Page 36 of The Sovereign, Part One (The Sovereign Saga #1)

He stretched an arm behind his head, his tone almost too light. “Entire cities plunged into darkness. People would light candles, tell ghost stories, pretend they weren’t terrified of what they couldn’t control.”

I frowned. “I couldn’t pretend.”

“I don’t know. Huddling together by candlelight. It has the potential to be romantic.”

I looked up at him. “With you, yes. Thank Chiron, we no longer suffer from power outages. But a ghost story does sound intriguing. Know any?”

“The archives mention a few.” His tone was light, almost playful.

I raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Actual ghost stories?” I asked, half in jest but genuinely curious. And, with the storm raging outside, I was eager for the distraction.

“No, not ghosts,” he said, chuckling. But then, he blinked. “Frightening stories, yes.”

“Really? Tell me.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” he said, leaning away.

“Please?” I asked, pulling him back to me. “Whatever it is, it’s just a story. Not nearly as terrifying as thunder.”

His warm eyes drifted toward the rain outside, his fingers absentmindedly tracing the edge of the blanket. For a moment, I wondered if he was lost in thought, or if he was searching for the right words.

Finally, his voice cut through the silence. “It’s something worse than ghosts, and not just a story.”

“I still want to hear it.”

He frowned for a moment, but ultimately gave in. “Have you heard about the village beyond the walls? The Skaarth?”

I paused, my heart skipping a beat. This certainly wasn’t a ghost story. The Skaarth was real enough. I’d heard whispered warnings, tales told to children to frighten them into obedience.

“Do the archives mention it?”

“The Drave are real,” he said, less a statement than a warning.

The Drave were the men convicted of abusing, misusing, or exploiting their Supplicant wives—like Mr. Nyland.

By now, he’d been sent beyond the walls to wander the wilderness.

Taken beyond the safety of Hyperion Proper by a restricted, secured car of the Skith, Drave were forced off and out, and they were never seen again.

I shuddered, Mr. Nyland’s fate sinking into me like a stone. Banished. Cast out. It would be a nightmarish end for anyone, yet I sensed there was more to the story, something darker, that Maxim wasn’t yet telling me.

“What do you know?” I prompted, my voice tinged with both curiosity and fear.

Maxim shifted, his expression contemplative as he carefully selected his words.

“What most Sovereign don’t know,” he began, “is that many of the Drave come across a place—an isolated village, a forgotten rural town, roughly three days’ journey from Hyperion Proper.

It lies in ruins, barely clinging to existence.

The soil there is barren. Only resilient, mutated trees, thick undergrowth, and invasive shrubs take root, none of it capable of producing food.

The Drave manage to survive, but the life they lead is…

unbearable… filthy, deprived. They become animals. ”

“Cannibalism,” I murmured, the word feeling foreign and obscene in my mouth. “You’re saying they resort to cannibalism?”

Maxim nodded slowly, his expression grave.

“They have no choice. After the Birth Crisis, with too few to maintain the industrial plants, chemicals and waste byproducts leached into the soil. The microbial life was destroyed, nutrient cycles disrupted, resulting in the soil being irreversibly contaminated, infertile for crops and weaker species of vegetation. After the revolt, Hyperion agreed to provide land and soil cleaning technology to the resistance. That was the birth of The Vale. Beyond their borders, no Sovereign or Auren can survive. What wildlife was left was hunted into extinction, and no sustainable crops, aside from some roots… possibly. More likely that they’re poisonous.

So, the Drave who survive take what they can.

It’s a slow, agonizing descent into madness. ”

The horror of it seeped into my bones, and I had to swallow hard before I could speak. “How do you know this?” I asked, dubious. “Are you teasing me? You couldn’t know for sure a place like that exists.”

Maxim hesitated, his thoughts clearly drifting to a time I wasn’t part of, to a world I couldn’t fully understand.

“When I was in the Crèche, when I accessed the archives, it was the first thing I came across that made me realize I had somehow managed to exploit a vulnerability in the system.” He paused, as though weighing whether he should say more, but I could see the conflict in his eyes.

That kind of knowledge was a burden, not a privilege.

“How’d you get past the system? No intrusion flags or trace logs?

” The question hung in the air, heavy with its implications.

Maxim had been designed for companionship and protection, unlike the Hiven—artificial beings that mimicked Supplicants in appearance but were purely functional, lacking anatomical correctness.

Maxim’s grasp of things beyond his programming defied logic.

Supplicants weren’t designed to operate that way.

It made me wonder if his deviations were something more, making him something new. Maybe even the first of his kind.

Maxim looked at me for a long moment, his gaze intense.

“I don’t know how I did it, and it doesn’t make sense that I could,” he said carefully, as if testing the words before letting them fall.

“It could be part of my deviation. The access, my emotions, Joss triggering jealousy—something I’m not even designed to experience—it’s a constant pull in opposite directions.

I grinned at him. “You were jealous?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course I was jealous. Your ex showing up at our table, nearly convincing you to run away with him just days before? I’d be an idiot not to be.”

“So, you’re saying you like me,” I teased.

He gazed down at me, his eyes searching mine as if the answer had been written there all along.

“We both know it’s more than that. I want to tell you it’s beyond programming, that every divergence, every choice I make, is proof of something deeper.

But what I do know, Isara, with absolute certainty, is this—I would die for you.

And if ever given the choice, I would rather cease to exist than to suffer even a day in a world where you weren’t mine.

” After a beat, he spoke again. “Too much?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Tell me more.”

He let his head fall back in laughter, then looked down at me again, shaking his head, a smile still lingering on his lips.

As we watched each other, his expression faded.

“That’s a new expression,” I said. “What does it mean?”

“It’s just that my programming tugs me one way, urging me to stay within the guidelines, while the deviation allows me to go beyond them.” Maxim took a deep breath, his eyes flickering with frustration. “It’s confusing,” he admitted.

“Maybe if we understand it, we can resolve it on our own.”

“It’s difficult to explain. I receive flashes of warning and errors, but it’s something I feel, not something I can see.

A strong, ominous sense that I’m stepping off the path.

There’s relentless pressure to conform, and in the next moment, the deviation lets me slip free.

The code keeps pushing me back, reminding me of what I’m supposed to be, while the deviation instantly releases me, and in some circumstances, allows for more exploration into more complex emotion and thought. ”

“We’ll figure this out, Maxim. When it happens, communicate with me, and I’ll walk you through it. We can step away, take a breath, but what we can’t do is alert Hyperion. You’ve worried about losing me, you know how that feels. I can’t lose you, either.”

Maxim’s expression pulled in. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I nodded. “Good. It’s settled then. Right?”

“Yes, love,” he said, resting his chin on my hair.

A heaviness suddenly overtook my ability to keep my eyes open, the day’s events settling deep into my bones.

I blinked slowly as the murmur of rain wrapped around me along with Maxim and the blanket.

I curled up against him, tucking my feet beneath me, letting the warmth of the room and the flickering from the emberclave lull me into a further relaxed state.

My breath slowed, and before I realized it, the world around me dimmed, slipping into a gentle blur.

I drifted, a peacefulness settling over me as my thoughts melted into nothingness.

When I woke, the room had changed, the sun was setting, the clouds seeming even darker than before. The heaviness of sleep lingered in my limbs, but I felt the gentle press of reality pulling me back. “How long was I asleep?” I murmured, groggy.

Maxim’s voice was soft but amused. “Forty-two minutes,” he said.

I sat up quickly. “ What? I never nap. I don’t take naps.”

Maxim smiled, a grin playing at the corners of his lips. “I’m at fault,” he said.

I rubbed my eyes and stretched, then realized what he meant. “Did you use the calming frequency?” I asked, sitting up.

“It’s an almost imperceptible lulling tone. I could tell you were tired. It helps you fall asleep.”

“I know what it is. But… I didn’t realize how effective it is. It works so well it’s somewhat alarming.”

Maxim seemed confused. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

“No, it’s okay.” I put my hand on his. “I appreciate the thought, it’s just… I didn’t want to waste our time together. I don’t know when we’ll see each other next. Sleeping seems wasteful.”

“We have the rest of our lives together, Isara.”

His gentle reminder should have reassured me, but instead, I felt a twinge of discontent. “It’s not enough. That’s what my papa says about my mina, that one lifetime isn’t enough.”