Chapter 22
Patience Is Power: Master Yourself, Master Your Enemy
Lily
A vilely ironic name for a world where millions of beings from other species were forced, against their will, to have their biological maps overwritten, then made to carry offspring like parasites incubating in stolen flesh.
It was a lesson the IMPERIUM’s lawmakers could never afford to forget.
Even after millennia, they had to remain vigilant.
No species could be allowed to rise so far above the others again.
The next chrono-cycles were the longest of Lily’s life.
She ate. She slept. In the remaining hours she trained within the limits of the small space, clinging to the familiar rhythm of exercises repeated until they became mindless.
She meditated and practiced breathing the way Helios had taught her, and she thought, endlessly.
She built plans. She replayed every short exchange with Horos again and again, hunting for some overlooked detail that could become a weapon in her hands.
Sometimes, when she felt strong enough, she let herself think of Khar.
She did it rarely. It hurt too much. The thought that she might never see him again hollowed her out, and right now she needed every scrap of strength and cunning she had.
The only variation in those endless hours was Horos’s visits.
As far as Lily could tell, he followed no schedule. He came when he wanted.
He usually brought something from the synthesizers, food that would have expanded the thin, snack-like menu available in the guest suite’s stasis cabinet, but Lily could not bring herself to touch it.
Vitro refilled the stasis cabinet automatically from storage, a process Horos could not easily interfere with.
The synthesizers, however, could produce anything he pleased.
The risk was too great to justify the comfort of a warm meal.
Sometimes he brought replacement uniforms. Lily accepted them. Not because Horos could tell what she wore, but because she was tired of crouching in the cramped bathroom, waiting for her clothes to dry enough to wear again.
Horos was exhausted, irritable, and frustrated. Manual control of Vitro was demanding and time-consuming, and the workload was clearly beginning to bury him. Lily watched his deterioration with a grim satisfaction.
Exhausted beings made mistakes.
She was waiting for the one mistake that would let her strike.
When they spoke, she gave him as little reaction as possible. Nothing that would provoke him, but nothing that resembled submission either. Fortunately, the hoarseness still roughened his voice since the last time he had forced a seizure on her, and it looked as though even speaking hurt him.
That did not stop him from talking.
He complained at length about the world’s injustice, about Vegrun’s ingratitude, about his own greatness. Lily listened with a neutral smile, though she would have liked to peel her own skin off rather than sit through his pathetic monologues.
Horos seemed satisfied even with neutrality, but it came at a cost. She could not steer the conversation toward what she needed most. More than once she considered changing tactics, provoking him carefully in hopes he would blurt something out while tired, but patience paid off.
After an especially long tirade about Vegrun, Horos finally mentioned Khar.
“That old tentacled lecher never expected I would take his most precious treasure,” Horos said.
“He likes keeping females around him, doting on them, but the only constant in his life is what he paid for. That oversized, gaudy space carriage. He paid extra for the cloaking systems, and now those same systems mean they have no chance of finding us. Not with the wage-slave guarding his beloved cruiser.”
Lily was fantasizing about smashing Horos’s head into something unrecognizable with the dullest object she could find in the suite when Khar’s appearance in the conversation yanked her back into the moment.
“You mean Khar,” she said.
Horos flicked his hand as if something sticky and disgusting had touched his fingers. The contempt was unmistakable.
“That brute. I suspect Vegrun started digging into my affairs because of him. I would have paid to see his face when he discovered Vitromium was gone.”
He laughed, a dry, grating sound, and Lily’s chest tightened at the mention of Khar.
Horos could not stop there. After Vegrun, he spat his poison at Khar too. Dissatisfaction poured out of him, thick and sour, the kind that came from weakness. The kind that only felt powerful while degrading others.
“He thinks he is important because he is a filthy Divani and because Vegrun indulges his ridiculous behavior, but he is a pathetic loser. His whole species is. They throw away their pride for a quick fuck. He is an even bigger lapdog than Vegrun. At least Vegrun pays for sex and does not permanently alter himself just to mount someone.”
Lily’s teeth ground together. It took everything in her not to smash her fist into his smug, plague-doctor face.
Stay steady. Not yet.
She drew in a breath and gave him a sweet smile.
“What are you talking about?” she asked softly. “What about the Divani?”
Horos tilted his head in that vulturelike way Lily had seen so many times. He made a thoughtful sound as if he were studying her expression.
“Hm. So you truly do not know. Good. I keep forgetting how ignorant you are about these things.” His smile sharpened.
“The Divani racial trait. The whole universe thinks it is romantic, how they reshape themselves for their chosen one, how they fit perfectly so they can produce descendants. I noticed someone started the imprinting in that thick-necked bull, and I hoped it was not you. It would have been such a shame if you dirtied yourself with him.”
Lily breathed.
In. Deep. Slow.
She could endure not breaking Horos’s nose.
For now.
Horos did not seem bothered by her silence.
“Although,” he continued, “it would be even better if you were the target after all. That would mean he is permanently chained to you, but you will never meet him again. And if you do, by then you will already be my bitch.”
Lily’s hands curled into fists. She could feel her patience evaporating like a droplet of water thrown into an engine flame.
The male seemed to sense the reaction he was provoking. For the first time in chrono-cycles, he opened his mouth wide, teeth like knives, and released that bone-splitting scream Lily could not escape.
Her body folded. Hit the floor. Convulsed.
For the third time she writhed helplessly at the feet of a creature who looked at her as if she were confessing love, not breaking her.
His voice, when he spoke, was weak and ragged.
“You know, Corvus are despised, but we are not so different from the Divani. The same evolutionary path, truly. They reshape themselves. We reshape our chosen. That is why the Corvus breeding-song is universally forbidden. It acts on nervous systems without consent.” His lips peeled back.
“Hypocrisy. As if it is not a sacrifice on my part.” He swallowed, wincing.
“It destroys my vocal cords. Even a medical station cannot fix them.”
His knotted hand clutched at his throat. Then he forced calm into his posture and began to gather himself to leave.
“I hope you will be reasonable. The breeding-song affects you even if you resist. Resistance only degrades higher cognitive functions.” His eyes glittered.
“And I would rather fuck someone who moves and reacts than a drooling vegetable, but that is not my decision.” He leaned closer, softening his voice into something almost coaxing.
“Think about it. How beautiful our life could be. We could travel the universe together. Think about it, Lily.”
Horos did not see Lily’s tears as he stepped out and the door sealed behind him.
Lily lay curled on the bed.
She was past tears. Past rage. Past denial. Now she simply existed.
Now she understood.
She had wondered why Horos had not forced himself on her earlier. It was obvious he had no moral restraint. The strange pattern, the insults and humiliation paired with attempts at false camaraderie, had been meant to make her accept him.
As if that had ever been possible.
And there had always been violence. It had simply been disguised, hidden, delivered in an underhanded form so grotesque it eclipsed her imagination.
The thought alone made nausea rise in her throat.
What truly knocked the ground out from under her was the uncertainty.
Had the change already begun?
She was certain she would resist until the last moment, but would she even feel herself slipping away? Or was the process so insidious that after one seizure she would not remember her own name, only lie in her vomit, waiting for Horos to decide what was done to her?
Lily knew she would end her own life before that happened.
And if she had any say at all, she would end Horos first, before he ever touched her again with so much as a fingertip.
He deserved death already.
But Horos could still find ways to drive the blade deeper.
Before her abduction, Lily had secretly wanted to leave with Khar, just the two of them, and go wherever they pleased.
Two against the world. Against the universe.
She had not dared say it yet, not with how comfortable their work had been, not with her lack of money for long-term flight, but she had been getting closer.
The solar collector alone had been a huge step.
She had almost been able to feel the dream becoming real.
Horos had crushed that future with a single, filthy hand.
Lily accepted that she had to let go of what she wanted most.
The thought of a life with Khar reminded her how he had caught her attention from the first moment like nothing else ever had, and how his pull would not loosen until the last moment of her life.
He had been an axis for her. Something that anchored her after a lifetime of drifting. Something she could grow around.
And now, with nothing left to distract her from the truth, nothing left to hide behind, she had to admit she had been the same for Khar.
Singular.
Irreplaceable.
Unrepeatable.
By taking her, Horos had not only stolen Lily’s future. He had inflicted an irreversible loss and an incurable pain on Khar as well.
Unforgivable.
Something broke inside her.
And at the same time, something hardened.
No more kindness.
No more careful tactics.
No more Horos.
That hateful, scavenging creature would die.
This was not a furious outburst. Outwardly, Lily looked calm, almost as if she had accepted her fate. But beneath the surface her anger, her contempt, her wounded pride boiled together like magma building pressure beneath a volcano.
She was ready.
Ready to end it all, one way or another.