Chapter 3 #2
“I know.” Fieri turns to face me. “The other kind is much more powerful. It’s why I have the Storm I do.
Because I let my loss make me angry and fill me with hatred of this world.
But that has its place. If you let your pain turn you into a monster around even those who do not deserve it, then you cause them the pain you so desperately want to stop within yourself.
Do not become someone else’s pain. Fight evil to protect love.
Otherwise, the universe will fall into chaos, and the only thing anyone will know is that feeling you carry inside you now. ”
His words are unexpected. Fieri is one of the toughest soldiers I know. I never took the time to consider his past before. He always seemed so unbreakable. And now I know it’s because he’s already broken, and I never got to see the pieces before he put himself back together.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” he says quietly. “Now, please, work with me. I am trying to help you.”
I lie down on the medical bed he directs me to. Every movement and positional change sends shooting pains through my wings. Fieri props them up on rolling carts and lowers a machine from the ceiling that hums and glows with soft white light.
Fieri begins work on my fractured wings first. The device heats the flesh and bone near my back and immediately eases my pain.
The Amphirans have more advanced technology than the rest of us. I have tried to learn everything I could from them to help my kind survive.
He’s quiet for a long time as he works. When I glance over my shoulder at him, his eyes meet mine.
There’s uncharacteristic worry in them. “You are not too unlike Aura. Your power is…exceptional, under-utilized, and needs more training. You also fight it like he did. So it builds and builds until it blows. Then you both do stupid shit, and end up hurting yourselves or others.”
“I didn’t hurt anyone else.”
He inhales deeply like he’s quelling the urge to snap at me. So I change the subject.
“Did you ever recover the last Amphiran females the Denarso took?”
“Six were still missing after Bakka’s forces invaded.
We did bring them home. They’d been sold to Novarks but held as entertainment pieces instead of mates.
Used their Storms to power ships and kill enemies.
It will take time for them to heal, but they are strong.
” Fieri moves on to another fracture, and the heat of his device follows toward my wings’ thumbs.
“How is Allele?”
“Very happy.” Fieri was never very talkative. He moves the healing device to my left wing’s broken third finger.
“Jorusk, whatever you think you did to deserve dying, you did not do.”
“I killed Kalihtanis, the cloaked Talhuskin on your ship, Gravion. They have waged a war of vengeance on us since then.”
“They are not related, Jorusk. This war is not your fault.”
Frustration tightens my chest. “How can it not be?”
“Talhuskins hate your kind because of who they are, not because of who you are or what you did. They have tried to rule you for centuries. They took you from your homeworld like Denarso take females. But they did not…”
A searing presence enters the room, and Fieri stops mid-sentence.
“Kleitak!” Stop! I know the female’s voice anywhere. Mother Cinuska’s Inferno heats the room as she enters and circles my wing, opposite Fieri. She wears the battle armor of Pyraforce. I am relieved she is alive, but I am certain she’s here to reprimand me. “Do not speak as if you know us.”
“I do,” Fieri states. “I have been to your home system. It is not dead. We simply could not navigate it because our ships did not have the necessary bumper panels for the mines or the Inferno to make the clouds part.”
What is he talking about? I know Fieri’s older and has seen a lot of things I haven’t, but I have no idea what’s going on.
She hisses at him and bares her pointed teeth. “Leave us.”
“No.” Fieri continues his healing.
In my mind, I laugh in shock because no one ever dares to disobey Cinuska’s orders. She raised many of us inside a ring of fire, so I would always know my place.
“I need to speak with Jorusk alone.”
“I need to heal him before he can do much of anything else.” Fieri repositions the device and works on my left wing’s last break. “So deal with it or wait. This is an Amphiran ship. He is my responsibility. And you are a guest.”
Mother Cinuska’s eyes gleam with red-hot rage. “He is my responsibility. I raised him.”
“With twenty others.”
“Fifty-three, over the years,” she corrects. “They had no one else.”
I glance between the two as they argue.
Fieri moves to another injury. “He did not get a nuclear family. You raised him like a student.”
“A soldier of Wrath,” she corrects. “And I did the best I could with all the orphans.”
When Fieri’s electric current dances off of him in faint wisps, Mother Cinuska finally relents.
“Fine. Easy, Amphir. Do not kill your patient.”
“He can’t,” I say. “Amphiran current doesn’t hurt me. It hurts but doesn’t damage me.”
She stutters for a moment. “You are not classified correctly.”
“I like where I’m at,” I defend.
The moment she begins to protest, I’m already expecting it.
“Please, Cinoska. Just let it be. I am happy to serve our people with my current team, repair assault systems as needed, and fight where I can. I do not want to be with the Dragons.”
She seems perplexed by my response. “It’s not about where you want to be but where you need to be.”
“He should be ash with the stunt he pulled,” Fieri mutters. “Smashing into a mothership like a fucking missile.”
I tug my wing from Fieri’s grip. “It was nothing.”
Fieri scowls at me, then glares down at Cinoska.
But there’s something in his eyes that hesitates to loathe her.
“He is the reason Victiram crashed to the planet. I know you came in here to lecture him. Just because I do not have an Inferno does not mean I cannot sense the tension and anger in your soul, bitter female.”
She gapes at him, and I bite my lip to keep myself from laughing.
“How dare you…”
“I’ve been a soldier much longer than you,” Fieri states, gently guiding my wing back to him and completing the repair on another broken finger. “I keep tabs on everything. Many think I am just a pissed-off old gruntpa, but I cannot hear what is going on if I am always talking over everyone else.”
“You don’t get to…”
“I know exactly how you feel,” Fieri interrupts.
“I could hear you in the commons just from walking by the door. If there is one thing that I have learned about a young anomalous soldier, it’s that it’s best to help them thrive than try to cram them into the cookie-cutter form of all the rest of us. ”
“What’s a cookie-cutter?” she asks.
He stutters. “A thing human Princess Jovie uses. It makes all the desserts the same size and shape.”
She still doesn’t seem to get it.
“It’s a food, Cinuska,” I tell her. “A sweet food we do not have time for.”
“Oh.”
Something Fieri said lingers in my mind. “What home system are you talking about?”
Fieri moves the device to my right hand and takes a seat beside Mother Cinuska. “Do you want to tell him?”
She sighs and eases into a chair not far from us. “I came here because I realize now that it is time I tell you the truth, Jorusk.”
I twist my neck and look over at her. “What was the lie?”
“No lie,” she solemnly says. “I just didn’t tell you everything because I was trying to protect you. I know only that every hundred years or so, a hatchling is cast out of the stars and falls to the world where we Drathious reside. The Talhuskins always found them and killed them.
“I was not around for the one before you. Legends say they were meant to sacrifice for us. But I think that’s just the way things worked out because Talhuskins saw them as a threat. They were always seen as the most powerful of our kind, but quieter, less like the typical Draths.”
“Rambunctious adrenaline junkies with twisted senses of humor?” I ask.
There’s uncharacteristic insecurity in her posture. Her wings droop like she’s exhausted. “Yeah. When I found you in the cracked egg way out in the desert of Talhuskins’ Planet Zekva, I thought you were too far gone to save.”
“But you must’ve tried anyway,” Fieri remarks. “Why?”
“So did you. So I should ask you the same thing.”
Fieri’s voice quiets. “I have my reasons.”
Mother Cinuska tilts her head and looks at him with odd curiosity.
“There was a ship near where I found your cracked egg, Jorusk. I wasn’t sure until I saw you riding that Talhuskin vessel into the sky.
Now, I know. You are not Drathious, but Drathis.
You are too important for us to lose. You must promise not to throw your life to the wind again.
You are our only tie to our homeworld, the true homeworld, where we are all from.
And we need that tether now more than ever. ”
Fieri completes his treatment of my broken parts and gets up. “Cinuska, may I have a word with you, outside?”
I watch as she gets up and leaves with him. Reeling from the news, I try to tune my hearing and listen in, but I’m still a bit out of sorts after being in the tank. Sitting up takes effort, but I want to know what’s going on.
“I understand, but this sense of responsibility is slowly killing him. And I think you know how that feels.” Fieri sounds confident and slightly irritated.
“What are you talking about?”
“You have raised many hatchlings, and yet you have no scent of a male on you. Your Inferno is as hot as his usually is. I know you are burning up inside. You must know he is, too.
“He needs a break, or he’s going to do worse than incinerate half a ship.
You think I haven’t seen that kind of damage.
But the prince I serve is of comparable power, just a different kind.
Jorusk is burning up inside just like Aura was.
He needs a female to focus his energy. And right now might be a good time to send him somewhere safer. ”
Just the idea of a mate makes my monster stir. A warning light flashes on my chest plate, and I calm myself with a deep breath.
I can’t have a mate.
I am far too dangerous.