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He placed the key against the guard’s belt, like it had always been there.
He’d officially gotten rid of all the evidence. Whatever detectors the Xanashis had in their palace had been paused from the moment Taryn had landed. Once he’d be a safe distance away in space, they would reboot back up.
A fail-safe plan to keep the Xanashis safe–and discover what the Zavorians were really after.
“It’s done,” Tarryn said as he slumped in his seat on the ship, directly facing Zandyr’s. The Ambassador–and one of Taryn’s closest companions–was busy checking his holo-projector with a quickly deepening frown. “The Zavorians got to the Xanashis. The scrambling device is going to work for a few mons, but we can’t trust it forever. We need to find out what they’re doing and why.”
Zandyr clenched his jaw tighter. His energy darkened.
“It wasn’tthatbad,” Taryn said. “Sure, the alarm went off a few minnans earlier than it was supposed to, but we got what we wanted and nobody tried to shoot our ship down. I say it was a success.”
“I agree,” Zandyr said, sounding distracted.
Taryn narrowed his eyes. “Did the Xanashis try to convince you to renegotiate the peace treaty? Again?”
“Yes. They didn’t succeed. Again.”
“Then why do you look like you want to incinerate something?”
Zandyr’s eyes slashed to Taryn’s. “Because our scientists say they’ve found a cure for the Blaze. And you won’t like it.”
3
TARYN
“It sounds, like the Terrans say, too good to be true.” Taryn swirled the deep green vinnor in his glass, already knowing he wouldn't take a single sip.
He never did.
But clinking one last glass with his companions before any big mission had become a tradition. It had started during their first off-planet mission, one of the few they’d all been on. All four of them, Ryker, Kyren, Zandyr, and Taryn, hadn’t gotten along at first, to be honest.
To be even more honest, they’d hated each other on sight. The four of them had grunted and slit their eyes even further on the ship. They were young, horns not fully grown yet, and all of them wanted to prove themselves.
Kyren, heir to the Quillon throne, had needed to be escorted to Xanashi and his grandfather, the great Rhynon–may the Nines care for his Light as he’d cared for his planet–had insisted he leave with a squadron of guards, but also Quillons his own age. Ryker had been chosen because he excelled at ninka combat. Zandyr was already proving he had a diplomat’s tongue. As for Taryn, nobody could quite figure out how he managed to always have information he shouldn’t have–and nobody had found out yet, either, until he’d told them himself.
Rhynon had been wise.
That trip had been a diplomatic disaster. A Xanashi sandstorm had separated their ship from the squadron’s, and the four of them had ended up in a confrontation with a vispa nest they definitely lost. By the time they’d collapsed back on board their ship, all of them bruised and blistered, Ryker had been stung, the toxin turning his silvery-golden skin black near his shoulder.
With no supplies and the ship’s comm board unresponsive, they’d lost hope. Then Ryker had asked them to drink one last glass together, as he’d seen his father and his companions do.
None of them had liked their first bitter, burning taste of vinnor. Taryn had hated it; not surprising, with his ancestry.
Mere minnans later, the squadron had found them.
Ryker had been saved, and was now the feared Seventh District Commander.
Zandyr’s left horn had been patched up, and now gleamed whenever he charmed and controlled the other ambassadors.
Kyren hadn’t lost his left leg as they’d all feared, and now ruled Quillon even better than his ancestors.
As for Taryn, he still had a faint scar across his stomach where that vispa had tried to disembowel him, and he still stayed away from any being with wings. But he’d become Quillon’s best-kept secret–and its most powerful.
Being on the brink of death had forged an unbreakable bond between the four of them.
They were more than companions. They were family. Brothers. Not created through Light, but through the struggles they’d all shared.
And these brothers wouldn’t try to assassinate Taryn in his sleep.
