunks of wood being slowly shaped into clubs or spear hafts by the hands of a seasoned warrior, no shards of blackrock to give those weapons their bite. Not a single one of the toys that had been the favorites of Rekosh’s brood siblings held a place of honor upon the many shelves.

Not a single one of Rekosh’s early attempts at adorning fabric were upon the wall, displayed with the pride a parent took in their broodling’s efforts.

It was as though Rekosh’s mother, Loshei, and his brood siblings had never existed.

As if Rekosh had never existed.

“I understand,” Rekosh said.

I only hope that you will also understand, one day.

Rekosh carefully tucked the wrapped dress under his arm. He’d come here to show the work to his sire, but thinking there’d been even the slightest chance of it having a positive effect on Raikarn had been foolish. Nothing could ever be as it had been. His sire had found someone to live and work alongside, someone to fill the hole in his hearts in a way Rekosh never could have.

Raikarn covered a basket with a cloth and straightened, looking at Rekosh. “Perhaps we should await Eshkhet. She should return with the broodlings soon, and we may all eat together.”

Harsh words stung like venom upon the tip of Rekosh’s tongue, but he bit them back. “No, sire.”

“No?” Raikarn tilted his head. “Have you anything else to do?”

“I have far to travel before sunfall.”

“Far to travel?” The tips of Raikarn’s legs scraped the floor as he stepped closer. “You have just arrived, Rekosh. If you still keep your den in Moonfall Tunnel, it is no harrowing journey to reach it.”

“I den in Kaldarak. With my tribe.”

Raikarn’s mandibles spread, and the fine hairs on his legs rose. “Rekosh, this?—”

“I have not come to argue, sire,” Rekosh said firmly, drawing himself more fully upright. Rage and sorrow roiled within him. “Our threads have long been separated, and we have both been fools not to admit it. You have a place here. My place is elsewhere.”

“You came to say that? To say… To say what, Rekosh? That you want nothing more to do with me, with your family?”

Rekosh hissed, mandibles sweeping wide open. “My family is in Kaldarak. Not here.”

He emphasized that last word by stomping a leg on the floor.

Raikarn thumped his own chest with a fist. “You are my blood!”

“And is that meant to matter?” Rekosh demanded, striding toward his sire. “When I most needed you, when my world came undone, where were you? ”

Raikarn met Rekosh head-on, their chests nearly bumping. “I never left you.”

A harsh growl clawed out of Rekosh’s throat. “But you did, sire. Here.” He tapped a knuckle against Raikarn’s chest, over his hearts.

“My world also came undone,” Raikarn said through bared fangs.

“Yet instead of clinging to the kin remaining to you, you let your hearts and mind drift away.”

“I never?—”

“Spare me. I have no desire to hear your justifications.” Clenching his jaw, Rekosh raked his gaze across the den, across all the evidence of the life, the family, his sire had made here. “I came to say goodbye. You have found joy and purpose again, and I will not stand in the way of it. Be content in knowing that I have found my own elsewhere and let that be the end of it.”

Their gazes locked and held. Untold emotions swirled in Raikarn’s eyes, which served as mirrors to the turmoil within Rekosh.

This was not what he’d wanted. Not what he’d hoped for.

But it was exactly what he should have expected, wasn’t it?

“I know that light in your eyes, Rekosh,” Raikarn said, voice broken and posture withering. “You will not be swayed. For all that I have done or did not do…”

Raikarn shuddered, mandibles twitching. When he reached up for Rekosh’s face again, Rekosh did not pull away. Their headcrests touched gently, and Raikarn’s fingers twitched on Rekosh’s hide.

“I will not have us part with hatred, my son. I will not allow my pride to blind me to the wounds I have dealt you. I am sorry, Rekosh. For the pain I have caused you, for my failures, I am sorry. I pray you will find it in your hearts to forgive me. But if you do not…know that I love you no less for it.

“May their eightfold eyes look upon you favorably, Rekosh. My hearts swell with pride in you, and your mother’s spirit sings with it.”

A tremor coursed through Rekosh. He squeezed his eyes shut, as though the darkness behind his eyelids could somehow banish his tumultuous feelings. As though it could calm the storm raging within him.

“Be well, sire,” Rekosh rasped before pulling away. He did not look back as he strode out of the den, though he felt Raikarn’s gaze upon his back until he’d passed through the entryway.

He offered no attention to the vrix he passed as he stalked along Goldflame Tunnel—not to their appearances, their postures, or their conversations. For most of his life, he’d been fascinated by gossip and rumors, by sifting through the endless information that flowed through Takarahl as surely as the air currents, but he had no interest in doing so now.

His place was not here in Takarahl. Perhaps it hadn’t been for much longer than he cared to admit.

His place, his home, was in Kaldarak. He needed only claim it. He needed only find the boldness to declare himself.

To claim Ahmya as his.