I giggle, and then she giggles, and then our guard laughs even though I’m not sure if Irrans even have pickles. We turn down a few more winding passageways and reach a steamy room with several pools of water sunken in the floor. It’s rustic, barely developed, but there are alcoves filled with rolled towels and jar of different powders.
“The warriors bathe here, but we can keep them out until you’re done.” Delphie nods to Aqen, who takes up a spot outside the door, giving us privacy.
“Before we get into it, I have one question for you,” Delphie says as she takes Lele from my arms. “It’s the only one that matters, really. Do you love him?”
One look at my face, and she can tell I do, more than anything.
“Then everything’s going to work out fine.”
I relax in the hot water while we catch each other up on everything that has happened since we got split up. I leave out the parts where Lyro threatened to kill me and I’m sure she leaves out stuff, too. There’s just too much to cover.
So much to cover that Delphie convinces us to stay another day, and then another one, and then we get word that Ada is on her way to Usuri. She refuses to believe a comm call and wants to see me for herself.
“I’m nervous,” I confess to Lyro a few hours before her ship is supposed to arrive. He’s dressed in one of Nik’s fur-lined svelis to combat the cold, and he looks ridiculously handsome, like a Viking king.
“Don’t be,” he orders. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
He stands next to me, one hand in mine and the other arm cradling Lele, when Ada and her Emperor enter the mountain.
The instant I see my sister, all my nerves vanish. It’s the Ada I remember from Earth, her blue eyes shining beneath an intricate, knotted crown, hair silky and swinging. This Empress is the girl I shared a princess-themed bedroom with. The one who held me and cried when our mom died. The one who gave up her dreams to support me through college.
We run to meet in the middle, as fast as we can bundled in our cold-weather clothes, already crying.
“I’m sorry,” I sob, when we meet each other halfway and fling our arms around each other. “I’m so sorry!”
“For what? Forwhat?” she cries. “I’msorry. I couldn’t find you. I looked everywhere, Lena. Are you okay? The Frathiks didn’t hurt you, did they? They said you were there willingly, but they wouldn’t let me talk to you.”
“I’m fine. You don’t have to be sorry. Areyouokay? Lyro told me what the priests did to you—” My breath hitches and I can’t finish.
Ada nods, the corner of her mouth twitching up when she looks past me and sees Lyro holding Lele. “I’m good. Really good, actually. He saved me, you know. Nobody trusts him, but I do.”
“I do, too.” Then I explain everything, right up through the part where Lele hatched, Harl sacrificed himself to save as many Frathik babies as possible, and Lyro gave me his crown in his spaceship using Elvis’s web.
“You still have that bug?” she asks, eyes crinkling at the corners. I nod and she laughs and hugs me again. “He’s so creepy.”
I shrug, heart soaring. “But I love him.”
Lyro
“IT’S GOOD YOU ARE HERE, brother,” Nik remarks over our daily nomo. It’s been a few weeks, and we’ve settled into a routine where we train and share morning nomo before our mates wake. “My planet is crawling with priests, and I don’t know how to get rid of them.”
“Kick them out.”
He frowns at me. “Where would they go?”
I shrug. I can’t say I feel generous toward priests at the moment. “They would make their way as we all do.”
“Most of them are fine warriors. Shame to waste all that training.”
He’s after something, I’m just not sure what. “You’re terrible at being subtle. Just come out with it.”
He sighs. “You’ll refuse.”
Now I’m curious. Nik isn’t the type to be cowardly with the truth. “Do you have dirt in your mouth? You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Fine,” he snaps. “Delphie and I were invited by Oljin and General Raknu to lead a team of warriors on a mission, and we’ve agreed. We’ll travel to Alcor and Mizar to rescue trafficked people and return them to their home planets. I want you to rule Usuri in our absence.”
My mind goes blank.Rule?
