My mouth has gone dry, my tongue stuck to its roof.
I don’t know what to say. Actually, I do. I should say,Just take me to my ride home, pass the Morpheus sphere to its proud new owner, and get the hell out of the Shadowlands. I never expected such a show of emotion from any of the nightfolk. I meant it when I told Aspect they aren’t monsters, but only in a clinical sense—they’re sentient, after all.
But if you’d asked me yesterday whether nightfolk werepeople, well … I don’t know what I would’ve said. I certainly wouldn’t have said that they could cry, or that they care what we think of them, or that they care for much of anything at all.
Aspect looks at me, visual processors blinking. Almost hopeful. They can learn hope now, in its proper form. Maybe it’ll be enough to bring my mechanical friend to life. I’m on the verge of tears at this point, and not just from my dislocated arm. I take a deep breath, trying to calm the whirlwind of emotions.
That’s when the ground beneath me blasts apart.
CHAPTER
10
ADRIA
Among the Shadowlands’ many creatures, empowered by the Diakópsei’s radiation, is the batbeast. Half the size of the average full-grown nightfolk, they use one pair of limbs as both spindly arms and legs, but there’s power behind their seeming fragility. They’ve been known to lift a child clean from their mother’s arms and carry them off into the dark, never to be seen again.
Somehow that’s the first thought that comes to mind when I see the crashed starship’s survivor. She’s small, like all dayfolk, though perhaps tall enough among her people, not quite six feet. Narrow shoulders and hips, a long, taut neck, lanky limbs that overshadow the rest of her body. One of her two arms hangs at an odd, sickening angle, clearly an injury of some sort. I’m larger, bulkier, stronger than her, but despite being visibly wounded, she has undeniable strength of poise. Even though I can’t see her eyes, I somehow know they could pin me to the floor.
This is a creature built and trained for taking what she wants and then vanishing, unhindered, back into the Pagonian wilds. It will not do to underestimate her.
The survivor also has just enough muscle definition that it shows through her protective gear, which adheres closely to its wearer. Foolish dayfolk, fearing Pagomènos’s power, the Diakópsei’s gift. I embody everything that suit is meant to keep at bay. And it won’t be enough to hold me back.
My new and too-often-unwarranted rage, first seeded during my overcharge, pulses in my chest again like a brutal secondary heartbeat. I tamp it down with all the force I can muster. This girl is useless to me dead (or close to it if her suit leaks). I must play this carefully.
I perch above on the Second Spire’s nearest ledge, just below where the crashed starship remains wedged in the mountain, overlooking the scene. The survivor isn’t alone. She’s accompanied by one of the dayfolk’s mechs, though it waves its arms and interrupts with uncharacteristic enthusiasm for a machine. Its head is cocked at an absurd angle that can’t possibly be practical.
And right across from girl and robot, flouting my kingdom’s laws with impunity, is one of my own people.
Regardless of the context, I certainly don’t allow my citizens to fraternize with trespassers. Yet here stands a nightfolk girl, likely close to my own age, undaunted, reaching for a Daylands-forged Morpheus sphere.
Since the nightfolk embraced the Diakópsei, we have no need of dayfolk Morpheus chips to “protect” our minds. Their standard usage (and rumored black market) exists well beyond my jurisdiction or interest. Most of what I’ve heard of its inner workings is likely mythology rather than firsthand reports. Many nightfolk are inclined to dismiss the market’s reality altogether; I very nearly did. I was wrong. The knowledge stings, like needles under my mottled skin.
I lean forward on my wrists to listen more closely. And that’s when I catch the specifics of their dialogue.
“Thank you, Kori.”
Kori.
The spire, despite being solid stone and ice, seems to waver beneath me. I grip it tightly with my claws. Head spinning, I struggle to process.Kori.I know better than to trespass in Daylands territory, but I know full well who this girl is. Daughter of the Daylands’ monarch. Heiress to their nation. And a willful criminal, apparently, judging by her presence in the Shadowlands and the smooth silver sphere of contraband memories in her open palm. Dayfolk don’t meet with nightfolk, and they definitely don’t offer an inner glimpse of their minds.
I mean to be careful, tactical. But the anticipation of a clash with dayfolk royalty overwhelms my good sense. A blast of radioactive power builds in my throat. I struggle to bite it back, teeth gritted, thoughts rushing through me so quickly that they stumble over one another, a tangle of conflicting possibilities.
Kori.
On this side of Pagomènos, Kori’s presence alone could acceptably be answered with death. But in her own kingdom, she remains the heir to the throne, despite boldly flouting her people’s laws by venturing into the dark and fraternizing with its denizens. The dayfolk would do anything to bring their heiress home.
Wouldpayanything.
Enough to solidify my rule in the Shadowlands, perhaps? Enough to crush Azarii’s futile rebellion in one fell swoop?
My jaw practically pries itself open to let the furious blast of energy out.
The ground at Kori’s feet explodes. Fragments of ice and rock scatter like freezeshot shrapnel. The girl stumbles, her mask-filtered scream swallowed by the roar of my power, her body reduced to a frail silhouette behind the blue-black haze of the blast’s aftermath. The ground beneath her has become a gaping chasm. She falls.
The nightfolk woman scrambles back from the abyss on six of her seven hands, her last one frantically searching for a handhold in the confusion. She’s a criminal, too, daring to trade for dayfolk tech, evenif she never entered the Daylands. But she isn’t my priority. This entire affair just became much, much bigger than her.
And, thankfully, in her terror at the sight of me, she loses her grip on the Morpheus sphere, which rolls. Bounces along the rocks. Plummets into the newly formed chasm with the Daylands girl.
