Page 86

ADRIANA

E velyn is deep in focus as Cal enters the lab. She’s in a deep, telepathic conversation with Bruton, and she barely notices the Aurelian entering. He’s looking at me like a lab rat.

I give him the best smile I can manage. “Hey. Let me guess. You want to ask me some questions.”

He nods. “About your experience in the Rift. If it becomes uncomfortable for you, let me know, and I will stop my questions immediately.”

He’s such a bizarre Aurelian, with none of Doman or Bruton’s easy charm.

I’m used to seeing the alien species in combat robes and togas, with a blade at their belt, and his hoodie and slacks makes him look abnormally human.

If it wasn’t for the deep marble of his porcelain skin or the brilliance in his too-bright green eyes, you’d take him for a too-handsome man.

He’s gorgeous, like he was made by the Gods to create something too beautiful to even be touched, as if being in the physical world threatens him.

I’ve got the distinct feeling that he’s never known the touch of a woman, though thousands would sign up in his harem based on a picture, even if he wasn’t one of the princes of the Empire.

“Of course. Go right ahead. You saved our asses out there. I heard it was you who designed the warning system that gave us notice of Obsidian’s attack.”

“That was Evelyn’s work. But I was essential to it.” He’s not bragging, simply stating a fact. “My most pertinent question first. Did you see the beings in the Rift?”

“The what?”

“The things that live in there. There have been many different reports, from Aurelians who survived shifts. Perhaps you have heard the old adage, one of my favorite pieces of knowledge from humans. Three blind men touched an elephant—one the trunk, who proclaimed it was a giant snake, one the leg, who said the elephant is like a giant tree, and—well, you get the picture, I am sure.”

“You sure the blind man touched the elephant’s trunk?” asks Evelyn, and Cal gives a long-suffering sigh.

“Your sense of humor never fails, Evelyn.”

I’m glad for her stupid little joke. It keeps me from thinking too deeply of that darkness that yawned, opening up to grab me.

“There’s nothing in there. Nothing could live there.”

“We thought the same of the deep oceans, under intense pressure. Life grows in strange ways.”

“There’s warmth in the deepest oceans. Geothermal life. The Rift has nothing. If anything… is alive in the Rift, it wasn’t born there. It’s using it, just like we use it, to travel to somewhere with resources, feasting, and going back through it.”

“It’s no habitat,” bursts out Evelyn, her voice tinged with sudden understanding. “It’s a conduit.”

Cal blinks, twice in rapid succession, then freezes. I look over at Evelyn and mouth, “ Is he okay?”

She nods, leaning in closer to me. “He gets like this when he’s thinking deeply,” she whispers.

Cal snaps back into it. “I see. Yes, that makes perfect sense. It is possible.” His words of agreement are interspersed with involuntary shakes of his head, a physical manifestation of his brain working on overdrive. “Would you give me the timeline of your shift?”

I lean back in the chair, take a deep breath, and spill it out—from the moment we had the warning, the instant Doman told me we had to shift, then being trapped in the darkness.

I say it impersonally, detached from it, laying it out as he probes me for information.

When it’s done, I feel exhausted, but I’m glad to have shared it with the two people who can understand it the deepest.

Cal thanks me. He was standing the entire time, rigid and intently focused on every single word.

Evelyn hands me a tissue, and I realize my eyes are wet. “My triad hates talking about when they were trapped,” she says in a low voice, not much more than a whisper. “Thank you.”

“It’s fine. It’s over. Done with.”

“I was just up there with Doman and Bruton. They brought me in on the plan. My end will be set up.”

I raise my hand. “It’s better I don’t know the details, unless there’s a part for me to play.”

“No. Nothing for you to do. By the time you are wed, she will be safe and off the planet.”

There’s a distant hoot from above, a yell of excitement. Evelyn’s face lights up. “What is it?” I ask.

Her expression is slightly distant, the look a human gets when they are telepathically communicating with their triad.

“They’ve dealt a blow to Obsidian. Come on,” she says, leading us back up into the estate and up the stairs to the top floor.

I have to hurry to keep up with Cal’s long-legged gait and Evelyn’s certain strides, and I’m the only one slightly out of breath when we get to the bar room, done in black wood and marble.

Doman has a hard expression, while Bruton is grinning.

“What happened?”

Doman presses a button on his watch, and a holo-vid appears on the bartop.

Evelyn shakes her head when she sees black ships blinking into existence over a planet. “I’ve had enough of war,” she says, excusing herself.

“Obsidian fell into one of our traps.”

The scene is crystal-clear graphics. A sprawling factory on a bleak, rocky planet, and ships descending downwards, lancing out Orb-Beams that glance off the heavy shields.

“We fed him false information. That this factory had the schematics for the Mark-13 cyborg prototypes. Watch,” says Doman, his voice filled with anticipation as the jet-black ships descend and the doors open, Aurelians diving out.

My eyes widen as I witness the War-God himself.

He towers over his forces, and at his sides are two shadowy dire wolves, as huge as he is, eating up the ground in long strides as they sprint towards the factory.

Then the nuclear bomb explodes. The camera bounces, jolting from the shockwave. Obsidian’s wolves, who were leading the charge, are hit by the blast, then the entire screen is obliterated.

“Is he dead?” I gasp out, feeling as though I witnessed history.

“I would not assume so,” states Cal.

Bruton grimaces. “No. Not dead. I just got the report from Fay. But his aura is weak. He was wounded. Grievously.”

I shiver. Of course. The reason she’s held captive. Her Bond to the War-God lets the Aurelian Empire track his movements.

That poor woman. Trapped underground, unable to feel her Mate unless Interrogators pull off the disruptor ring to force her to feel her man. She must be in terror each time, hoping beyond hope she will feel him, in agony that one day she may take off the ring and have only emptiness in her mind.

“More reports coming in,” states Bruton, checking his smart-watch.

“Three of his warships downed, nearly a dozen Reavers, and hundreds of his men turned to dust. He might have gotten out, but this will deter his surprise attacks. Now he knows he could be walking into a trap every time he shifts in.”

“He will be more desperate by the day,” says Cal, in that soft voice of his, and he is the only one who doesn’t seem to be celebrating.

Doman replays the moment once more, of the nuclear explosion’s shockwave expanding, and he zooms in as close as he can on Obsidian himself.

His eyes are black holes, his skin marble but his veins like oil flowing through him. His teeth are sharp and fanged, and he has a fury in his eyes that terrifies me, and it feels like he’s looking straight at me.

I try to imagine what thoughts roil in his mind, but I can’t.

He is truly alien, a force not of nature but of Fate itself.