Chapter 12
RYNETH
Ryneth could barely stand. The static had left his limbs trembling, his strength wrung out of him. He wanted a bed, sleep, oblivion, but he was still here in enemy territory.
Summoned.
The word kept hitting him. A golden device hissed in the corner, opium drifting through the air, and he dragged it in, chasing the sweet burn of it. His chest shook, breath leaving him in short, fast gasps.
“Let me explain. Please.” The doctor gestured to the couch. “Sit down. You are safe here, Ryneth. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Ryneth wasn’t so sure of that. The message on his multi-slate was proof that danger was looming in the darkness, but his legs gave out and he couldn’t refuse Daven’s outstretched arm as he was pulled back into his seat.
“You were born here, on Helion, and sold to the Imperial family as a baby.”
“I—what?” Ryneth nearly toppled down the couch. “I’m from Helion?”
Zimeon nodded. “People always want symbols, Ryneth. Someone to follow. Someone to worship. Someone to blame.”
Ryneth frowned. “What does that have to do with me?”
“In order to give the people what they wanted, we developed a serum,” Zimeon continued. “A biological enhancement designed to create figures people would follow without question.”
“We call those enhancements Dariux,” Milanov added. He’d lit a red-cinder cigarette, smoke curling from his mouth. “You are Dariux, Ryneth.”
Ryneth shook his head. “I don’t get it. What do I have to do with this?”
Zimeon gave him a small smile. “There is no easy way to say this, I’m afraid. We bought babies for testing and injected them with the Dariux serum before sending them off-planet into foster placements. We—”
“Wait.” Ryneth raised his hand. “You kidnapped me?”
“Aethera.” Daven squeezed his thigh. “That’s what he’s saying.”
Ryneth watched as the doctor spoke but could only hear the words rattling in his own head.
Sold. You were sold. Like the trash you were.
“Why?” he heard himself whisper.
“Because survival was part of the trial,” Zimeon explained, not answering his question.
“If the child lived, the Dariux matured with them. And once it matured enough, it created a pull toward Helion. Not by chance, and not by some holy design. By the body remembering where it had first been altered.”
When the time is right.
“If they survived,” Ryneth echoed.
Trash.
He thought of Mara and Tavi, and the other boys. Of countless nights protecting the Ward. Of endless hours of working in the Outer Ring. Of poverty, hunger, fear. Of that damn Helion work contract that had kept coming back on his multi-slate.
And that contract, that shuttle, that stupid chance he had cursed for days… it hadn’t been chance at all. Something inside him had been steering him here long before he understood what he was doing.
Trash.
No, not trash. Mara had loved him. Tavi had loved him. It didn’t stop the tears rolling down his cheek.
“Welcome home,” Cyprian said softly. Ryneth hadn’t heard him come in.
He slumped against the backrest and looked around. He hadn't heard any of the others who now sat around him, watching him as if he was something rare.
As if he was… precious.
“This is not home,” he wanted to snarl, but it came out breathy. His thoughts dragged. The smoke and the drug coiled in his blood. The room blurred at the edges, the faces of the Imperials turning into golden shadows.
“This is your Dariux family,” Milanov said, gesturing to the group sprawled around them like they owned the place. “I believe you met them at the Academy today.”
Ryneth stared back. His skin prickled, and his teeth felt weird.
They hadn’t just drugged him to calm him down. They’d drugged him to make this easier. To make his body answer before his mind could fight it.
Theo. Not Bekn. Not the enemy.
But his gaze snagged on the blond man standing motionless by the wall, chained there by his throat.
“They’ve all come to welcome you home.” Milanov smiled. He clicked his fingers, and sound and movement rushed back into the room.
Around them, people talked. Servants appeared. The fire crackled. But Ryneth’s thoughts were too loud.
Every memory felt cracked. His life on Düren. Mara had told him his biological parents had died. Now he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure any of it mattered. He wasn’t brought here by a work contract, but by the injections they’d forced into him.
“When did your gift first appear?” Zimeon asked.
“My gift?” Ryneth shook his head. He’d never called it that.
It had been a curse most of his life. “I was seven. His name was Andor. He was a bully. Every day after school he’d wait for me.
Call me names. Tell me I was a loser because I didn’t have a dad.
He’d kick me because I was smaller. And I—I let him. Until one day, I’d had enough.”
“What happened?” Daven asked.
Ryneth looked at him. At those ember eyes. That sharp jaw. Light, he was too beautiful. The thought of kissing was overwhelming, and judging by the way his lips curled up, he knew it too.
He huffed and tried to shake the drug from his blood, but the memory dragged him under. “Andor grabbed me by the throat and pinned me against the wall until I was choking. I think he would have killed me, if I hadn’t—”
The moment was carved into him. The sounds Andor had made. His cries. The light… There had been so much of it. It had come out of nowhere, had electrified the boy’s body, and Ryneth had lifted him and thrown him over the Ward.
He shivered. “Do you still buy babies?”
“We had an incident,” Zimeon said carefully. “A serious one. After that night, the program was shut down.”
Ryneth lowered his gaze to his hands. How could they look so normal when they could cause such devastation? “So that’s it? Everyone here has…a gift?”
“Yes, Ryneth, we do,” Milanov answered. “Some can shoot fire, others create ice. Some see visions, others make time stop.”
“So we’re all different?” Ryneth looked up from his hands and around the room. His teeth still ached. He pressed his tongue carefully against them and wished the feeling would stop.
He wondered what the others were capable of. He wondered why his skin was itching so badly. Squeezing Daven’s hand, still wrapped around his, he even wondered why he hadn’t let go.
Ryneth’s pulse stumbled. The itch in his gums turned into pressure. Heat coiled low in his stomach, wrong and unwelcome. He clenched his thighs together, but his body reacted anyway. Not from want, but from the pressure under his skin. From Daven’s hand still wrapped around his.
“We do share certain similarities,” Zimeon said after a beat.
“Such as…?”
“We came across some complications. Something we hadn’t foreseen in the injections. A side effect of the power.”
“…Which is?”
“We get off on violence.”
Ryneth’s mouth fell open in shock. “Violence? Well, I don’t.”
“That’s what every new family member says, Ryneth,” Zimeon reassured him.
It didn’t work. Ryneth felt trapped between raw fear and that damn regret he hadn’t managed to shake off ever since he set foot inside that space shuttle.
“Can you feel how your teeth are aching?” Milanov asked softly.
Ryneth shook his head and wanted to bite his tongue when it reached for his gums again. He was not going to give in.
“Aethera, don’t lie to yourself,” Daven mumbled against his ear, creating gooseflesh when his air caressed Ryneth’s groin. He stifled a groan and shook his head.
He had to get out of here.
“The Imperial is right,” Mirel said. It was the first time Ryneth heard his voice. He didn’t miss how Kylix’s grip around the other man’s waist tightened. “It’s hard the f-first time, but you’ll get used to it. Trust me.”
That was the worst part. Not that his body reacted, but that he kept catching small, human things anyway. Daven holding his hand. Mirel’s voice shaking. Cyprian watching him like he mattered. It made hating them harder, and that made everything worse.
Trust him? Ryneth scoffed. He wasn’t going to trust him. Or any of these monsters, for that matter.
Because that was what they were. He had seen enough violence in his life to know he didn’t get off on it.
And yet…something ached between his thighs. His stomach swooped. Heat crept up the back of his throat.
Someone smoked a red cinder cigarette next to him, and Ryneth’s nostrils flared as the opium reached inside, settling in his gut.
“Let me show you.” Milanov gestured to the guard. “Bring in the prisoner.”
Two Luminary guards marched in, dragging a man between them. He wore a purple jumpsuit, the fabric torn, as he clawed and fought.
“Let go of me, you son of a bitch. Let. Go!” He snarled, then looked up, as if he’d only just realized other people were watching. He froze. For a moment, his eyes clouded with the fear of a man who knew he was going to die, but then they hardened. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Oh, yes you are.” Ryneth’s heart jolted when he watched Moargan stand and slowly circle the prisoner.
Leaning in, he sniffed the man’s nape, laughing when he tried to recoil and strike at him with his shackled hands.
“He’s terrified. I can smell it and it’s the most delicious thing in the world. Ryneth? Come here, pup.”
“No.” Ryneth pressed his back against the couch. His skin prickled. Something was happening to him. It wasn’t the opium, at least not all of it.
The Imperial was wrong. He didn’t love violence. He hated it. The injustice, the pain, the sorrow…
“Come on, aethera.” Daven’s breath was hot on Ryneth’s ear. and he shivered. “Don’t you want to play?”
Kylix stood. “Perhaps this will help you. This man is a member of Concordant. A fellow Düren.”
“Concordant?” Ryneth asked before he could swallow the words. His vision brightened as he took in the prisoner through a different lens. “Prove it.”