Beyond the Red (36 page)

“I’m glad to hear it.” Serek kisses her cheek. “I have to get something, but I’ll return shortly. Just stay here.”

“Okay,” Kora says with a stupid little smile. It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. Serek kisses her again—this time on the lips—and leaves the room. The door closes behind him and silence follows—a heavy, uncomfortable air like the unconversation in the desert. Once again, Kora avoids my gaze and turns away from me. Once again, she intends to pretend that I don’t exist, that I’m not here, that nothing happened between us in the ruins.

I’m sick of being treated like her toy. Like someone not worthy of any sortuv explanation.

“Are we not going to talk about what happened?” I finally say.

She doesn’t turn to face me. “There isn’t anything to talk about.”

I snort.
“Naï,
of course not. Nothing at all.”

She sighs and runs a hand through her hair. After a long beat of silence, she stands and faces me. “I’m sorry, Eros. For everything.”

I scowl. “I don’t want or need your apology.”

“I’ve hurt you.”

I clench my fists. Stare at the wall above her head. “You must think me weak if you believe you’ve unraveled me with a single kiss. Or maybe you think yourself miraculously special.”

She frowns. “I didn’t say that. I just … it shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry for initiating it—I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Me neither.” My words sound sharp. I hope they cut.

Kora looks at me for a long moment. “I’m marrying Serek.”

“So I’ve gathered.”

She bites her lip. Starts to step toward me, then steps back. “Thank you for protecting me. It was very brave of you, and you didn’t have to—”

“It wasn’t for you.” I lower the full force of my gaze on her. “Telling your brother where you were meant betraying the location of my people. Unlike you, I don’t want the blood of hundreds on my hands.”

Her gaze falls. “Nevertheless, thank you,” she whispers. “Regardless of your motivation, I am in your debt.”

It’s a lie and we both know it. She’ll never be in my debt—she’s royalty and I’m a half-blood slave. She’ll marry the second most powerful man on the planet, and I’ll live forever in their shadow, serving the very people who slaughtered mine, the very people who would kill me given any opportunity.

I would leave at first light, but I don’t have a people anymore. I have nowhere to run to, nowhere to go. If I came across humans in the desert, they would kill me. If I ran into guards in the city, they would stop my heart with a phaser pulse. Sepharon in the streets would beat me to death, or watch me starve, or parade my broken body through the streets.

I have nothing. I am nothing. If I want to live, it’ll have to be here, serving a royalty I’d love to see burn to the ground.

The back of my hand itches and I rub the tiny light scar etched into my skin. Yet another reason I’ll never be in her debt. Her gaze follows my hand and she purses her lips.

A knock at the door, and Serek enters, carrying a wrapped square of some kind and a small octagonal glass. He pulls out a chair from the desk set to the side of the room and motions to it. “Please sit, Eros.”

I sit, like a good little pet.

Serek unwraps the package—it’s a clear, circular gel with tiny points like dull teeth on one side. He motions for my arm, and I consider questioning him, but what’s the point? He’ll get what he wants either way, and I don’t have the right to say a word about it because I’m a slave. Captured and marked like an animal.

I was stupid to think one kiss might have changed that.

I give him my arm. He flips it wrist-up and wipes the crook of my elbow with the inside of the wrapping—some kinduv sanitizer, I guess—and presses the patch into place. It stings, but the pain is nothing. Like several bug bites at once in a concentrated area. Serek turns to the glass and begins tapping on the surface. He grimaces and sighs.

“Well?” Kora moves toward him.

“It matches up. Eros is Asha’s son.”

The air in my lungs goes cold.
It doesn’t matter
, I repeat over and over again until I can breathe.

Kora’s eyes are wide and she stares at me like the news should mean something. As if it matters that my father should be sitting on the throne. As if my birthright would somehow mean something in a Sepharon court. No, I take that back—it
would
mean something—that I would have to be executed immediately, before word leaked to the public. Because suns and stars forbid a fucken half-blood would have right to the throne. I shouldn’t even be alive—I’m diluting their
perfect
race with my disgusting human blood. To have me on a throne would be blasphemous.

Good thing I have no interest in going anywhere near that ridiculous throne of glass.

They’re still waiting for a reaction, so I stand and rip the patch off my arm. Pinpricks of blood rise to the surface, and I press down with my free hand. “It doesn’t matter,” I repeat, aloud this time. “No one can ever know, and I’m not about to ask to be executed, so you can guarantee I’ll never tell anyone.” I look at them. “I’m assuming you won’t, either.”

Serek sits and slides the glass on the table. Scrubs his face with his hands. “This isn’t right. The laws of birthright stand for a reason.”

I roll my eyes. “Laws of birthright don’t matter when you’re a half-blood. We don’t have rights to anything. We don’t even have the right to live.”

Serek winces. Looks up at me. “You don’t believe that.”

“What I believe doesn’t matter. I’m a half-blood slave.”

Kora sighs. “Eros, you know you’re more than that.”

I arch an eyebrow. “Really? Tell me then, what am I? I can never leave this place—I’d be killed on the spot. I can’t claim my birthright even if I wanted to—I’d be executed before the words left my lips. This is all I have left, whether I like it or not. It’s all I’ve had since someone razed my camp and murdered my family.”

Kora bites her lip, but at least she doesn’t have the nerve to apologize again. Because she knows full well this is her fault, and no amount of words can undo what’s already been set into motion. Nothing she says will make an ounce of difference, so I don’t want to hear it.

I turn away and face the window. Stare out into the foreign white streets and golden trees, into a land that will never be my home. “This is who I am. I’ve accepted it, and it’s time you do as well.”

Serek leaves when some female servants enter the room to help Kora get cleaned up and dressed for dinner. I wait in the bedroom while she bathes, and face the wall as she gets dressed. They put her in a long black and gold dress—because apparently no one’s allowed to wear any other colors here—and I’m handed a new set of clothes and told to bathe while they continue to prepare her hair or whatever it is they do.

The bathroom looks nearly the same as the one back in Elja, except it’s bigger, of course. The tub isn’t really a tub—it’s a pool in the center of the floor, filled to the brim with steaming hot water. I strip and climb in, scrub the sand out of my hair and the dirt and blood off my skin. I’ll admit it’s nice to be clean again after sitting in my dirt and sweat for far too long, but I don’t linger. It’s strange enough being here without sitting in a luxurious bath meant for royalty.

My new clothes—or, skirt-pants, I should say—are pretty similar to the uniform I wore in Elja, except it’s black and gold, of course, and the cloth is made of some kinduv shiny silky material that slips through my fingers as easily as water. No shoes again, which works for me because I’m used to walking around barefoot anyway.

I knock twice before entering the bedroom and step inside. Stare at the wall and try not to die of boredom waiting for them to finish coating Kora’s face in emphasis she doesn’t need. When she turns around, her eyes are lined in thick, smoky black, her eyelashes look twice as long, and her lips shimmer with a dark gloss. She smiles at me and I pull open the door and stare straight ahead.

Serek is waiting in the hallway, and he takes her arm in his when she steps out. They smile at each other and Serek says she looks beautiful. Maybe I should have drowned myself in that tub to save a lifetime of this ridiculous posturing. Suns and stars, I don’t even want to think about what’ll happen after they marry. And start having heirs.

I follow them to the dining hall. Like everything else, it’s too large and too extravagant and too shiny and black and gold and covered with banners. The crescent-shaped floating table is barely visible beneath the mountains of meat and drink and colorful fruit and vegetables and soups and desserts. Kora and Serek kneel across from Roma, and I step against the wall, a foot or so away from the line of guards.

“Good,” Roma says. “You’re all here.”

Serek smiles. “Did you expect anything less?”

Roma takes a long drink and slams his goblet down so loudly that it echoes. Kora jumps and the room falls silent. My heart thumps in my ears and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

Serek isn’t smiling anymore. “Is something wrong, brother?”

“Wrong?
Naï
, not at all. Not anymore.” Roma looks up at me—no, not at me, at his guards standing just beside me. “Arrest the half-blood and bring him underground immediately.”

My heart stops and my blood goes cold as someone grabs my arm. My instinct screams
fight
, but there are literally hundreds of soldiers in this room alone. I don’t stand a chance, so I let them yank my arms behind my back and cuff my wrists together. Serek and Roma are arguing, and Kora keeps shouting, “He’s my servant, I need him!” but I’ve already missed half of the conversation and she whips around to face me and she’s crying. Gray tears streak down her face.

She’s not in any danger, so why is she crying?

“And you believe him?” Serek exclaims. “Dima is not to be trusted!”

The guards yank me out of the room and the door slams behind us, cutting off the mounting voices. They push me down a long hallway, jostling my steps and walking deliberately fast. But I keep on my feet to the end of the hall and out into the cool night air. Through a courtyard with nine fountains, past half a dozen buildings, into a small black building with a sleek exterior and a thick metal door.

One of the guards places his hand on the metal, and a small screen above the doorframe blinks green before it slides open. They lead me through several thick doors, each with a security check that requires touching the door or entering a code or speaking a command. Down a long set of steps that seem to go on into the core of the planet itself.

The deeper we go, the cooler and wetter the air gets, until my skin is sticky and cold. Finally we reach the bottom level, where the floors are black and so cold it burns the pads of my feet as I walk. The only light here comes from dim strips above each thick door, and the hall is so silent, every step sounds like an explosion. They lead me to the very end of the hall, where a guard presses his hand against the door, waits for the telltale green light, and opens it.

They shove me inside and the door hisses closed behind me.

I sit in darkness with my eyes closed and my head against the wall. I’ve lost all sensation in my feet from the cold, but I still squeeze my toes together and rub them in a failed attempt to keep them warm. I’m not sure what will happen if I don’t get feeling back in them soon, but it can’t be good.

The problem with isolation is it gives you way too much time to think. And when I have endless time to my thoughts, I remember things I’ve worked so hard to bury, memories I never wanted to unearth from the darkest places in my mind. Sitting here in absolute silence, the shadows call them from the corners of my mind like a beacon to a lost wanderer in the desert.

I think of Day, lying in the sand, drenched in red from sand and blood. I think of Nol and Esta—of sharing tea with them the morning before the raid. Of rolling my eyes at the kisses Esta pressed to my cheeks while balanced on the tips of her toes. Of hurrying the embraces from Nol so I could make it to my shift on time. I think of my brother, clasping my shoulder and telling me I’m an uncle, long before I understood what it meant.

I think of Kora, wrapping her legs around my waist, digging her fingers into my back, and kissing me like her life depended on it. Of the sounds she made as I felt her soft breast and the way she shuddered against me as my lips traced the markings on her neck and our bodies pressed tightly together.