Page 27 of Defiance (The Intersolar Union #7)

Novak had been in the palace’s private prison just long enough to be processed. He was cuffed and collared with a shiny new black tag decorating his ear. When the guard changed, however, he stood up, knowing exactly what came next.

Pioden slid from the shadows and opened his cell with a smug sneer of triumph.

“Out, degenerate.”

Pioden locked his tail and wrists together, and pushed him through the deserted halls. A bribe? An order? It wasn’t Novak’s job to find out.

Pioden made him walk for hours into the desert headwinds. If he looked back at Hja Qiyua, he could see the dark pink glitter of Charlie’s chemia, but every time he tried, the other advenan whipped his shoulders with his tail. It cut his prison uniform to shreds, ripping out the hardened feathers that protected his skin. Trails of blood ran down his spine and dripped from his wrists.

It was better than the pain of not seeing that chemia trail.

When Hja Qiyua’s skyline dipped beneath the horizon, he stopped looking back. One wrong step and he’d tumble hundreds of feet down the shifting sapphire dunes. Pioden probably wished he’d do exactly that and have the courtesy to break his neck on the way down. Save him the trouble.

When sunrise broke and their star rose above the dunes, Novak stared at Tailu, the ambiguous horizon where the sky and the great deserts met. The further the star rose above Piaoguo, the more obscured the horizon became.

“You speak Mara Lingui,”

he threw over his shoulder, having recognized the venandi cadence of the bodyguard’s accent.

Pioden didn’t respond, clearly not the talkative type. Novak’s tail flicked, exacerbating the anguish of being cuffed for so long. He continued on, drawing out his words to pass the time.

“In Hja Erle, the sunset is called the closing door and the sunrise is called the opening door. Only when Tailu is unknowable can the great road lead beyond the veil. It’s good to die in the daylight here.”

Pioden still didn’t respond, but Novak didn’t mind. He took a deep breath of clean, dry air and sampled Charlie’s chemia in his snout for comfort.

“You should have danced with her while you had the chance,”

he mused with a sad sigh.

Pioden scoffed.

“I call her sunset because of the way her silk catches the light, but I think she’s actually the sun itself. She has the power to open and close doors, reveal new roads…”

“Fucking disgusting.”

“Me or her?”

Novak asked, brow piqued.

“And are we talking about the dance, or maybe the way she got on her knees and let me fuck her face after that dinner party?”

Pioden’s tail snapped against his shoulders, ripping away another plume from his spine. Its barbed hook tore his flesh and a fresh dribble of blood tickled the small of his back.

“Short-sighted rat,”

Pioden growled.

“You just set our whole species back decades. We’ll never dig ourselves out of this hole thanks to shiteaters like you.”

“Set us back from what?”

He shrugged, the tag in his ear fluttering in a strong wind.

“Graduating from merit collars to public registries?”

“The freedoms of civilized men!”

“Ohh,”

Novak drawled, swaying the tip of his tail like a lure.

“I get it. You’re jealous. You want to bite a willing woman too instead of jack off to censored porn in a doctor’s office because they don’t want to ‘overstimulate our innate senses.’ You’re not so different from the rest of us bottomdwellers, see? Denial isn’t healthy, you know.”

“I’m not anything like you,”

Pioden growled.

“I guess not.”

Novak licked his fangs in anticipation.

“Why settle for collection cups like a civilized man when I get to enjoy a hot pussy drunk on my venom instead?”

Novak shifted just in time, catching Pioden’s knife between his side and forearm. He squeezed the blade against his elbow and twisted. Its serrated edge caught in his plumes and grazed his ribs.

Pioden lost purchase on the sand as Novak swung him sideways by the knife grip. His claw tangled with Charlie’s medallion, bending the chain so it popped off his neck and gouged out a line in the sand. Novak’s eyes narrowed on the glint of gold on midnight blue as Pioden slid to his knee, tail lashing a wide arc through the air to steady him. Guei’s bodyguard tackled Novak to the ground and Novak extended his fangs. They slid home in the other man’s neck.

It had been a month since the river, and Novak’s standing donor appointment had been steadily creeping up on his holotab’s calendar. He’d silenced it each morning, feeling the weight of venom in his mouth, swallowing it down as they weeped in longing with every sway of Charlie’s hips. Every whiff of her fiery silk and sweat.

It had taken only days rather than weeks for his glands to feel engorged again, swollen and needy in the roof of his mouth. They recognized that his quarry had never left and now it would serve him well. Rather than feeding his venom to her little by little the way nature demanded, he had enough to sedate a fucking ryhidon.

But for the second time in less than a sol, a serrated tail whipped around his neck and yanked him off Pioden, driving the breath from his lungs. He landed in a spray of sand, scrambling to face whatever new threat was standing against the rising sun.

“Novak?”

the figure panted, easing out of his fighting stance.

Novak’s ear twitched, his colear? picking up a familiar chemia trail, though he hadn’t sampled it fresh in years. Bjorek Dasin, the only other advenan serving in Ferulis’s covert fleet. He wore the standard black spec op tac, but a new chevron reflected the light at his neck. He was in training as a covert elite.

“Sorry, kral. I mistook you for the other one.”

He jerked his head at Pioden, limp in the sand.

“I’m impressed. Headwinds are strong. How’d you find us?”

“The way everyone else does it.”

The young agent smacked the air and hit an invisible hull with a metallic konk.

“A needle with thermal optics.”

Bjorek grinned as he hoisted Novak to his feet. He used the knife stuck in the agent’s mangled plumes to cut his tail free. It fell limp to the ground, uncontrollable from the lack of circulation. Novak groaned from the tingling pain as Bjorek dragged Pioden closer for the biometric lock on the cuffs.

Once freed, he reached his weakened hands into the sand for Charlie’s medallion. He dragged it back to him. The chain was broken, so he slid it into the pocket of his prison uniform.

“Ferulis sent you?”

“Of course. Think your fingers work well enough to pop out an eye?”

“He’s not dead yet.”

Bjorek tasted the air with a glint in his eye.

“Then let’s fix that first, and I’ll tell you what I know.”