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The wind whipped Amber’s hair across her face, blinding her, but she felt the Devourer’s lips press hard against her ear.
“It’s time.”
A shiver made her voice shake. “But it hasn’t been three years yet.”
Pierce chuckled at that. “Not ready to face your destiny?”
“Ready and willing, you arrogant asp. But you did say three years. Are you a liar?”
Fingers ground into Amber’s wrist, but it was Pierce’s voice, as dry and cold as a glacier, that scared her. “I didn’t think you’d last that long after developing an obsession with confession.”
“And you were bored,” she accused.
Pierce leaned closer still and his lips wandered down her cheek until she could smell the venom on his breath. “Who’s the asp now? I came for you, Brosia. To keep you safe. Look into my heart and you’ll know it’s true.”
Amber’s fronds twitched before she could stop them. Both unfurled despite the wind, streaming from her neck like ribbons. The infra-red picture they sent was jumbled and blurred by the tossing thermals, but the EM from Pierce’s brain was shockingly clear.
She was important to him. Precious even and he intended to keep her safe. His thoughts were full of everything they’d shared long ago and how much he loved her. The loudest emotion was regret, tinged with a wistful longing for what might have been if their child had lived.
A surge of grief surprised Amber. She usually had her emotions safely locked away but sharing with Pierce had somehow set them free. Their past might have been so different ...
Something collapsed in Amber’s fist.
She looked down and it took a moment to realize she’d squeezed her necklace so tightly one side of the lacy golden globe had flattened. Her heart cried out at the sight of the damage she’d caused, but she silently dropped the basket without another glance. It slid behind her coat and safely out of sight.
Pierce didn’t seem to notice. He was whispering to himself with his eyes half-slitted. Her execrable ex seemed to be giving orders. The thought of his spider slaves made Amber’s skin crawl and she checked her suddenly itching hands for any sign of bites.
Nothing was visible.
She tried to relax and think, but it was harder than ever. Surely, she could turn this to some good. She finally knew exactly where Pierce and Darsey were. Sadly, they were in the last place she would have wished—close to each other.
Amber took a deep breath and met Pierce’s green-eyed gaze. "So, you killed Raptor and rode his body, while hiding its true state?" Pierce didn't answer, but he also didn't look away. "And you did that to stay close to me?"
"Of course. I wanted to care and protect-"
"You let them attack me."
Pierce's jaw snapped shut and his eyes flicked away, before settling on her again.
"At the space port,” Amber continued, gripping her shaking hands to stop them from seeking her necklace. “In the ship. You must have. You said you stayed close, so you were right there. Yet those animals hurt me. You wanted me to be scared, even battered. Why?”
There was no denial. Pierce offered a sad smile instead. "I wanted you to see. To understand. That they're all beasts. Fit for little more than culling. Trading your life for theirs ... it makes no sense. It's madness. Brosia, help me, please, because I can't understand."
Amber almost tried to explain, but it would have been a waste of time. Pierce killed others to survive. He couldn’t afford to see them as people. He didn’t want to listen to her arguments. He just wanted to persuade.
“Confused, Brosia?” Pierce asked with a surge of delight that put Amber on her guard. His mind felt triumphant and horribly smug.
Dread trickled down her spine. “What have you done to me? Why am I struggling to ... to ... think? To talk? To do anything the way I used to?”
Pierce leaned even closer—close enough for her to smell a tang sharper than iron on his breath as if he’d been drinking blood. “I found you.” His cheek touched hers. “I was there for your last gestation. I guarded you while you grew to be born for the final time.”
Amber couldn’t pull back, could hardly whisper. “Oh, gods.”
“Indeed. My children watched over you. They kept just as close as poor blind Sparrow. He didn’t notice them drift down to settle on your crystal. He didn’t see them bite deep, then deeper still. I set my venom in your soul and my cobwebs through your brain long ago.” He nuzzled her cheek in delight. “How does it feel?”
“Horrible,” she croaked before she could stop herself—ever the good student answering her mentor and no wonder. He still controlled her in every way. He was under her skin and in her mind, despite all her attempts to be rational. She sagged against him and didn’t try to hold herself up. It was far easier to surrender. Amber slipped and went down on one knee in the mud outside her melted door, but Pierce caught her arm and pulled her upright. He dragged her along beside him, to the lip of stone that edged the valley running below her prison.
“Quickly now, sweet-one. We want a good view.” He squeezed her arm in delight and pulled her into a side embrace as they clambered out onto that rocky ridge.
“Of what?”
Pierce didn’t answer. He jerked her closer, until Amber had to bite her lip against pain. He chuckled and pulled her hard against his hip while digging his hand into her waist. He started humming and squeezed her in time to the tune. She tried to pull away but was held tight.
“Don’t squirm, Ambrosia,” he snapped. “I’m favoring you with the perfect vantage point to watch me make history. Obviously, it would be more precise to say, ‘watch me make history again’ since every sentient life in the Universe was created by me and every success since then is therefore due to me, but no need to be pedantic. I was never one to labor the obvious.”
Disgust twisted Amber’s gut, making her lips twist too. “You were never one to labor full stop.”
Pierce laughed. “Ah, there’s the caustic old lady I heard about so often from the kres. I don’t blame you for insulting my avian experiments though. Doubtless I would have ridiculed them too if I’d been forced to live among them. They remain sadly bestial despite all I did for them.”
It was Amber’s turn to laugh.
Her long-gone husband was also long gone in the mind. She might be struggling to make sense of the world, but he was lost. What an idiot. She didn’t know why she’d ever respected him. “I don’t remember all of my lives, but I still know a multitude of people who make you look small, petty and cruel. They’re far beyond you, every one of them. You didn’t create a drakking thing. You just twisted and force-fed what already existed. Who knows what might have grown without your selfish interference?”
Pierce laughed low and soft, but his hand tightened further, digging his fingers deep into the curve of Amber’s hip until it felt like her pelvis would crack. She fought to stay silent, but her breathing quickened until she was panting against the pain.
Curse him to Hell and far beyond.
“You need a lesson in manners,” he whispered in her ear. His words were slow and thick, as if he was half-drugged by the pleasure of his attack. “And common sense. I’m here to save you, remember?”
His fingers flexed to grind against Amber’s bones and then he released her. He pushed her away and she stumbled, unable to stand on her left leg. It felt numb and dead, while her hip was burning. She hopped along the front of the ridge. The brittle tundra crumbled under her right foot until she teetered, swaying forward to stare down at the ground below.
Far below. Falling might not kill her, but it was going to hurt.
Pierce caught Amber before she could tumble over the edge and dragged her back to his side. “See? I always save you, even from yourself.” He started humming again. “Any moment now. My orders are about to change the landscape forever. I excel at that, despite the doubts of lesser beings.”
The ground groaned and abruptly heaved beneath them, tossing Amber into the air. She landed jarringly on her feet making fresh pain shoot through her hip. The earth kept shuddering and she would have fallen if Pierce hadn’t gripped her again. He laughed while keeping his balance without effort. Her only option was to grab him back and hold on.
The world bucked and quaked, until even the Devourer was thrown into the air. He landed safely every time, as poised as a razorback dropping on its prey and Amber felt like a jointed puppet in his arms. Pain jarred her and everything became blurred.
Darkness threatened but before it could claim her the shaking eased. She gasped for air while her eyes lifted to search for the cause of the strange vibration. Near the horizon, a dirty cloud of violet dust rose above the fallen towers of Judgement. The recent riot had damaged many buildings but now a savage intrusion had toppled the rest.
A mound of tumbled earth and rock stood where the heart of the city had been. Its top was open, like the cone of a volcano. Light glowed at its peak to strengthen the similarity, yet the color was wrong. Very wrong. Amber knew that copper-touched golden brightness far too well.
“The mother crystal,” she breathed. “It must be. But how? How did you shift it from Blossom?”
“Hmmm,” Pierce hummed in delight. “Leaving it on Blossom after my most recent ingestion seemed far too obvious. I knew shifting it was necessary but had no intention of letting you and your execrable brother regain enough technology to track me. I moved it ten-thousand years past, just down the road so to speak. It was a wonderfully challenging project. I had to shift this planet into the habitable zone, which meant timing its orbit to avoid crashing into Blossom. So delightful. I was sated then, and the thoughts came so fast it was hard to action them all. I look forward to being that full again.”
Amber cringed and struggled to reconnect with her battered body. She was grateful for Pierce’s support, but only because she’d have been wrecked by the quake without his help-
“Gods above,” she gasped. “What of Darsey?”
Pierce frowned and gave her a shake. “You interrupted me. Do you need more tutoring in politeness?”
Amber drew a shaky breath. “No, thank you. May we please check on my friend?”
Pierce sniffed and lifted his head to gaze across the plains to the mountain that had tumbled Judgement aside. “No need. I made sure she was well shielded. Do you think me a fool, nectar?”
“Does it matter what a lesser being thinks?”
Pierce gave her another shake and his hand twitched around her upper arm as if it wanted to tighten further, but he relaxed and looked back to the crystal-lit horizon. “Don’t try to be smart with your answers, Ambrosia. It doesn’t suit you. You know very well that you’re not a lesser being. A lesser mind of course, but still one of my people and the one to whom I owe my wonderful new existence.”
Amber cringed at the reminder and wilted in her husband’s grasp. This was all her fault, and her final plan was in ruins. How could she ever reach the altar with the Devourer holding her so tight?
“Your thought of Darsey is a timely one,” Pierce mused. “Bring the other biped. Let’s go home, shall we?”
He was looking past Amber, but when she twisted in his grip there was no one there. He seemed to be talking to an empty slope. Darsey’s prison was a smaller brown mound than Amber’s shattered cell had been and was now blurred by the shimmer of a protective shield. Her friend was safe.
Amber looked back to Pierce with raised brows, but her question was answered without further asking. The ledge quivered and Amber braced herself, but the quake was over. Instead, the staccato pounding of multiple steps set the rock shivering. She guessed what was coming and shivered too.
Darsey was carried from the far side of her prison and Amber recoiled at the sight of her escorts. Spiders—but far larger than any found on settled worlds. They were nightmare creatures with spiked legs and horned helms. Their rough carapaces were either darker than a black hole, or as transparent as oozing sap so it was possible to see the muscles and organs pulsing within.
The largest arachnid carried Darsey close to its thorax, clutched tight in its front set of legs. It was mottled black and clear, so that Amber could see its heart beating near its prisoner’s head, as well as the tendons driving its hind legs forward. It trotted over the icy muck and yellow strings attached to its head bounced in time to its rapid steps.
The spider grew closer, and Amber grasped at her chest in sudden horror. That wasn’t string on the spider’s head. It was blonde hair and the face beneath ...
Amber stepped back and her heel slipped off the edge behind her. For once she didn’t care and found her balance without thinking about it. She knew the face of the twisted arachnid holding Darsey. It belonged to Lamidia, although only an echo of her beauty remained. She was larger and far uglier than the last time they’d met, but still tragically easy to recognize. Her pretty features hung on an oozing mask that showed glimpses of the brain behind. Her large and lovely eyes had become a horror with the eyeballs sitting behind them like red-veined globes of jelly.
“What has he done to you?” Amber whispered while her stomach churned at the thought. Pierce’s experimentation on Lamidia was clearly ongoing.
The spider ignored Amber to keep her bulging eyes fixed on Pierce. He strode to meet her and placed a quick kiss on her still-blushing lips. “Thank you, sweet one. See her safe to a cell and I’ll bring the other at my leisure.
Lamidia’s eyes rolled toward Amber for the first time. “I can take that one too,” the spider said. Her words were staccato quick, but still conveyed a hint of sulkiness. “No need for you to waste your precious time and energy.”
“Quiet.” Pierce’s roar rang down the freshly scarred valley at their feet. The skin of his face was so taut it was impossible to read his expression, but his fury made Amber’s fronds thrum.
Lamidia hunched over her burden and tried to curtsy. She almost fell onto her pert little nose but stuck out a knee joint to save herself. She froze there, half-prostrated at her master’s feet and seemed to have stopped breathing. Amber didn’t blame her. Pierce was in a killing rage, which seemed to be a gross overreaction. He was furious at the mere suggestion of handing Amber over to Lamidia.
The Devourer’s voice rumbled through the land like an earthquake. “I SEE YOUR TINY MIND. FILLED WITH PETTY LUSTS YET SOMEHOW DRIPPING JEALOUSY. NEVER HARM MY WIFE. THAT IS MY PREROGATIVE AND MINE ALONE.”
Darsey twitched at the furious cry and started struggling in Lamidia’s grip. The spider ignored her, until Darsey freed a fist and punched one of the translucent eyes above her. A stifled screech escaped the spider’s pale throat and the cartilage of her exposed esophagus bobbed in response.
However, that was Lamidia’s only reaction. Dark blood, standing out starkly on her glazed cheek, ran from the eye, but she made no effort to staunch the wound. She stayed stuck in her awkward bow at the Devourer’s feet.
Amber risked a glance at Pierce. He stood and watched Lamidia bleed, while his smile grew a single hitch at a time. A minute later he was grinning and leaned over to touch Lamidia’s face. He gently wiped the blood away ... and stored it in his com.
Lamidia shuddered at his touch, but not in horror. She leaned into his hand and sighed when he drew back.
Amber had to fight off a fresh urge to vomit. Everything about that relationship was toxic. Darsey started struggling again, but Pierce hit her on the top of the head with the side of his fist and she slumped into silence. Lamidia giggled and Pierce patted her cheek.
“No need to thank me, long legs,” he said. “The punishment was less than she deserved, but I’m not done with Darsey yet.”
“Soon though?” the spider-hag asked, although her gaze shifted to fix on Amber.
Pierce growled and snapped upright. “Silence. Don’t question me. Do as I ordered and mediate on how to hold your tongue while you do so.”
Lamidia jumped sideways, dragging Darsey with her easily enough, despite the unconscious woman’s limp weight. Another leap carried them off the ledge. Amber stood there, gripping her hands to keep from slashing out uselessly, while her friend was bundled away toward the iron altar.
She’d failed.
Again.
Everyone was lost.
Again.
The thought was impossible to process. When Pierce gripped Amber’s elbow and steered her away, she didn’t resist.