Chapter 3

chapter

three

KAEL

A few hours later, the wound in my side still aches, pulling at the stitches with every step I take.

But that doesn't stop me as I let myself into the shuttle bay.

It's late and the shuttle bay is empty, lit only by a single dim voltobulb. On another day, Aldern might still be down here working with some of the recruits who'd shown an interest in mechanical design and repair. But not tonight.

Radford tried to keep a lid on the news from Cass, but it still spread through the base like a plasma fire. By the time he dismissed the Alpha Guard to try to get some sleep while Cass finished decoding the message, everyone in the palace had heard the news or a distorted, convoluted rumor of the news.

The younger recruits, the Gammas and Deltas, were sent to bed despite their excitement. Nearly everyone else is still in the mess hall, buzzing with excitement.

Nearly everyone. But not everyone, since I can hear the soft fall of footsteps behind me.

"Where are you going?"

I close my eyes and exhale before turning to face her. "Aislynn."

"You're going to find her, aren't you?"

I don't ask which "her" Aislynn means.

"I have to go. She's my mate."

"You don't know that this girl on earth is one of us." Aislynn's expression is closed and difficult to read.

I shake my head. "Yeah. I do."

I can't fully explain this compulsion to go get my mate. The instant drive to find her and bring her back. The instant certainty that the name and image Cass pulled up is indeed my mate.

I just know. I know it in my bones. It feels right. The way it felt the first time I'd held my ion blade in my hand and felt it respond to my touch alone.

Some things feel right from the very first instant. This is one of those things.

But just like I know this unknown woman on a distant planet is destined to be mine, I know something else as well. Aislynn will never understand.

She's sensible and practical, the least emotional of all of us, but also, she doesn't want to understand. She doesn't want to think about all she lost or remember who she was before that night when the Sovereignty raided the Telmarine Palace on Perse, where we—the youngest children of the clans—had been living in hiding since the coup.

Frack, maybe she truly doesn't remember the girl she was back then.

The girl who'd been paired with her fated mate and then followed him around, desperate for every moment in his company. The girl who could hold light in the palm of her hand.

But I remember.

Now she is a warrior like the rest of us. She is as committed, if not more, than the rest of us to bringing down the Sovereignty.

She's the toughest person I know. Tougher even than Draeden.

If I start talking about my gut feelings, she'll probably punch me in the gut.

As if on cue, she stops me with a hand on my arm and says, "Kael, I know you. Neither of us were raised in the old ways. We don't believe that nonsense about how the Tides of Be'lah have a plan for us all. Or that every moment of our lives is bringing us closer to our fated mate and our true destiny."

I study her expression while carefully schooling my own.

She's right, of course. We weren't raised in the old ways. We grew up after the bloody coup that killed our families and shredded the fabric of our culture. And if you'd asked me yesterday, yeah, I would have said that the Tides could go frack themselves.

Still, I was older than she was when the coup happened. I remember the stories my father told me about the Tides, the Sullec Prophets, and his own Saliankas Ceremony where he met my mother. Nevermind the fact that my mother ended up being a selfish bitch who betrayed him. That's besides the point.

Furthermore, I remember the countless ceremonies we were rushed through as children while we lived in hiding. I remember meeting girl after girl. I remember feeling nothing. Until her . Until Jaylerena.

Frack me, but I still remember it. After all these turns, I still remember the moment I first touched her, this tiny girl, barely older than Aislynn was at the time, with copper curls and the prettiest eyes I'd ever seen.

A lot of records were lost during the coup, so I don't know for sure how old I was at the time, but I must have been around nine turns. I'd already met many girls. She was just another scrawny child. Another awkward encounter to get through before I could go back to sparring with Draeden. I barely even looked at her. Until I touched her.

The moment I cupped her jaw in my hands, everything inside me shifted. Touching Jaylerena sparked something inside that I'd buried deep until the moment today when I saw her image on the viz screen in C&C.

So I don't say any of that shit aloud. I can't say that to Aislynn because she doesn't remember what it was like. She's chosen to forget it. And, honestly, I can't blame her.

Until today, I didn't know what had happened to Jaylerena, but I knew there was a chance she might live.

It's different for Aislynn. We all know that Caiside died. She and I were there together when he pulled that shuttle down onto himself blocking the passage. He died to save the rest of us.

He died and with him died her own fledgling powers.

For years, I would catch her holding her amulet in her palm, trying to make the sacred waters inside glow. They never did. They haven't since that night.

Then one day, she took her amulet off, and I haven't seen it since.

So yeah. Anything I could say about the Tides or my mate would only add insult to injury.

So instead, I use the one argument I know she can't dismiss.

"Think about it. If she is my mate, then we're a bonded pair. Think about what that would mean."

Her eyes flash. "Do you want congratulations?"

"I don't mean for me. I mean for the rebellion. Think about how today could have gone differently. If I was a healer, I wouldn't be limping now. Our contact at the safe house would be alive."

Her chin bumps up. "You don't know you'll be a healer just because your mother was."

"My mother is ," I bite out the words and the bitterness in my tone makes even Aislynn flinch. "My mother is a healer. Which means I most likely will be too when my Venamy blooms."

For once, Aislynn is at a loss for words.

So I push on, refusing to give up ground. "I won't pretend my mother's not out there. She is. She's still alive. She's part of the Sovereignty. And I think about that every skirmish we fight in. Every time I wound one of those bastards, I know that my own mother might heal him or her up and send them back into battle. They have an endless supply of foot soldiers to throw at us, and they have my mother to heal anyone we wound. Think about the difference it would make for our side if we had a healer."

Aislynn doesn't say anything, but presses her lips together to lock in a protest she knows won't sway me anyway.

Shaking my head, I cross the rest of the way to the shuttle. "If going to earth, if finding this girl of the Hatcreek Clan, gives us any kind of edge at all, I'm going to do it. Think about it. She and I could be the first bonded pair the rebellion has.

She takes a micro step back, recoiling as if I've slapped her.

I wish I could take back the words. Because my be'lahshuk and I will not be the first bonded pair. Aislynn and Caiside were.

"You know what I mean," I say gently. "And you know what this means."

"Yeah. I know what this means. For you."

"Not for me," I correct her. "For the rebellion."

"Right." But her tone is bitter.

I almost don't blame her.

Caiside is gone, fallen to who knows what horrors the night of the raid on the Telmarine Palace on Perse held. Of course she's upset that any of the rest of us might have living mates.

Without a mate—without a match—she is just another body in the rebellion.

She'll never complete the bonding. Her skills will never fully develop. She'll never be more to the rebellion than a fighting body and a skilled blade.

That hasn't mattered before now. Without mates, that's all any of us are. But if Irick's message is correct and my mate has been found, that could change everything. The other princesses are no doubt nearby. Once I find them, we can return all of them to Perse.

"Don't you see that this is the break we've been looking for?" I press.

But she shakes her head, revulsion still marring her face. "A single bonded pair won't save the rebellion. And your absence will hurt the rebellion. Our contact on New Calendeum is rescuing more children from the camps every month. Those kids are going to be the future of the rebellion. Not one bonded pair, but who knows how many. We need you here. Rescuing our people. That's what's important. The children. I would think you of all people would understand that."

Right.

This is the shit thing about being as close to someone as I am to Aislynn. She knows where to punch me to make it hurt.

"Yeah. I get it. Rescuing those kids is important. But how long is it going to take to train kids like Waleam to fight? It's going to be years before they're ready."

"Some of them might?—"

I know where she's going with this and cut her off. "Might form bonded pairs? How would we know?"

"We know they have the potential," she argues. Her gaze is just as fierce as it had been earlier when she'd been fighting me in the training hall. "Every one of these kids we've rescued from the camps has first marks. It's how they ended up in the camps to begin with."

"I know that. But do any of us even know how to perform the ceremony to test them?"

She scoffs. "I'm sure Cass does."

"Actually, he doesn't. I've asked. That information was Peia's not his. And even if we could piece it together, the process might take longer than we have. But if this Joey Kincaid really is one of the princesses, than the others might be there too. And Peia as well."

"Oh, you'll just go get her. In a twenty-year-old shuttle that hasn't been properly tested? That no one knows for sure is even capable of intersystem travel."

She's right. Of course she is. Aislynn is almost always right.

When the Empire fell to the Sovereignty, the tech behind the Pyruhonic Drive in this shuttle was in its infancy. Neither of the two prototype shuttles had been completely tested. And that was twenty years ago.

I give Aislynn a nod and a shrug at the same time. "You're right. This could be a suicide mission. But for the past twenty years, we've used this shuttle on short runs back and forth from Perse and for hops over to the next palace dome. We haven't pushed this shuttle because when Peia and the other princesses disappeared, everyone assumed the tech had failed and they'd all died." I point a hand at the shuttle, which is parked on the lift that transports it up to the surface. "But now we know that's not true. We know they made it. We know where they are. If they made it, then I can too."

"But why did it take twenty years for us to get the message with their location? Have you thought about that? What if this is just a trap to lure you away from base? Even if it's not, you have no way of knowing that this tech won't fail the second you leave our system."

I nearly chuckle at that statement. "Don't you get it? That's why it has to be me. And that's why I should go alone. It's too damn risky to send anyone else. It needs to be a solo mission."

She shakes her head, but I can see that I am starting to convince her. "But it doesn't have to be you."

"Sure it does. Even if the girl Irick found wasn't my mate, it would be me, because I'm the best pilot we have."

"You're right. You are the best pilot we have. That's why we need you here, not chasing across the galaxy on some dangerous quest to find some woman who may not even be Pers?n."

Again, I don't voice my absolute certainty. Instead, I put into words the frustration we've all felt for the past decade. "I'm tired of planning. I'm tired of waiting for the perfect moment. I'm ready to take the fight to the Sovereignty. I'm ready to take back our planet, and this girl is going to give me the power to do that."

"I don't think you should go alone."

"I can protect myself."

She rolls her eyes. "Radford is going to be pissed. You know what he's like. He doesn't like it when you go hunting in the forest the next palace over. He's going to lose his shit over this, and I'm not covering for you."

"I didn't ask you to." I grab her and pull her into my arms, giving her a tight embrace. "Are you going to tell him?"

"No. I'm not a snitch."

I wait until she's gone before climbing into the shuttle. I stow my bag in one of the two tiny rooms designated as crew quarters. Though the shuttle had been designed and built for interstellar travel, it has never been used for that. Since we'd started shuttling refugees off planet, the shuttle had been cleaned up and was in top condition. Besides the bridge and the crew quarters, there's a head and a living space with a replicator

It will do. It would have to.

After dropping my bag in the quarters, I make my way to the bridge and sit behind the nav deck, before typing in the commands to boot up the system without turning on the Adjunct.

The Adjunct is like Cass, but even more paired down. It's a tiny slice of a long dismantled Historian. Cass is a fully working, corporeal Historian. All that remains of the Adjunct is a chunk of disembodied code that eases interactions with the shuttle's communication and nav system.

I don't turn it on, not yet anyway.

The second I do, it will interact remotely with Cass, and C&C will know what I'm up to.

Which means I'll have to navigate and steer the shuttle myself. At least until I make it off Nerida. I don't mind a bit.

Aislynn was right about one thing. I am the best shuttle pilot the rebellion has, and I actually prefer to nav with my own hands.

The shuttle bay lift cranks into motion, slowly rising through the dense mountain behind the palace. Once the lift is clear of the mountain, I sit for a moment, staring at the screen at the view of the palace from the launch pad.

I never tired of this view.

Telmarine Palace trickles down the mountain side below me, a cascade of dusty white buildings, overgrown plants, and faded rooftops tumbling down to the purple lake at the base of the mountain. I'd seen vizzes of the palace from before the fall of the Empire. At the height of the Empire, the Telmarine Summer Palace had been a jewel, meticulously maintained by an army of servants, its stone walls polished, its roofs gleaming multiple hues of purple, its gardens manicured.

Now, its beauty is faded, the plant life overgrown, but it's somehow even more beautiful.

As I type in the coordinates I'd gotten from Cass, I wonder briefly about my mate. What kind of palace does she live in?

When Peia, the companion Historian to Cass, had left with the Princesses, they had had the resources and technology to thrive wherever they ended up. Even though Earth is a sister planet, it's relatively primitive. So I'm sure Peia has provided a life of privilege for my mate. It's possible her current standard of living exceeds what Nerida can provide.

That won't matter. My princess will have known from childhood that her destiny lay far from Earth. She'll know what's expected of her.

I take one last look at the Telmarine Summer Palace before phasing through the envirodome encircling the palace.

As I expect, piloting out of our solar system is the hardest part of the trip. It doesn't help that I'm probably the first Pers?n in twenty turns to be making the trip. As a teen, I'd been fascinated by all the tech from before the coup. The shuttles were designed for interstellar travel, but we'd barely had a chance to use them for that before the coup. Still, there were countless training sims designed to teach pilots. Draeden and I had both spent hours working through them, imagining a future in which we'd travel to the sister planets in search of the lost princesses. So I have experience with this flight, even if none of it has been in real life.

Outside, once the ship is past the orbit of the Dark Moon, Gr?pus, I carefully chart the course to Earth. I schedule in numerous stops along the way to drop comm buoys so I can stay in contact with Nerida throughout the trip.

This means the trip to Earth will take longer than the trip back, but I can be patient. I've waited this long for my Jaylerena … No, my Joey.

If that's the name my mate has chosen to go by, I should get used to thinking of her that way.

Once I set the shuttle on the course I've charted, I engage the Pyruhonic Drive. Then I head for the hypersubsumation chamber. A few sessions in there will allow me to download straight into my memory most of the files about Earth and Joey Kincaid that were sent by Irick's mate Cressida.

By the time I reach her, I should know everything I need to know about Joey Kincaid.