Shrouded: Heartstone Book One (9 page)

The first glimpse of Moon Base 14 didn’t really register as unusual. She saw the flat pads, the cargo liners spewing hover sleds, and the raised causeway for pedestrian traffic. Lights shifted along the walls and floors, marking routes and signaling to those versed in port codes. A large screen broke the wall above the walkway, a list of departures and arrivals scrolling down it. Slowly. She’d never seen a port schedule with so few entries.

Their ramp banged to the bay floor, rattling their bench seats and bringing all eyes back to the matter at hand. A woman stood in front of the exit. She held a large data pad in one hand, a puffy bag hung from her other shoulder, and she beamed at them through large spectacles. Her hair hugged the top of her head in tight red curls that bounced fiercely when she marched up the ramp.

“Madame Nerala.” Their coordinator stumbled to greet the woman. She looked human, possibly even primary stock. Vashia guessed her to be somewhere around sixty, despite the spring in her step.

“Mr. Noll. Are these my new girls, then?”

Vashia couldn’t imagine who else they could be. She peered at Madame Nerala and tried to judge the character behind the cheerful, grandmother exterior. She’d never known a grandmother and had barely any memories of her mother. Tarren leaned closer and whispered in her ear.

“I have a new theory about the fairy tale thing.”

“Yeah.”

“I think they spread that crap to get people to come here.” She sat back and nodded to where Mr. Noll and their new owner exchanged data pads. “Maybe that’s the only way they can get anyone to agree to it.”

“I like my theory better.”

“I thought you would.”

Murrel pressed in from the other side. She didn’t quite manage to whisper. “What? What did she say?”

“Never mind.” Vashia smiled for her, for both of them. “I think it’s time to go.”

Mr. Noll waved them forward. He gestured to his cohort as if they all hadn’t just heard the exchange. “This is Madame Nerala,” he said. “She’ll be in charge of your instruction from here on out.”

“What instruction?” Tarren blurted out. She looked bashful, but then again, they hadn’t been ordered to silence, had they?

“I’ll help you all to acclimate to Shrouded culture and law.” Nerala favored her with a kindly look, a motherly look. It gave Vashia an immediate case of the creeps. “But first, we’ll head to the dorms and get you all fresh clothes and some rest.”

She turned and pranced back down the ramp. The women hesitated. They looked to Mr. Noll, but he waved them after Grandma Creepy. They moved slowly, drifting down the ramp in her wake in little, whispering huddles.

“I think they’re going to torture us and feed us to something,” Tarren hissed.

“What was that?” Murrel asked.

Vashia stared down the ramp. She took a step forward, and they both followed her. “Nothing, Murrel. It’s going to be fine.” She ignored Tarren’s snort and took another step. The girls that left ahead of them pooled in a bunch around Madame Nerala. They fidgeted and shifted from foot to foot, but the whispers stilled.

The three of them were last to leave the ship. Vashia led the way out into the hangar. The ship a few bays down fired up, drowning out whatever Nerala said to them in a roar of engines. The women moved closer, pressed up beside their newest caretaker and waited for instructions.

The sleds followed the floor lighting between the freighters, weaving toward their individual destinations. Vashia took a step to the side and let Tarren and Murrel squeeze in beside her. She leaned out around the butt of their ship and watched the tunnel where the majority of the cargo seemed to end up. The departing ship’s engines faded as it returned to orbit. Its absence made the regular hangar sounds seem quiet.

“There we go,” Madame Nerala purred. “Now, we’ll head through the atrium and get your rooms assigned. I think you’ll find them comfortable for the short stay. Oh!” Her hands clapped to her mouth and all fourteen bride candidates jumped in place. She waved them to calm with one hand, but the other busily straightened her hair. She stood taller, cast nervous glances to their right.

Vashia followed her gaze and caught her first glimpse of the Shrouded. Two men stalked across the hangar, and she had no doubt at all as to their race. They had to be Shrouded. They couldn’t be anything less. Her jaw dropped open.

“What is it?” Murrel whispered.

Before Vashia could answer, static exploded inside her brain.

M
ofitan started toward the bays
. Dolfan caught sight of him from the walkway. He knew exactly where the bastard was going. His jaw clenched. He should just let him go. Or he could intercept him at the next stairwell.

His legs taking him at a jog, two steps at a time to the bottom, he reached the floor at the same instant Mof passed. Not that it mattered. They’d watched two shuttles unload brides already without so much as a flutter on his part. He guessed Mofitan was in the same boat. If he’d sensed a candidate that he might be drawn to, why would he be striding for today’s arrival as if his life depended on it?

So why did he hurry? Why the hell did he have to feed Mofitan’s hostility by showing any interest in the brides? He shook his head, but slid into step beside the other prince.

“Morning, Mof. Checking cargo today?”

“Yep. Cargo.”

“Then you don’t mind if I join you.”

“Couldn’t stop you if I did.”

“Right.” Well, at least they understood one another. They walked together, but with an arm’s length between them. A ship roared to life ahead, drowning the sound of hangar business as usual. Except today wasn’t business as usual. Today a ship in bay 3 brought another group of brides, a group that may or may not include the Kingmaker. He shook his head and reminded himself it wasn’t about the throne—not for him at least. He’d originally been drawn to the moon base with the brides in mind and had always watched the shipments. But no one, not Mofitan or anyone else, needed to know that.

The ship lifted and maneuvered gently back into space. Another waited to take its place. Trade at Base 14 increased faster than they’d originally intended. Pelinol wanted to keep it to a trickle, but half the Council pressed to open more lanes and bring in more revenue and more resources for Shroud. The other half never wanted outsider trade at all. This Choosing, whoever ended up on the throne, could mean a huge difference in the planet’s trade policies.

For now they had a steady schedule and a waiting list of governors eager to negotiate a piece of the business. Dolfan agreed with Pelinol. He supported the trade, but he could see the danger in it. He could see the greed in the eyes of each trader and he heard the things they whispered when his back was turned.

Mofitan marched forward while Dolfan hustled to keep up. The hover sleds worked their routes at the bay’s rear. Overhead, the narrow strip of shuttle pads waited for the smaller vessels. Dolfan tilted his head upwards but his vision blurred. A buzz of static whispered between his ears. His senses snapped to attention, humming with something he couldn’t begin to place.

He staggered to the side and nearly collided with Mof. They both stopped and stared at one another. He couldn’t read Mofitan. The man’s face always looked that pinched, and if he could sense the same vibration Dolfan was getting, Mof wasn’t letting on.

“What?” Dolfan recovered and stood tall. His head still raged with interference, but he smiled and gave Mof a level stare.

“Tripping over your own feet?” “Maybe.”

Mofitan held his gaze, but he took a step forward. Dolfan mirrored him, taking two of his own and gaining a stride. Mof responded with three, and they were off again, this time twice as fast, down the row of ships.

They passed another hull. He could see Madam Nerala standing three bays down. She caught sight of them and straightened. The buzz roared in his head. His jaw clenched and he scanned the little crowd around the woman. Mof pulled ahead again, and Dolfan ignored it. His eyes roved the faces huddled around Nerala. His brain hummed.

She
was there somewhere. His Heart mate.

“Greetings, Highnesses.” Nerala curtseyed before he’d caught up with Mofitan. She nodded to him as he slid to a stop beside his rival. “What a delightful surprise.”

“Madame Nerala,” Mofitan answered.

Dolfan nodded his head in her direction, but he watched a blue wig at the far side of the group. The static pulsed every time the woman wearing it moved. They all pressed together, shifting places and sneaking looks at him and Mofitan. He tried to listen to Nerala’s prattle and still catch each face in the crowd.

“…our new arrivals to their rooms and let them rest,” she was saying. Her words faded against his internal reaction. His brain, his blood, buzzed with it. The source had to be here.

“Well, then.”

He could tell from the woman’s voice that she felt slighted. He should have felt bad, should have torn his gaze from the blue wig long enough to make eye contact, to make amends. But the crowd shifted and his senses blurred out the thought.

She’d been hiding behind the other woman with the blue wig. He knew it as well as he knew her face, though he’d never seen it before. Her gray eyes flashed to his and he knew she’d been hiding, just as he knew she could feel the same static, just as he knew that her brain hummed along with his.

Her hair shagged around her shoulders, honey golden and only a shade lighter than her skin. She stood two feet shorter than him at the very least, but the set of her jaw and that cool spark in her eyes said enough. They said she knew him too. They said that he was in a whole world of trouble.

“
D
id you see them
?” Murrel hissed for the third time. “I mean, wow.”

“You said that already.” Tarren nudged Vashia and chuckled.

“They’re purple.” Murrel sighed and sank further into her lounge.

“More lilac, really.”

Vashia watched them argue. If she’d had to venture an opinion, she’d have called it taupe—smoky tan with just a hint of lilac. She kept her mouth clamped shut and let her brain recover from its encounter with the Shrouded.

“And I told you they were big.” Murrel rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow.

“You made them sound like giants,” Tarren said. She sat on her couch, as if she didn’t quite trust the padded cushions, as if the tasseled fringe might snag her in her sleep. “They’re just tall and—broad.”

And muscular and exotic
, Vashia amended to herself. The Shrouded had black hair that set off their unusual skin tone. They had muscles on their muscles, and shoulders as wide as…

“Are you still with us, Vash?” Tarren stared at her. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Maybe she’s in love,” Murrel sang.

She sat up and shook her head. What could she tell them? Her vocal cords hadn’t felt like working since the hangar. She’d followed Madame Nerala like the other girls. She’d marched with them through the causeways, the atrium where the dome promised a full view of the planet once it rose and the fronds of plants she’d never heard of clung and twisted over the walls. She’d followed, but her body protested each step.

By the time they’d reached their room, the humming had long since faded. The static evaporating as they left the Shrouded Princes behind, but the memory of it still fuzzed her thinking.

“Well,” Tarren reached out her leg and poked at her with one toe. “Are you in love, then? Is it the fairy tale after all?”

Was it? She caught the note in Tarren’s voice and cringed. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t feed them false comfort. She shook her head and sighed. “I’m just tired.”

“The one with the braid,” Murrel whispered. “He looked right at me.”

“They definitely had a way about them.” Tarren lay back and stared at the ceiling. “That’s for certain.”

“I told you they were big.”

“Shut up, Murrel.”

Vashia felt the urge to chuckle and just let it fly. They’d been given clean clothes, uniform, sage jumpsuits that hugged and warmed enough to make her sleepy. She snuggled into the lounge and closed her eyes. Maybe she
was
just tired. She’d been under more than her share of stress. Her body might just have had enough. Maybe the static was nothing more than fatigue. Maybe it had nothing to do with taupe skin or muscles.

She didn’t remember a braid.
Must have been the other one
. As she drifted off to sleep she pictured hazel eyes and jet black tendrils framing a face that seemed much too familiar.

M
ofitan disappeared after the hangar
. Dolfan let him go. He wandered back to the relay office, to the gauges and the Gauss and stared at the readings until his vision blurred. He didn’t want the throne. It hadn’t been a lie. He still didn’t want it.

He flicked a switch and watched the elevator cars pass cargo between the moon base and his world. He didn’t care to rule Shroud, but he’d take it if that was the path that brought him to the Heart, if he could stand beside the stone and understand for once what that bond meant.

He wanted it now. He’d seen his future in gray eyes and honey hair. Why the Heart would make him king, he couldn’t guess, but he’d take it. The Heart didn’t lie, and it couldn’t be denied. If he bonded first, Mofitan and Haftan and the rest of them would have no choice but to accept it.

Dolfan leaned back in his chair and watched the colors swirling in the Shroud. He didn’t know how to rule. He didn’t know why he’d felt the pull, especially here, so far from the Heart’s dome. No matter. He knew it now. He’d known it the second he saw her face. The Kingmaker had arrived. Once she’d passed Nerala’s training and they returned to the palace, then nothing would separate them ever again.

T
hey ate
breakfast in the atrium. The dome overhead framed a blazing view of Shroud, swirling in shades of blush and yellow. Storms, Vashia knew, but from a distance undeniably beautiful. How would they live inside that? For the first time, she imagined what her future might look like. Did they have cloud cities? Giant beetles? She grinned and looked back to her plate. At least they ate well. The station food processors spit out fare that beat their ship’s stores by a mile. She nibbled on tiny bits of fruit shaped into gemstones and little stars and listened to the women around her chatter.

“The one with the braid was too brawny,” Jine said. “I liked the shaggy one.”

“Is there such a thing as too brawny?” Tarren winked at Vashia and dove into her own fruit. The Shrouded Princes had dominated the conversational topic all morning.

Vashia snapped up another red star and reminded herself that she didn’t care who Jine thought was attractive. Besides, both men had been built similarly. Granted, she didn’t remember the braid, or what color
that
one’s eyes had been, but she got enough of a look to see the similarities in muscle mass and breadth.

She’d heard enough as well. The constant giggling and whispers were impossible to drown out and drove her toward a considerable headache. Of course, it might have been the static. She’d woken from it twice during the night, and so far this morning she’d had three little mind storms already. None of the others, not one of them, seemed to be suffering the same malady. She’d listened carefully enough to figure that much out, hoping she wasn’t the only one who’d developed a psychic allergy to the Shrouded. No such luck, though. Again, Vashia was the odd one out.

As if on cue, it started again. Faint and humming in the back of her skull, then swelling into a roar, a buzz that made her vision fizzle at the edges. She figured they were circling her—that or pacing back and forth outside the atrium. She’d marked at least four exits from the base’s central dome. The Shrouded Princes could be down any one of them. Wherever they were, Vashia was able to sense them from a bit of a distance.