Chapter 59 #2
“Potential damage, my sweet bird—I’d never hurt you.” He stroked the wall where he’d just hit it. “Is that better?” He looked up and smiled at the mirrored watching spheres that dotted the drozekar’s ceiling, always recording in case a mission failed and a tribunal was called to review evidence.
Airik relaxed a little. Torren was fine. “Why sell your seed if you were meant to be breeding?” he asked, dropping his voice low so the Watchers couldn’t hear—Veynari surveillance was most concerned with physical proximity.
“You think I actually did it?” Torren made a face as if disgusted by the implication.
“Don’t you think I’d remember such an enterprising activity?
” He smoothed his shirt into place, wincing as his hand passed over the brands.
“The worst of it was that the reports stated I’d been using my status as prime to drive up the price—as if my cock wasn’t enough of an experience to justify the cost.”
Yes, Torren was absolutely fine if he could jest like this. “I don’t understand, then. What was the evidence brought against you?”
“There was no tangible evidence. Just two anonymous testimonies and a recording from a Watcher who could’ve been anyone wearing a mask.
” Torren crossed his arms, leaning against the wall.
“But the Ourex had seen and heard enough. And fortunate for both you and me, Ed’un’s mission had failed, so instead of ten brands, I received only three.
All I had to do next was collect your body and sword.
” He smiled broadly. “At least their confidence in you hasn’t yet been shaken.
They know the only way you’d fail is if you died. ”
Airik braced himself against the ship’s curved wall. While he’d been fucking Nora, the world he belonged to had spun into chaos.
Ice overtook his body as he realized this was the world he had brought Nora into. “If Aelior has been detained, I need to find her. We need to go. There’s been a mistake, and the human—”
Torren’s eyes flared bright. “I already told you—I don’t know where she is.
The announcement of her arrest was sent just as we were called for portal transit.
All missions were grounded except those in progress.
I feared that if I turned around, I could never get off the ground again.
” His voice faltered. “The last message I received from her came through a private channel, just hours before the notice, though I didn’t see it until after the brandings. ”
On the other side of the door, Airik heard the water shut off. Although his throat had long gone dry, he managed to ask, “What did it say?”
“I would have let you listen to it yourself, but it vanished moments after I read it. She told me that I—” Torren swallowed, blinking back emotion suddenly spreading across his eyes. “I am your brother. As close to one as our world will ever allow. Whatever is happening, I need to keep you safe—”
“Safe?” Airik sputtered. “Why would I need to be kept safe?”
Torren tilted his head, all traces of emotion gone as quickly as they’d come. “Why do you keep looking at that door? Humans can’t shift through walls. And don’t worry about the human. I’ll transfer her. I can handle her just as well—”
“I don’t want you to handle her. She is mine.” Each of Airik’s muscles threatened to give out, as if all the exhaustion of the weeks before had solidified into something heavy and inescapable. Without Nora in his line of sight, a blackness was closing in on his vision and mind.
Torren stared at him, his odd-colored eyes narrowing. “Is the human yours?”
For a moment, they both stared at the other, a lifetime of memories forged between them.
More than once, Torren had shielded Airik’s body with his own in the fields, knowing he couldn’t use the regeneration chambers.
I’m not doing this to protect you, Torren would say, his body shredding from whatever weaponry had been aimed at them.
I’m doing this to earn time in the regeneration chambers so I can sleep.
Airik didn’t have to utter the words for Torren to know the truth.
Torren’s eyes widened, bright with understanding. He shook his head, slapping a hand across his eyes. “You are a fool,” he groaned. “A cunt-starved fool who thinks the first taste is the sweetest—”
Airik shoved Torren against the wall, silencing Torren and shocking himself at how quickly the force of movement—intrinsic to him, it seemed—returned. “Do not speak of her taste or her cunt. What you do in pleasure dens—that is not what this is.”
“How would we know what anything is? We aren’t supposed to know it—ignorance of it keeps us alive.
” With a hard shake of the shoulder, Torren freed himself from Airik.
He dropped his voice to barely a whisper.
“With Aelior imprisoned—only the True Father knows why or if whatever she’s done will catch up to us—you must know that something is wrong.
It might have started on the Lemides, maybe even before.
You don’t need this complication with the human—your life is already hunted by death as it is. ”
He looked to the door, then down to Lucky. “If you think you’re feeling something for the human, then you should also remember the human is not unkillable. Easier caught by death than you. You do know that, don’t you?”
Airik’s head shot up. Of course he knew that. It plagued his every thought.
The hall went quiet as Nora’s humming stopped completely.
He wouldn’t lose her. Even if all he could have was to watch her life from a distance, that would be enough.
But it required him to return to Zarmur. To root out the rot that followed him. To use the little prestige afforded to him as a morazir—an unbranded, no less—and find out what had happened to Aelior. A general could help him keep Nora out of the breeding algorithms.
Flexing his shoulders, he forced his breath into a manageable rhythm, then uttered an order to Lucky—in English, so Torren wouldn’t know—to stay until Nora emerged.
“This mission serves both as an extraction and to facilitate testing of new technology,” Airik said, giving one last glance to Nora’s door.
“One of the purposes which has now been fulfilled.”
Torren looked between Lucky and Airik, then lifted a brow. “Yes…that’s correct.”
“So our return is now contingent upon Xallix, yes?”
“Y-Yes?”
Airik pushed past him and stalked toward the cell rooms.
“Now, wait.” Torren hurried after him. “I’ve already been branded three times—even I can’t take another.
The mission brief is clear: The new engines require a full day to configure.
Why don’t you eat something? Subsisting on a nutritional matrix for weeks can’t be good for the body.
It would certainly explain the insanity that’s taken hold of you. ”
Airik grunted. “I’ve been eating exactly what I’ve needed.”