Chapter Twenty-Four

Niva

They don’t take me to the cage of Opake, but they put me in a prison cell.

Me.

Me!

They accept my promise that I won’t use my power to break out of the prison. Even in my guilt of violence, they assume I would never lie, me being their divine, all-powerful, deity-like sex goddess.

It’s my own fault I ended up in this cell. I should’ve known better than to go to the council building when I was so explosive with power. If I’d lost control at home, blown out a wall in my bedroom, no one would’ve cared. They would’ve laughed and chalked it off to “oh, Niva’s still learning to control her powers again.” It happened once or twice before.

But no, I had to be stupid enough to lose control at a public building.

Because I was in such a hurry to get my father’s help to save Graven. Now I’m trapped and can’t even go myself.

I have hours to sit and meditate, calm, and focus myself, gain control of my power. I can do this. All my predecessors learned to live with this. There hasn’t been a possessor of the power executed in recent memory. Surely, I can learn to control myself as well as they all have since then.

But I still have to save Graven. I can’t stay locked in here.

I don’t care how many strikes I get against me; I can’t let the humans kill him.

I wait until it’s dark and the guards have been lulled into complacency by my meditative habit. All I’ve done is sit in one place with my eyes closed since they locked me in here. I’m to await an appearance with the council tomorrow, where they will no doubt pass a strike on me. Two if they find out what I did with Graven.

I’ll worry about that later. Saving him is my only priority right now.

The guards turn down the lights. I pretend to sleep, and once they’re not looking at me anymore, I institute my plan.

Using my new focus and control, I use a centralized beam of power to silently create a hole in the wall just big enough for me. I slide through it, and I’m out. I get through the alarmed door at the exit of the holding building the same way.

I know where the rebel camp is, in theory, though I’ve never been myself. I can’t ask for help, but I do know if I cut through the jungle at my hyper-speed run, I’ll get there faster than if I take a speeder on the road.

I turn up my inner light to full brightness to illuminate the jungle path and run through the trees as fast as my feet can go.

I know I’m close when I hear him scream.

The sound of Graven in pain ignites a fire inside me. What are they doing to him? These barbaric humans? It makes me want to destroy them all.

I dim my light and sneak around the side of the camp where I heard his voice distinctly. I find a rash of humans surrounding a cage of some sort.

“Hands in the air!” a woman shouts with a blaster pointed inside the cell.

Gods, I hope that’s not Graven she’s shouting at, but I can’t see.

“Oh, you stupid rebels,” a disturbingly monotone voice says. “So trusting, why do you bother with warning?”

“I said, hands in the—” But she doesn’t get to finish.

A blast of something, not a laser from a gun, hits her, and she gives a bloodcurdling scream. Her whole body is consumed by electric shocks, and she falls to the ground, unconscious. I pray she’s not dead.

I move closer. Whoever this is attacking the rebels with whatever that weapon is, he’s no friend of Graven’s. Or at least, I don’t think so.

The other rebels tighten their stances to fire their blasters at whoever just shocked the one on the ground. But they don’t get to. Somehow the shock thing shoots at all of them from two different angles and all six of them fall.

I sneak up to them, finding all of them moaning.

I’m glad they’re not dead, at least. Or I think I’m glad. They were the ones who captured Graven, after all.

There’s a man standing beside the metal barred cage, a weapon of some sort in his hand, pointed at the rebels who are now on the ground. The weapon is now pointed at me.

Another man crouches over Graven in the cell.

Graven lies unconscious, unmoving.

Fury awakens my full power, a portion of which has been lying dormant due to my efforts to keep control over myself. It overcomes my tenuous control, and totally by accident, lights me up. The two men with the weapons stare at me, pointing their weapons.

“It’s one of those aliens,” the one crouched over Graven drones in his sick monotone. “Shoot her!”

Their shock guns fire at me at the same time. I hold up my hand to intercept their blasts, expecting it to hurt except…it doesn’t.

It tingles, almost tickles, and sends shocks up and down my arm. The shocks mingle with my power and strengthen what’s already pumping through my veins. “Huh, interesting,” I say, staring at how my hand is glowing with a new silver sheen. “Was that supposed to hurt?” I ask them.

I stand and walk closer, now certain they can’t hurt me. I have to investigate.

“Shoot her again!” the one in the cage says, and they do.

This time, I walk into the shocks, letting them hit me square in the chest. They send ticklish shivers down my spine, and I laugh and wiggle. “Ha! Oh, I think you’re actually feeding my power, fellas. Go ahead and try that again.”

They balk at me, fear lighting their faces. “Stay back,” the monotone one says, “We’ll fire again!”

I ignore that threat and lean on the bars of the cage. “Who are you and what do you want with Graven?” They’re almost protectively guarding him. I can’t decide if they’re here to help him escape. It’s possible. Though I’m not sure I agree with their tactics. Knocking all the rebels unconscious was a bit much.

“He’s my son!” the one crouched over him says. “I’m here to free him from the rebels.”

I’m surprised he gave up that information so easily, but then he does look scared enough to piss himself, so perhaps it’s just fear. “So, you’re the infamous Captain Dargule. And who does that make you?” I ask the other one. “His assistant?”

“Y-yes,” the other one mumbles. His hand shakes while his weapon is still pointed at me.

“You can put that down. It’s not going to do you any good against me.”

The nervous one puts his down. The other one doesn’t.

Graven moans on the ground and twitches, seemingly unable to move, though his eyes are open and his feelings are circling around him in a clear aura now that he’s regaining consciousness. He’s obviously in physical pain, but his emotions fire bright with anger mixed with the orange of fear. His eyes reflect the same thing.

I’m going to save you, I try to tell him with my gaze as best I can. Though I conceal it from the men, keeping my posture of nonchalance and my tone of condescension.

I hold out my palm and let a yellow globe of power swell in my hand. “You have one minute to convince me you mean Graven no harm, or I kill you.”

They both start talking at the same time, so I have no idea what they’re saying.

“Hey!” I shout at them. “One at a time.” But before they start talking again, I see Captain Dargule’s hand reaching into his pocket, very subtly, very slowly.

I shoot a laser beam of power with the precise control I’ve learned through my meditations, and I burn his hand so badly he won’t be reaching for anything for a few days.

He screeches, a most pathetically pained sound. “Fucking alien scum!”

“Oh my.” I make a clicking, scolding sound with my tongue. “That would not be how to talk to someone who is ready to kill you. What’s in your pocket?”

Graven moans loudly but manages to breath out, “He has…a bomb…a remote activated…bomb.”

Oh fuck. Playtime’s over.

I zoom through the open cage door and search all of Dargule’s pockets until I find the remote. All faster than any of the humans can see.

I pause from my hyper-speed, holding the remote as far away from Dargule as I can. “Do you want to kill him or should I?” I ask Graven.

He stirs, moving his big body, pulling himself up with his arms. “Me.” He’s slow-moving, but by the bulge in his muscles, his strength is unhindered.

Dargule jerks his still-working hand and aims his shock weapon at Graven. I blast it from his hand with another precisely aimed surge of power. Dargule shrieks in agony, both his hands charred and smoking.

“Thanks,” Graven murmurs to me then lunges at Dargule’s neck with a stranglehold.

“No…” Dargule chokes at Graven. “Please…I made you…what you are…you wouldn’t exist…if it weren’t…for me.”

“Shall I burn his tongue, too?” I ask Graven.

“No.” He squeezes Dargule’s neck harder until his voice cuts off with Graven crushing his larynx. “I’ve got it.”

A shock of that tickling sensation sprouts over my back again.

“Whoopsies!” I turn on the other man who just shot me again. “Almost forgot about you. Can I take care of this one, Graven?”

“Yes,” he growls, still intent on his strangling of Dargule, the evil man’s body writhing in its death throes.

I shoot a focus of power at the other man, the hottest, most intense bolt of energy I possess. I watch his lifeless body fall to the ground.

I look back at Graven, who’s now staring at his dead father. I can’t see Graven’s face, but the emotions swirling around him are too complex for me to name—some of them shades of colors I’ve never seen before, emotions uniquely human. He’s healthy. He’s feeling things he’s never felt before, fully, with his whole body.

I don’t know what to expect from him, but when he looks up at me, there’s a smile on his face and warmth in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says easily, breathlessly. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

“You’re welcome.”

I watch him, wondering how he feels about me now. There’s no movement from him. I have no idea if he’s happy to see me, beyond just me saving his life. I’m filled with a harsh uncertainty.

Everything in me wants to leap on him, hug him, make love to him in celebration that he’s still here. That I saved him and he’s free now. But he shows no sign of moving toward me, no hint of wanting to touch me.

He points to the remote still in my hand. “We should deactivate that.”

I look at the little electronic device that, with one press of the button, will explode the entire camp. The device has no other switches or seams in its advanced tech. “I have no idea how to turn it off. I’d be afraid of setting off the bombs accidentally.”

“Me, too.” He stands, staring at the device. “From what I know, as long as we don’t hit the wrong place on it, it should remain stable.”

He’s so large, looming over me. I have the desire to nuzzle into him, to beg him to wrap his arms around me. But it might cause one of us to accidentally press the button and set off the bomb. Which would be bad.

He stands frozen in front of me, showing no reaction to my physical nearness. I’m too afraid that somewhere in all of this, somehow, he doesn’t want me anymore.

“Well,” he scratches his head nervously. “I guess we should turn it over to the rebel tech specialists and let them take care of it.”

“Yeah…”

He moves past me, out of the prison cage. He gives his dead father one more glance as he passes. But he doesn’t look at me. He turns his back to me and walks on, as if I’m not even there, standing, wishing with every part of me that he would show some sign that I matter to him, wishing I could decipher what his unfamiliar amalgam of emotions means.

Wishing that somehow, he doesn’t just desire me but that…he feels something more.

I remind myself that it’s useless if he does. I can’t leave my people. It’s my sworn duty, one I pledged myself to as soon as the Exstare powers manifested. Before that, if I’m honest. My father and his loyal service to our planet runs in my veins and family traditions.

I cannot have both the Fellamana and Graven. And my lifeblood and creed tell me, I have to choose my people. I have to lose him.