Tavak turned, both males immediately standing.
“I do not have long,” he murmured to them in Keriv’i. He heard movement and saw Ravu emerge from his sleeping quarters at the sound of the commotion. Inclining his head, he greeted, “Ravu.”
“Where have you been?” he asked, approaching the group. “Valerie did not tell us where you’d gone, just that you were safe.”
“I have been with Evelyn,” he told them truthfully. “Healing.”
“Is that her name then?” Tavak asked. “The human female you have lost your mind for?”
“Yes,” Khiva responded, seeing no reason to deny it. “She is here now, with Valerie.”
“What is happening?” Dravka asked. “If Madame Allegria found her here…it would not end well for you.”
“It does not matter. She has no power over me,” Khiva said. “I am leaving Everton. Tomorrow night. I have come to ask if you will join me, if you will joinus.”
“You have lost your mind,” Tavak remarked.
“We could all leave this place, start again,” he continued, looking at all of them in turn. “We would be free again.” They all looked at him, not saying a word. “Do you not want that? A second chance, to build a life you desire? Do we not deserve to?”
Silence spread over the room and Khiva felt frustration deep in his belly.
“This might be the only chance we have,” he tried again. “You cannot possibly want this life?”
“And where will we even go, Khiva?” Dravka asked.
“A neutral colony called Dumera,” Khiva said. “That is where we will go.”
“You forget,” Ravu said slowly, “that not all of us were like you before, Khiva. We were not the Prince of Firestones. We did not come from wealth. My brother and I were motherless, fatherless. We remember well the bitterness of hunger and how cold it was during the frost season.”
“You would rather remain here because you have food and shelter?” Khiva asked, his brow bones coming together.
“Do not judge us,” Tavak murmured. “You do not know what it was like, on Kerivu. But we remember. Why would we give that security up to go to a colony we do not know, where work is uncertain, and credits might be scarce?”
“Because you are whipped and abused on a regular basis by a sadistic female who sells your body every night,” Khiva growled. “Because you have forgotten what it was like to have freedom and will.”
Tavak’s lips pressed together. He looked at his brother, but neither’s expression changed and Khiva feared that he would never be able to convince them. Not unless they wanted it for themselves. He’d known that even after the destruction of Kerivu, they’d led hard lives, drifting from transient colony to transient colony until Madame Allegria came across them. They’d needed to whore themselves for credits, long before they’d met her.
“There is no choice for us,” Ravu said. “We must stay.”
Khiva blew out a sharp breath and turned his gaze to his other friend. “Dravka?”
He knew his answer even before he voiced it.
“You know I will not leave her behind,” Dravka said softly. “I would never leave her.”
“She can come with us,” Khiva argued.
“She will not leave,” Dravka said, knowing Valerie better than anyone. “Even still, Madame Allegria would notlether leave. She would letallof us go before she let Valerie go.”
Khiva closed his eyes, his shoulders sagging. Deep in his belly, he felt as if he was betraying them all, by leaving.
“Very well,” he said softly, knowing that no amount of persuasion would make them change their minds.
From the pocket of his overcoat, which Evelyn had washed and mended, he pulled the small, translucent card, the glowing numbers showing ‘2700.’ He’d found it there once he’d put it on that morning as they prepared to leave the townhome. He’d figured that Valerie had slipped it inside when she’d brought him to Evelyn’s that night.
He handed it to Dravka, though it was for all of them.
“Take this,” Khiva told them. “Hide it from her. If you ever change your mind, use it.”
