I do my best to make them happy, because if I don’t, it’s only worse. But I can tell that I’m dying. It’s slow, but it’s still death. Today I can barely make my hands and feet move even when they whip me.
I thought that at some point I would reach a maximum amount of pain. But it turns out that there are so many kinds of hurt. More kinds than there are notes in the musical scale. And they don’t combine into a single melody, they layer like chords, louder and louder, impossible to ignore.
There’s the chime of thirst and hunger. There’s the throb of open wounds. There’s the ache of sore muscles and broken bones. There’s the scream of dehydrated cells. The stab of a headache, the dull squeeze of a sad heart. The scorch of humiliation. And those are just the ones I’m feeling right now as I stumble and fall and taste dirt.
The whip stripes my legs, and the collar around my neck chokes me as I’m dragged in one direction. I try to get up, butI just can’t. I know in my heart that this is the day that I die. If my body doesn’t give up first, my captors are going to decide I’m not worth hauling around from planet to planet.
I don’t care at this point. What’s one more note in the symphony of pain? But some animal part of me still is trying to avoid the inevitable. So I drag myself across the powdery dirt floor, desperate to put slack in the leash.
Hands grab me.
I cringe, trembling, only vaguely aware that these hands are different. They’re larger. The claws don’t bite into my skin. The rhythm of their gait as they carry me is different.
My neck hurts with the effort of holding up my head, so I lean into the stranger’s chest. My eyes hurt, so I close them.
Chapter 4
Oljin
She’smine. I found her. My heart exults even though my mind swarms with worries.
I still want to kill those frixing Mizarans, but my fury recedes as I reach the bottom of the cliff and head away from the spaceport into the grasslands. I don’t have time to be angry or seek revenge, not when my queen is in my arms.
I don’t dare take her to the priests, not like this. She’s hurt and sick, light as a baby braxa, her bones as fragile as tili stems. No one will touch her but me, not even with their eyes. Not until she’s strong enough to stand beside me. I cradle her to my chest and run in the direction of Pravil’s family home, deep in the outlands. The grass seems to part before me like Alioth herself is guiding my way.
I don’t need priests to tell me that my fated queen is in my arms. I know it in my blood. My hot, busy blood. It yearns for her, begging me to take her. To mark her with my teeth, to claim her with my cock.
I push away the thought as soon as it enters my mind. She’s so vulnerable, and I am the only protection she has, so R’Hiza take me if I damage her in any way. I stroke the soft wisps of her unruly mane and press my lips against her scalp, and a shudder ripples through her. Is she frightened of my teeth? Does she think I’m taking her somewhere to hurt her?
I slow my steps so I can focus on her face rather than the terrain. She blinks her lids open, but her wide, green-and-whiteeyes are unfocused, staring somewhere behind me. I’m not even sure she’s aware of me. I’m nothing to her, and she’s everything to me.
Though I’m sure she doesn’t understand me, I make her a vow. “They won’t hurt you again. No one will. I swear to you, Alara, I will protect you with my life. You have my loyalty and devotion above all others, as long as I live. I will never give you cause to fear me. I will learn your ways and treasure our differences and shape my life to yours. Our path may be difficult, but we will find the blade’s edge to balance on together.”
At my words, she melts into my chest, making my breath catch. She trusts me. She doesn’t know my name, and I don’t know hers, but our souls recognize each other.
I run through the night and into the next day. In the deepening afternoon, the sound of braxas lowing reaches my ears before the grasslands abruptly give way to a short-cropped field. The valith where Pravil grew up, a large dome built of earth and wicker, sits at the center. Next to it is a bathhouse and another outbuilding that houses a modest braxa herd. A woven fence surrounds it all to contain the animals.
When I approach the gate, an older female in a white headscarf startles in her seat by the door. She rises with a cup of nomo in her hand. “Oljin, Prince of Irra, is that really you?!”
I’ve met Pravil’s mother many times before. I often accompanied him home during our years of friendship as greenlings. Kind and hardworking, she always welcomed me as though I were one of her own children. “Greetings, Saana. Pravil sends his prayers for your good health.”
“I’m honored by your visit.” She dips into a low bow, almost spilling her nomo. “I regret I don’t have hot food to offeryou. I don’t cook as often as I used to now that Garyth’s ghost is gone.”
Pravil’s father died two years ago. A severe male with many injuries from his saidal hunts, he was never very warm to his family. Still, I can see a new kind of loneliness in Saana’s eyes. She misses her mate, however cold and stoic he might have been. “May your ghosts reunite in Alioth’s light.” It’s a trite phrase that comes to my lips automatically, but she seems comforted by it.
“You must stay the night,” she insists, motioning to invite me inside. It’s only then that she seems to notice I carry someone in my arms. Her mouth falls open. “Goddess, who is that?Whatis that?”
“I don’t know, but I hoped you could help her,” I say, trying to keep the urgency for my voice even though every part of me is straining to fix this tiny, broken, foreign female.
Saana is known in the outlands for her healing skills. Though untrained, she has an extensive knowledge of medicinal plants developed during her years of caring for the local braxa herds. She patched me up more than once when Pravil and I were apprentices and took our sparring sessions too far.
She sucks in air through her teeth. “Bring her inside, quickly.”
I follow her into the dome house and lay my Alara on the pallet Saana quickly makes up for her. The circular room is just as I remembered it, with a central hearth for heating and cooking, the living areas around the perimeter. Small, arched windows look out into the grasslands. Bundles of dried herbs and grasses hang from the walls and ceiling, imbuing the space with their fresh, pleasing scents.
“Will she wake?” Saana asks, already moving to a set of shelves where vessels hold even more herbs and spices, along with measuring and grinding implements and bottles of oil. “See if you can rouse her, and if she will drink, give her water.”
I kneel beside my Alara and smooth a lock of her hair from her face, seeing it for the first time. Under a layer of dust, she has soft skin, the color of tili stalks after they’ve been dried and seasoned. Her cheekbones are flushed a deeper shade, and her wide mouth is a rosy plum.
