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The atmosphere in the lab had changed since I’d been there. There were fewer Thorzi around, and those I passed on the long hall back to the lab looked harried and afraid.
There, near the glowing blue tubes, I found Crux hunched over a panel, murmuring to himself. There were tubes in front of him. Samples I could imagine him taking from the other humans.
I wondered if any of them had been as affected as I had. It was scary, but was I being overly sentimental, or was it basically the same thing as having a wank rag?
Nobody’d said anything to me about it, and hopefully Crux hadn’t had a chance to get to everyone, but I’d learned that people didn’t always talk about the things that hurt or scared them. Didn’t mean they weren’t affected.
He didn’t even notice I was standing there, too slight, too human, beneath his notice.
“Crux.”
His head snapped up, and he narrowed his blue eyes at me.
They were nothing like Vorian’s warm sapphire orbs, but sharp and cold as ice.
“What do you want?” His lip curled as he looked me over, the new silks and bright colors, like he knew as well as I did that I didn’t belong in anything so nice.
I turned my chin up. “I’m here for what’s mine. The child you’re creating from—from my sample. And Vorian’s. I want to stake my claim to it and see that it’s safe.”
Crux sneered, but it only took one brief flick of his attention to the tube beyond me, where a small, bean-sized creature grew, for me to turn.
There it was. It was nothing, yet. And everything to me.
Because Vorian had chosen me, and we wanted this future. And I’d be damned if I were leaving it in Crux’s hands to decide if and when that happened.
Breathless, I stepped closer to the tube, touched the surface of it. I didn’t know if it was glass or some kind of thick plastic, but it wasn’t warm. It didn’t feel like anything.
I’d imagined the thing growing inside would give some kind of shiver, sensing me near. It didn’t. And somehow, the idea I clung to didn’t require it to do anything at all. It was mine. Ours.
“Hey there,” I whispered.
Crux scoffed. “It cannot hear you. It is nowhere near that developed.”
Didn’t matter to me. I pressed my palm against the tube.
“I would like them moved to the palace. Immediately.”
One of those low rumbles sounded from Crux’s throat. “I am the Progenitor. I decide where the progeny of Thorzan develops and how.”
I spun toward him, ready to argue, to claim I was friend of the prince, of the queen. That he had no power at all over me anymore. None over Vorian.
But before I could so much as open my mouth, one of the other Thorzi in the lab interrupted us with a short, fearful sound. “Sir, we’ve intercepted communication from Prince Kaelum’s ship to the palace.”
“And?” Crux demanded.
“They have found the warrior Jax and his human companion. They are returning to the palace... The Zathki are with them.”
Crux hissed curses so intricate that my interpreter implant couldn’t make sense of any of them. His hand slammed on the console, a whoosh of air escaping some of the tubes before the lights started flashing.
“Pack what you can,” he commanded his assistants. “We’re leaving.”
I put myself between Crux and the tube that he’d put my sample into, the one I’d sneaked Vorian’s sample into. “This one’s mine. You can’t take it.”
Crux bared his teeth at me, but I didn’t know if it was the clothes, or the fact that I wasn’t the kind of person he expected to stand up to him, but a second later, he scoffed and spun away.
“Keep it,” he spat. “See if you can keep the tube viable without my help.”
He left me behind with plenty of the technology, but he was right—I didn’t have a single idea what to do with any of it.
