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“I take threats seriously, Xanthos.” I look down at him, Orion keeping frighteningly silent. “If you want a deal, you will assure my ship safe passage to Borealis for negotiations. And if you don’t want my Hunter to kill you right now, you’ll promise me that you will nottouchEarth. Do we have an agreement?”
Xanthos’ eyes dart to Orion, then back to me.
“Yes…yes, we have a deal,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “Now let him up, Orion. I don’t think we need to waste our time here any longer.”
As we leave, the gravity of Xanthos’ words starts to sink in.
Now I don’t just have to save Homeworld. I have to save Earth, and everyone on it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RYKER
I stalk through the halls of the Wrath, seeing red.
I wanted to go with Fiona for her meeting with Cressida’s Borean contact, but the others insisted that I’m too hot-headed–that I can’t be trusted not to lose my temper. And I would like to be angry at the others for thinking this about me…
…but they’re right.
I’m undisciplined. My tongue is nearly as sharp as my horns.
And I will slaughteranyonewho threatens my queen.
So perhaps it’s best that I stayed here after all.
I find Taln in the kitchen, standing over a crate full of fresh ingredients he must have picked up from the market. I didn’t even know he’d left the ship, but he looks to be relishing the scent of fresh vegetables as he sifts through the crate’s contents.
“Brother,” he says over his shoulder, not even looking at me.
He may have lost use of his leg, but his senses are as sharp as ever.
“Have you been meditating?” he continues. “You seem angry.”
“Iamangry,” I grunt, slouching to a seat at the table. There’s a discarded bottle of booze on the table—courtesy of Kye, no doubt—and I reach for it to take a swig straight from the bottle, hissing out a breath when the amber liquid burns my throat. “And I…well, I can admit that I’m wrong. Yet that doesn’t seem to matter. When will this rage stop?”
“When you’re older,” Taln chuckles. “We have centuries to grapple with the baser instincts of our people. You’ll recover.”
“But I can’t resist the urge to mate her,” I say. “To be bonded to her forever, inexorably. I wish we’d simply perform the Elixir Ceremony and be done with it all…”
“Do you think that would stop your anger, truly?” Taln says. He turns around to face me, shaking off droplets of water clinging to his knuckles. He’s changed since he was wounded—calmed down; in fact, grown softer. I’m not sure if I prefer this version of my brother or not. “Only you can master yourself, Ryker. No ceremony is going to change that.”
“If Kye had just—”
“It wasn’t Kye that attacked me at the ball on Triton,” he interrupts.
The silence hangs between us, dense, tight, uncomfortable. I groan, shaking my head before tugging on my beard. “I knew you were still angry about that.”
“Not angry,” he says. “Resigned. And perhaps…hopeful that you’ll be able to redirect this energy to the battle ahead. I’ve been reading the old legends, and have found that the goddess Yrsa had a berserker of her own: a Skoll beast, capable of great carnage.”
“But that isn’t who I am.”
“That’s for you to decide, brother.” Taln takes a seat across from me at the big table, leaning back in his seat and extending his bad leg. “All I know is that it isn’t me. And that our queen is going to need a warrior when the battle for Homeworld finally comes.”
I slide the bottle across to him and he drinks deeply from it, then sighs.
“It seems we’re in a predicament,” he says. “One of us with the discipline to do what’s right, and lacking the body for it…and the other a slave to his instincts.”
