Chapter 71 A Heart that Keeps Beating, Eve
A HEART THAT KEEPS BEATING, EVE
ZIRA OF HOUSE SERATH WINS
Matriarch Zira of Rima has chosen to marry Ascendant Alliance Sovereign Directors Rafe and Lorian.
A victory for one woman and a disappointment for thousands of others.
The news comes during breakfast. Gai talks about it casually, like he’s discussing the weather.
"The marriage negotiations are finalized. Rafe and Lorian will wed Zira of House Serath next week.”
I lose control and begin to cry.
“I want none of this, Eve. No crying. Tears make people careless.” He swats at me with his hand, and I back away into a corner. “They’re too close to power to have a choice in this,” Gai says.
The breakfast room is spinning as I think about them with someone else. A woman that I can never be. A rich, grey-skinned, free and equal Reima Two woman.
“It’s a strategic match. The Ascendant Alliance couldn’t have asked for any better,” Gai continues talking.
Rafe and Lorian are getting married to someone else.
How can they do this to me? After everything that I did here. How I have suffered. I can’t focus.
Gai continues talking, oblivious to my world ending. "Of course, these Reima Two arrangements are primarily about business. Zira of House Serath will bring legitimacy. Capital. Everything we lost when you decided to play revolutionary, Eve. This is the best thing that could have happened.”
I stop breathing. I simply forget how. I think my heart will stop beating next, and then I will just die. Naked and collared and heartbroken.
"Purely transactional, naturally,” Gai's voice drifts through the roaring in my ears, but his words don’t make any sense to me anymore.
All I hear is my heartbeat pounding.
No.
No.
No. It can’t be!
The world tilts, and black spots dance in my vision.
Someone is screaming somewhere. Maybe it’s me.
I grab frantically at my hair trying to stop the pounding in my head.
"Restrain her," Gai orders, "before she damages herself."
Hands grab me, and I fight just to feel some pain. To match the pain in my heart. “No, no, no!”
"Really, such dramatics," Gai says. “You’re still their prisoner. You still have your annual conjugal visits.”
"No," I gasp. "No, they wouldn't—they promised—"
"Promised what? To wait for their pet? My dear, the moment you got caught working with Terra Ka you became property. And property doesn't factor into matrimonial decisions."
I can't fully grasp anything Gai is saying. All I hear is marriage. Wife. Someone else in their bed, in their life, in all the places I'll never be allowed. Someone is going to take my place between them in our bed.
Their bed.
Her bed.
Their wife.
Not me.
The fight leaves me as suddenly as it came. I go limp, the guards let go of me, and fall to the cool obsidian floor. I want to die. I have thrown away my life for alien men who tricked me into thinking they loved me.
I don't get up for days.
Not for dinner. Not for the morning inspection. Not for anything. What do I have to live for if not for them?
On the third morning, I decide I will not allow aliens to decide my fate, and somewhere between the haze of grief and wantingness to survive, fragments of plans crystalize.
Terra Ka. Earth. Escape. If I can get to my feet, if my traitorous heart keeps beating, I'll find a way to escape the Obsidian Palace, contact Gael the Returner and beg for extraction.
Then, I will return to Earth and pretend I never heard of the Celestial Spire, Rafe or Lorian.
"You need to drink some water," Autumn says, holding a glass to my lips.
"This is ridiculous," Gai declares on day four. "If she refuses to see reason, let her die."
But Autumn forces water past my lips every few hours. Just enough to keep my body functioning while my soul shuts down, but my mind is silently working, planning my escape, just waiting for my heart to heal enough to get up and go.
"Commander Gai won’t call a doctor. He says it's just hysteria,” Autumn tells me.
“Please, Eve, don’t give up. Not over them.
Think of what you represent to humans in the galaxy.
Remember what you did for those who escaped at the Grand Championships.
Don’t be so in love with your captors that you allow them to kill your spirit. ”
But all I want to do is give up. I can’t bear to know they’ve married another, no matter how bad it looks to the outside world.
I close my eyes and will my heart to stop.
But it refuses to obey me. So, I allow my mind to picture escape routes and scenarios.
It’s working so hard to distract me from what’s happened that I finally decide that I must go.
If only to hide the shame of letting these men hurt me like this.
Autumn’s right. I can’t let other humans down.
I wait until Autumn falls asleep on her mat and then I rally myself.
I can’t die here.
The Palace’s AI voice murmurs its usual lullaby through the ceiling vents: Observation cycle complete. Rest period engaged. I listen for the soft click that follows, the signal that the monitors have switched from live to archival mode. It’s only a thirty-second window, but that’s all I have.
I turn Rafe’s ring on my thumb, leave our shared room, and start running as quietly as I can through the palace. I know there’s a service hatch at the end of this hall, and it’s just big enough for me to squeeze through. And no one will be the wiser until I’m gone.
When I reach the hatch, the access pad blinks yellow: locked. I can’t imagine this having any special code on it, so I just start pressing obvious buttons and it doesn’t take long before it opens with a hiss.
I look around to see if anyone has noticed me, but the hallway is completely dark and silent. No doubt it’s been longer than thirty seconds, but thankfully I’m still alone and no alarms have gone off.
I peer into the tunnel and decide I would rather die trying to escape than see them with their wife. What if they visited with her? And she would watch as they fucked and then whipped me? I can’t have that.
I dive into the tunnel. It’s narrow, lined with cables that buzz under my palms. The air smells of coolant and burned dust. I crawl until my knees ache and then crawl more. I keep thinking of Earth and all shades of human faces. Everything that I took for granted when I lived there. Like freedom.
After what feels like forever, I see a faint violet light ahead. A vent to the outside. I press my face to it and catch a glimpse of Alba’s night sky—storm clouds glowing with city fire. It’s so close I can almost believe I’m already outside.
I force the vent open with shaking hands.
The grate gives with a dull snap, and I pull myself through, dropping hard onto a maintenance ledge that runs along the palace’s outer shell.
Alba’s wind hits me like a slap. The sky is all bruised purple and black, lightning trapped inside the clouds like something alive and angry.
Below me, the city burns with orderly light, and as I realize that it’s real, I say to myself, “I’m out! ”
Then, I cling to the ledge until my breathing slows. Once I’m stable, I move sideways, fingers numb, until I find what I’m looking for. A recessed service access marked with faded Imperial glyphs. They are located every so often along the walls to access service ports in case of emergencies.
The panel doesn’t accept my touch. It wants authorization.
I press Rafe’s ring to the surface and whisper a prayer to my God and to one of Lorian’s goddesses.
“God of my childhood, you never stopped the nuns, the tragedies, or even the galactic cages, so I don’t expect much from you now.
But please, if you were waiting to help me once in my life, let it be now.
Let me escape this fate.” I wait and nothing happens, then I say, “Severin, goddess of transformation, hear me instead. I am changing on this side of the galaxy. I am cutting myself loose, and I am not kneeling. If I am one of your Lost People, and you remake those who endure, then watch and remake me as I endure this in your name.” Then I wait, and for one terrible second nothing happens.
Then, slowly the glyphs begin to glow and realign themselves as the stone irises open, just enough for me to slip inside.
The chamber beyond is small and cold, but humming with power. Cables as thick as my arm snake into a central console grown directly out of the palace wall.
The moment I touch it, pain lances through my skull. I taste copper. My vision blurs. But then something else happens. The system hesitates. It does not recognize me as authorized. But it recognizes the ring. And the ring recognizes me.
A thin lattice of light spreads across the console.
LIMITED ACCESS GRANTED
flashes in Standard Imperial.
That’s enough.
I close my eyes and pull the memorized sequence for Terra Ka from the darkest corner of my mind.
My fingers hurt with every touch to the console that results in a shock, but I manage to route power away from palace surveillance, just long enough to open a dead comm band and then override the palace’s outbound filters, and punch the channel through.
My hands are shaking so badly I almost miss the final input.
“Terra Ka,” I whisper in English, hesitating as the words feel unfamiliar. “This is Eve. Obsidian Palace. Alba. I have escaped. I need help.”
For a split second, there is nothing but static and the sound of my own pulse.
Then the channel opens.
A voice comes through, distorted and accented in English and real. “Eve Eden,” it says. “Run in the opposite direction of Alba and get as far away from the Obsidian Palace as possible. We will find you.”
I press my forehead to the cold stone next to the console and close my eyes.
“Eve?”
“I’m here.”
“Run now. End transmission.”
The computer goes dark, and I leave the room. Back on the ledge, I try to figure out how I am going to get down and out without being noticed by security.