Page 38 of Taken to Heimo
“Yes. And I know one more fallible than most.”
“Where are you going, Svera?” My father calls out to me before I’m even conscious that I’ve moved. I’m back at the door now, tea staining my abaya around the hips.
I wrench it open and step out into the light. “I’m going to crucify her.”
10
Svera
“Mathilda!” I’m pounding on her door. I’ve never pounded on anyone’s door before with my fist and I’m shocked by the sound.
Boom, boom, boom. “Mathilda!”
Mathilda’s house is the highest on the hill, the largestand likely storing all manner of secrets. I want to know all of them.
“Mathilda, open the door!”
Suddenly, it swings open in front of me and I’m caught with my fist suspended in the air. “Svera,” she coos and I jolt at the sound of her voice, so practiced and diplomatic.
“Mathilda, I…”
She cuts me off. “Svera. You’re ahead of schedule. Come in, sweetheart. You look positively frightened, like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
As she sweeps her arm back and ushers me inside, I realize that even though I know her face, I don’t know this woman at all. Clean, smooth skin, long, locked grey hair. Her robe is made from the same nightshade leaves I just drank with my parents. Nightshade tea is expensive enough, but this robe…she should not have this. She shouldn’t have her ownlife.
I catch myself at the thought. It’s one I’ve never had before. A thought that I just shamed Krisxox for — that I rejected him for. I wonder where he is and if, perhaps, I shouldn’t have asked him to accompany me. Mathilda is wearing an easy expression that I know I should not trust. She’s up to something. But what? She is not so stupid as to think she can kill me with the entirety of Voraxia watching.
The soft click of her door latching sounds magnificent. “Do you have a message for me, advisor Svera? I heard the birth was a great success.”
“Unlike so many others that came before.” There. It’s out. I said it.
I hold the paper towards her and she takes it from me. Her dark eyes flit over the page. Still, her serious, concerned expression never wavers. “Oh goodness. I see. You wish to know what anoudis? I’m sure this would not have come up in your dictionaries.”
“I know what that word means and you shame us both by repeating it. What I want to know is where the hybrids are. Their location is the only thing that will save you.”
She just nods at me and her eyes are kind. They have only ever been kind. So is her smile. She sweeps her long locks back over her right shoulder and wades deeper into her home, past the cooking area filled with foods I have never even seen before. And it’s all been right here this whole time. What else is she hiding from us?
“Yes, of course, you know. You know quite a great deal, don’t you?” She opens a door to her left and gestures for me to enter. From where I stand, I can’t see where it leads. “You want to know what became of the hybrids? Come and see.”
“So you don’t deny that you bartered with Bo’Raku, knowing he would sell the babies to the Niahhorru.”
“That is what he said he would do,” she replies, again in confirmation. “But it is not what he did. He sold them to another bidder before the Niahhorru could get to them. They were not so organized as they are now. Rhorkanterannu had not yet risen to unite the pirates. I believe some of them went to the Skyth, while another of the younglings went to Sky, though the two are not to be confused.” She smiles. “No human would want to end up with the Sky, or so I’m told.”
I’ve read about the Sky. They specialize in creating bio-machinery and are said to be the best at grafting cybernetic enhancements onto their so-called patients, often against their will.
“I am disappointed that you don’t see what I was doing, Svera. I am all that stands between us and the horrors of the outside universe.”
“You’re right. What need have we for more horrors when we already have you?”
Her smile falls and a muscle in her cheek ticks. “I don’t expect you to understand. You’re just a child, really.”
“I understand well enough and I want the coordinates to the hybrids so they can be recovered.”
She sighs and shakes her head softly and gestures again to the open door to her right. “All the answers you’ll need are inside.”
“You can’t kill me, Mathilda. You know that, right? Krisxox of Voraxia is my Xiveri mate.” My stomach clenches the moment I speak such a ghastly truth.
After the way I left him, I have the gall to claim him now?I wasn’t even angry with him… Well, I was angry with him, but only because all I could think about were the hybrid kits and his hatred for them. I couldn’t count on him to rise to anger with me on this and even if he did, I couldn’t ensure my parents’ lives against his desire to punish.
