She must’ve read all of that on his face because fear struck its way across her expression. She asked, “What the hell did you get me into?”
He said, “Don’t blame me. You were the last person I wanted to take along.”
She smiled suddenly. The sight of that smile, so wide and white and utterly lovely, took his breath away, making it hard for him to think. She said, “I feel the same about you.”
He regarded her. There was no love lost between them. She had disliked being forced into a position in the gambling and dance hall that he and his brothers owned. She felt that since they had wrecked the ship that she had been on through no fault of her own, and taken her hostage through no fault of her own, that the very least they could do is release her into the world unburdened by debt.
The world didn’t work that way.
Still, there was a part of him that wished that they didn’t dislike each other so intensely. Or rather, that she didn’t dislike him so intensely. The truth of the matter was that he was highly attracted to her, whether he wanted to be or not, and while he found her irritating, he also found her quite amusing. She was quick-witted and very intelligent; she could grasp the situation quickly and act appropriately. He had seen her do it before and he knew she could do it now.
All those things just made her even more attractive to him. He had to remind himself again that he was not meant to mate. That the gift that had been bestowed upon him was so powerful that passing it on would be a terrible thing. Most children born with that gift died, their little frail bodies unable to withstand that gift.
His mother had fully expected him to die, as had every elder of their race. They had hovered over his crib for weeks, just waiting for the gift to take him. That gift was the one that he never spoke of because it was so powerful and so violent that just mentioning it frightened both him and his siblings.
He had rarely had cause to use it. He had used it in the mines. When a particularly brutal overseer had decided to beat Renall to death after Renall had lied and claimed that he was the one who had stolen an extra portion of that miserable slop that passed for food, Jeval had had to use that gift or lose the brother he held so dear.
His siblings and the few other crew members that had been sold to the mines with them had been so horrified by what that gift had been able to do that they had made him take a blood vow to never use it again—unless the circumstances came down to his own life or death.
So far, he had always kept that vow.
Even in the heat of the greatest battle, he had remembered how horrible what had happened had been, and he had not used that gift, surviving by skill and wit and luck instead.
He also had not mated with any creature capable of reproduction. Mating with any race capable of reproduction, of procreation, would mean potentially passing on that black and cursed gift.
He could not watch a child he created die. He would not watch a child he had helped create die.
There had been another one with him, a twin. A child nobody spoke of. It was as if that child had never existed. A beautiful little girl they said, with eyes of pure silver and skin the same color, with the blue tracing the vein that bespoke royalty already growing in her temples. She had died, and he had lived. He was no prince. If he had been, he would never have withstood the dark gift.
The Elders said that had that child lived, she would have been their Oracle, one born to replace the aged and withered Oracle who had served her race for so long and so well.
But she had not been born.
He gulped a little, setting those feelings aside. He said, “Come on, we need to get to the Hall.”
She gave him a sardonic smile then ducked her head and said, in a meek and little voice, “Yes, Master, as you wish. But when this is over, someone owes me something, and it better be a big something too.”
