Chapter 26

Istare at the security screens, trying to swallow my fear so I can breathe again. I can see Yossul and Fadai running toward our base. Ivo alerted our guards so they know to let them through, but I fear they won’t be the first to make it here.

Sweat drips down my cheeks and seeps into my collar as I observe a buggy furiously cutting across the red dirt.

Shaytan and Blaze are in it.

“No,” I whisper as Blaze fires several laser shots at Yossul and Fadai just as they drive past them. He misses and I breathe a sigh of relief—a short-lived sensation as I realize Shaytan will be the first at our doorstep.

I slap the comms button on my console. “Get ready!” I shout. “Shaytan and Blaze are coming first! Fire at will and do not stop until they’re dead!”

More Sky Tribe soldiers come up from behind, catching courage as their overlords approach the military base. I’ve got one of our best shooters on the long-range weapon, and he’s busy clearing the sky above Opal City of all those unwanted aircraft.

I’ve got a dozen men with laser rifles trained on the incoming hostiles, too, and about a hundred boys with short-range weapons and long knives ready for battle.

What I still don’t have are the fucking coordinates for the starship, and time is running out.

“Dammit,” I curse and plug my earpiece in, then grab the tablet and run out of the command center. I’m not sure what will happen to Fadai and Yossul while they’re still out there, but our men have clear instructions, and the enemy is here.

There is no room for error.

I need to get behind the controls of our second starship shooter, and I need to do it fast. Running like my soles are on fire, I dart through the building, occasionally glancing through the reinforced glass windows to see the Sky Tribe cohorts swelling outside the compound.

Our people release rapid-fire sequences of laser beams at them, managing to push the bastards back and even take some of them out.

It”s not enough.

My heart aches as the prospect of never seeing my men again cuts deep into my heart. It’s hard to focus, but my choices are few and each more dreadful than the other.

I press the comms button on my earpiece. “Any news, Ivo?”

“They’re transmitting numbers on one of the radio lines,” he replies. “We can’t decipher them, though.”

“Are the gates holding up?”

“For now, yes.”

“JEWEL!” Shaytan’s voice echoes outside, sending shivers down my spine.

Oh, God, he’s looking for me. He’s determined to get to me, and I fear he won’t stop until his hands close tightly around my throat.

Goosebumps prick my skin as I climb to the roof of the compound, determined to reach the long-range tower as quickly as possible.

Explosions tear through the eastern side of the building. The ground shakes, and everything else shakes with it. Bright orange explosions burst to my left, the heat spreading outward and frying my skin slightly. Black smoke twirls upward, filling my lungs and making me cough as my vision blurs. I fall flat on my face, the tablet beeping as it hits the fractured terrace floor.

The beeping sends waves of alarm through my body.

I know that sound. It’s the sound I’ve been waiting for.

“Shit,” I manage as I try to get to the tablet so I can see where the drone sensors picked up what I’ve desperately needed the whole time. “The starship. The engines are on.”

“JEWEL!” Shaytan roars as he climbs up to the roof.

“How in the world?” I gasp, watching in horror as the monster rises to his feet.

Blood pours down his thigh from a hip wound that will take entire spools of silk thread to patch up. He’s covered in soot and dirt. He’s tattered and steaming with fury. And he is looking right at me, the mountain of a Sunnaite man who made it here ahead of everyone else.

This level of determination is something to behold, and were it not for the direct danger, I’d probably declare myself impressed.

But I’m scared.

I’m alone on this fractured roof, the long-range tower still too many feet away. I can hear our men fighting and dying down below, struggling to defend the base, but the violence with which the Sky Tribe has reached us is soul-shattering.

Two more jets remain in the air, and they’re setting their sights on us. I’m not sure how many laser hits the tower can take. It may have been designed and built to withstand the laser heat, but even the protective layer has its limits.

I can’t see Yossul or Fadai anywhere, either. My heart is beating out of my chest as I scramble up to my feet and grab the tablet, briefly checking its cracked screen. I see it—bright green against a dark purple backdrop—a heat signature from one of my sensor drones.

My eyes hurt, but I can’t look away, even as Shaytan’s shadow looms bigger and heavier over me.

“We’ve got it,” I whisper, making a mental note of the coordinates.

“There you are!” Shaytan snarls and throws a knife at me.

I duck, moving like a gust of wind to get out of his way and out of his reach. “It’s over, Shaytan!” I try to distract him, talk to him, and keep him busy while I figure out the best method to lock myself inside that long-range tower.

Judging by what I saw on the tablet screen, there are only minutes left before the starship takes off.

“It’s not over until you’re mine,” Shaytan says. He laughs as he lunges at me.

I slide to the side and swerve, avoiding one of his blows. His fists are as big as my head, and he could easily knock me out and probably put me into a coma if he nabs me.

My breath is short, but I make good use of the adrenaline coursing through my body as I glance back at the tower. It”s about two hundred feet, and there’s no way to get there.

Shaytan throws another knife at me. The blade slashes my shoulder. I cry out from the sharp pain, but it’s just a flesh wound. He raises his automatic laser weapon, however, and points it right at me.

“I guess it’s my turn to say it’s over,” he says, grinning with profound satisfaction. “Now, come over like a good girl and surrender to your fate.”

“You continue to underestimate me,” I reply, hand on my sidearm.

He’ll fire before I get to take my shot, though. I need a distraction. Something. Anything. My eyes keep darting all over the place, but there’s only chaos and violence. Explosions and laser beams flying left and right. People are screaming and dying in agony somewhere on the ground level while I’m stuck up here, trying to get out of this monster’s reach before it’s over.

“I’m not done kicking your ass just yet,” I tell him, smirking.

“Look around you, Jewel. We’ve taken Opal City. And I’m going to take you, too, whether you’re ready for it or not.”

I catch a glimpse of Yossul climbing to the top of the building. Shaytan can’t see him; he’s too busy ogling me—his future bride, his most prized possession.

“It’s not a matter of me being ready or not, Shaytan. It’s a matter of you accepting that you won’t get what you want.”

“What are you going to do, sweetheart?” he asks. “I’m not letting you get anywhere near that long-range gun. And I’m certainly not letting you get off this roof until you learn to call me your master and submit to me.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Slowly, Yossul gets over the ledge and takes out his laser gun. “Run!” he shouts.

“What the—” Shaytan turns around, but it’s too late.

Yossul fires his shot, and I’m running like the damned wind. I hear the fighting behind me. I know Yossul didn’t deliver a critical injury, but it bought me the handful of seconds I needed to get away from that monster.

The war is reaching its boiling point. The very air I breathe burns my lungs as I struggle to reach the temporary safety of the long-range tower. I’m almost there.

“Die, you piece of shit!”

Shaytan’s roar makes my skin crawl, quickly followed by pained grunts from Yossul. I’m tempted to look back, but I can’t. No matter what happens, I’ve got to move forward—ever forward—until my last breath.

Almost there.

Out of nowhere, Blaze rams into me with his whole weight. It feels as though a train hit me. My body aches as I hit the ground hard.

I roll over, crying out with each thud and scrape. My bones feel like jelly. My skin opens with a multitude of scratches and gashes. I lose sight of my sidearm. It fell somewhere along the way.

“Oh, God,” I manage, trying to pull myself back together quickly, but everything hurts. Everything just hurts, and I don’t think I’ve got anything left in me.

Blaze grabs a handful of my hair and pulls me to my feet. The sting spreads like wildfire across my scalp as I try to fight him, to no avail.

“Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry?” he asks, panting and covered in somebody else’s blood as he glowers at me.

“Let her go, Blaze!” Fadai shouts. He reaches us with a dreadful limp.

Everything has come to a sudden halt up here. Blaze has a firm grip on me. Yossul is on the ground, grievously injured. Shaytan is about to kill him. My men are hanging by the slimmest of threads while I’ve still got a hundred or so feet left to get to the tower.

“Please, Blaze, you have to stop this,” I try to reason with him.

“Kill the Kreek prick!” Shaytan howls. “I’ve got this one.”

“Please!” I cry out, tears filling my eyes, blinding me. “Please, Blaze, listen to me. We have a cure for the plague! We have it! We’ve been working tirelessly for the past year to design it, but we did it! We tested it, and it’s effective. I swear! You have to stop this!”

Shaytan groans with frustration, but his hip wound is still bleeding profusely, gradually draining the intensity out of his red skin. He’ll be a pale pink and hopefully dying but not soon enough.

Blaze, however, looks genuinely conflicted. “That’s what I don’t understand. How’d you come up with a cure, exactly?”

“Solomon was running Opal City,” I pant, trying to find the shortest version of the true story so that it would make sense and drive my point home before it’s too late. “I told you he’s the one who created the plague. He had a cure for it, too. We came here to investigate the origin of the virus, but we had no idea what we were walking into.”

“Solomon planned the whole thing. He wanted to keep Opal City to himself, to be a king for the survivors,” Fadai adds, his hands raised in a peaceful and defensive gesture. “He kept this place hidden from the rest of the world because he wanted to watch us all die. He wanted to be a god to his chosen few, but then we came along and found out what he’d been up to.”

Blaze looks at me and then at Fadai, the confusion muddling the crimson pools of his eyes. “Why would he do that? It still doesn’t make sense!”

“The madness of a megalomaniac never makes sense!” I shout back. “He felt marginalized and unappreciated. His peers thought less of him despite his brilliance, and he lost it, okay? He fucking lost it. His peers were mostly women. High-level scientists who likely looked down on him and made fun of him. Well, he showed them. He devised the single most devastating plague that targeted Sunnaite women and released it in a systematic process until all hell broke loose.”

“They didn’t stand a chance,” Yossul grunts as he tries to get up, but Shaytan kicks him back down.

“I’m not done with you yet!” the commander general snaps.

“Your mother, your sisters, your grandmother,” I say, looking at Blaze with intention. “They died because Solomon felt belittled. That’s the truth, and it is awful and it is ridiculous; I completely agree, but that’s what happened. We have proof. Journals. Written memos. Recorded research. Solomon’s wives managed to save a lot of research and passed it on to us. We had no choice but to kill him when we confronted him with his actions. He destroyed the cure he had stored at the time, forcing us to use his notes in an attempt to reproduce it. That’s why it took us so long.”

“We would’ve come to you sooner about this,” Fadai says. But look at you, Blaze. You’re all still so hell-bent on following this destructive path. We knew we couldn’t make you understand, not without a tested cure to prove it. And we knew we couldn’t tell you about Opal City because, well, look around you!” He motions at the disaster burning all over. “This is what you do! This is what the Sky Tribe does!”

Blaze stares at me with a mixture of grief and disbelief. “It’s insane.”

“And it’s a lie,” Shaytan insists. “I told you, the only way we’re going to make our species great again is if we—”

“Oh, will you just shut the fuck up!” I groan, rolling my eyes with frustration. “On and on, you keep going with that same nonsense Selina Sharuk drilled into your thick head. For a self-declared leader, you, Shaytan Hull, are so easy to manipulate that it’s almost comical. Tragic for the very people you claim to protect. Understand this. The plague was a weapon used by a maniac to destroy a world he resented. Solomon didn’t care about the consequences or about the pain he was causing. He just wanted to be loved and worshiped.” I look at Blaze again. “How much longer are you going to allow these malignant narcissists to have their way while the rest of the world burns? How many women will you let suffer, both humans and Sunnaites, simply because your boss refuses to understand the reality of this situation? How many more people are going to die when we have a cure and a strategy to help bring Sunna back to life without ever touching Earth again?”

“Blaze, we have conquered this world already,” Shaytan says, but I can tell from the tone of his voice that he senses Blaze’s hesitation. “These are the words of desperate people. The last grasp of losers!”

“And if they do have a cure?” Blaze asks him. “What will our subjects say when they realize they had a better option? Not everyone wants human women on Sunna; you know that as well as I do.”

“It doesn’t matter! The Sunnaites have rarely known what was best for them!”

“And you do?” I snort a mocking laughter. “Look at you. You’re ready to kill and maim anyone who gets in your way so that you can force me to be your breeder! I have rejected your claim for a bond over and over again, yet you persist! Are you even a Sunnaite at this point, Shaytan? Because your entire culture is built on the willingness of a woman to bond with two men. I’m not willing!”

And there it is—the underlying point that Blaze has been avoiding until now. The hard truth hits him like a slap in the face, turning his cheek red as he looks at me. For the first time, I feel like he can actually see me, like he can actually understand what I’m trying to say. He shakes his head slowly, then nods at Shaytan.

“We should talk,” Blaze says. “We should all just sit down and talk. Halt the invasion of Sapphire City, test their cure, and if it turns out to be a lie, we just kill them and get this over with. Shaytan, we must be reasonable; otherwise, those who survive this war will never accept us as leaders.”

“Are you an idiot?” Shaytan cackles. “We’re about to destroy them!”

I scream as he’s about to fire his laser weapon at Yossul. I see the look of dark dread on my man’s face as he stares right into the smoking muzzle of death. But Blaze turns and fires his weapon first—a warning shot that hisses past Shaytan and causes him to freeze, staring back at us in sheer disbelief.

“No,” Blaze says. “We need to talk.”

Seconds pass in tense, unbearable silence. Fadai won’t move. He can’t risk pushing Blaze away, not when we’re so close to persuading him to listen to reason. Yossul won’t move because if he does, Shaytan will kill him. And I won’t move until I’ve got a clear path to that tower. Any minute now, they’re going to launch the starship.

Shaytan narrows his furious red eyes at Blaze. “What was that?”

“I said we need to talk,” his lieutenant replies. “Can you trust me for once?”

“Fine,” Shaytan says and seems to relax for a moment. “I’m listening.”

Blaze’s biggest mistake is to trust him and lower his weapon.

“Wait, no!” I gasp, but it’s too late.

Shaytan shoots and kills him before he can raise the pistol again. Blaze falls backward, a big gaping hole opening in his chest. Black tendrils of smoke rise slowly from its charred edges while parts of the fabric still glimmer in orange embers from the laser’s destruction.

His eyes are wide open, reflecting the reddish dawn sky as the life quickly fades from them.

Our last hope of getting Shaytan to end this peacefully is gone.