Chapter 21 #2
I lingered in the embrace for just a few seconds, memorizing it—perhaps comparing it to my recollections of the past. I was not the same; I kept telling myself that.
I’d seen things since my sister and I last met.
The darkness of that Rummicaron world, with all its Roka-addicted people; the effects of the pollution on their bodies.
I’d met Jaxin, and in the short time I’d known him, he’d changed me on a fundamental level.
I had an understanding of my gift, and better control than I’d ever had.
That was thanks to him, thanks to the subtle nuances in his feelings beneath the cool armor.
His Rummicaron mind exercises were helping me here, too, letting me feel a calm through the hurt that I would otherwise not have known.
I let that feeling guide me, anchored in the solid knowledge that I’d made a male love me who wasn’t supposed to know what love was.
Jaxin was all I needed, and he gave me the strength to stand firm now, too.
My gift unfurled like a flower in my mind, not spreading across the ship just to find Jaxin’s mind, but curling through the room and around Koratalin to sniff out the truth.
What was beneath that false concern? What was the truth?
She was talking about how much she’d missed me, and how relieved she was that she’d managed to rescue me from that awful mercenary.
At the same time, her questions probed at what I was doing now, how my cure was going.
I deflected her question with a “You’re not interested in my nerdy science stuff!
Tell me about your life, Koratalin.” It made her frown; a flicker of something shifted beneath her warm welcome.
I focused on it, pulled on it like it was a thread to unravel.
Pull it, and things started to collapse like a house of cards.
It was like all my experience sliding beneath Jaxin’s emotionless shields was coming in handy now.
There the truth was, staring me in the face from one moment to the next.
I blinked, shocked to discover the darkness in my half-sister’s mind.
Hidden there, even against the power of my gift, all this time.
She felt exactly like what the stories of our father had always implied he should feel like: greed, anger, cunning—those were first and foremost. Her impatience to get answers from me was heavy and hard to miss.
She wasn’t happy to see me or concerned about my well-being; she was here to interrogate me.
I did not count on her realizing I’d burst her facade like a bubble.
She jerked back from hovering, supposedly protectively close, and her smile dropped.
“What did you do, Danitalin?” she said in such a cold tone that fear slid like ice water down my spine.
She was furious with me, and I could sense her desire to strike at me; it pulsed against my skin.
My eyes dropped to her hands in reflex and widened when I discovered the metal, gem-studded claws she wore over her nails.
Her hand would do serious harm if she struck me with that, she’d draw blood.
Her satisfaction curled between us then, thick and heavy.
She knew I’d seen the threat, sensed it, and she rather enjoyed having that kind of power over me.
How sick. How could this woman be related to me?
I already knew how my empathy-gifted mom had been tricked by Hadralin for the duration of their passionate affair.
Yet it sickened me to discover how deeply I’d been tricked by him, and by my half-sister.
Mom had warned me, and I had believed myself too strong an empath to be deceived.
“So, you’ve grown stronger. Fine. It doesn’t matter.
” Koratalin strode away from me in a swish of lush golden silk and red embroidery.
Her black hair shimmered along her back in undulating waves, the tips dipped in gold dust for an extraordinary look.
She’d always enjoyed the finer things in life, and I should have realized that getting piles of gifts from expensive stores was not love—just the only way an emotionally stunted person could think to persuade me to like them.
“I never did like playing games,” she added, and that was a blatant lie.
Koratalin had taken great pleasure in deceiving me, I saw that now.
Her smirk told me she knew I knew it, and she did not bother to correct herself.
“Now, since we’re done with this”—she flapped her hand between us, and her gold- and gem-crusted claws glinted—“sisterly bonding thing… You’re going to tell me what I want to know, and then you’re going to finish your work. Got that, sis?”
I nodded slowly, but my mind was racing as I considered the options.
There was no way I was going to make the cure for her that she was after, but I needed to convince her that Jaxin was key to it all.
I had to make sure he was safe, and I had to make sure we found a way off Koratalin’s ship.
Once we were together, I was certain Jaxin would know things I didn’t.
So that was the plan: get him in the same room with me, preferably with minimal guards.
“So, this is the real you, is it?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. It was a poor shield against the darkness I now sensed coming from her, and my skin prickled, reminding me that she’d embraced me.
“Why do you even want a cure for Roka pollution? What do you care?” Jaxin had outlined some reasons to me at one point, but it still didn’t make much sense.
How would having this cure give Koratalin control of a bigger slice of the drug trade?
She smiled evilly, there was no other word for the way her mouth curled and her black eyes glinted.
She was going to indulge me because she liked being the one in control, and she rather liked horrifying me to boot.
“Because, sis,” she drawled, tapping a claw against her red mouth, “with a cure like that, I can charge the sods working for me to have it. It’ll have them flock to my production sites and leave the others at a disadvantage.
I can even charge my rivals a premium if they want it for their workers. Get it?”
I did not get it, it was too horrible. This was not at all what I had set out to create, and I refused to hand over such power to her or anyone, for that matter.
Shaking my head, I told her no, and her expression grew dangerous, a threat sharpening in the air like a knife.
She was too far away to harm me with her claws, but that did not mean she couldn’t harm me in other ways.
There was a very small laser pistol hanging from her belt, for instance, and her personal guard was only a shout away.
“You don’t get to say no to me, Danitalin.
You’re my blood. I’d hate to see you harmed, but I will, if you leave me no choice.
” Hate to see me harmed? That was a lie, too.
She didn’t give a Nia’s whiskers about me.
Dead or alive, it didn’t matter, as long as she got her cure.
That was where I had the leverage, and I pounced on the chance.
“Where’s my guard? Where did you put Jaxin?
I’ll help you if you let us—both of us—go afterward.
Unharmed. And I’ll need his help; he’s the only one who knows how to assist me.
” My demand was met with an amused bark of laughter, Koratalin’s disbelief that I needed Jaxin’s help crashing against my mind.
I struggled to maintain the cool shielding I’d learned to create with Jaxin’s exercises, pain like shards in my chest from her intensity.
Things were wearing thin; I was getting tired of keeping this up.
“You need a dumb Rummicaron warrior to help you?” my half-sister said, shaking her head.
“I doubt that. Are you banging him? Is that it?” I gasped, and perhaps my expression said enough, because she laughed again.
“Oh, that’s priceless! You are! I suppose him being a cold fish is the only way you can get close and not burn out.
Something is better than nothing, is it? ”
Mortified, I tried to figure out how to answer that, but every answer would give away how much Jaxin meant to me.
That was not a risk I could take; it would put all the power back in her hands.
I settled on: “His emotionless state protects my mind from overloading. He helps me think straight.” She raised an eyebrow as if she did not believe me, and I feared she was about to suggest she’d put another Rummicaron as a guard in the room with me.
Then she shrugged, as if she didn’t really care.
She thought she was in control, that she had all the power.
Perhaps she didn’t think Jaxin and I could get up to no good when put in a room together.
She was going to find out she was wrong, because I was convinced that, together with him, I could do what Jeltom and I had tried to do the first time around: a bomb, a distraction, and escape.