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But why would he need every single one of the humans? Simple enough: he did not. My father simply hated to lose, much less lose to Kaelum, the living symbol that King Xyren had also taken a human from his care.
“I do not wish my gametes mixed with Kaelum’s human,” I informed him, trying to be as calm as possible. I could not be placating—it came across as disingenuous at best. But I could be calm. Calm was what I did best.
Yes, some called it dead or cold, but Crux had always responded well to it—conversation devoid of emotions. He had no respect for emotions, or people who had them.
He curled up his nose. “No, you want the most pitiful of them. The waif who hid his own disgusting clothes.”
“It was pragmatic of him,” I countered. “His own clothes were not as new or comfortable as the traveling garb.” I suspected there was an emotional reason Beau had left his things, but unlike Crux, I found Beau’s emotions something to notice and learn from. Never to mock.
I would not have wanted to re-dress in his threadbare clothing either. Particularly not when surrounded by people wearing finer clothes than mine, like Ree with her sleek red dress and Genevieve with her silk.
But of course, it was easy for me to see Beau not wanting to be the one person who stuck out in his peer group. The one who didn’t have nice, pretty things. Or loving parents.
Or maybe that was just me.
Crux ignored my defense of Beau and simply marched on. “If the bratty princeling will not return what is mine, I will find another way to end this. Whatever it takes.”
And with that, he marched off into his area of the residence, ignoring me entirely.
For a moment, I considered going back to check on Beau. I dismissed it, though, because now, immediately after he’d dragged me from the room, Crux would be on the lookout. I had to wait. Give it time, let him grow once again comfortable and complacent.
I returned to my room and distracted myself with memories of how Beau’s soft skin had felt against my own, and his sparkling green eyes, unlike any I had ever seen before.
I inspected my skin in a mirror, stripping to look at all of it, too pale and pink for the Thorzi, and too foreign and blue to the humans. My skin soft and human, my eyes frightening and Thorzi. Neither of my parents’ people would ever accept me.
Still, one of my legs was bare of star marks. Would Lyr gift me with an eighth, I wondered, if I braved its light once more? Or would that be too many, and would that be the time it killed me?
More importantly, would an eighth mark make me into something else? Someone worthy of respect? Worthy of his own house?
My mind flashed back to Beau’s tiny room, his whispered words.
“Need you.”
No one had ever needed me before. Never even wanted me. Never thought it important that I had chosen them.
And I had chosen him, and every part of me longed to go back to him. To choose him again. To tell Crux that I would always choose Beau over him.
But how? If I did that, Crux would hurt Beau.
Unless I found it within myself to end it. To stop him for everyone, for all time.
I had tried before, to find the courage to kill Crux.
He hurt my people every day he continued his lies about where the technology he used to create children had come from. If we could somehow make peace with the Zathki, obtain more of their technology, take it out of the hands of one selfish monster and make it common, my people would have a better chance for survival.
But of course, it would have to start with the end of Crux. And then ignorant Thorzi warriors who couldn’t see the subtle differences between strength and stubbornness would refuse peace with the Zathki—a people so like our own that we were practically the same. A people we should be working with, not fighting, like angry zintari fighting over a kill.
Unlike zintari, Thorzi and Zathki were not solitary creatures. They worked best in herds, and they needed to remember that, before the Zathki starved to death and the Thorzi died out.
But then, who was I to tell them what to do, how to live? Only bastard Vorian, son of Crux.
I waited two days to visit Beau again, as much as I wanted to go to him every moment, worried about Crux and his treatment. It would not serve Beau to bring any more of my father’s attention down upon him. It would not protect him.
It was an ugly surprise, though, when I found the door to his too small cell locked from the outside. I glanced up from the flashing blue light on his panel to the rest of the hallway. All locked. Crux had started locking the humans into their cells.
Was it because of his increasing anger at having the human Lucas taken by Kaelum, or because of finding me with Beau?
I shook my head. As much as it did matter, whether I had been the cause of this captivity, there was nothing to be done about it now. I could only see to Beau, make sure he was not injured.
