Kesh
I woke with a head full of dream-like images of Faerie swallowing me down, of Sirius’s gleaming arm, and of Eledan’s urbane laughter. I might have leaped to my feet had the pair of strong arms clamped around me not tightened into a vise-like grip.
A quick visual check for any immediate threats revealed a high-ceilinged bedchamber with gold and silver flourishes, minimal furniture, including the bed I lay on, and no windows. There was nothing like this room on Shinj, and the shape lacked the human-made feel. This had to be Faerie.
“You can let go now, Sota.”
“Must I?” Sota asked in my ear. It felt like before, when he’d been a ball of killing tek and used to sit low on my shoulder. “You’re so warm. This body molds perfectly to your back. I’m experiencing some interesting sensations. I don’t think I ever want to let you go.”
Only Sota had the power to summon a smile in the direst of circumstances. I twisted in his arms and looked him in the eyes. A small smile pulled at his soft lips and brightened his honest mock-human eye. The red tek-eye wasn’t as cold up close. I flicked a lock of his hair away to admire its sleek, accurate detail. He really was a work of art.
I touched Sota’s cheek, finding it warm. Nothing hinted at its synthetic construction. I’d seen mandroids before, although they were more popular in Sol than Halow, but never this close. Less than a day had passed since I’d learned he was my Sota, and it didn’t feel real. Maybe it never would.
He smiled, appearing disarmingly real and very male, now that we were eye to eye. When he touched my face in the same manner in which I’d touched his, my heart did a little anxious flutter.
“This feels kinda weird,” he said. “Doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” It did feel strange, but I couldn’t place the sensation. I looked at him as though he were something precious, something to be loved and admired, but not in the way I looked at Kellee or Talen. Sota was family. My family. I’d created him.
He withdrew his hand, his smile gentle and honest.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“Fifteen hours, four minutes, and three seconds.” His voice, so smooth now that it was synthesized through more sophisticated filters, held a delightfully humorous purr that perfectly matched his personality.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Sirius is permanently angry. Talen shouted. Kellee is a twitch away from turning feral.”
“Oh.” I rolled onto my back and blinked at the ceiling. “They tried to negotiate with Eledan, didn’t they?” Of course they had. Clearly, negotiations hadn’t gone well.
“Yes and no…” He narrowed his eyes and whispered, “The walls are listening.”
Then we weren’t free to speak. I sat up and waited for my head to stop spinning before rising off the bed. Dressed in my typical leathers and coat, I dropped my hand and found the whip still clipped to my side. I had no memory of anything after I’d fallen asleep in Kellee’s arms, but I did recall being naked then, which meant someone had dressed me and left the whip with me.
“Kellee wants me here?” I asked, turning to find Sota on the bed, eyes dancing over me.
“There weren’t many options.” He swung his legs off the bed, stood, and stretched his arms over his head, his shirt lifting to reveal his lower waist and hips, his pants slung low. Arcon sure knew how to make their mandroids. “Kellee figured you’d be happier armed when you woke.” Had Hulia picked out that body or had he chosen it? It was a fine example of a mid-twenties human male. Sota had picked it, for sure.
He placed a hand on his hip and gestured wildly with the other. “What kind of monster puts a bed in the middle of a room? Even I know that’s not where beds go. And this decoration is shockingly ostentatious. Is all of Faerie this ridiculous?”
There was no use fighting my smile. “Do you know where we are?”
“No, but there’s no tek. I’m blind here.” He ran his fingers through his hair in a very normal gesture. “I can only see what is in front of me and only hear what is immediately around me. Is this how you live, stuck in a sensory bubble?”
“Yeah, mostly.” I touched my chest and felt the warm beat of Talen’s bond inside. I’d gone so long without Talen that I’d forgotten what it felt like to have that connection strumming between us. It felt good, felt right, like I wasn’t alone. And I wasn’t. Not anymore. Sota was here. Kellee would be nearby too.
“I do have fingers to make up for it, though.” Sota lifted his hands, wiggled his fingers, and grinned.
The mention of fingers reminded me of how Sirius’s metal hand had reached for me. Clearly, it hadn’t been Sirius. “Was any of it real? Falling? Sirius…?”
“No.” Sota’s smile vanished. “Eledan hit everyone with an illusion to make you see things.” He shrugged. “Didn’t work on me.”
“Then how did he catch you?”
He swallowed and looked away. A touch of heat warmed his cheeks. “I don’t want to say…”
Sota was embarrassed? Surely not. “Well, now I have to know.” I roamed the room and rummaged through a dresser, its drawers empty. Was this place an underground knoll? It did have that same cavernous feel as Sirius’s knoll. I touched a wall, and its organic warmth throbbed against my palm. Definitely alive. Eledan’s knoll, then, if he had one? I knew so little about him from before his time in Halow, but there was one vital piece of information Oberon had made clear. Eledan had created the Hunt—a nightmare that was free again, and hungry. The Hunt had killed Aeon and would kill us all eventually.
“Kesh?”
“I was remembering Aeon…” Sota’s eyes softened with concern. Kellee had said Aeon had wanted to die, but that didn’t make enduring the loss any easier. For all his mistakes, he was still my first friend. I should have done more. We all should have done more.
I headed to the door and tested the handle. Locked.
“You can tell me anything, you know,” I told Sota, eager to steer my thoughts away from the past. “Like it used to be during all those nights on Calicto. I’d tell you a fairytale, and we’d watch those silly shows on virtuavision.” Those mundane memories seemed like someone else’s, but they were mine, and I’d cling to them forever if I could. Memories of the Calicto messenger and her AI drone when things were simple. Even Sota had changed beyond recognition.
“I have an off switch,” he blurted. “Not an actual switch. Eledan clicked his fingers, and then I was here, rebooting beside you.”
Sota had a failsafe. It wasn’t surprising. Eledan had probably implemented it when he’d had Sota in his lab at Arcon, future-proofing him. What else had he programmed into Sota? “He’s worked with tek longer than I’ve been alive. I can try to disable it, with the right equipment…” On Faerie, finding tek-equipment was nearly impossible, and Eledan would have crafted his failsafe with a skill I could only dream of. It would not be easy to unpick his work.
Sota wrapped his arms around himself, biceps tensing. “I don’t like the way he looks at me. He wants to cut me open and study my insides.”
I offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “He looks at everyone like that.”
“Not you, Kesh.” He shook his head. “We’re dust to him, but he admires you.”
“It’s not admiration. It’s lust, but not in the way you’re thinking.” I tugged at the door again, but it didn’t budge. “He wants the polestar fragment inside me. It calls to him.”
“It’s more than that.”
Sota, more than any of the others, could read people from the inside out. He knew Eledan’s infatuation with me ran deeper than desire. I turned back to face him. “He has a quarter of the polestar in him too.”
“His tek-heart?” he correctly guessed.
I nodded.
Loosening his folded arms, Sota came forward. “I knew there was more than madness wrong with him.”
“We simultaneously repel and attract each other. Before, I thought… I thought I was so messed up that I was genuinely attracted to him, even after everything he’d done to me. I didn’t know all the facts. Now I do.”
“How did he get a piece of the polestar to combine with tek to make his heart?”
“His life magic, the same magic as his mother’s, the same magic I had for a few years. I used it to make my whip semi-sentient and… to make you.”
Sota drew up next to me and settled his hand on my shoulder. “I haven’t thanked you for that.”
“Yeah, you have.” I squeezed his hand. “Every day, not with words.”
Sota looked at my hand over his without blinking, perhaps enjoying the sensation of skin on skin. I had no idea how much he could physically feel or how he processed that information.
He beamed and dropped his hand from my shoulder. “Step back. I’ve got this.” The skin on his forearm unzipped and from inside, a compact pistol dropped out on a cantilevered tek. He aimed at the door handle and a single blast crippled the lock and handle. The gun stowed away again, just as cleanly, and the synthetic skin zipped up without a seam.
I offered my fist, and he bumped it. “You are badass, Sota.”
“So are you, Kesh.”
“Now let’s get out of this prison before Eledan shows up.” I tugged the broken door open.
Eledan stood in a hallway, his expression tilted toward boredom. He wore a deep purple doublet and matching pants, laced with pure white thread. The same white thread was braided through his black hair. In his arms, he cradled a bundle of similar clothing, made of the same fabric.
Sota’s gun port dropped open again with a metallic whir.
“Save it, drone.” Eledan clicked his fingers, and Sota collapsed. His head hit the floor with a sickening thunk.
“Sota?” I rushed to his side and cradled his head in my hands. He didn’t move, didn’t breathe. His open eyes stared at nothing. He looked… dead.
I squared up to the prince, nose to nose, and reached for my whip. “Bring him back!”
He gave a disgusted grunt. “Oh, please, Kesh. He’ll be fine. Put this on.” He shoved the bundle of clothes at my chest.
I shoved it back hard enough to rock him on his feet. “You put it on.”
“You will wear this.” This time, he shoved hard enough to drive me back against the wall and trap my whip hand beneath the clothes. His eyes narrowed to dark slits, like twin obsidian blades. “Or Sota will spend the next few decades right where he is. I know you don’t want that for him. Stop being stubborn and do as I command.” He eased back. “After all, you agreed to this, remember?”
I had. His dominion over me in exchange for freeing my people. “I don’t have to do anything for you. You haven’t freed the saru yet.” I snatched the clothes off him anyway, to get him out of my space, and tucked the bundle under one arm.
“That’s what we’re doing.”
We were? I shoved at his chest, forcing him backward, and tugged my coat straight. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
Humor crept into his expression, in the twitch of his wicked mouth and shine of his dark eyes. “When, pray tell, should I have told you? Before or after the drone shot me in the chest?”
I hated him more when his arguments were reasonable. “I wear this and you’ll wake Sota up?”
His shoulder lifted. “Fine. Yes. Must everything be a bargain with you?”
It wasn’t worth fighting him over something so small as clothing. Ignoring his questions, I flicked the clothes out. Trousers and a fitted blouse adorned with delicate lace filigree. At least it wasn’t a dress.
I arched an eyebrow. “His and hers matching outfits?”
He smiled. “It seemed appropriate, as you’re about to address your saru.”
“What?”
A hand gesture was all he deigned to give me before sauntering down the corridor. “You are their queen, are you not, Mylana?”
“But… the Hunt is looking for me—and you. If we’re seen in public, won’t it come?”
“I’ll handle the Hunt. It’s important we appear united in these terrible times.” He spoke those last words like they were a joke. Was everything a game to him? “Oh, and bring the mandroid.” A click of his fingers and Sota stirred to life at my feet. “Keep him close, Kesh. Faerie is not kind to tek.”