The House had deemed our Calling complete, and Maalik had been unable to take any vengeance for Elex’s defiance. The religious sects had final say on Callings, so there was not much Maalik could do, and he had learned his lesson early about complaining to the King.
They had no choice but to return us to the Legion. Our recovery had been slow, but eventually we had been medically cleared, only to have the Machi Thanatos announced.
When Maalik led the soldiers who invaded our safe house in Heraklion, Elex had made good on his promise to rip Maalik limbfrom limb with his power, but it had broken something in him for a while.
I swallowed hard and turned my gaze away from the approaching wharf as I remembered. I had seen many, many horrible things in my life, but what Elex had done to Maalik made me shudder. The sounds Maalik’s body had made when Elex had pulled his arms out of their sockets with his power turned me green every time I remembered it. Maalik had been a bastard and had deserved to die, I just didn’t know if Elex would be able to recover from being the instrument of his demise.
I saw a shadow approach from behind us and turned to see Helios approach my brother.
“You okay, kitty cat?” Hel purred in Elex’s ear, taking his hand as we all stood looking at the city. It felt like an extremely private moment, and I squirmed in embarrassment. There were just some things I didn’t need to know about my brother’s relationship with his partner.
Helios was a Soma, one of the shape-shifting guardians of Mageia. Or they were supposed to be, anyway. According to Hel, that had been their role for thousands of years until the Elusian King of Alexandra figured the best way to stay in power was to enslave the Mageians. In order to do that, he had to eliminate the Mageian Tesseris ability to block the Elusian power of Suppression. That ability could only be unlocked by Bonding with a Soma.
As had happened with my father, Elusians caused unimaginable pain when they Suppressed Mageian ability to use magic. A Tesseris Mage could block the Elusian Suppression, which I’d seen in action when Elex and Hel had rescued us all from the invaders.
Alexandrian society had become reliant on the power of Mageians to function. Somas, however, had been deemed too dangerous to manage, and were considered expendable. No Somas, no Tesseris Mageia, no ability to defy the Elusians. To bury the knowledge of Somas, Alexandria had discovered a way to identify Somas genetically and begun a systematic genocide of all Somas under the guise of the Shaking Plague. My two younger sisters had died of the plague and their blood lay on our father’s hands.
Everyone knew that the plague was an endemic fever that typically attacked kids under the age of five, but it had become increasingly deadly in the last two hundred years. What we hadn’t known was that the plague hadn’t actually become more deadly, but the Elusians had developed a blood test that identified children who would become Somas, and they had begun systematically killing them. Kids. They were killingkidsto keep them from becoming Somas and prevent the next generation of Tesseris Mageia from developing their powers when they bonded.
Their plan had mostly worked, too. They had eliminated the knowledge of Somas from most of the known world as the Alexandrians conquered country after country. The King locked down the spread of knowledge in areas he controlled, crushing any whisper of Somas. Medical staff were taught that the euthanasia of children identified with the Soma gene was a mercy, that they would die in agony otherwise.
Since the resistance in Greece had been crushed about twenty-five years ago, only Northern Roma and Illyria remained truly free from Alexandria and Illyria’s territory had been steadily shrinking.
Greece had formed a treaty with Alexandria that had given Alexandria the throne in everything but name. The Greek Princess Eurymenye, my mother, had been given to the current leader of Alexandria, King Cyrius Alexus, as a wife and hostage. Yep, that was good ol’ Mom and Dad.
Elex and I were brothers. Half-brothers, technically, but we didn’t make that distinction. He’d been born to an Illyrian slave, whereas I’d been born to the Queen.
I had other siblings out there, somewhere. At least, I still hoped they were alive. We had found out that our oldest brother, Davidus, had been the first Mageia that had partnered with Hel to free Mageians sent to the Machi, though we’d only learned it a few days ago. Hel had said he was somewhere in Illyria but hadn’t spoken to him in years.
There were other kids out there too, most of them younger. We knew that Elex’s twin, Erix, had been killed by Maalik while trying to escape when he realized he had Mageian powers.
The spray of the water brought me back to the present. I watched as Hel squeezed Elex’s hand and I had to fight down a surge of envy. It wasn’t that I had been interested in Helios at all. I mean, sure, he was beautiful even with his scars, but what I envied most was the connection they seemed to have. Despite everything my soul still longed for someone who would love me for me, not for the crown I would have worn.
As a boy I’d been isolated from everyone except my siblings. As a young man I’d learned quickly that anyone who expressed interest in me was probably looking for a way to get to my father. In the Legion…After what Maalik and Aurelius had done it had taken me a long time well to feel clean. While I’d never admitted to Elex what had happened I think he sensed it anyway. Let’s just say he was alittleoverprotective. Not that relationships were a real thing in the Legion. Nor had I been that interested.
Living with Maalik those last few years had been torture, in every sense of the word. He had made my life a living hell with his unhealthy attraction to me. He’d nearly raped me a couple of times, only for me to escape. At least, until I was thrown in the dungeon. None of which I had ever told Elex, because it would, one, make him crazy with fury, and two, he would feel that he had somehow failed me or should have protected me. He looked tough on the outside, but inside my brother was a marshmallow.
I looked at him as he leaned back into the embrace of his Soma. His hair was longer than I had ever seen it, the bright sunlight almost gleaming off the shock of white among his black curls. He and Erix had been almost mirror images of each other, Erix’s hair white with a black stripe, both of them with startlingly blue eyes.
Hel had gorgeous wavy blond hair and beautiful silver eyes. His golden hair hung down covering the right side of his face. He had been burned badly when he had survived an attack that had taken the life of his best friend and almost-Bonded, Orion. When we had first met him, he had insisted on hiding his face behind his hair or the hood of his jacket. He’d slowly started feeling more comfortable with us seeing his scars, but coming home seemed to have reignited some of his self-consciousness.
Hel had been captured by the Elusians and transported to the Machi to be just one more obstacle for the Mageians to overcome. The Elusians had expected him to battle the Mageia in the Machi Thanatos and end up killing or being killed himself. That had been a major miscalculation. Instead of killing Mageia, he’d allied with us and arranged for ships to spirit the Mageian competitors to his homeland. Over the last few years he had rescued almost five hundred Mageians.
Hel hadn’t told us a lot about his life in Illyria other than the general political structure but his younger adopted sister, Betts, had shared enough to let me know that it wasn’t necessarily a paradise. They had their problems with bigots and assholes. Hel hadn’t been treated kindly when his Mageia had died. In Illyria, it was expected that a Soma would die rather than let their Mageia come to harm. Hel’s only crime was having lived by some fluke of fate.
“You okay?” Elex asked.
“Just worried,” Hel answered. “I still don’t understand why Polemos wanted me to come back so urgently. The work I was doing in Heraklion was important.”
We both nodded.
“I’m sure he knows,” I said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have sent a whole team of Somas to replace you.”
The arrival of his replacements had been a bit of a shock and had actually delayed our departure a little, since Hel wanted to make sure they had someplace safe to stay and our original base had been compromised. We were pretty sure they wouldn’t hold any more Machi in Heraklion, but who knew? The Alexandrians might surprise us.
Betts was the captain of theChrysalis, the ship that was bringing us to Illyria. She had brought word that the war leader of Illyria wanted Hel to return and sent a squad of unbonded Somas to replace him. No one knew exactly why he wanted Hel to come back. Hel said he had never met him. He had been named War Leader a few years back and the man was the reason Illyria had managed to avoid being completely overrun, so he got what he wanted.
“I wonder if he just wants to speed up the process of matching Somas to Mageia,” I said.
