Page 39 of Tears of Tungsten
I hadn’t been the target of the attack that had ended my life, and I wasn’t the target today either. Even so, I didn’t care about myself. I cared about her. I’d been involved in plenty of operations since becoming a Heliad, and I was well aware that The Grand Judiciary’s disregard for life knew no bounds. If history repeated itself, despite everything I’d done to stop it, I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it.
I desperately tried to find Selene, scanning the village for her unique presence. It didn’t take me long to spot her, but by then it was already too late.
A whirlwind of fire surrounded her, tachyon particles she’d summoned to her aid just so that she’d become visible to her lovers. “Stop!” she cried.
They stopped, as she had hoped, but it did nothing to help Selene. She was already beyond their aid. Blood trickled from her nose and ears, as crimson as her long, beautiful hair.
Selene’s fire blazed out of control. “Brendan!” I heard August Cavallero shout. “Help her! Absorb the tachyons!”
At one point, he’d emerged from the Sphinx and he was trying to make his way toward us on foot. He was too slow.
His advice was pretty useless too, since Cerberus, Scylla and Typhon were all trying to absorb the flame. For unknown reasons, they couldn’t. There was something anomalous about the blaze, a strange power the chimeras couldn’t fight off.
It was Gaia’s magic, twisted within Tartarus’s fire, entangled together like an unbreakable web of energy. It sapped everything and everyone of any ability they might have had to intervene.
“Selene!” Tanya Renard shouted from somewhere in front of me. “Control it. You can do this! Gaia is with you.”
Knox Alexander opened the cockpit of the Cerberus. “Selene! Don’t do this, beautiful.”
Pollux Donadieu emerged from his own mecha, looking as white as a ghost. “Selene, stay with us.”
The Typhon opened as well, and Brendan Chimera joined the rest of his team. The prince was notorious for ability to remain calm and emotionless even in the worst situations. There was no sign of that fabled composure now. He clutched the edges of the cockpit so tightly I expected him to snap his own fingers. “Princess, please!”
Under different circumstances, it would’ve been satisfying. He was panicking. They all were. Pollux in particular was taking it very poorly, which was unsurprising considering the loss of his sister. I’d have deemed it a well-deserved lesson, but I took no pleasure in this. At the end of the day, this wasn’t really about them, but about Selene.
She couldn’t hear them anymore. They couldn’t hear her either. I could, and I refused to allow her to get hurt.
She was so alone, so afraid, so lost. She didn’t want to die, but she had no way out. She’d been overwhelmed by everything that had happened to her lately—not just the attack on Gaia’s Haven, but also my presence and the effect my power had had on her.
I took one step forward, then another. They had yet to see me, but it would happen soon.
Somewhere beyond the wall of fire, Selene mourned the senseless losses in this battle. “Why did this have to happen?”
Why, indeed? It was a question I’d asked myself many times, when I’d been younger and had yet to grow accustomed to the hidden filth of our reality. I wasn’t that person anymore and I’d have liked for her to find out the truth in a different, less brutal way.
But the world wasn’t so kind and my wishes had very rarely been fulfilled. That didn’t mean I’d just give up on her—on the dream I hadn’t realized was so important to me until the Great Mother had told me to follow it.
I was one man, and here, I didn’t have the power I wielded in space. On Mercury, when I’d been close to the sun, the star had fed my unique abilities and had allowed me to immobilize the two chimeras. On Terra, I didn’t have that advantage. But I was still a Heliad, and Selene was one person I wouldn’t lose.
She might hate me for everything I’d put her through at Chimera Academy, but she deserved better than to become a tool in the hands of The Grand Judiciary. I could protect her. I had to.
Plunging into that inferno after her was insanity since I couldn’t be sure what effect Gaia’s magic would have on me. But it was the only way.
“Great Mother,” I whispered to myself, “don’t abandon us.”
Fire blazed around me, as bright and blinding as the sun’s corona. Just like that, my presence became obvious to every single person in Gaia’s Haven.
“A Sun-Dweller!” one of the few survivors of the disaster cried.
“The apsid!” Typhon hissed in fury. “Hatchling, kill him!”
“Stop him!” Knox shouted. “He’s after Selene.”
They weren’t fast enough. I plunged into the flames, hoping and praying that Selene wouldn’t reject me and get us both killed.
She didn’t. For whatever reason, the power keeping everyone else away allowed me to pass. Maybe she instinctively knew that I wanted to help her. Or maybe she didn’t realize that, deep inside, I was just as dangerous as the men who’d disappointed her so badly.
Her question still hovered in the air between us.Why had this happened?It was the easiest question in the world, and yet, I ached when I replied. “Because the world is cruel, Selene. And three-quarters of the time, nothing is black or white. You might think you know who your friends and your enemies are, but it’s all a lie.”
