Chapter Twenty
i Am didn’t like lies. Whether they were bald-faced or of the omission variety, spoken right to his face or something whispered behind his back, he really hated false shit. Especially if he was the one who was lying.
And particularly if it was to his daughter.
Okay yeah, sure, he and Catra did intend to talk to her about everything. But they’d been sitting on this mess for twenty-four hours, and he still didn’t know how to bring it all up.
As he sat at the modest table in the alcove of his and Catra’s simple, unadorned private quarters, he glanced across the shallow space at his mate.
His beloved shellan was over on the comfy couch, staring blankly at whatever was in front of her.
At the moment, it happened to be the TV that rarely got turned on, but earlier it had been the book in her lap.
The silence was getting to him, but he didn’t have anything to break it with that was worth the syllables.
Things had been like this since about four in the afternoon.
No, that wasn’t right. It had been like this since Denne had come home late from the restaurant, and checked in as she always did at the end of the night.
Their daughter had seemed off, but they’d both agreed they weren’t discussing anything until they had a better sense of the implications of it all.
Denne was going to have questions. They had to be prepared to give answers.
“I don’t know,” Catra murmured. “I might be reading the charts wrong.”
“I doubt it.”
This was the non-starter conversation they’d been having over and over, the same words exchanged, the silences in between growing longer and longer.
The impotent chatter released some pressure, but the reality that nothing was getting any clearer and hours were passing into an inevitable was making them both nuts.
“It just doesn’t make sense.” Catra sat forward and stared at him squarely.
“Our charts, yours and mine, have been the same our entire lives. And last night, you and I both looked at the mapping t’On did for her after she survived her transition.
Last night’s shooting stars were correct for their timing and the directions they came from.
And you saw me sketch the constellations as they appeared at nine nineteen, and I overlaid them on her transition’s chart. They were an exact match—you saw that.”
He nodded, even though they’d been through this before.
“The rest of the prediction is clear,” she concluded. “Denne is to mate t’On and the s’Hisbe will survive another thousand years. If not… everything ends.”
Again, iAm nodded because what could he say? All of that was true.
His mate shook her head. “So why aren’t you and I in her post-transition chart? No matter what she does?”
It was a rhetorical that he was not going to answer. Well, he could, but none of the replies were going to make either of them feel any better.
Catra got to her feet and paced around like she was trying to solve pi to seven thousand decimals.
One of the things iAm loved most about their private space was that it wasn’t some royally appointed, silk-and-satin showcase.
When Catra had assumed the throne after her mother’s death, she’d demolished everything that horrible female had erected—except for the Constellation Room.
During the rebuilding, his mate had known that the citizenry expected a certain level of grandiosity for their Queen and her Prince Consort, but she’d also recognized that times were changing.
So she had given them a luxe royal seat, but it was behind a facade that faked out the humans.
And for their precious, private home, she’d kept it real, not regal.
Here, there were velvety, deep-blue walls, and comfortable furniture, and handmade throw blankets that were gifts from Cormia and the Chosen.
The kitchen was stocked with all the staples he needed to cook with for his Queen and their daughter, and the bedroom and bathroom they shared were cleaned by their good selves.
Their commitment to remain down-to-earth and grounded in regular life was something that bonded them.
When you had thousands of people worshipping a version of yourself, when you were surrounded by genuflection and praise, it was hard to truly stay connected.
To your mate. To your daughter. To the real concerns of the people you served.
“I don’t want to go to t’On before…”
As she let her words drift, iAm nodded. “We have to talk to Denne first. We have to show her the chart.”
“And what are we going to say when she sees we’re not on it?”
“The chart’s about her.” Except he knew that wasn’t going to deflect their daughter. “And t’On’s never said anything about the absence of us.”
Which also didn’t mean a damn thing.
“He was very relieved when I put it away and didn’t want to talk about it.”
iAm nodded. “That’s because he doesn’t want to get mated.”
“Is it? Or is it because he doesn’t know how to tell his Queen that she’s going to die? You know how loyal he is.”
iAm rubbed his exhausted eyes. “Maybe it’s just that you’re not on the throne. As I said last night, that would explain why our charts are the way ours are.”
“True.” She shook her head. “And what is read can change. Also, my worry is not about me keeping the throne. I will serve as long as I’m able, as long as I’m supposed to, and when it’s time to let it go, I’ll do so readily.”
Dropping his hands, he murmured gravely, “Have I mentioned lately how much I love you.”
His beautiful mate stopped and looked over at him. “I love you, too.”
“Listen to me—and I have to say this. If you and I are supposed to live a simple life? I have no problem with that at all. I’ll bring you coffee and crullers for the next five centuries and be perfectly happy. It’s never been about some crown for me, or the power that comes with it.”
Catra came across with an urgency, and searched his face. “Do you mean that? I mean, I know that you do. I just—”
“I mated you for you.” He put his hands on her hips. “If anything, the royal stuff is a complication that gets in the way of us actually being together.”
Her eyes closed briefly. And then she bent down and pressed her lips to his. “You are the most important thing. You and Denne. Nothing else matters more.”
As sadness entered her eyes, he knew exactly what she was thinking before she said in a helpless way, “I don’t want to die. And I also don’t want to give her the throne as things are now.”
iAm kept his mouth shut about the death stuff. Of course, one answer was to have t’On do an update on their own charts. But shit, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more.
He’d learned his lesson, thanks to this nightmare with Denne’s update, fuck him very much.
And when it came to the throne, Catra had a point about how things had been going lately.
Even though the s’Hisbe had remained fairly cohesive and connected, humans had grown increasingly invasive in the last decade.
With their monitoring capabilities ramping up year by year, the privacy and seclusion the s’Hisbe had always relied on was being challenged on so many fronts: Documentaries on “a secret sect,” probes by government officials, intrusions on lands around the Territory with those data centers.
As Queen, Catra was sequestered from interacting with those rats without tails for obvious reasons and so was he.
A rotating committee of representatives did what they could when the outreach couldn’t be avoided, but the unease had been mounting. And so had the threats.
Things were not what they used to be.
“I just can’t shake this feeling of dread,” Catra whispered. “But it’s like the real danger is inside the boundary.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been dreaming about…”
When she drifted, he captured her hands. “About what? Since when?”
Catra tried to break away, but he shifted her into his lap and stroked her braids. “Talk to me,” he said.
“I have this dream about a dark figure coming into our room. I’m awake, but I can’t move. I feel like I’m drugged or something… and then the fire starts. There’s flames, all around me, and I look over—and you’re…”
“What,” he demanded. When she glanced away, he touched her chin and brought her eyes back to his. “You need to finish this. I need to know.”
“It’s just a dream.”
An ice-cold fear set up shop, right in the cradle of his soul.
“Finish it,” he said in a low voice. “Tell me the whole thing.”
Tears spilled from his beloved’s eyes. “You’re dead. Your throat is… cut. It’s as I start to scream that the fire consumes me.”
As his shellan collapsed into his chest, iAm wrapped his arms around her and stared across their happy little home, the place where they had spent so many years, cocooned away from the larger cares and responsibilities that were waiting just outside the door.
The strength of their love had made these four walls and a ceiling feel like a for- tress.
He glanced across at the door and decided the steel panels with their dead bolts were as flimsy as a sheet of paper.
That fucking light show last night wasn’t a pair of random meteors.
It was two cursed stars, falling on them all.
After a while, Catra looked up at him. “We know nothing for sure. So we tell Denne the absence is me not being on the throne. And beyond that, I submit to our fate, whatever it may be.”
iAm dropped his mouth to his mate’s. He was prepared to protect his shellan with everything he had in him.
But no mortal lived forever.
“Me, too,” he said grimly.
God, he hated this whole thing.
He really did.