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Chapter 1
“The weather on Janus must agree with you, Rylec.” A sly voice cackled, sending shivers through the darkness at the edges of the council chamber. “You look so… tan.”
Rylec gritted his teeth, but kept his hands behind his back. An hour ago, Rylec would’ve assumed Naccius’s comment was about the layer of dirt and sweat adhered to his skin, but servants had hosed him down after collecting him from the living hell that was Janus. Despite the moon’s harsh sun, he remained as pale as the snowy mountain he was born on. All that had changed were his horns, the crystal texture brightening from white to gold. Though he had lost all privileges when he lost his position, Rylec shot Archlord Naccius a glare darker than the shadows twisting around the blonde male.
The archlord’s smile split into a predatory grin. He crossed one leg rather dramatically and propped an elbow on his chair’s stone armrests. “What do you think, Kratos?”
“That we should kill him.” Archlord Kratos paced the length of the space between the stairs to his seat and Rylec’s prisonerbox. The male’s wings ruffled with his energy, his clawed thumb stroking the hilt of his dagger. “My vote hasn’t changed.”
“We can’t kill him.” Archlord Eliaz’s stern voice brokered no argument. The leader of the Tertian Council—once Rylec’s greatest ally—tapped his jeweled fingers at a steady pace.
Naccius didn’t sit any straighter, nor did Kratos stop his pacing, but both banished their thoughts of murder. Rylec could tell. They had no other reason to look so disappointed. Rylec’s lip twitched. He couldn’t help himself. “How kind, Eliaz.”
Eliaz’s glowing blue eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. The archlord didn’t have wings or horns or claws like most Sollirians, but he had some of the strongest magic Rylec ever had the displeasure of encountering. More than one of their training cohorts had overlooked the glow of his eyes and faint blue tinge of his skin and assumed his Sollirian blood was too diluted for magic.
He had never learned what happened to their bodies.
“Can we get to the point?” Archlord Severin was a hologram in the Tertian Council chambers. He most likely stood on their homeworld, summoned by the Empress of Sollir to interrogate prisoners. The male didn’t have to do much more than stare to bring someone to a tearful confession. His pure black eyes marked him as a soul eater, a rare and terrifying bloodline.
But if Severin was on Sollir then the empress was involved and nothing good would come of Rylec’s return to civilization.
He faced Eliaz. “I agree with Severin. Why am I here?”
The council chamber dropped into a heavy silence. Naccius picked at his sharp nails, Kratos paced faster, and Severin continued his dead-eyed stare. All waiting for Eliaz to deliver the bad news.
Eliaz had saidtheycouldn’t kill him. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t die today.
If the empress decided that was his fate, then so be it. He’d go to his grave without regret. It was all worth it to see her smile, rejoicing in her freedom.
Rylec leaned back in the box, crossing his arms across his broad chest. “Spit it out, Eliaz.”
The archlord tapped the large ruby on his pointer finger. A hologram lit up the chamber, the glow lighting the high-domed ceiling and tinting the white stone a pale blue. Rylec instantly recognized the map of the Sollir Empire. Sollir itself sat next to their system’s sun, but Rylec skipped past it and a dozen other worlds to the edge of the system. Tertia marked the edge of their empire, with Janus as a tiny ball of rock stuck in its orbit.
Rylec cocked a single brow. Why was Eliaz showing him a map every Sollirian child knew? He had spent the last three years on Janus in exile but living on the inhospitable moon hadn’t damaged his memory.
A dotted line appeared, marking a path right above Tertia’s orbit. Eliaz lazily waved a hand at it. “In three hours, an Earthling cruise ship will pass over Janus. I need you to infiltrate the ship and capture four targets.”
Rylec smoothed the crinkle in his forehead the moment after it appeared. “What use does the empress have for Earthlings? Outside of the empire, we’re little more than boogeymen, a half-forgotten nightmare told to scare children.”
“I guess capture wasn’t the best choice of wording.” Eliaz flicked his ruby again. The hologram changed. “Retrieve, then.”
Rylec’s insides went cold. Four faces stared back at him. He didn’t recognize three of them. His entire being focused on the fourth. It wasn’t the same picture they had posted across the empire after her escape. No, she was a few years older, her dark hair longer and the expression in her green eyes sharper, harder. In place of the purple star-maid robes she had always worn on Tertia, she dressed in a tight black jacket and matching pants.The sight of her sparked something he thought was long dead inside him.
With one look—from a splotchy security camera, no doubt—the fire within him flared into life.
Of course it did. She was his wife after all.
Rylec lost the smile playing on the edge of his lip, a growl rising in his chest. “No.”
“The star-marked are property of the Sollir Empire, Rylec. The empress wants you to get them back.” Eliaz stood from his high seat and strolled down the steps to the main floor. “Over the last two years, this operation has smuggled a dozen star-marked from us. They haven’t returned to their homeworlds, and we haven’t located their base of operations, but if enough of them band together, it will become a problem for us. We have the advantage of technology and magic, but we cannot erase the minds of an entire galaxy if they decide to reveal our existence. If the star-marked tell other civilizations about us, they will resist our beacon that makes them turn the other way when they get too deep into our space.” Eliaz stopped before the prisoner’s box and leaned forward. “We will then have no choice but to kill them all and terraform their planets, starting anew. But the empress has assured me she will pluck your star-wife from their ships and torture her to death first.”
Rylec jerked forward with a snarl. “When I see you next—”
“—you’ll have your wife and her newest escapees in chains, ready to be delivered to the Star Temple for re-education.” Eliaz’s glowing eyes held no mercy. He twisted his ring, turning Rylec around right as the doors to the chambers opened. Two guards wearing the star crest of the Sollirian Imperial Crown marched in. Rylec hide his flinch. For years, the crest had shown a vibrant valdi bird, but now the image displayed a white snake, crushing the bird’s body. Suffocated just like his father, the former emperor.
Then two smaller figures entered, fracturing the memory of Oriel’s shattered body. One was an older Sollirian female with stark white wings. The other… a small child in a pale gown, with dark hair, the greenest of eyes, and two crystal-specked, gold horns.
She was the spitting image of her mother.
