“You cannot,” they curtly retorted, and it was all I could do to not unleash my tendrils again, intel be damned.
“What happened to your sibling?” Micah quietly asked, and when I sharply glanced at him, I saw my mate watching the Hydrassian withempathywritten all over his gorgeous face.
Ugh.
As usual, my mate had picked up on an emotional element to the conversation I’d been too focused on my end goal to notice.
Why is it so hard to human?
“Uuktar was abducted many moons ago,” Uulvin replied, dropping their gaze. “By theLacertus.”
“WHAT?!”I bellowed, and Pedro yelped, scurrying back into the baby sling on Micah’s lap.
My outburst earned me more judgment from the Hydrassian. “Yes, well, why pay for services when you can simply enslave your own personal seer instead?”
I need to tell Honnor!
Wait…
“What good is a seer with no karnilian?”I muttered as the pieces started to come together only to remain infuriatingly out of reach. “Is that why they paid mercenaries to locate the stone for them…?”
Or why they called in an anonymous tip about an egg, perhaps?
Uulvin hummed, back to watching me like a predator. “As I hope you realize by now, Stellarian, theLacertusare not youronlyenemy. However, they are the ones you will need to target if you wish to find the answers you seek.”
It was my turn to narrow my eyes. “By rescuing your sibling?”
They nodded.
This is ridiculous.
I huffed. “So nowyou’recalling in a Stellarian to do your dirty work for you?—”
“No,” Uulvin brusquely stated. “We are asking the Stellarian who freed their people for help. ThehonorableStellarian who chose uncomfortable truth over lies of supposed supremacy.”
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
I truly didn’t know how to address this assessment. “I’m not?—”
“Youare,Zig,” Micah stated, equally sure. “Deal with it.” Before I could reply, he turned to Uulvin. “What do we need to know to rescue your sibling?”
The only reason I didn’t continue arguing was that he’d apparently gone into Commander Babygirl mode again, and I was powerless to resist. That, and it gave me the opportunity tothink.
To plan my next move…
The seer brightened. “We can give you the coordinates for where they are holding my sibling.”
“Then I will simply star hop in and out. Done.” I rolled my eyes and gestured at the walls surrounding us in annoyance. “After we leave this cursed cave?—”
“Wrong,” Uulvin barked, silencing me. “TheLacertusemployed those who created this very technology to protect their prisoner from Stellarians like you—technology your stellar collision can also conjure at will…”
“Wait,” Micah sat up straighter, an excitement I knew well making his brown eyes sparkle. “Are you saying there are others like me? Supes… I mean,alienswho can manipulate inorganic matter?”
The scientist has awakened.
Uulvin bobbed their heads. “In a way. You will need to talk to these matter manipulators in order to learn how to dissolve the barrier surrounding Uuktar.”
