Page 112 of Sway's Peace


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“No, that’s perfectly fine. It’s what they’ve done with it that’s warped.” Loyalty made another one of those careless gestures. “Then again, maybe it’s just my personal belief system meeting and clashing against theirs.”

Sway stared at him. Confused. He’d also been thrown out of the Song, condemned by everyone in it. Yet, he was completely unaffected.

“They would call you a monster too,” he said, staring at the xenom male. Trying to get a reaction. Wondering why he wasn’t getting one.

“I imagine they do,” Loyalty nodded once.

“You don’t care.”

He laughed. “Why would I?”

Sway didn’t have an answer for him. It seemed so obvious that it shouldn’t be something he had to explain. And as such, he couldn’t actually form a logical explanation as to why.

Loyalty gave him a calm smile. “To my way of thinking,they’rethe monsters.”

Sway reared back, stunned. That was just… wrong.

No one considered farasie monsters. His people were isolated specifically for the purpose of self protection, because everyone in the universe knew that a farasie wasn’t going to harm you, even if you harmed them. They might be called fools, easy, weak, even cowardly. But everyone would feel safe with a farasie.

To call his people monsters…

It just made no sense.

“You know, my people, we value family above all things,” Loyalty said, leaning his head back, looking up at the ceiling of the burrow. At the long claw marks petrified into the dirt from whatever had created this space. “I know the rest of the universe sees us as these terrifying parasites. And, in a way, I can’t even argue. Weareparasitic.” He held up his hand, looking at the way his veins moved under his flesh – something fully in his control. “My prime body can survive on its own, but it’s very weak. Very vulnerable. And I have to take over the reproductive machinery of another species in order to create my gametes and produce my own young. Something has to die in order for me to live.

“But that’s true for all species, isn’t it? Everything has to eat something else. Even your people. For all that they’re vegetarian, they still have to kill and eat plants to survive. Life survives on life. I’m different because I don’t just eat the things that die. I have to subsume their form and that is too much for the sapient universe to forgive. It’s monstrous.”

Sway said nothing. Loyalty dropped his hand back to the ground, grinning at him.

“But that’s normal to me. I don’t see a problem with it. My previous body was a six-legged beast from my home world. I didn’t possess vocal cords, so I couldn’t speak, but my people’s language is movement based anyway, so it didn’t matter. I didn’tconsider taking that body to be any different from taking this one. The only real difference to me was that I had to pay the owner, while I just took the last one.

“But regardless of what body I claim, your people consider what I do, how I have to live, to be such a horrific crime against nature, I had to be forced out of their city. Even when they knew you and Grace would protest, they didn’t care. They considered it more righteous to lie to you about what happened to me than to tolerate my presence even a moment longer.”

“I’m sorry,” Sway said, wincing. “I should have looked for you. I shouldn’t have believed the lie that you just went out hunting.”

“It’s fine. Honestly, it’s not a bad lie.” Loyalty chuckled. “Probably would have happened if I would have felt safe leaving you there alone.”

“Huh?” Sway blinked. That wasn’t what he was expecting him to say. “What do you mean?”

“You know. All this.” He gestured out the entrance of the burrow. Not indicating so much to the forest, but to everything that led to them being in the forest.

But that just deepened the furrow in Sway’s brow. “You say that like you expected this.”

Loyalty made that non-committal motion again.

“Youdidexpect this? But…”

“I told you. I met this group before.” Loyalty looked out the open hole. “I was in my previous body then, so I couldn’t talk. I guess they must have assumed I had the understanding of a beast as well, because they were quite free with their opinions. Of me. Of the universe. Of people like you. I don’t meanmurderers. I mean specifically farasie that break their pacifism. They look down on your kind more than anyone. They would consider you murdering someone to be worse than me doing the same. They expect it from me. But you’re supposed to be one of them. You defying their ideals, proving that farasie aren’t naturally, biologically superior and pacifistic, is cause for hatred.”

“You came here with me because you knew they would turn on me,” Sway muttered. “That’s why you insisted on coming. Even though your mate is waiting for you.”

Loyalty chuckled. “She always said I had more guts than brains. My people earn our names, you know. Bet you can guess how I earned mine. But I can’t help how I feel. Maybe it’s because the universe sees me as some kind of monster, but I want to treat the people who are kind to me even better. Like I can prove, at least tothem, that I’m not one.”

They lapsed into a long silence as Sway contemplated his words.

Honestly, he expected that kind of loyalty from his crew. The people he’d escaped Rik-Vane with would have stayed with him as well if they’d had the same suspicions as Loyalty. If they knew that his kind would have turned against him like this, they would never have left.

But that was his crew. Males he was bonded to closer than brothers. Males that he would entrust his life to at any time – and had in the past.