Chapter 26

The footsteps come closer. Ringing off the stone walls they sound like the final peals of my death knell. Fear, so powerful I'm frozen, grips me tighter than an obsessive lover. I can hardly take a breath.

Face it. If this is it, I don't want to go out lying down.

I'm trembling, my knees feel like they're made of water, and tears press hard on my eyes, but still I rise to my feet. The cell is small enough I can reach out and steady myself on the damp cold stone wall.

Flickering torchlight illuminates a small, barred window in the door giving me the first hint of what the cell I'm in actually looks like. The door looks like it's made of stone. Thick and heavy, definitely not something I'll be busting my way out of. Where the light reaches the close walls they glisten with the dampness and what I think is probably mold.

"Supper," a gruff voice barks coming to a stop outside my door.

Something clicks, clacks, then a square appears in the middle of the door. An opening that I hadn't seen in the dark. A tray is placed inside it. I'm too scared to move to take it. My muscles won't respond.

"Take it or I drop it," the gruff voice demands.

My knees almost give way as I force myself to walk. The first step is the worst. My knee buckles and I stumble forward, barely getting my hands up in time to catch myself. I grab the tray right as he lets go and it begins to fall. Some of the food, if it can be labeled as such, spills to the floor.

"Eeep!" I scream as something darts out of the darkness surrounding me to feed on the spill.

The gruff voice laughs uproariously. The sound of it echoing off the walls of my cell, doubling over and over, coming in at me from every angle. The laughter slices through my fear, cutting it away, and all I'm left with is anger.

"Gada," I yell back, the single Urr'ki curse I know.

The laughter continues as the footsteps move away. I'm so angry I'm left trembling for an entirely new reason. I want to say more, do more, but there is nothing I can do.

I'm not alone.

The thought comes as if it's not even my own, but it brings along with it a certainty. Absolute and complete faith that Dilacs is coming. I have no way to know this. For all I can know right now, based on when I last saw him, he's in a cell too. Or worse.

Logic attacks the towering certainty that he is coming and exhausts itself against this belief that he is not only okay, but he is coming for me. I feel it is true so deep, it's in my heart. Written in my soul.

He is my one. The magical mate that all the great romances are written about. The other half of me, the one that completes me, the one I am meant to be with.

I have never, in all my life, believed any of this was true. I thought girls who espoused such or believed such were fooling themselves. Drunk on dopamine and whatever other chemicals the idea of love pumps into your head, but I'm not drunk on anything. Nor do I feel high on any chemical. No all I feel is certain.

I know he is coming. As certain as I am that two suns will rise over Tajss in the morning and that the desert is hot and dry. It is not a matter of questioning, it simply is. A basic, fundamental truth.

And there is no longer room for fear in my heart. How can I be afraid when I know my love is coming? He will save me. It is only a matter of when so the worst thing I can do is provoke my captors. The only smart move right now is to wait.

"Thank you, Garada," my neighbor prisoner says, her voice as kind as ever. "How is your daughter? Did the herbs help with the fever?"

"Yeah," Garada grunts. "Thank you for that."

"Of course," Rani says. "I am glad it made a difference."

Garada grunts then I hear the tray sliding over stone. A moment later the flames of the torch recede, a door shuts, and we're left alone in the dark and silence. I chew my food quickly, not wanting to compete with whatever else might be sharing this cell with me. I use what feels like a piece of bread to mop up the remnants on the plate then set it down by the door.

I rest my head on the cool stone of the door, listening to Rani eat her food. I wait until I hear her set her own tray down.

"Rani?" I ask.

"Yes, was your food okay?"

"I've had better," I say.

"I certainly hope so," she says, a hint of humor in her voice. "The prison was never meant for comforts."

"Yeah, right," I chuckle. "Makes sense, I guess. Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," she says. "It is pleasant to have someone else to pass the time with."

"You know that guard," I say. "You know his name, that he has a daughter, that she was sick. How? Or, maybe more, why? He's keeping you here. Why be nice to him?"

She doesn't answer immediately. Silence hangs heavy in the darkness and I'm beginning to think she's not going to answer me at all when she does finally speak.

"It is not his fault," she says at last.

"How? He's a guard. It's literally his job."

"Exactly," she says, still speaking softly and without a hint of rancor. "So many of my people are doing their jobs. They are, all of them, merely trying to survive. Can I blame them for that?"

"I mean, yeah, he doesn't have to," I counter. "He could, I don't know fight. My boys, they were fighting when I was captured."

"Good," she says and though the volume of her voice doesn't change from its softness, there is a steel in the word that catches me by surprise. "You see. All is not lost. But I will not blame my people for what, in the end, is mine to bear."

"Yours?"

She clears her throat.

"You seem a very sweet girl," she says, instead of answering. "What star are you from?"

"One very, very far away," I say. "But you're avoiding the question."

"Oh? You are not from our galaxy then? How strange, please, tell me more of how you came to be on Tajss."

I chew on my lip. It's clear she's avoiding my actual question, but the idea of her stopping all conversations and leaving me to sit in the dark alone has its own terrors. Do I push her to answer the question, or keep her talking?

That gnawing of fear is enough to push me towards keeping her talking. Sooner or later things will come out and what harm is there in sharing with her?

Unless this is part of the Maulavi plan. To get me to admit to something that they can then use against me?

Now that is one diabolical plan isn't it? I can hardly believe I even thought of it. It's devious with a bit of genius to it. Okay, well if that's the case and she is a plant, then I'll do what I've been doing all along. Tell enough of the truth to avoid the lie of why I'm really here.

"We were on what we called a generation ship," I say.

"Generation ship?" she asks.

"Yeah, it's?—"

I delve into trying to explain the history of how humans came to Tajss. Time slips past as I talk and for that, at least, I'm grateful. The certainty that came out of nowhere remains. I know that Dilacs is coming for me. Which means all I have to do is stay alive until he can.

If she is a plant and milking me for information, then I am doing the one thing I need to do. Buying time. And so, I go into great and minute detail about life on the ship. I am going to buy Dilacs as much time as I possibly can.