Now wasn’t the time. But I felt the beginning of something inevitable to unravel.
Even if I couldn’t remember the past… I was starting to believe in the future.
Iknew Daphne was exhausted, but there was no time for rest. The nictas seemed to have been spared from the blast of the weapon, thank the gods for small favors. We mounted as soon as enough of my males could handle a nicta, pairing each with one who couldn’t and setting the weaker riders in front—just as I had done with my mate.
I handed her a roll of bread and dried meat, hoping they would tide her over until we arrived at Bantahar. There would be no more stops for us until we were safe behind the city walls.
For the next few hours, we rode in silence. I was still seething over the Renegades’ audacious attack and their mysterious new weapon. It seemed to work on the same principle as the one they had used in their attack on Bantahar, only on a smaller scale. This one hadn’t had the power to destroy walls, or we'd all be dead.
Daphne slumped against me, her even breathing telling me that she had fallen asleep. I was grateful that, secure in my arms on the wide back of the nicta, she would get some decent sleep.
Some of the harder-hit males were coming around and were able to mount their own nictas, which made traveling faster. Slowly, the Ruunum sun began to rise behind the nearing mountains, while the Pyme River swelled alongside.
A sense of unease was growing in my gut, so deep that not even Daphne's presence could staunch it fully, though I found what peace I could in the moment. While she slept, I held her to my heart's content, brushed kisses against the back of her head, and reveled in the softness of her hair. I had missed her for twenty rotations, thought her lost to me until I could finally leave this life to join her in the next. Duty had kept me alive. First, the duty to see Myccael grow into a mature male and become the Vissigroth of Hoerst. No matter what, I couldn't leave my demesne to whatever fate Kennenryn would have bestowed on it with me gone. Without the Kiss of the Dragon, Myccael would have been easy prey for our erstwhile susserayn. Rightfully, Myccael should have been able to take his seat as vissigroth when he turned sixteen, but at that age, he hadn't been the male for it yet. So I waited. Unfortunately, Myccael hadn't seemed to want to grow out of his foolish, youngling rotations; rotation after rotation passed, and I was stuck, heartsick for my querilly, who was waiting for me on the other side so we could be reborn and reunite.
Then fate once again interfered a few rotations ago by bringing my daughter Thalia back. At her arrival, Myccael finally grew into the male he was always supposed to be—and so much more. I could have finally stepped back, but with Myccael being the new susserayn, Hoerst still did not have an heir. That wasremedied with the birth of my grandsons, both of whom bore the Kiss of the Dragon, but they were newborns, and Darryck was busy running his own demesne, the Icelands. I knew Daphne would have never forgiven me for leaving that kind of unfinished business behind. So I waited. Rotation after rotation, I endured the greatest heartache a vissigroth could, and now, she was back.
I brushed a gentle kiss across her sleeping brow. I didn't even mind any longer that she had no memory of me. What I saw a few hours ago—the look she’d given me, the way she’d clung to me—gave me hope that our love could regrow from nothing if necessary. It had before, and it would again.
It had taken time for it to grow then, too. At least it had for her. She was understandably distrustful of the male allied with the invaders of her city. She never said anything, but I knew in the beginning she thought I was just being nice to get her to go to bed with me. And maybe I was. I honestly can’t remember my exact intentions. Only that, from the moment I saw her in the clutches of Kennenryn's dragoon, I knew she was mine. Mine to take care of. Mine to protect. Mine to keep. I wanted to kill the male for daring to touch her, but her presence had stopped me. Instinct told me that she would have run like a frightened animal had I killed him. So instead, I chased him off, determined to have it out with Kennenryn once and for all over what his dragoons were doing to the cities we saw fall.
Kennenryn may have been the lesser evil when compared to Susserayn Groyk, but a lesser evil was still evil. He’d been outraged to discover I mated Daphne, a human—a lesser being, to Kennenryn and his ilk—but there was nothing he could do about it, or so I thought. I’d underestimated his evilness. A mistake that had caused Thalia's abduction and cost Daphne her life. But it had also given me a son.
I inhaled Daphne's scent as I leaned forward to smooth some of the wisps of her hair brushing against my skin. It was a cheap excuse to touch her more, but I wasn't above it.
The sun rose higher, and the nictas were getting tired. They were resilient animals, but they hadn't gotten a full night's rest last night, and we were going faster than we normally would.
"Mallack, look," Korran, who had the best eyesight a warrior could want, pointed forward.
I had to narrow my eyes to see it, but once I did, I knew what it was. The magrail. I had forgotten how far they had already come. Despite my newfound misgivings, it was a welcome sight, as it would be a safe spot for a rest.
Even from that distance, though, the look of it unsettled me. It rose out of the earth like a silver serpent coiled across the foothills. It was sleek, and it glinted under the pale rays of the Ruunum sun. The rail itself wasn’t like the crude tracks the humans used back on Terra—Kyra had shown me pictures. These were forged from tempered mytrillium, which hummed faintly with a low, rhythmic pulse. A resonance you could feel in your bones if you stood too close. The pylons that supported the rail curved like branches from old-growth trees, etched with symbols in both human script and Leander engineering codes. Half-artifact, half-infrastructure.
It was functional. Elegant—and wrong.
Beside the main track, the work site stretched like a hybrid battlefield, part stone and wood staging yard, part alloyed scaffolding and hovering drones. Crates were stacked in neat formations, some bearing the seal of Bantahar’s city council, others smudged with symbols I didn’t recognize. Males insimple tunics hauled cables and slates, working side by side with technicians in sleek, armored suits manipulating palmtops and plasma welders. They wore visors that flickered with light every time they blinked. Steam hissed from somewhere down the slope. A low whine followed, and then the sound of magnetic alignment sifted through the rail line. The magtrain was approaching, probably still a few leagues out, but near enough to engage whatever mechanisms worked it.
I shifted Daphne in my arms as she stirred, her brow furrowing slightly at the sounds. She didn’t wake. I hoped she wouldn’t, I wanted to let her rest just a little longer.
Korran brought his mount closer. His expression was set, unreadable. “It’s grown quite a bit in just a few days.”
I grunted. “They’re expanding too fast.”
He nodded. “Too fast… or too desperate.”
Either was a problem.
I remembered Myccael’s council chamber, seeing the model of the magrail. It hadn't given me an uneasy feeling like this. Neither had the real thing when I last saw it on my way to Hoerst, but now Daphne's words echoed in my head:I need to talk to him. He needs to stop the magrail. Now I saw it for what it really was, an alien rail through the heart of our mountain range, built over soil that bled history.
Developing this area, digging into the land in any way, had been forbidden for far longer than we had written history. We had no idea why. Just like we had no idea what we were digging into.
I tightened my grip on the reins and nudged the nicta forward. We crossed a narrow pass above the rail line, high enough to seeit stretch all the way to the base of Bantahar’s walls. Still a few hours’ hard ride from here, but the city loomed behind it. Its dark stone towers rose from the mist like sentinels, watchful and austere. Fire-fed forges puffed in slow intervals from the spires, part smoke, part signal. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the sentries walking the battlements, armed to the teeth, eyes sharp after the last attack.
Bantahar was ready for war. Or expecting it.
Daphne shifted again, her hand brushed my chest, and for one suspended heartbeat, everything else faded. The ache. The blood. The future.
She was here. She was real.
