Page 88

ADRIANA

I gaze out to the capital city, pure white reflecting the fiery reds as the sunset paints the sky. Doman wraps his arms around me from behind, a reassuring wall that grounds me against the alien landscape before me.

“It was nice of your brother to let us stay here,” I say.

I’d worried we’d be billeted in the Royal Palace.

Instead, we’re in one of the guest bedrooms on the top floor of the manor.

It’s good to be surrounded by friendly faces, and that’s what I see in Evelyn and her triad.

Cal already left, hidden away in the compartment of a Reaver while Titus flew him back in.

From the city walls, a small beige ship is moving languidly towards us, flying like a bumblebee, and I track it. “Is that thing coming towards us?”

Doman is out of the window in a heartbeat, landing easily on the balcony a floor below as the Reaver in the landing strip hums to life, the autopilot activated and bringing the ship up to meet him.

He twists, forcing his body through the widening gap as the side doors open.

Titus and Gallien, who were lounging on the sofa, rush to me.

“Behind me,” growls Titus, pulling me back and putting his body between me and the window.

“What is it?”

“Just a transport ship. Bruton would have told us if one was coming.” Titus speaks in a clipped tone, not wasting a word as he scans outwards through the window, his hand resting easily near the hilt of his blade. Gallien is talking in a low voice into his smartwatch, alerting Bruton’s triad.

“I need to see,” I say, and Titus moves aside slightly, so I can survey the scene past his big bulk. Doman pilots the Reaver with grace, the attack ship moving out and blocking the small transport craft. The Reaver turns, the back of it opening and the little cargo ship enters the cargo bay.

Alarm spikes in me. “What’s he doing? What if it’s a trap?”

“He will have scanned it already. The contents are inert,” states Gallien, and the tension in the room dissipates. He walks to the window beside me and cocks his head slightly. “It’s a package from your sister.”

Doman touches the Reaver down inside the walls of the manor and comes out holding a long white package, tied with twine.

The setting sun casts his silhouette in a soft, golden hue as he walks back to the manor, holding the package with reverence, as if it is the most precious thing in the world.

He goes through the front doors and I hear his light steps up the stairways, and he returns to the bedroom with the package in his hands. “Were you expecting something?”

I shake my head. “Is there somewhere I can open it? I’ll want to give her a call.”

Doman cocks his head. “Yes. The library, at the end of the hall.” He hands me the package.

It’s meticulously wrapped in smooth, matte paper, and it feels both substantial and delicate to the touch.

It’s bound with slender twine, knotted with presence, an elegance in its straightforwardness.

It doesn’t feel like something she would send me—there’s something about the simplicity that speaks to Aurelian hands.

I step into the quiet grandeur of the manor’s hallway.

The marble walls are cold and impersonal, but there is a small table with blue flowers in a vase, clearly Evelyn’s touch.

My slippers are soundless against the stone floor, my linen pants and flowing top gentle against my skin, loungewear from the vast wardrobe handpicked by Gallien.

He truly imagined me in every situation possible.

The library has a heavy wooden door, but it opens without a creak.

I step in, and air seems to embrace me, the rich, comforting scent of well-worn leather and old books.

The light is warm and subdued, and there’s a weight of time here.

I get the sense not of centuries, but millennia.

Bookshelves rise to the high ceiling, filled with leather-bound tomes.

The dormant fireplace is ringed by four leather chairs, three of them Aurelian sized, with creased leather, and a smaller one in the middle where Evelyn must sit.

Here is the legacy of the aliens who lived before.

When the next triad takes over this home, the flowers in the hallways will be gone, every touch of Evelyn erased, but whatever her triad adds to this place will endure.

Aurelians come out of the cryo-bays as blank slate.

They enter the world without parents, belonging only to the Empire that their forefathers gave their lives for.

Here, each triad that lives in these ancient walls adds to the collective knowledge. I shiver, imagining when it was built—was the Pentaris alliance formed, or were we still five warring planets? No one knows how long Aurelians have been here, on Colossus.

I hold the package gently, setting it down on the mahogany coffee table and sitting in the human-sized chair.

There’s a light knock at the open door. “Beg your pardon,” comes the soft voice from the entrance.

I turn to see the older servant, whose outfit is fresh pressed, her hair done in a tight bun without a single strand of hair out of place.

“Would you like any coffee or tea? Or for me to get the fire going for you?”

“Thank you, no. Just some privacy, I have a call to make.”

“Of course,” she says, closing the heavy wooden doors behind her, sealing me in.

I run my hands over the matte paper of it, guessing the contents.

It’s long enough that the only thing I can imagine my sister would send me was a dress, but she would not have had enough time to make one, let alone send it here.

My hands shake as I gently undo the twine, then unfurl the paper so as not to rip it.

It’s a lifeline to my former life, and as I see what’s inside, my eyes get wet.

My wedding dress.

I have no idea how she managed to craft it in time.

“Oh, Junebug,” I whisper to myself, imagining her sleepless nights.

The pure white fabric is smooth and soft to the touch, and it comes alive under my fingers, the strands seeming to mold and shape themselves against my skin.

My eyes widen as I realize that while it is not full a pleasure dress, the silk is intertwined with the living strands of the shimmering cotton designed to tantalize and tease the wearer, embedded not in the dress itself, but in the perfectly stitched white leaves and flowers that run up the high neckline down the bodice.

June used the material not to torment and tease the wearer, but to bring life to the leaves that are so detailed they could be real.

I stand, letting it drape against my body.

I can see my sister in every line, every curve of the fabric, and I picture myself standing in the Arena of the Gods in front of my triad.

Everything I ever was, everything I fought for, all of it will melt away.

My life had a plan. A form. A direction, and Doman and his triad did more than just throw it off course.

Bonding myself to them won’t shift my life’s arc, it will extend it, until the decades I have lived so far are insignificant.

My most precious memories, reduced to blips.

Will I forget the little details of my sister in a hundred years? Her laugh, her smile, our inside jokes? What about a thousand?

Or is it like Evelyn said, and the memories are so precious and clear it feels like you live them again, and I’ll think of her every day when I’m still young and she is long gone?

Will I remember her as she was, in our childhood, growing up together, sneaking out of our home, or will I replay the end over and over in my head, when she’s on her deathbed, her hair white, her body failing, while I remain unchanged?

I always knew I’d have to say goodbye to my parents.

But the thought of my brother and sister on their deathbeds, surrounded by grandchildren who look my age, fills me with panic.

The human mind is not built to contemplate such things.

We weren’t meant to live for thousands of years, and even centuries twist and change us into something more alien to ourselves than even the Aurelians.

Would Queen Jasmine as she was, a smuggler spitting in her hand to seal deals, even recognize herself now?

I place the dress gently down on the long coffee table, smoothing it, and walk to the circular window. Looking out at the rolling hills, empty estates stretch as far as the eye can see.

This isn’t what I want.

I’m promised a marble palace, servants waiting on my every need, the cold, suffocating masculinity of the Aurelian Empire surrounding me. Everything planned. Everything arranged perfectly. Instead, I yearn for the wild forests of Virelia, where our homes intertwine with the nature around us.

I turn, looking back to the heavy wooden door, towards the bedroom where the triad waits.

I like them. I really do. That moment on Virelia, when we were on the treetops under the moonlight, was one of the happiest of my life.

The night we spent on Frosthold, cozy in the igloo under the endless stars, is so precious.

But do I love them? I barely know them.

For them, it’s so easy, so certain. Aurelians have a single Fated Mate, and that is all there is to it.

They find her or they search their entire lives and die alone.

Their last thoughts must be of regret, with the tiny hope that as they consign themselves to the cryo-bays, the next of their line will succeed where they failed.

It must be torturous, living through centuries of life, wondering if their Fated Mate’s human lifespan was gone in a blink while they were in Academy, or in the hundred years of service they pledge to their Empire.

But if they do find her, their story is complete.

They’ve achieved all they could have dreamed.

Their only aim is to sire an empire of sons, restoring not only their alien species but building their legacies.