Chapter Twenty-Nine

Graven

We kill time in the air, circling the city until it’s time for the council meeting, then I land the ship on the landing pad on the roof of the council hall.

“If it goes badly, I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of here.” I’m unable to believe I can’t save her. I would rather die than surrender her to the motherfuckers who want to lock her up.

“Have some faith,” she says calmly, as calm as I’ve ever seen her. I don’t understand her confidence. After her father worked so hard to help us escape, her confidence in the council to hear her truth and pardon her sounds like lunacy to me. “They might believe me.”

“It’s my job to protect you.”

She puts her hand on my arm. “I can protect myself. It’s your job to support me, be my comfort, and help give me confidence. I forbid you to do violence against my people. Agreed?” She stares at me heavily.

I can’t refuse her. “Fine. But it doesn’t mean I can’t grab you and run like hell if they try to take you away again.”

“I can run faster than you, remember? And so can they.”

I grumble, realizing she’s right. “But I’m stronger than them.”

“Graven,” she says levelly, “if they decide to take me, there will be no way to stop them.”

“How can they possibly stop us? We’re invincible, you and I.”

“No.” She twists her hands. “The Fellamana have weapons you’ve never seen. Their purpose is defensive, but that doesn’t make them less deadly.”

“Like what?”

“Things that will stop even you and me.”

It seems impossible. The peace-loving Fellamana with advanced weapons tech? But she’s so sincere, I believe her.

I grasp her hands and press kisses to her palms. “If you die, I die. You know that, right?”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” She strokes my cheek. “You can go back to your rebels.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

She sighs, choosing not to argue. “I didn’t want this for you.”

“I’m all in with you. I don’t live without you.” I pinch her cheek and give her a smile.

“Is that how this monogamy thing works?” she asks with a tight brow. “You’re willing to die for that person?”

“It’s how it works for me.”

She kisses me, tenderly, putting her hands on my chest as she does it. I hold her hands there, reveling in her touch as much as her lips. “I’ll do everything I can to get us out of this.”

“I believe in you.”

“If they try to restrain us, promise me you won’t resist.”

I bury my hands in her hair, wishing I could keep her safe and take her away from here. But this is what she wants. “I promise.”

We secure the ship, but within minutes of us stepping out onto the landing platform, a security force storms around us. “Possessor of the Exstare, you’re under restraint!” the lead guard shouts at her.

Niva holds up her hands in surrender and looks at me to do the same. “I’m here to speak peacefully with the council. If you would lead us to their communal chamber.”

Four guards swarm around us as though to capture us.

“Force is not necessary, captain,” Niva says. “We’ll come willingly.”

“After the damage you did yesterday,” the captain corrects her. “I’m afraid I have no choice.”

Niva nods respectfully and puts her hands behind her back. A guard steps forward and wraps her wrists in a device that covers her fists, obviously meant specifically for her, so that she can’t direct her power at anyone.

I’m not sure it will work exactly, considering she can emit power from many places on her body, but she doesn’t fight them. “Graven,” she scolds me, and I put my hands behind my back.

“I don’t like this,” I say, feeling them put cuffs around my wrists.

“Don’t resist, please,” Niva warns me.

I don’t even attempt to break the cuffs. “I won’t.”

They lead us inside the elaborate glass building. It’s all so pristine and transparent. I’d only ever seen their structures and architecture as beautiful compared with the ugly metal Ten Systems warships on which I’d lived my life. But now, I see their clear transparent walls differently. I see people afraid of anything they cannot see or understand.

I have no idea how Niva is going to convince them of anything.

We’re brought to the council chamber doors, and the guards open to let us in. Within the doors, I see a dozen Fellamana sitting on a raised dais overlooking a central examination area, as though they’re all waiting for her.

Niva enters, and I move to follow, but a guard blocks my way.

I glare at him and can’t help growling; the guard leaps back in fear. No one keeps me away from Niva.

“Graven,” Niva scolds me. She turns to the security guard captain. “He’s necessary evidence to my defense. He must accompany me.”

“Niva!” Her father appears at the council chamber doors with a look of utter horror on his face. He comes toward her, hugs her, whispers something in her ear.

She responds to him, “I couldn’t do it, Father. I’m sorry. I’m not a coward. I can’t run from my own people. I have to tell them the truth.”

He rests his forehead against hers. “Daughter…”

“Have faith in me. Have faith in them. I can do this.”

He lifts his head and nods at her. He looks at me, his gaze wandering from my head to my toes. “I’m glad you came. Seeing you will help them understand her.”

“It will?” I ask, surprised that I could really have anything to do with this.

“He needs a translator,” Niva says to her father.

“I’ll find someone,” he says and goes away.

Inside the chamber, Niva stands in the center of an insignia on the floor, something that has writing on it in Fellamana. A council member addresses Niva, and she responds, but it’s in Fellamana, and I don’t understand.

In my lack of understanding, I panic. I have to know what she’s saying. If I don’t understand her, I can’t help her. I’ll have no idea what’s going on. Niva assumes a calm demeanor, but as soon as she begins to speak, the entire council stiffens, and their skin tones start to swirl in shades of orange.

What is she saying?

A Fellamana dressed in a different colored uniform from the security guards, though looking no less official, stands beside me. “You require translation into the human language?” she whispers so as not to disturb Niva’s conversation.

“Yes,” I hiss impatiently. “Please.”

The translator turns to watch Niva and begins to speak low in my ear. “She’s speaking about her heart and how she loves her people and…” She pauses amid her translations and I tap my fingers, twitching with impatience for her to translate my Niva. “She says…‘I have changed. You can see it in my emotions. And in my energy.’”

Niva’s gesturing to herself, and I hadn’t thought about it, but her skin is luminescent in a different way it hasn’t been before. She’s giving off a glow of sorts that didn’t used to be there. She’s also swirling from head to toe in this gloriously, comforting, calming royal purple.

Loyalty, she told me.

A member of the council speaks to her, and my translator quotes them, “How do we know your new loyalties still include your people? From the sight of you, it appears all your loyalty has gone to this human, and you have none left for your people.”

“But you can see the truth as I speak. I’m not here to deceive you.”

“You believe you are not, but that doesn’t mean it is true. How can we be sure you’re still devoted to the Fellamana?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? When I could be on my way to the Liberator to join Koviye. But instead, I came to you to face almost certain execution. Unless I’ve misread our laws as they stand.” She glares at them all and ticks off her crimes on her fingers. “I have loved a human. I have done violence. I escaped a prison cell. I killed a human.”

At this last, a strong gasp filters through the council, and the leader shouts, “You killed a human!”

“It wasn’t like that!” I can’t help shouting an interruption to defend her. “She saved the rebel camp. A traitor still loyal to the Ten Systems set explosives to blow every shelter and planned to kill everyone. But she stopped him. She saved us.”

My translator translates for me.

But the council leader merely glares at me and says in my language, “You speak out of turn, human. Don’t do it again until you are invited.”

Niva gives me a scolding glance and shakes her head at me. I step back toward the wall, unable to help grumbling, unable to regret defending her.

Niva continues, as does my translator. “I have done each of these crimes out of love. Love for the Fellamana. And a love that has swelled to include not just this human but all the humans. To punish me for merely acting on the love I feel is a direct conflict with our most sacred law.”

Niva looks at the writing under her feet and points to the symbols with her toes. “The Freedom to Love in Peace.” Niva looks up at them again. “You have taken that away from me. Me, the possessor of the Exstare! I should’ve condemned you all from the moment you suggested humans were forbidden for me!” She shouts the last, and there’s a force behind her voice. Something beyond a normal volume. It has power behind it. As if her voice has been amplified by her Exstare.

They all sit stunned by the display of her new power.

“But because I’m young and new to the Exstare, I did not understand what our law meant. But you should have. You took advantage of me. In your fear that I might love a human, you forsook your love of me. By taking away my right to choose freely who I love.”

She pauses, giving the council time to question her or object, but when they all sit and stare at her, she continues, “When Koviye fell in love with his human, you took no time to consider and study the wonderful new kinds of love the humans have brought to us. You judged them only out of fear for what is different. But I have not judged them. I have experienced it and found their love to be rich in a new kind of power that can only enhance our way of life.”

The council leader sits forward. “What power is this you speak of?”

“After only three days of experiencing this human’s way of love”—she smiles at me, then turns back to the council—“my Exstare has grown exponentially, and has taken on a new quality of precision and strength. That is why I had my accident yesterday—and it was merely an accident—in my father’s chambers. Last night, I spent my hours trapped in the prison cell practicing with the new power.

“After I freed Graven at the rebel camp, I healed four humans injured with mortal wounds. All four of them”—she emphasizes—“back to consciousness without needing a reprieve for sex between them to recharge myself. This, after all the practicing I had done and the explosion in the council building. I have never experienced even close to such power, and neither did Koviye.” She stares at each of them, daring them to question her.

“You understand if we do not ask for a demonstration and are skeptical,” the lead council member says with derision. “For fear of you having another…accident.”

“Father,” she turns to Povape. “Would you trust me to give them a demonstration on you?”

He nods regally. “I trust you with my life.”

“We cannot free her from her restraints,” the lead council protests. “She’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t need to be freed,” Niva says. Her father moves to stand and come near her. “You may stay in your seat, Father. I can heal the anxiety and stress I have brought you these last days from here.” A beam of power, so soft in its light but precise and intense, streams from her heart and floats gently through the air to her father. He relaxes into his chair as the power envelops him, and he sighs with gratitude. His skin tone, which was rioting in yellow and orange, calms to his regular pattern of deep indigo.

When Niva lets go of him with her power, he puts a hand over his heart and takes a deep, calming breath. “Thank you, daughter. I feel more relief and calm than I have felt since before Koviye left us, since before you came into your power, and I have been worried for your health every day since.”

Niva gives a shy smile at his praise. “I’m so glad I can help repay you for all the love and support you’ve given me.”

The leader has sat back in his chair, analyzing Niva with a new kind of respect. “These new skills with your power are most impressive, and I concede that your loving with this human has given you improved strength. And I can see by your care for your father you have indeed not forsaken your love for our people.” He turns to the council. “In agreement?”

The councilors each nod and voice their approval.

Niva sighs and bows her head in gratitude. “I appreciate your vote of respect and confidence, and I vow not to betray you but only repay you with honesty. I regret very much that I took off with Graven rather than seeking your removal of the rule against humans first. I didn’t trust you to hear me and listen to me.”

“I hope that this new trust in the future might help all our disagreements to be more easily and lovingly overcome. We must work together to keep the foundations of our culture intact.”

“Indeed!” cries out a council member whose complexion has returned to a more excitable green and purple color.

The lead councilor nods in agreement. “You are wise in your youth, Niva. You are a blessing to our people.”

The fear in my chest begins to release. This sounds to me like a resolution has been reached. Though my Niva is still in restraints. I can’t relax fully until they’re removed and I see her safely out of this place.

Niva beams with a smile. “In keeping with my new pledge of honesty, I must admit I will require much more training and time to experiment with my new skills before I would use them to perform more detailed tasks such as curing a small child or an acute case of cancer.”

“That is understandable, and granted,” says the lead councilor.

“But I believe with a long-term love relationship with Graven, I will gain only more strength.”

I stiffen and hold my breath. Long-term? Did I hear her right? Is the translation correct? Getting to stay with her would be the joy of my life.

“What do you mean by long-term?” The lead councilor hesitates.

Then she says something that causes the whole room to gasp and sit back in their chairs. Even my translator stops, seeming too shocked to repeat what she’s said.

Niva continues, and the translator stutters and recovers herself, though not in time to repeat the shocking thing Niva said first. “I no longer require sex to heal others. I will no longer have sex with just anyone. I must have complete control and choice over who I engage with intimately. This is nonnegotiable for my personal health and, therefore, the continuation of the Exstare.”

The lead councilor looks around at the others at the table and getting their reluctant nods, speaks. “We concede that you should have complete control over your choices and should not feel forced to be intimate with anyone you do not desire.” He sighs and adds, “It is in the very basis of our laws of consent, after all.”

“Thank you,” Niva says.

“Guards, please release them,” the councilor says. “You’re free to go about what training you require with your new power, Niva. Please do revisit us, though, with any new developments. We appreciate you keeping us informed, and we will listen to you with love in our hearts.”

He stands and puts a hand over his heart, as do all the other council members. “We do apologize for our lack of love for you in our previous decisions. We’ll launch a full research team into the new love forms of the humans, now that you’ve shown us the riches they have in their differences.”

Niva puts her freed hand over her heart and bows in return. “Thank you, councilors.” Then she turns to me and grabs my now freed hands too. “Come on!” she bubbles with excitement.

“Where are we going?”