"Saving her? Saving myself? Or destroying us both?” he begins confessing to me. He always does. “Rafe, I had to. When she begs for the neural stimulator, when she cries if we go eight hours without the shrine, when she?—"
"Stop. Just fucking stop, Lorian. Clearly, this isn’t working. We need to talk about solutions, not?—"
"If you hadn’t noticed, dear Brother, there aren't any solutions, but pain for release." He meets my eyes and I’m looking at my mirror image. “We all three must suffer through this."
“We won’t survive it if you act like this. Those new grievances came from your keeping her out of sight these last three weeks. But I know you can’t help yourself!” My composure is gone. “I won't lose you or Eve. But I also can’t monitor you both every second of every day.”
"What are you suggesting? Lock her in a cage and wait? Just hoping we will all come out with our sanity on the other side? Oh wait, we’realready trying that. She has our collar around her neck with our names on it, and it’s not fucking working, is it?"
An alert appears on my IC, and I slam down my drink and pick it up to read it.
I stare at the words until the room spins. “They’re coming for her,” I say quietly. “Tribune Jin Kol convinced the IGC on behalf of the trainers to reopen the case. You gave them three weeks of evidence of Eve not serving her sentence.”
“So the galaxy wants her dead now again, not just owned.”
“No Lorian, they want to crush what she might come to represent,” I say. “Jin Kol is coming here with an enforcement detachment. If she’s here, she’ll be taken without a trial or any chance for an appeal. The IGC’s jurisdiction reaches every Ascendant property. Every station. Every orbit.” I hesitate. “Except one.”
“Father.”
“The IGC won’t touch him; he’s too well connected in the Empire.”
Lorian gives a low, bitter laugh. “No. We can protect her here.”
“How? This isn’t a warship. It’s a hotel. A business. We need to think strategically. Not everything can be won by killing people, Lorian.”
“If we send her to Father, we’ll be sending her to hell and might not ever be able to bring her back.”
Neither of us speak for a minute. We just look at each other.
Then, after a minute, Lorian nods once.
“I’ll arrange the transport,” I say. “And when she asks why, we’ll tell her the truth—that we’re the danger that loves her, and our father is themonster who can keep her alive.”
Just then, the bathroom door opens. Eve enters wrapped in a towel, her lovely brown hair dripping onto her shoulders in a way that makes her look so adorable. I want to go to her, but she freezes when she sees me. For a moment, nobody moves. Then, suddenly, she's running, launching herself into my arms with a cry that breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. “My beautiful rebel,” I say against her wet hair. “I missed you.”
"You're back," she whispers against my neck, and I have to hold back tears.
How can I send her away?
But at the same time, she can’t stay here. They’re coming for her, and even if they weren’t, how long would it be before she and Lorian killed each other in the shrine while I drank myself to death?
"I'm here." I hold her in silence for half a minute, my hands running up and down her back, feeling how thin she's gotten. "I'm here, Eve. Get dressed. We’ll have dinner; you and Lorian need to eat."
She pulls back, studying my face. "Something's wrong."
"Everything's wrong. But get dressed first before we discuss it. Please."
Dinner is agony incarnate. Eve sits between us at our private table, wearing a simple dress that can't hide the marks on her skin from the neural contact points, whip welts, and bruises from restraints she and Lorian indulged in in the shrine. And she knows something terrible is coming. She keeps reaching for us, touching our hands, our arms, as if she can hold on to us through sheer contact.
“You’re not eating,” I say, and hold a full spoon of food up to her mouth. “Open.” She obeys me. And I continue spoon-feeding her with my eyes on Lorian. “You’re not eating either. Would you like me to feed you too? I do have two hands.”
Lorian takes a spoonful of food and puts it into his mouth begrudgingly.
After I’m satisfied they’ve eaten, I take a sip of wine and say, "We can’t continue like this."
"I’m not returning to Earth. I don’t want to forget either of you. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I’d rather be here than on Earth with the feeling that something is missing. I’d drive myself insane trying to figure it out. My heart can never forget either of you."
“I already told you Earth isn’t an option. I mean a different way to serve your sentence until we can get it repealed.”
