Keir Read online

  “Why did you leave, Keirlan?” she asked. “Where did you go?”

  “I saw myself in the mirror,” he murmured, finding his voice at last. “What I was and what they had done to me. I saw the monster they were all afraid of, and I tried to run away from it, too.”

  “Oh, Keir, I wish I could have stopped them. I wish I had known what Rialto had planned. I would have given anything for you not to have suffered that.”

  But you did not stop them, he thought, regretting the unspoken accusation even though it was the truth. You let them take me.

  “How did you find me afterward?” he said aloud.

  “I made him tell me where you had been taken. I was too late to stop them. I made sure we stayed hidden after that. Every day I thought you were going to die, and yet you fought to survive. Such strength you had. And then, one morning, you were gone.”

  There was no reproach in her voice, but guilt still tore holes in his chest. He had been so immersed in his own misery he had not stopped to consider how she might suffer with him gone.

  “I thought you would be safer without me,” he said, but that was not the whole truth. He hesitated then said, “I did not want you to see me like that.”

  “I had already seen the worst of it.” She reached out a hand to touch the tattoos on his chest and he had to force himself not to recoil.

  Serena halted and withdrew her hand. “I think there are some clothes in the chest,” she told him, releasing his hand.

  Keir rose and went to the end of the bed where a heavily carved chest sat on marble feet. Lifting the lid revealed various pieces of clothing inside, all in neat folds. He took Quin’s cloak from his shoulders and laid it on the bed with care. After a few moments searching, he found a white shirt and plain gray tunic, pulling them over his head and smoothing them straight. With his skin fully covered, relief soothed some of the anxiety knotting his stomach and he knelt at his mother’s feet.

  “Forgive me for all I have done to hurt you,” he murmured. “It was never intended.”

  “Then you must forgive me for letting them take you that night, for I can never forgive myself,” she returned, pulling him upright to sit beside her again. “Now, tell me about your Red Witch. Does she truly practice powerful magic?”

  He glanced across at Quin. She sat very still in the window seat, moonlight adding a ghostly sheen to her hair and face. It gave the illusion of her shimmering with a supernatural aura and it was hard to believe she was no sorceress, having brought him back from death. Even though he shared her talent to travel from one world to another, even though she had told him it was science and not magic, her abilities still seemed mystical to him. He touched her mind, but it was far away and he knew she would not hear a word he said.

  “It seems like magic,” he said. “But there is no evil in it.”

  “She has risked much for you.”

  “Yes, and I would do the same for her.”

  Serena smiled at the heartfelt intensity of his words. “She is a good friend?”

  A good friend? The thought warmed him. Yes, she was that. But then he felt that strange thrill again, remembered the heat and softness of her body beneath his, and panic set his heart hammering against his ribs. He swiftly crushed the memory, buried it deep inside lest he let even a whisper of it breathe free. If Quin ever saw it, ever sensed that momentary longing, he could not face the revulsion he knew he would see in her eyes.

  “Yes,” he managed, his voice tight as he forced his feelings into a sealed shell inside.

  “I wish I had time to learn more about her and how she rescued you.” She sighed and a slight quiver filled her voice. “Dawn will come all too soon.”

  Keir edged closer, placing an arm around her shoulders. Serena leaned into him, and the familiar herbal scent of her hair swept him back to his childhood. To a place of comfort and warmth, before the silent figures had taken him away.

  “You still believe we shall die in the morning,” he said.

  She shivered. “Yes,” she whispered. “Rialto will have his wish at last.”

  “I think Quin may have other plans.”

  “Do you believe she will succeed?”

  “Yes, I do.” He allowed himself a wry smile. “She is a determined woman. She does not admit defeat.”

  “Then I will try to have faith in your Red Witch, as you do,” she said, more resolutely. “I hope her magic is strong enough.”

  “It will be. But you should try to get some sleep now.”

  “I am tired,” she sighed. “But I do not think sleep will come easily tonight.”

  “You should still try,” he insisted, rising so she could make herself comfortable.

  Obediently, she lay herself down on the bed, hands folded across her stomach. He pulled a blanket over her and earned a laugh. “Tucked in by my own son,” she chuckled. “I would never have believed it.”

  Keir bent to kiss her on the forehead. “Goodnight, Mother.”

  “Goodnight, my son.”

  She closed her eyes, and Keir made his way to the window seat, to wait for Quin to come back. Her utter stillness chilled him, and the pallor of her face made her seem more kin to the stone carvings that cradled her than flesh and blood. As he eased himself into the seat opposite, murmurs echoed in his head, and the familiar voices drew him in. At his intrusion, Quin’s eyes snapped open and she broke her telepathic contact to stare at him.

  “The others came with you?” Keir asked, a touch incredulous.

  “Eavesdropping on me now, are you?” she returned, with a crooked smile. Apparently finding the intensity of his gaze too much, she stared back out of the window at the moon. “I thought I might need some help, so they volunteered. Taler insisted on coming.” She gave him another quick grin. “I think she’s quite fond of you.”

  This time it was Keir who looked away, embarrassed. “Will it work?”

  “I have no intention of dying tomorrow,” Quin said. “I never do. How is your mother?”

  “She is afraid. I told her to try to sleep.”

  “She’ll need her rest,” Quin said. “Tomorrow will be a hard day. Stay with her as much as you can. She mustn’t hold us back.”

  “What have you got planned, Quin?”

  “More black magic,” she jested and Keir frowned, recalling their conversation on the non-existence of sorcery. “Oh, not literally. Remember the landscape on my wall?”

  “Yes.”

  “We can make any kind of image appear anywhere. It isn’t magic, but the citizens of Adalucien will believe it. The Red Witch is going to summon a dragon.”

  “A dragon,” he said skeptically. “A real dragon?”

  “No, an image. I plan to scare them into letting us go.”

  Keir shook his head in disbelief. “My father does not scare easily. You do realize he shall try to kill us to be rid of this dragon? He will believe that is the way to banish it.”

  “Possibly. I’m hoping others will see the logic of letting us go rather than having me release my creature on them. Especially when they find we don’t burn.” She took the two small round shield devices from her pocket and handed one to Keir. “Swallow this.”

  Keir gaped at her. “Swallow?”

  As if to reassure him, she placed the tiny silver disc on her outstretched tongue with an exaggerated gesture then gulped. A faint grimace crossed her expression before she showed him her empty mouth. “Your turn.”

  He took the remaining disc hesitantly, turning it over with his fingers. It was feather light, the smooth, curved surfaces cool to the touch, and reflected a distorted image of his face when he held it up to his eyes. It seemed completely inadequate to the task ahead, and he could not imagine how it would work, but his trust in Quin was strong enough for him to believe it would.

  He placed the disc in his mouth and played with it. Despite it being no bigger than a coin, his throat rebelled against swallowing it, suddenly dry. He forced it, gagging as the lump lodged in his gullet, then
gulped repeatedly to clear it.

  “Are you all right?”

  He coughed. An uncomfortable knot crawled through his chest and he rubbed at it until the feeling eased. “I have eaten worse,” he ventured.

  Quin laughed, but he could hear an edge to it, as though she had forced the sound. “Here. Get your mother to take this one. I don’t suppose she’d take it from me.”

  Keir obeyed, although Serena protested the necessity even coming from him. Once he was sure she had swallowed the device, he returned to his seat opposite Quin. Despite her almost serene expression, something in the shadow of her eyes made him wonder.

  “Are you afraid, Quin?” he asked, surprised by her air of calmness.

  She looked him in the eye then, a strange expression on her face. “Yes, I am.”

  “Even after all you have been through?”

  “Even then. Even after all those years of traveling, all the things I’ve seen and done, I still get scared.”

  Curiosity took the edge off his own fear. “How many years have you traveled?”

  “Three hundred, on and off.”

  For an instant he thought she might be mocking him, but her expression remained perfectly serious. Despite the amazing things he had seen her do, the wonders of the world she came from, it seemed impossible. “How old are you?”

  “I’m not sure. Traveling through time makes it hard to keep track, but over three hundred years old.”

  “But you look no older than me.”

  “That seems to be one of the side effects of traveling. I was only eighteen the first time I used a gateway, younger than you. I don’t appear to have aged since then.”

  “Is that when you first learned of your talent?”

  “Oh, I didn’t have it then.” She hesitated, and he sensed her sudden unease. “That was when Rulk came to my world. Through a gateway. I was the one unlucky enough to be there when she arrived.”

  “What happened?”

  Fear spiraled out of her before she controlled the escaping thought. “She ripped all the memories out of my head. Then she pushed me through the gateway.” Quin drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “I don’t know if she meant it to kill me, or if she just didn’t care. Either way, it took me to another world, to Edarius. And to the Sentiac.”

  Again, Keir caught the image of his ancestor, of blue-black skin and eyes that burned with blue flame. Something shivered through him, something he had felt before but failed to recognize. That strange sense of kinship with Quin even before the link she had forged between them. “What did it do?”

  Quin sat silent for a long time. When she spoke again, Keir had to lean across to hear her words. “The Sentiac was trapped at the end of the gateway. When I reached it, the gateway…mixed us up, merged us together. I became a part of it, and it became part of me.”

  Keir sucked in a breath. “That is what you meant when you said I was as human as you. That we are both tainted.” Hurt stabbed at his chest. “Why did you not tell me before? Were you ashamed to admit it?”

  “No! I…” Her voice broke off. “Keir, I was afraid how you might react. You’ve suffered so much, convinced yourself that you’re evil because of the way you’ve been treated when you’ve never done anything wrong.” She stared at him, the intensity of her gaze almost painful. “You were afraid of what it meant to be a child of the Sentiac. And I was too scared to tell you I was one too.”

  “Do you not think telling me might have made it easier for me to accept? To see that good can come from it?” Bitterness stung him.

  “Keir, I’m sorry. But if I’d told you, that day you learnt what you were, or later, after you met Rulk, how would you really have felt?”

  Thoughts coiled and twisted through his head, knotted his stomach. How had he felt on learning of Kisella’s powers even though he had already known of their shared blood? Shocked. Frightened. Her ability was terrifying. And if Quin had told him? Would he have trusted her? Could he trust her now?

  “I do not know,” he admitted. “Quin, I am afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what I may be able to do. Of the powers I may have. I thought after learning my ancestry, after meeting Rulk, the fear would go away. That I would know who and what I was. Banish that demon.” He shook his head. “Instead I fear that I will truly become one.”

  Quin shifted over until she sat facing him, her expression grave. “Is that what you think I am? A demon?”

  You are an angel, he thought, but could not admit it to her. Could not tell her how much she had touched him, how much light she brought into his life, even though he ached to say it. “No.”

  All the tension seemed to ease out of her. “Good.” She leaned back. “We weren’t meant to have these powers, Keir, but it’s how we use them that defines who and what we are.”

  How we use them…

  He shivered. What of Kisella? Did the use of her powers against him make her a demon? She could have killed him, if she had truly wished to, and yet she had not. Instead she had chosen to use her talents to protect the innocent.

  “Can you teach me how to use them?”

  Quin raised her eyebrows. “I can try. I’m not the best teacher.”

  “Did someone teach you?”

  “Yes.” A smile, warm but wistful, lit her face. “One of the Eidar.”

  “Eidar?”

  “They’re a form of sentient psi energy living around Edarius.” Perhaps sensing Keir’s confusion, she elaborated. “They have no physical form. They look like balls of white light.”

  “How do they speak?”

  “They’re telepathic.” Sorrow, her sorrow, etched into his thoughts. “One of them bonded to me, mind to mind. His name was Darion. My first love.”

  “But if they have no solid form…”

  “He became human. For a while.” Her gaze fell away. “And then he was killed.”

  Her pain at his loss washed over Keir like shards of ice rising from a polar sea, freezing the breath in his lungs. He gasped at the shock of it, and her eyes met his in stunned comprehension of what he had felt.

  “Keir, I’m sorry, I never meant you to feel that.”

  He shook his head. “I am fine.” His heart ached for her. “You have lost so many.”

  She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. “Too many.”

  Keir found himself sinking deeper and deeper in her thoughts, knowing Quin did not even realize she had allowed him in. The fathomless abyss of her sorrow opened around him, haunted by the ghosts of those she had loved and lost. Her friend Ryan, lost somewhere in time. A planet in flames. Her first love, a man with reddish brown hair and green eyes. A red-haired girl.

  He shook himself free. Quin was crying softly into the cradle of her arms.

  “Quin!” He darted to her side, knelt down. “I am so sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” she managed, her voice muffled. She drew a shaky breath, and then another, forcing down the tears. “You should get some sleep, if you can. It can’t be long until dawn.”

  Keir took it as a dismissal. Even though he felt he should offer more than just words, a barrier still remained between them, one he could not bring himself to cross. He returned to his seat, leaning against the cushioned back.

  Quin swiped the tears from her face and moved to the opposite side. “Goodnight, Keir.”

  “Goodnight.” He stared up at the moons and shivered at the thought of the dawn to come.

  Chapter 9

  Beneath the endless canopy of a cerulean sky and the glare of a white-hot sun, three young children played on a wide beach of pale-pink sand, giggling happily. Humanoid but reptilian, their pale-green scales shimmered gold in the fierce sunlight as they wrestled each other before running down to the sea, splashing and squealing in the warm water.

  At the top of the beach sat a group of adults, basking in the tropical glare with their own scaly hides a myriad of different hues. Spread amongst them stood armed guards, their s
litted eyes vigilant, clothed in plain, one-piece military suits of red and gold, both simple and functional.

  At the center, a tall, elegant saurian female reclined on the sand, her skin golden-green like the children’s, and a twisted coronet of silver and pearls around her bare head, the only insignia of rank she wore. Lithe and muscular, she lay on a cloth of gold and green, observing the children with a slight smile on her thin lips. Raised ridges framed the turquoise eyes and a strong jaw-line with multicolored scales, sparkling like jewels in the tropical sun. Dressed only in a short tunic of iridescent blue that left her slender arms and legs bare, T’rill, Queen of Metraxi, relaxed amongst the somnolent members of her court and her alert guardians, content and at peace, a day away from the rigors of duty and responsibility.

  A new arrival made his slow way through them toward the queen, a saurian male dressed all in black that covered his dark-green scales from his neck to the top of his long boots. The ridges around his fierce red eyes had gone gray with advancing age and his expression was correspondingly dour. His passage forced many of the indolent courtiers to stir themselves and move aside or be stepped upon. A fractious whispering followed in his wake at his disregard for their pleasure, with many a glare thrown at his back.

  The disturbance drew the queen’s gaze and she glanced up as he bowed before her. “I did not expect you to join us today, R’hellek,” she greeted him sonorously, her deep and vibrant tones welcoming. “Has the sun finally tempted you from your duties?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” he replied. “May I sit?”

  “Of course.” She returned to watching her daughters as he lowered himself stiffly onto the sand. “I must bring them here more often,” T’rill mused. “They love it so. I keep them confined at court too much.”

  “It is the safest place for them,” R’hellek disagreed.

  She glanced at him, bewildered by his statement. “Surely you don’t believe they could be in any danger? I’m sure they are as safe here as anywhere.”