Page 67 of Tears of Tungsten
“Oh, we’re well aware of that, Stella,” August murmured.
“Maybe not as aware as you might think,” Jared offered with a sharp smile.
Knox bared his teeth at him and I got the feeling he was seconds away from lunging at Jared and tearing his throat out with his teeth. Brendan grabbed his wrist, keeping Knox from losing control. “We appreciate the warning,” he said. “Please, lead the way.”
As if on cue, the gates of the spire opened. Jared, Stella, and the rest of their team entered the chamber beyond. The other apsids stayed outside. We followed and so did our chimeras.
I honestly thought the apsids would try to keep our mechas from going inside, but they didn’t. I was glad, but at the same time, it worried me. It meant the Great Mother, whoever she was, didn’t think the chimeras were a threat. But then again, if they had been—ifany of ushad been—we wouldn’t have made it this far.
All things considered, the Great Mother was strikingly straightforward. She and Selene were already waiting for us when we arrived. I should have probably paid more attention to the leader of the apsids, but my attention was fully drawn to my beautiful lover.
A little over a day had passed since we’d last met, which was why it struck me to see her so different. I couldn’t have put my finger on why exactly that was. Physically, she hadn’t changed. But there was a certain feeling I got about her that made me feel she wasn’t the same person she used to be.
She didn’t smile when she saw us. Instead, she nodded, greeting us with a coldness that made me ache inside. “Thank you for coming to see me,” she said. “I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
“The alternative was much worse,” I replied. “We’re so sorry, Selene. We shouldn’t have acted the way we did.”
“I don’t think you’re sorry about what you did, but more about me finding out. But that’s okay. I don’t… I don’t think I blame you as much for it as I used to. Gaia only knows I have my own faults. It’s not like I’m entitled to throw stones.”
“I don’t think anything you did can compare to their actions, Selene,” Jared chastised her. “Don’t beat yourself up just because you want to give them a second chance.”
I wanted to punch him in the face, to tell him to shut the fuck up. But at the same time, I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him. He wasn’t wrong. We hadn’t done anything to earn her forgiveness, but it was in her character to discard our actions out of kindness and love. The problem was that we’d come to take that for granted. If we hadn’t, maybe we wouldn’t be here in the first place. Maybe we’d have trusted her more and through that, made sure she wouldn’t be in Gaia’s Haven during the attack. Or better yet, we could have pooled our resources and found a different way, something that didn’t involve us killing innocent people.
We’d done none of that, and now it was too late to take it all back. But despite it, I was still just as selfish as I’d always been and I still craved her like a chimera craved blood and fire. “Selene, you’re right to be angry. We did some pretty horrible things. We had a good reason for it. We needed the power of human lives to bring Charybdis back. But I don’t blame you for finding it repulsive anyway.”
“I don’t think it’s repulsive,” Selene answered. “It’s just… painful.” Her lips twisted, but that wasn’t a smile either, not really. “I’m such a horrible person, you know. I think I wouldn’t have minded it at all if you’d told me about it beforehand, if you had explained. How can I make something like this about me?”
“Because itisabout you,” Knox pointed out. “Everything we do is about you. Surely, you must know that by now, Selene.”
She glanced at him, torn and wretched. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but the Great Mother pressed a hand to her shoulder, stopping her. “Before we go any further, I’m afraid I have to intervene. You’re all probably wondering why we decided to bring young Selene here and keep her with us. Well, it’s quite simple. She’s been chosen as Jar’yd’s mate and the future mother of his children.”
What the fuck? On some level, I’d feared something like this would happen, but I hadn’t expected this woman to dump it on us like that. And I would’ve never blamed Selene for what Jared had done to her, but a child was another thing entirely, a real complication that could do a lot of damage both to her as a person and to us, as a unit.
Knox’s eyes started glowing, the air around him blurring as the beast inside him threatened to come out. This time, Brendan was too distracted to calm him down. “Chosen by whom?” he gritted out. “As far as I know, she had no such plans.”
An aura of tachyon emissions bloomed around August, and I could taste his fury in my mouth, in everything that I was. “We’d just brought up the possibility of having a family with her,” August continued, “and she explicitly told me she had no intention of taking such a step anytime soon.”
“I’m aware of that,” the Great Mother replied without missing a beat. “But things change every day, and our decisions affect the plans and lives of our loved ones. You made a choice when you attacked those innocent Terrans. That doesn’t come without consequences.”
“We’re aware of it,” Brendan shot back, “but we also know it has nothing to do with the relationship between Jared and Selene. If any of you have a problem with us, that’s fine, but don’t use it as an excuse to hurt her.”
“Oh, the last thing I want is to hurt her. We’ve welcomed her on Eos, given her a new home at a very difficult time in her life. We can offer her the answers and acceptance she’d never find on Terra.”
Fury surged through me, as hot and all-consuming as the sun. “Somehow, I don’t think all those gifts will come for free. Tell me, is that the same offer you made my sister? Is that why she left everything and everyone she knew behind?”
“More or less, yes,” the Great Mother replied. “But can you really blame her? She died a horrible death at your parents’ hands. Why would she want to come back to Terra?”
She’d died? How did that even work? She was right there, in front of me, alive and well. Was it an apsid skill? If so, it might explain why our enemies hadn’t really reacted when we’d attacked the other crystallized units. If they could regenerate or be reborn, anything we did was just a minor inconvenience.
But if that was the case, why hadn’t the apsids destroyed Terra by now? A constantly regenerating species would be next to unbeatable, if only because they had an endless supply of soldiers at their disposal. They could have thrown battalion after battalion of crystallized units at us, chipping at our defenses, eliminating us one by one. They might have taken heavy losses in the process, but it wouldn’t have mattered.
“It would have mattered,” the Great Mother said, obviously catching onto my thoughts, “because of your chimeras.”
Ah. I could see where she was going with this now. If chimeras consumed apsids like they’d eaten the Terrans in Gaia’s Haven, the aliens would likely not be able to heal or come back to life. All of a sudden, the invitation to come here no longer looked like such a good thing.
“Don’t worry about me, Pollux,”Scylla said.“If they do attempt to kill us, they’ll only be able to destroy our metallic shells. I think that’s the whole problem and why they’re having so much trouble facing us.”
“You could be right, Scylla, but we’re not on our own turf anymore. Who knows what these people are capable of doing in a singularity?”
