Chapter 18

Evie

A freaking bomb? I couldn’t believe that my enemies would go that far. Maybe Aramon was right to believe that the alliance was almost complete. I hadn’t been as hopeful, but someone else had to be—or this wouldn’t have happened. The image of the destroyed room was seared into my mind, and I was still trying to make sense of what I’d seen.

If Aramon hadn’t seen the bomb before it went off, I would have been dead; we’d been moving directly toward it. I recalled vividly how he’d thrown us back onto the balcony we’d just left, his body shielding me from the blast. The scent of blood had filled my nose, but smoke and ash soon replaced it, and the chemical vapors from whatever had been in that bomb burned my nostrils. Now, I couldn’t smell anything, but I could see how tattered and torn Aramon’s robe was. His red skin masked any visible blood, but I was certain it was there, as several large splinters and pieces of wood protruded from his back.

I sat in his lap with my legs wrapped around his waist. My back was facing forward, so I had no idea which way we were going. I knew, however, that we were racing through the sky at rapid speeds. The air whipped through my hair, tugged at my braids, and tore at my skirt and flowy blouse. I had a perfect view of the oasis and the sandstone building next to it, with a stack of smoke spiraling into the air.

The poor waiter was dead. I doubted that the Ovt male had known he was about to serve a bomb. I recalled Aramon’s shout and the door opening to the hallway as he did. I was pretty sure the Tarkan King had gotten away with his mate, but others hadn’t been so lucky. My brain already struggled to recall who or what I’d seen: red skin, but also red blood. Had the remaining Asrai died? Thrymnor was probably fine; his thick skin must have protected him. I could not recall what had happened to the Viridara delegate or the Sune delegate. If any of them had died, we would have to start all over again.

Any worries about the possible failure of forming this alliance faded to the back of my mind when I caught sight of several dark spots. I squinted, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, and then drew in a shocked breath. “We’ve got company, Aramon,” I shouted over my shoulder. The wind caught my words and whipped them away, but I saw Aramon clench his jaw. He hunched forward over the handlebars of the hover cycle he’d stolen, and I was forced to cling more tightly to his neck as he increased our speed.

Then the first sharp spire of rock whizzed past me on my left, too close for comfort. I fought to hold back a scream. The blips were coming closer, resolving themselves into the shapes of several skimmers—very fast flyers meant for a single person. There were hover cycles too, and several other flying vehicles, but they were not as fast as the skimmers. They weren’t as dangerous either, because a skimmer could be outfitted with lasers. When the first fired a shot that crackled over our heads, I knew they meant business. That was a kill squad on our tail.

“Hold on,” Aramon said, and the male was actually grinning, a laugh tinting his tone. “This is going to get a little hectic.” He spun our vehicle with a quick twist of his wrist, and then we were careening in a different direction, darting left and right around several more rock spires. The landscape was transforming from sandy desert to rocky desert. Red stone rose first in spires, and then in twisting cliff walls that forced us to turn and spin in rapid maneuvers, or crash against the stone.

I held my breath at first, too scared to so much as blink, but when spots started dancing in front of my eyes, I had to inhale. Dust made me cough, but I did not dare cover my mouth—I couldn’t let go of Aramon’s neck or I’d fly off this bike and fall. At these speeds, it seemed inevitable that we’d crash, but my pilot was handling the bike around each turn like a dream. The skimmers chasing us had more trouble, and when the first hit a rock and exploded, Aramon whooped with elation. “Fuck yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!”

That was his plan? To race through this maze and make the chasers crash? It seemed utterly crazy, but when a second fared the same fate, it became believable. I did not question how Aramon could keep up with the turns at these speeds—I’d asked for the best pilot there was to be my bodyguard, and he was delivering. I just never thought I’d actually need this skill to escape. Then the skimmers soared higher, their flight capabilities better than that of our hover cycle. They flew above the rock and the narrow ravines, safe from crashing, and we’d already outflown the rest of the chasers. I saw no sign of anybody but the three remaining skimmers.

“Don’t worry. Solear and I have a plan,” Aramon said, his hand spinning the handlebars of the hover cycle casually. I could see it from the corner of my eye if I twisted my head—his steering and the rocks rising in front of us. Oh no. Was that a mountain? We were racing up its slope, steadily climbing into the air. Now, there was no protection from the ravine walls, and the skimmers seized their opportunity, coming in close and firing their lasers.

Aramon braked so abruptly that I nearly flew from his lap; his arm around my waist held me and prevented me from taking that fatal tumble. When the world righted itself around me, I realized that two of the three skimmers had crashed, struck by friendly fire when we suddenly dropped out from between them. That was the craziest maneuver I’d ever seen, but it had worked. How had that worked?

The last remaining skimmer spun around and faced us, revving furiously to gain speed. I thought it was going to crash into us when Aramon headed straight for it, swerving left and right to avoid the strafing laser fire. At the last moment, he ducked us beneath the vessel, avoiding a crash. I had a perfect view over his shoulder of the skimmer turning and chasing after us again. It was faster than us and rapidly closing the distance. Through the transparent dome of the skimmer, I could see straight at the pilot. An Ovt male. So, our supposed neutral, safe haven had betrayed us after all.

The mountain rose at a sharp incline, but eventually, we were going to run out of that rising slope. When we did, would we careen down another slope on the other side? Or would our runway abruptly terminate in a cliff like many of the mountains and cliffs we’d already passed?

The skimmer was so close that I could see the color of the pilot’s spots—bright silver and purple. He was going to pull the trigger at any moment, and we’d be done for. There was nowhere to go. “Hold on, this will be awesome!” Aramon said, and he did not sound scared or worried; he sounded like he was having the time of his life. As the skimmer’s nose got close enough to bump our exhaust, we dropped, plummeting down at a steep angle.

I had my answer: we were flying off a cliff. The skimmer went straight while we went down, and I could watch its silver underbelly soar over my head. The plummet flung me up into the air, held only by one of Aramon’s arms. Then his other arm came up past my head, holding a laser pistol, and he fired. It was a single shot, arcing overhead and striking the skimmer in its tailfin. One shot was enough.

The skimmer tumbled and careened in a crazy spiral, and so did we. Too high for the hover cycle to propel itself into the air, we were tumbling and spinning wildly as well. The engine spluttered, but Aramon kept us tethered to the machine, his boots hooked beneath the metal footrests. He was laughing, his fist shaking in the air with a rude gesture aimed at the retreating, failing skimmer.

“Aramon!” I shouted, my eyes taking in the rapidly approaching ground. "We're going to crash! Do something!" At this point, I didn't know if there was anything he could do; I'd never been on a hover cycle that had gone too high. I just knew that it was virtually impossible to extract them from this kind of dive once they'd entered it. Interestingly, my crazy Asrai mate didn't seem worried.

When the ground came close, the engine made a different noise. I heard it, but Aramon had been waiting for it. His leg moved, kicking hard against the side of the bike, and his free arm abruptly jerked at the handlebar. “Hold on,” he shouted, as if I weren’t already clinging to him for dear life. He sat down, hunched over the bars, forcing me to lean back and watch the world in a crazy, upside-down pose.

But the bike was going, the engine humming smoothly as it got back into range, propelling us into the air and aborting that fatal fall. In less than a minute, Aramon spun us into a graceful arc around a large boulder and brought the hover cycle to a stop. Dust arced into the air behind us, but that was the only sign that we’d been going too fast; the landing was perfect. The silence that followed our landing made my ears sting in the absence of the rushing wind. We’d made it. I slid on wobbly legs from his lap and collapsed on the hot desert sand, but I was never getting onto another hover cycle with Aramon ever again.

“Thanks, bro,” Aramon said out loud, but I knew he wasn’t talking to me. Even if he was, I was too busy being grateful that I was alive to respond. My heart was racing, my palms were sweaty, and sand stuck to the back of my neck from cold sweat as well. All my careful braids had been ripped apart by the harsh winds our speed had generated, and I didn’t even want to check my panties to see whether I’d soiled myself or not. When we fell, I was certain we were going to die. When those skimmers fired at us, I thought we were goners. Too many near-death experiences in a row—there was only so much I could take. This was the final straw.

“Your com device, please,” Aramon said. He stood next to me, casting shade over me with his wide shoulders. I saw only darkness against the glare of the sun and the glow of his red eyes inside his dark, deep-set eye sockets. I raised my wrist limply and let him take the device from my skin without asking why. “Thank you, Evie,” he said politely. Too politely. He had to be up to something, or he wouldn’t be so nice. Suspicious now, I forced myself to sit up and was just in time to see him raise a rock and smash it into my com with a crash.

“What!? Why did you do that? We need to call for help!” I said, my voice hoarse and my throat sore. I must have been screaming more than I thought throughout that wild, crazy ride. I touched a hand to my skin, but the bruises from last night were still gone, healed by Caitlyn and her tissue regenerator.

He cocked his head my way, a grin splitting his ghoulish face. “We cannot risk anyone tracing us until it is safe for you to return,” he said. Then, he followed that up by smashing his own com device, turning to the hover cycle, and smashing some key part on its dash as well. “There, untraceable,” he added. “Ysa will be disappointed, but at least she can be proud of me for hotwiring that bike as fast as I did. Don’t you think?” I had absolutely zero idea who this Ysa was that he spoke of, but when he came to pull me to my feet, I let him draw me into a hug.

Already, the crazy events and the heat were getting to me. I felt exhausted, dried out, and my head was beginning to pound with a headache. Aramon offered me water from a canteen, and I drank greedily. Having lived in the desert half of Xurtal for most of my life, I knew how to deal with this kind of climate, but I thoroughly hated it. Preserving water was not what would keep us alive; too often, I had heard horror stories of people dying of thirst in the desert with a full canteen of water. Not me. Dehydration struck quickly and harshly.

When he brushed his hand over my belly and turned off the illusion device, I felt marginally better immediately. The constant tingle and hum of electricity over my skin had become something I ignored, but it was exhausting. I never realized how much until its constant presence was suddenly gone. “You must strip off all of your Evadne costume,” Aramon said. “We will count on hiding where you are by finally making you look like Evie for once.”

It felt wrong to pull the case for my contacts from a pocket and take them out; I’d worn them near constantly since I was eight. But what he said made sense: if I did not look like Evadne, they would not be able to find her. It was the best disguise there was. Once I’d taken out the contacts, I felt exposed in ways I couldn’t explain. I wasn’t even certain what color my eyes were anymore—blue, brown, green? Would Aramon like me when my eyes weren’t Evadne’s pretty ruby?

He stuck a finger under my chin and forced me to raise my face to his—forced me to face him, even though I wasn’t ready. It felt like I could sense him all around me, but he was only touching me with that one finger. A warmth spread over me, one that didn’t come from the punishing Ov’Korad sun. “Ah, there you are, Evie. My pretty little human. Green—why am I not surprised? The Xurtal must have thought it prophetic to see their coloring reflected in you. Red hair, green eyes.” Oh… he could be right about that. I’d never considered it, but, like my name sounding so much like their princess’s, that could have played a part in why they’d made me her double. The Xurtal were big believers in fate.

“Put this on,” Aramon said after he’d taken his fill of staring into my eyes. He pulled a pouch free from beneath his tattered robe and pressed it into my hands. “It’ll protect you.” That was all the explanation I got, but when I opened the small package, it revealed a black suit of armor like the ones all the mercenaries of the Varakartoom wore. Aramon had his own package, and he was already shrugging out of his Asrai noble clothing.

When the robe dropped, I finally got a good look at his back and drew in a shocked gasp. “Fuck, Aramon! You need medical care; that looks awful.” Splinters of wood—some small, but some as thick as a finger—stuck from his flesh. He looked like a porcupine with all those raised spikes sticking out of his flesh. Blood had dried around some of the wounds, but others had not even bled. All of it looked painful, but he was moving like he didn’t even notice.

“Give me the medkit.” I did not question if we had one or not, if Aramon had packed armor and a pistol, he would have packed a medkit too. He was too concerned about any of my scrapes and bruises to go without one. Indeed, when I called for one, he pulled one free from a pouch he’d dropped at his feet, the handheld scanner twirling in his fingers as he turned my way.

“You first,” he said. His skull-like features pulled into a wide grin, and his scarlet eyes twinkled with glee. He dipped into a bow. “You’re not anyone’s princess but mine now, Evie, so you can’t boss me around.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him, but in the end, it was easier to give in and let him scan me. Faster.