Dyris is talking. I hear her voice, my heart warms with her desire, her need to be, as all things surely want to be, free.
When I am revealed to Dalox and the others, I see something cross his features, and I’m not sure what it is.
“I think you’ll give me whatever I want,” Dyana finishes triumphantly.
The rest of the warlords are looking at Dalox, all save for Darax who hasn’t taken his eyes from Deus.
“And what do you want?” Dyris says, stepping towards us. “A life without males? We had it, but you weren’t content with it.” Dyoti joins her.
Dyana presses the disruptor to my head, the metal digging into my skin.
“I want freedom, like you do,” she says, but for the first time, she sounds uncertain. “I want sarkarnlings without all the ritual.”
“The ritual is what makes us Sarkarnii,” Dyoti says. “It is what makes us strong. Males have a purpose, as we do. Together we are invincible.”
Dyana snorts, smoke and embers coming from her nose.
“If you believe that, you are as weak minded as a male in rut,” she says savagely. “As idiotic as those who brought us here without a thought for what it might do.”
“Punishing the males won’t bring your daughter back,” Dyris says. “And how were the males to know there would be a sickness here?”
“They should have known.” Dyana throws her shoulders back, her voice stronger than ever.
“We could not have known,” Dalox says. “We were drawn here, pulled through the wormhole by an old enemy, the Ulep, one we thought long vanquished. They laid a trap for us.”
“Enemies!” Dyana huffs. “Only males have enemies.”
“And yet you were prepared to bask in our spoils of war,” Deus growls. “War means enemies, as well as jewels. You cannot have one without the other.”
“Don’t tell me what I can have, or not.” She turns on him, spitting out the words. “You’re pathetic, all of you, pining away after your females. I offered an alternative,” she says. “A world without the rut, without all the complications. And you did not want to take it.”
“Perhaps because the complications make the universe,” I say, my voice hoarse from where she presses against my windpipe. “Because without the complications, without the love, what else would there be but an act of no consequence.”
I stare steadily at Dalox as her hand tightens.
“Perhaps because love is worth the complications,” I add.
Then I fling out my arm, slamming it into hers which holds the disruptor. She isn’t expecting the move, and it’s enough to dislodge the ray gun in a rising arc.
It’s snatched out of the air by a clawed hand, my head snapping to see who has it. But before I can, I’m flung across the room, my throat crushed and burning, smoke filling my nostrils, taking what air I have left, and a searing pain crosses my abdomen.
There are voices, raised, violent. There is fighting, but I cannot get up to join in.
And there is a voice in my ear.
“Stay with me, little spark. Stay with me.”
DALOX
Ipace.
Three strides to one side, turn, three strides back again, turn, three strides.
My tail follows me, silently. My wings, which I have been unable to shift back since the clan hall, rustle, the shoulders scraping on the ceiling which was not designed for partially shifted Sarkarnii.
My Gillian is still. The disruptor bolt only grazed her, but it was enough to do damage to her human body. The pod tells me she is strong, that she will recover, but those eyes have not opened and she has not spoken.
“Dalox.” Darax growls my name from the entrance to the med bay. He does not enter. He clearly values his scales.
