Chapter 2
The three-dimensional globe turns slowly above the enormous oval table, casting its pale light across Mero’s face.
He stands with both hands braced upon the stone, studying the three worlds suspended at its center. Dark swaths spread between them, swallowing routes that were considered safe only generations ago.
One of those worlds paid for Aurelian protection.
It was an open secret that the other two paid the government of the protected planet kickbacks through backroom deals, knowing that the chilling effect created by even a single protected planet in the system would deter the vast majority of the crime that plagues every place we are absent, where strength is the only law.
Not long after Queen Jasmine came to power, the only world protected by us in the system declared independence. For more than two centuries, all three planets flourished within our reach, paying none of our taxes yet protected simply by lying inside our expanse.
Now we respond not in instants, but after months or years of conventional travel.
And now those three planets suffer the same predation as every place beyond our reach.
It burns me up. Throughout our careers, we would Orb-Shift into war, our beams lancing out from nothingness and taking the enemy by surprise. So many slavers killed. So many people freed.
But once that power is gone, humanity devolves into its base, primal state.
And so do we.
How many Aurelians now prey upon humanity’s weakness, taking humans as slaves?
Mero turns the globe with two fingers, and another darkened region rotates into view. This system is only one among many.
Settlement after settlement. Distress calls we were forbidden to answer. By the time we arrived, all we could do was punish raiders, kill slavers, put down entire nests of Scorp and help the survivors rebuild.
“Thirty-three percent,” I snarl. “Thirty-three percent. Where have the brave men gone?”
Mero’s mouth hardens.
“Many became Elites long before the civil war. Doman has an incentive not to push them towards the cryo-chambers, but to keep them alive and voting as he wishes.”
I lean over the table, clutching its edge in both hands. “Many of those who would have voted with us now serve the Old Ways. We’re left with the fat, the old, men past their prime.”
The disgust in my words turns inward. I’ve allowed myself to deteriorate, allowed a layer of bulk to settle over my physique. We were so worn down by the smell of old blood. It has that particular stink, like a slaughterhouse.
The three worlds continue their slow rotation between us, dark routes staining their pale glow, and I press my palm against the place where Mero’s Orb-Blade cut through my robes and opened my abdomen. The Med-Bay erased the wound, leaving my skin smooth, but the memory remains.
That instant of searing agony. The rush of blood down my body as I charged him again. The adrenaline pulsing. The sheer presentness of it, when the body knows it is balanced upon that razor’s edge between life and death.
I have not felt anything like that in so long…
Except when I chased Nell through our forest, the scent of her thick in my nostrils. That is real. That is life. Only she gives me a feeling as intense as the smoke-filled battlefields, when my blade ignited and I went against men who had cut down Aurelians, men who thought themselves my match.
Why doesn’t she feel the same towards me?
I grit my teeth, my molars grinding, and my hand closes into a fist upon the table. When I stopped beside Nell this afternoon, blood still running from the wound across my abdomen, I drew her scent deep into my lungs.
Nothing but fear and discomfort.
No trace of need for me. No trace that she would rather see me alive than dead.
Talarin enters our war room and shuts the door behind him. His aura is taut, but we’ve all been that way since we left for the vote. I sniff. He might be concealing some of his emotions, but the sharp bitterness of self-disgust hangs in his scent.
Mero looks up from the globe.
“How is she?”
“Not good.”
“What the fuck did you say to her? She spends one night with you, and suddenly she doesn’t want anything to do with us.”
He cocks his head to the side, and his aura goes totally calm. “The truth.”
“All of it?”
“Enough.” Talarin approaches the table. “She believed we might take her into the Rift, beyond the Empire’s laws, and keep her somewhere no one could ever find her.”
“We would never.”
He stands on the other side of the table, his harsh features distorted through the globe spinning between us. “You’ve never thought of it? When these hundred days are done and she leaves, would you let her go? Is it the maws of the Aelor-dravir that stop you from considering it, or her wishes?”
A growl gathers in my chest. His words ring true, and I hate it. I can’t imagine this estate without her. I can’t imagine centuries without her scent thick in my nostrils, and I ache to complete myself, to feel her growing in my mind, to know her better than she knows herself.
Mero raises his hand, sensing this could come to blows.
“The vote is settled for this turn. There is no saving the lives of those in the darkness. But if we are to win her, we must make her understand that we alone can keep her safe, even if they come. She is not a fool. She knows full well that Colossus is filled with Orbs and could be the first target when they hunger.”
I pace to the bar and pour myself a drink, relishing the burn as my mind races.
“So then what? There is not a man on this planet who understands these things. We have guesses and dark prophecies. You know what the Old Ways say. That if a Seer is not upon the throne, we all die. You want to join with the men we have spent decades killing?”
Mero waves his hand. The globe’s projection disappears, leaving the three of us alone around the table. He looks to Talarin, then to me.
“No,” Mero says. “We learn from them. They once had Obsidian guiding their Shifts, yet they continue even without him. How?”
Talarin circles the table. “Several of the triads who attended General Keerak’s dinner last night Shifted into the Spire during the assault. They may be able to tell us.”
“Will they?” I take another drink. “They’ll be tight-lipped. Everyone the Empire captured from the Spire was executed after barely a trial. Any interrogations were classified. Whatever happened there, they do not want us to know.”
Mero taps his fingers against the table. “Let us see what was left unclassified to Elites. There will be no record of the journey through the Rift itself, but we still have access to everything recorded outside it. We’ll be able to see the battle and the escape.”
He passes one hand through the air. A recording reconstructed from the surviving Reaver feeds appears. The Spire rises at its center, surrounded by hundreds of black vessels. Imperial Orb-Beams lance between them, and Reavers burn beneath the barrage. I feel my pulse quicken.
Too long since I was in a real battle. Too long since I fought from a Reaver instead of commanding warships that provided overwatch.
I yearn for those early days, when our lives were in our own hands and every moment passed taut with danger, before we were promoted to commanding lumbering Titan-class ships and the thousands of triads relying upon us.
In the battle feed, larger warships hang beyond the mass of Reavers, their enormous shields and layered armor marking them as the vessels where the leadership class should be sheltering. Yet instead of those ships punching out first, small groups of Reavers begin breaking away.
Everything else is standard strategy: a force mobilizing to leave, caught by an ambush. But those ships. Those tiny ships, single Reavers Shifting before everyone else.
“They transferred the leadership onto them,” Talarin says. “Look. They knew we would concentrate our fire upon the warships, so they hid their command aboard smaller vessels.”
Mero watches with narrowed eyes. I wave my hand, replaying the sequence and slowing it down until the tiny Reavers crawl across the projection. They leave at measured intervals, each breaking from a different edge of the formation before Shifting alone.
Not a panicked escape. Not commanders scattering to preserve themselves.
A pattern.
“No.” I shake my head. “Don’t you see it? It’s bait. They’re bait for the Aelor-dravir.”
Talarin’s hand stills.
I replay it again. The first Reaver disappears. A second breaks in the opposite direction, followed by another along a third path. Only after they are gone do the vessels at the heart of the formation begin to move.
“They send Orb-signatures ahead along different routes,” Mero says. “The Aelor-dravir pursue them, leaving a path for the ships they intend to preserve.”
“That is how they are getting through with so few casualties while we have so many.”
“If that’s true—wait.” Talarin’s hands flick quickly, dexterously working the holovid controls. His left forefinger pins the dates of our crossings alongside the casualty reports, the Spire’s losses at the top. With his other hand, he brings up the order in which the vessels Shifted.
“The Bastion. It was the first of our major support vessels to go through. Nearly cleaved in half by one of those things. The Tempest, Vindicator, and Aegis followed. All three unscathed.”
He flicks through the data.
“Of the eight Reavers we lost, six were among the first ten percent to Shift. And look at these—the very first ships through. Some were damaged, but not enough to destroy them.”
“Then we can work out their reflex times,” Mero says. “Cross-reference the timing of the attacks.”
Talarin brings up earlier crossings, comparing them with the losses at the Spire.
“The pattern matches. It’s spotty, but it matches. Traversing later in formation does not guarantee safety, but the losses are heavier among those who Shift first.”
He nods to himself, deep in thought.
“We should bring this before the council when we challenge the decree again.”
“The issue is settled for this turn,” Mero replies. “And it would not change the vote. If casualties were Doman’s concern, we could send Mark-13s aboard the first Reavers. We would lose an Orb with each vessel, but no Aurelian lives. It still would not sway him. His younger brother has his ear.”
“Scorp-blooded little freak.” I bare my teeth. “Never linked with a triad. Alone his entire life, and Doman lets him decide how the rest of us fight.”
I picture the pretty boy gallivanting across the Empire with a woman who is not his Mate, Scorp blood running through his veins because he tried to forge a Bond where none existed.
“And he believes every passage through the Rift wakes them further. He has never fought a real war. Never stood in the aftermath of something we could have prevented.”
My hand tightens around my glass. If that princeling were standing before me, I do not know whether I could stop myself from cutting him down.
Mero waves his hand, and the combat footage disappears.
“We need two more Reavers,” he says. “If we are forced to punch out, one draws the Aelor-dravir away. One carries Nell through.”
“And the third?”
Mero’s gaze settles upon me.
“Drives an Orb-Beam straight down its fucking maw.”
My blood surges at the thought.
Talarin walks to the bar and pours himself a drink. “With what funds? We have earmarked everything for the shield defenses.”
“It is time we had another talk with Ruttelle,” Mero says.
“And what of the other matter?” Talarin asks.
Guilt moves through the Bond, sharp enough that for a moment I cannot tell which of us it belongs to.
Mero’s fingers still upon the table. “Ruttelle sent word. He says Nell is a ghost. Most of the records that should exist simply do not, but he has found a thread.”
“It’s a ruse. He only wants us inside his manor.” I set down my glass. “We told him not to investigate her.”
“Yes,” Talarin says. “Of course.” His thumb moves across the black ring. “But don’t you want to know?”
“She is fiercely private,” Mero says. “She would not even give us her last name. If she discovers we have been prying into her past, she may never trust us.”
“She does not trust us now,” I counter.
Talarin’s thumb goes still on the ring. “I do not like it,” he says. “We have pushed her too hard already. She needs time to learn that this is what she needs.”
“If there is someone in her past who could threaten her, we need to know,” I say.
“And if there is no threat?” Talarin asks.
“I still need to know. I need to know if there is something that can make her stay. I need to understand her, and she is giving me nothing.”
“She is scared of you.”
She should be.
My palm aches with the need to slap her ass. I smelled the rush of her arousal when she wriggled upon my lap. Her utter need.
This one wants to be tamed.
Needs to be tamed.
And I am the one who can do it.
Mero looks towards the empty space above the table.
“Tell Ruttelle to arrange a meet.”