Page 45 of Broken Triad

My tears aren’t fake. I wish this was real. I feel so worthless.

Why can’t I be their Fated Mate?

What’s wrong with me? What did that woman have that I don’t?

“Promise me you’ll eat when I’m gone,” he says. My stomach is roiling, but I nod.

“I promise.”

“We’ll come back, Lola,” he says, standing and looking down at me, so powerful yet so broken, looking at me like he can’t believe I exist.

“I know you will,” I say, trying to distance myself from my feelings. “I know you will, Khra.”

He leaves me alone. I open the bag of dried meat. It’s got a smokey smell that makes me feel ill. I’m not sure what it is—it’s too gamey to be cattle, and it’s perhaps one of the elks that live in the deep forests.

It’s night, but I can’t sleep, and after an eternity, I open his sketchbook. The first half of it is filled with sharp, precise drawings, of Colossus, the Arena of the Gods where Aurelian triads challenge each other to duels, of the Royal Palace, with its towering spires. There are quick drawings of ships, some of the ugly vessels of the Toads, then the next page will be a spiral galaxy, each star drawn precisely, thousands of them. I imagine him drawing on the long, long voyages during his hundred years of service, before he deserted and joined the Fanatics.

Later, the strokes are harder, angry, nearly ripping through the page. There is another arena, but this one is like the mirror image of the Arena of the Gods, as if there is a sunken underworld that reflects back the world in twisted fashion, black slabs of rock instead of the pure white marble of Colossus. This is Obsidious, the home planet of the Fanatics. There are barracks and weapons. He uses black ink, sketches of temples with black waters. My heart goes cold as I see the altar.

It is the symbol of everything that I hate. The altars where the Priests do their blood rituals, like the one that let every Aurelian in the universe feel their Mate.

I turn the page quickly, and stop.

It’s me.

It’s the first person he’s sketched. Every one before was buildings and scenes, planets and galaxies.

It’s me, standing in my servant’s robes, dagger in my hand, in the cellar of Paulus’ estate.

This is no foolish girl needing protection. I see him as he sees me, fire in my eyes, knife in my hand against a threat I know I cannot survive. Behind me are shapes of other women, but they are vague and formless, while every detail of me is sketched out like he took a photograph. I can see the beads of sweat on my neck, the way my lips curl back, my teeth bared in a crazed grin as I ready myself for death.

I close the sketchbook, my eyes furrowed. I don’t know what to think.

I take a piece of dried meat, remembering my promise, and force myself to chew.

16

BOLDEN

We pull ourselves up the ladder and into the afternoon sun, our arms burning with exertion from the climb. The sun is old and huge, basking us in its unwelcome warmth, sweat mixed with dirt and burning us. My leg is the focal point of pain. In the closed confines of the tunnels, a Scorp was hiding in wait, staying still and silent while we dispatched its kin. We thought the area cleared when it dove out at me, raking my leg with its claw before I cut its head from its body.

I lie on the hard-packed ground next to the yawning maw of the caverns, waiting for the Reaver. We are a few minutes early.

Each day we take a terrible risk, on the cusp of the war. I am meant to be in battle, a real battle, finally up against my equals, but we have a mission first. We must make Lola whole.

Until then, I cannot meet my destiny. But if we’re discovered before the battle, executed for the kidnapping before we get Obsidian’s call, our story will be cut short before we obtain absolution.

Krazak stands in the sun. It beats down on his marble flesh, but there is no trace of tiredness in his aura or his posture, straight-backed and staring at the ridge where our Reaver appears. Only then does he relax. We weren’t discovered. The Reaver descends on autopilot, jerkier than when he is at the controls, and touches down hard on the grounds, the side doors opening into the hallway. I limp in. It’s fresh and clear inside.

“Med-bay. And use the healing ray. I won’t have us brought before the Interrogators if you limp in with an unexplainable wound.” Krazak barks out the order and strides up towards the cockpit.

He’s frustrated that our second foray into the mines was fruitless. We haven’t found a trace of miners. The three of us knew, instinctively, that they would be most likely to go down the deepest tunnel, but we haven’t had the time to clear it fully.

I limp deeper into the ship, Khra following me, and the doors to the med-bay open to me. Khra offers his arm, but I grunt, pulling myself up on the big metal slab as the AI-controlled arm descends from the ceiling, scanning up and down my body.

“Leg. Ray,” I say, not wanting to speak. Khra sits on one of the chairs in the room, which is sterile and nearly empty. “What are you doing in here? You didn’t get injured.” The long metal arm shines a light on my wound, a light which intensifies, first sanitizing the wound. This part is painless.

“No. I wasn’t slow and sloppy like you,” he quips, as the beam turns blue-black, powered by Orb, sealing together my flesh with burning pain. We’re on an older model Reaver, and the tech is agony, but it will restore my leg as if nothing ever touched it. We could have done the same to the whip marks on our backs, to the myriad scars that mark our chest, but we are not vain like the Aurelians who lie flawlessly by their pools, surrounded by harem wenches, growing old on Colossus.

---