Chapter 73
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
AIRIK
Airik’s heart thrashed in his chest. He refused to look at Nora—her quick breaths and pleas were enough to make him want to turn the blade on himself.
This ache was worse than failure, death, or the unknown void that followed. None of his years of forging had prepared him for the torment of watching the light in Nora’s eyes fade into fear. Fear of him.
He held the blade steady beneath the woman’s trembling jaw. She didn’t resist, so weak that she needed Airik’s support to stay upright.
Someone had been hunting him—that much was clear. Whether it was one man or the entire Veynari fleet and all its forces, Airik needed to know.
He could not withstand an empire. But he could take down mere men. Iver would have names—a list of individuals. Targets to destroy if Airik was ever to know a moment’s peace again.
He had killed hundreds, thousands—maybe even more—in the good name of the Veynari. What were two more if it was for Nora’s safety? If she were alive, with him in this universe, then he’d spend the rest of his life earning her forgiveness. Eternity if he must.
“I know what you’re going to ask,” Iver said, his voice lacking any of the arrogance he had before. He held his still-bound hands open, the backs of his palms against the wall. “Let her go—she’s too weak to run or be any threat. I’ll tell you anything.”
Airik narrowed his eyes, unmoving.
“It’s Vorn,” Iver said, his eyes never leaving the woman’s face. “There are dozens of commanders, morazir, and his own progeny involved in…whatever it is they think they’re doing. But who everyone answers to—it’s Vorn.”
“The Ourex,” Airik said, an image of Aelior smiling at him when he’d just been a boy flashing through his mind. “Are the rest of them…wrong, too?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t say for sure—I’m nothing but a vruukar in their eyes, so I wasn’t privy to everything. But I’m certain it’s not all of the Ourex, because why play these games with you? They could have just killed you otherwise, no? Especially after it was known that Aelior—”
“That Aelior what?” A chill weighed hard on Airik’s chest.
“You must understand that keeping you alive is a risk. The Algorithm might’ve selected you to walk as a morazir, but Vorn always felt that was a mistake—to turn something unstable and wild into something unkillable.
So when it became known that Aelior had been granted access to the vault, then there was no reason to keep you alive. ”
Airik released a harsh breath, emotion and revelation spinning just out of reach.
“You look a bit…surprised.” Iver paused, his scales shimmering with sweat. “Dear god, don’t tell me you don’t know about the vault.” He scoffed, his hands relaxing in the cuffs. “For a morazir—touted for both might of body and fortitude of mind—you don’t seem to know much.”
He gritted his teeth—why couldn’t he remember anything?
His last trip to what had once been his home.
Anger. Loneliness. Frustration at watching his parents seem to indulge a love that had created him.
He had lain on the floor, unable to sleep.
But at some point during the night, his parents had come in.
He had pressed his eyes shut, pretending to be asleep.
His father had told him he had figured out a way to add Aelior to the Jortag Vault, in case anything happened to himself.
She could be trusted—scorned by the Veynari as much as they were.
If anything happened to Airik, Aelior could help.
There were tools, knowledge, and technology in the vault that could help him if the Veynari—
He shook his head, drawing deep breaths through clenched teeth. His father’s madness had been unique—both a morazir’s and love’s. One that had confused fantasy and hope.
“Airik,” Nora whispered. “I know—”
He shifted so his back was to her. “Where is Aelior now?”
“In an off-world prison.”
“Dead? Alive?” Airik’s patience plummeted, the prickle in his hands reaching a clamoring pitch.
The woman made a soft whimper as the blade slipped a little, cutting through the fabric over her throat.
“Alive,” Iver shouted out. “She’s alive!”
“Airik,” Nora begged, her voice quiet behind him.
“I know it’s hard not to feel in control.
I’m scared—I know I always am. Nothing new.
But you are in control right now. Everything here is okay.
He’s talking and can’t hurt us.” She stood close behind him—he could feel her heat.
But she wouldn’t touch him, and his heart blistered as pressure rose in his chest.
He eased his grip on the woman just enough to lean back against Nora. Her arms instantly wrapped around his waist, and he felt her press her wet cheek against his back.
“As you know,” Iver continued, “the vault’s biological analyzers don’t respond to cloned tissue or to blood drawn from a body under duress.
I don’t know how it was made—certainly not with any tech known to the Veynari.
Believe me, I’ve been trying to crack it, with undesirable results.
” He lifted his chin, revealing the scars.
“So you can rest easy, Prince. With no other way to open it, she will be kept alive.”
Airik bristled. He was no more a prince than he was a morazir.
He couldn’t understand half of the words Iver, who spoke in English, said. But he had gathered enough to know that his body had only had value when alive, if it served the Veynari as a key or a weapon.
“What is in the vault? Why kudra? What use is any of it to Vorn—what is he trying to do?” He pressed the flat of his blade to the woman’s throat—to make her cry out, not to cut. “You are making me ask too many questions.”
Iver flinched. Sweat beaded between the flattened scales on his skin.
“I don’t know exactly, but his favorite phrase is The True Father has grown weary that the light has been led astray.
And one of my first tasks for him after my”—he blinked, as if locked in inner turmoil —“capture was to arrange an off-world facility to build prime species. To ‘re-illuminate’ the True Father’s vision of melding all the true species into one. ”
Airik’s blood froze. He had heard whispers of this before.
That those designed as prime were the first experiment toward creating a single species.
It had been an extraordinary failure, producing individuals with unpredictable mutations and dispositions.
A weapon that did not obey or perform on command was useless.
So almost all were destroyed at birth in the already-controversial artificial wombs.
Culled. Per the Algorithm’s orders.
That was what the Veynari did to entire planets. But the Algorithm, its logic strange and obscure, had never ordered the eradication of an entire species.
“The—” Airik swallowed. The woman no longer trembled in his grasp, now disturbingly still. “The kudra.”
Though Iver’s bleeding had stopped, his tan skin had become almost white.
“Well, what better way to clear a planet of life while keeping its natural resources intact? Kudra to preserve the planets that might prove useful…and a drozekar to deal with those that aren’t.
This new species will need a home—an entire galaxy to populate.
Your vault is the final piece. It has tech that can neutralize the kudra.
And the weapons in it—even if a touch dusty—are still deadly and will withstand current Veynari methods of interference.
The Veynari can’t shut them down, and the weapons can’t say no to whoever is using them. ”
He felt Nora’s arms tighten around him. He forced himself to take a breath.
What Iver said could have been true, false, or the hallucinations of a man who had lost too much blood. Airik would have no way to know until he broke open the vault himself.
“And what is your purpose in everything?” he asked. “And Xallix’s?”
Iver’s gaze dropped to the end of his braid, tied with a flower-printed cloth.
“Xallix is Vorn’s progeny. Not surprisingly, Vorn believes his line is closest to Ulliel’s light.
So, of course, he will start the spread of a new order with his own first,” he explained.
“It was the other generals who should have noticed his conceit. They failed to. All of them are the same, you see. Arrogant. Aelior was the only one to notice, and well—she’s making a little less noise now, isn’t she? ”
A wind rushed in through the ramp, carrying the smell of iilas. Still, after all this time, he hadn’t found a single fruit to account for the smell.
“Was Vorn—this new ‘order’—who took my mother and father from me?”
Airik knew the answer. But when Iver sighed, it felt as if the kudra spear that had pierced Airik’s father’s heart so many years ago had been thrust into Airik’s own heart.
He’d never wondered before how it hadn’t broken.
Kudra was supposed to be brittle. Now he realized it was being enhanced as a weapon.
“If it’s any consolation, the Veynari’s time has runneth over, as they say. It’s just that what’s replacing it isn’t any better. Same shit, different loo—has the human taught you that wonderful idiom yet?”
When Airik didn’t respond, Iver continued.
“Your legend—the unbranded who outranks all others despite being wild. Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered. Unmodified to the vision of the almighty True Father. You should never have survived, and you undermine everything. There’s no room for you in this new world, my tragic, wild prince.
” Iver smiled, his pupils now uneven in their focus.
Nora’s hands pressed into his stomach so hard that he wondered if she might meld into him.
He shut his eyes. He was just one man, but he still had his sword. With it, he’d still be unkillable. A weapon of the Veynari’s own making.
He could not escape an empire—even a new one under the command of Vorn.
But—and it must have been the Madness within him—he did not want to escape it. He wanted to break it. This was how he’d fix everything.
Muttering an apology, Airik cut the woman free of the metal binds. She fell to the ground, gasping.
When he turned to Nora, his heart stopped. Aching filled her glare, igniting him.
Instantly, he dropped to his knees. “I’m sorry—”
His words cut off as she yanked him to her chest, burying his face between her breasts and nearly suffocating him. “Shut up,” she cried. “I’m very angry with you.”
“I am sorry,” he moaned, hoping the vibrations of his voice would reach her heart. He pulled her braid from behind her head so he could hold her. “Do you believe me? I would never have hurt her. But I needed him to talk so I would know what to do next—how to fix things.”
The only safe place for him in this universe was here, looking up into her brown eyes. “Please,” he begged. “Tell me you believe me, cheranna. That I would not have hurt her. Not really.”
“I said shut up.” She pulled him into her, planting kisses on the top of his head. “You’re an asshole, you know that? But…” She kissed the cut on his temple. “I believe you.”
Behind him, he heard the woman shuffle, moving toward Iver.
Leave them, he thought. They must be as fucked as I am with this madness and want.
In a few minutes, he’d have to leave and bring back Torren and Lucky. But for now, for a little while longer, he wanted this.
“Why does he call you a prince?” Nora asked, stroking his hair.
Airik pressed his head hard into her chest. “Because…in a different time—in a different universe—that’s what I might have been.”
She gasped, drawing back with a smile on her lips. “A prince, huh?” she raised a brow. “Of course you would be.”
Her finger left hot trails as they traced the scars on his face. Both of their breaths returned, and he wiped the last of her tears away.
“You could have winked or something, you know?” she said. “So I wouldn’t have panicked.”
“Wink?” Airik rested his chin on the curve of her breast. “Is that like a kiss? Will you show me?”
She laughed. “I don’t think a wink is a princely thing to do, but yeah, I can—”
Nora’s words were cut off by a blinding flash of light and an ear-splitting pop.