“Then do something, for God’s sake!” Blade’s voice lifted into a shout. “For pity’s sake, stop being a coward! We all have someone we love and whose life is being threatened at this very second while you stand there whining about you not being willing to use her for what she was made for.”
Drake’s heart showed in his next words, as did the love he felt for her. The love that was the only thing that could protect her from his twisted ambitions and desires, from his corruption by the power he wanted to hold so much that he could feel that wanting staining his very core black. “It was never up to her! She did not ask for this! It was done to her, and she didn’t deserve it! We did this, humans did that to her, and now she will die if we let her release what is inside her, and I fucking love her, yes I do! I love her, and I hate that I’m so weak that all I can think of is that centuries from now I will be remembered as the man who could control an ancient weapon, the only man who could control that ancient weapon, and did control it!”
Blade let out a long breath. “No. You won’t be remembered at all. Not if you do nothing.”
“I’m not capable or worthy of that power.” The words held all his bitterness. “I never was. How I would end up in control of it and with her heart is beyond me. She deserves so much better. She deserves to live. We will fight the Federation without her or not at all.”
“We can’t win without her, and you know it.”
True.
It was all so true.
Drake stood there, torn and conflicted. How could he do it? How could he force her to first win this fight for them and then force her to rebuild that fortress and then imprison herself within it?
He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
Lornia’s voice came into the room, soft and slow, tinged by that odd accent of hers. “Drake, is this why you turned away from me? Is this what you fear? I knew, I have always known, that if I was ever used as the weapon, that I would have to hole myself away again, away from life and the universes. I hate that. I am afraid of that, yes. But…but you humans…”
She came into the room. Her silver hair spilled to the floor and shone and glittered like a river of precious metals. “I almost destroyed your world just a few minutes ago because I was so angry at you for turning away from me. I have that in me, the ability to kill at will. Perhaps my being in the world is not something I can live with, not knowing that I am capable of such harm simply because I am angry.”
Tears filled up in her eyes and ran down her face, breaking his heart. He held his hands out, wanting to touch that smooth and slightly hard skin of hers, to take her into his arms, but she stood her ground and fixed a long and intense gaze onto his face. One that saw right through to the very bottom of his heart. He said, “I’m weak and failing.”
She shook her head. “You are strong. Power corrupts, yes, but sometimes one must touch the poison to know how to avoid it later.”
He drew a deep breath. “I’ll lose you. You’ll be where I can never find you again.”
The tears running down her face left tracks as silvery as her hair on her translucent cheeks. “I know. Tralam will be rebuilt; there is no other way around that fact. As soon as I use the weapon within me, that fortress will begin to form. It will take me. The ancients created the weapon to first fire then hide itself. I can’t change that fact, and I can’t change the fact that right now warships are coming, and even though I have little love for humans after what was done to me, I do love many humans.
“You, Drake. I love you. That is how you control the weapon. The weapon was built for destruction and only creation—only love—can control it. It has to be you, and you have to do this. You have no more choice than I have.”
No choice. That chafed at him and made him angrier than ever. “We have a choice. We can fight in other ways.”
“Maybe you can. I can’t. If you do not let the weapon do what it was intended for, if you do not put your orders into my ears and send my abilities to the warships, then I will break apart. You will kill me by not using me.”
Drake searched Lornia’s face, hoping to see a lie written there. He knew that she was not lying. She, of all of them, knew best how the weapon was to be used. That her race had not created it, and that she had not asked to be implanted with that weapon’s abilities aside, she knew what it was capable of—and what would happen if she unleashed it.
He lifted his hands in a pleading gesture. The palms of his hands, lined and slightly pink, caught his attention. He had never surrendered once in his life, never, and he did not want to surrender to this either.
Drake said, “I cannot send you back to that loneliness.”
Her smile was better. “It’s not your choice. It was never your choice. Not that anyway.”
He pondered that for a moment. Had any of it been his choice? He had been drawn to that fortress and the weapon within it ever since he had first heard of it. He had never considered that the weapon might take the form of a beautiful creature that he would fall in love with. That he might one day have to deploy that weapon, and in doing so cost himself the love of that creature. That he might lose her.
He said, “There must be some other way.”
Lornia’s voice held a note of impatience. “No. There is no other way, and you know it. The Oracle foretold of my coming centuries ago. Perhaps it was always intended. Perhaps the founding members of this damned Federation knew exactly what they were doing when they sailed into Tralam with their words of wishing to lock themselves away from their creation. Oh, of course, they would say that! It was what we had done, and so they followed our example. Perhaps my creator had intended for this to happen all along.”
That was something he did not wish to believe, but he could see the truth in that. For so long the population of his universe had held the founding members of the Federation up as things to be revered. They had believed that they were peaceful and despised the sudden grab for power made by so many of those they had allied themselves with, but perhaps all of that was incorrect.
Perhaps the founding members of the Federation had indeed gone to that fortress where space and time folded in on itself and deliberately forged of the ancient Speaker that he loved so much a weapon, a weapon that could be removed from the fortress which had been its prison.
And if all of that were true, then he had played right into the Federation’s hands once again.
He said, “I will let you go. I will be right beside you. Even if I am forever lost in space as a result, even if time folds me away from you, even if I am killed in my endeavor to remain at your side, I will always be with you.”
