Beyond the Red (33 page)

Girls.

I chew absently on the salty meat and pull out the remaining contents of the bag—a switchblade I used to cut the first thug’s throat, a dozen more packs of dried meat, and some sortuv powder that I think you’re supposed to mix with the water to replenish nutrients or something. I throw that at Kora, too. It smacks her arm and slides to the sand—she still doesn’t look at me as she takes it.

Then there’s the pouch Gray gave me, from Nol. To be honest, I’d been so focused on finding Kora that I’d forgotten about it altogether, but here it is. It doesn’t look all that special—the pouch is made of some kinduv thick, rough black fabric tied with a leather drawstring and engraved with a large gold Sephari letter that looks like the sliver of a moon. When I open it up and dump the contents into my palm, a black ring rolls out. It’s hard to see in the darkness, but I hold it up and catch the light of the moons and stars. It’s a simple ring made of some kinduv smooth, near-black metal, with a semi-translucent gold band running through the center. Some kinduv polished gem, it looks like, cut into a circle and embedded into the ring.

I slide it onto my ring finger—it fits perfectly.

“Eros.”

My eyes snap up at my name. Kora still isn’t looking at me, but she’s standing and pointing to a small group of headlights on the horizon. Serek’s procession. “That’s him,” I confirm, closing my pack again. And so we wait in silence until they arrive.

The doctor hovers around Kora like a child clinging to his mother. He takes blood samples, cleans every tiny little scratch, and gives her all sorts of nutrients in the form of stick-on gel patches. He gives her about a half-dozen bottles of freshly chilled water and bowls of fruit before Serek dismisses him and he joins another car in the caravan. But none of that compares to the way Serek looks at her—to the warmth in his face and eyes every time she glances at him, to the way he gently touches her hand and caresses her palm and smiles at the smallest thing.

He’s in love with her. Completely and utterly.

I thought she shared his feelings—at least, I was convinced of it at the party before everything went to the Void. But now I’m not so sure—now her responses seem hesitant, like she’s forgotten how to smile or share his secret glances. And even now, as he holds her hand and kisses her knuckles, she watches him with this stiff little smile.

But she doesn’t look at me. Not once. And the cold in my chest spreads a little farther.

It doesn’t matter,
I remind myself.
It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.

Maybe if I think it enough, it’ll be true.

I stare out the window as the sand races by. We can’t return to Vejla, so we’re headed to the capital of Safara, Asheron, but I’m not sure why I’m still here. I’d expected Serek to leave me to fend for myself in the desert after returning Kora, but instead his guards demanded I get in the port beside him, and so here I sit, the observer of this awkward courting. If you can call it that.

I tap my fingers against the door, then finally lean back on the seat and close my eyes. It doesn’t take long before exhaustion washes over me and I start to drift …

Someone is holding my wrist in the air. I startle awake and try to rip my hand away, but Serek’s grip is firm. His glare slides from my hand to my face, and I blink the sleep from my eyes and yawn. “I’m assuming there’s a reason you’re cutting off the circulation in my wrist.”

His grip shifts and he squeezes my ring finger with his thumb and forefinger. “What is this?”

“A finger,” I say.

“Don’t play games with me, Eros. You know very well I’m not referring to your finger.”

I glance at my hand. Back to Serek. “A ring.”

He scowls. “I know what it is, boy. What I don’t know is how you came to acquire it.”

His insistence on calling me
boy
sends a twinge of irritation through my gut. “I can’t feel my fingers.”

“Answer the question.”

“Release me, and I will.”

His glare is sharp enough to shred bone, but he throws my hand back at me. I rub my wrist and sit up. Glance at Kora. She shifts her eyes to the blurry divider with the digital map cutting off the front seat from the passenger’s cabin. My chest throbs.

“It was a gift,” I finally say. “From my father.” Kora’s eyes snap to mine—oh, she must think I mean—“My adoptive father,” I correct. “The man who raised me, Nol.”

She nods once and glances at Serek. But he doesn’t look satisfied—his glare deepens and a hint of a snarl wrinkles his nose. “And where did this ‘Nol’ acquire it?”

“I don’t know. I just got this the other set. I was told he asked someone to make sure I got it if anything happened to him.” Serek is fuming and I don’t know why. I don’t get what’s wrong—what does the ring mean? I hesitate. Raise my hand to the light. “Does it mean something?”

“You truly don’t recognize it?” he snaps.

I raise an eyebrow and lower my hand. “Should I?”

“It’s the Ring of
Sirae
,” Kora says softly, turning to me again. “It was
Sira
Asha’s, for a short time, before he …” Her voice falters and she bites her lip.

“Before he was murdered by rebels,” Serek spits. “Eighteen cycles ago.”

My blood chills and the ring is cold against my finger. I run my thumb over the cool band and dare to glance at Serek. For a man who doesn’t like unnecessary killing, he looks disturbingly like he wants to rip my throat out with his teeth.

“So I ask again, boy: how did a rebel come to acquire the ring missing from my dead brother’s finger?”

I shake my head. Clench my fingers into fists. “I don’t know.”

“I think you know very well.” Serek leans toward me. “It doesn’t take a great leap of logic to come to a conclusion.”

“Nol wasn’t a murderer,” I say. “He wouldn’t do that. He didn’t even like my training to become a soldier because he was against spilling blood.”

“A likely story, considering the gem you dare put on your finger.”

I fight the urge to lean away from him and match his glare with my own. “I don’t know why he wanted me to have it, and I don’t know how he got it, but I know he wasn’t a murderer and he must have had a reason to hold on to it until now.”

Serek snorts. “To hide his involvement in Asha’s killing, I am sure.”

“Nol had nothing to do with that.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t say if it’s naïveté or stupidity that blinds you to the truth.”

“MY FATHER WASN’T A MURDERER!” Every muscle in my body is tense and my heart slams in my ears as Serek’s glare shifts from angry to downright murderous. He opens his mouth to speak, but a smaller voice interrupts him.

“Eros,” Kora whispers. “I think we should tell him.”

The hot energy setting my blood to a boil evaporates with those words. I shake my head. “I don’t think—”

“Do you want to die? Because if you don’t explain, that ring is going to get you killed.”

“But—”

“You are aware”—Serek crosses his arms over his chest—“that I am sitting between you two.”

“Show him, or I will,” Kora says. “Now.”

Something builds inside me at her tone—that she’d resort to ordering me around like her pet, like her slave. I thought we left that pretense behind at the palace, but it’s clear I’m nothing more to her.

I glare at her. “I can’t. I lost that dissolver stuff you gave me when your brother stripped me naked and tortured me for six sets.”

If my jab affected her, she doesn’t show it. Not that I should expect it to affect her, since she apparently doesn’t give a blazing thought about me.

She turns to her precious Serek instead. “Do you have a medical glass?”

Serek reaches behind his seat and hands Kora a palm-sized octagonal glass. She taps on the surface a couple times, her fingers sliding and swirling across it doing stars knows what, then she lifts it up, leans forward, and holds it over my right eye. It’s see-through, and it doesn’t look like it’s doing anything special from my end, but judging by Serek’s reaction, I have a pretty good guess what it’s doing on his.

The prince has gone rigid—his eyes widen and his lips part like he’s frozen in mid-breath. Then his body relaxes, one muscle after another, and the tension slides off him like a heavy blanket falling off his shoulders.

“He never knew his father.” Kora hands the glass back to Serek and turns to him. “I assumed it was someone further down the line, but what if your brother’s ring wasn’t stolen? It’s passed down from firstborn to firstborn, isn’t it?”

Serek doesn’t speak. He’s looking at me in a whole new way—analyzing the planes of my face. It’s a little uncomfortable to be watched this closely, and it’s all I can do to maintain eye contact. I shift in place and try not to fidget.

Then Kora’s words sink into my mind. “Wait. You mean Asha’s firstborn?”

She nods and glances at Serek, but he’s too busy staring me down to say anything.

I laugh. I haven’t laughed in a while, but I full-out shake-the-stars laugh. Me. Asha’s son. Some half-blood half-royal joke of the universe. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard—like a royal,
especially
the world-blazing-ruler, would
choose
to have a half-blood kid. Sure.

“I don’t understand what you find so funny about this,” Kora says.

“I’m not Asha’s son. There isn’t a blazing chance in the Void.”

“It’s more likely than you might think.” Kora stares out the window. “Asha frequented the outskirts while he was
Sira
. The night he was killed, he slipped past his own guards and went out into the deserts in the middle of the night. No one ever knew why, but they found his body alongside the path back to the city. He was returning to the palace when he was attacked—and he was missing his ring.”

I shake my head. “That doesn’t mean a blazing thing. He could have been doing anything.”

She turns to me. “He could have been witnessing the birth of his son. He would have given your mother the ring for safekeeping until you came of age, which would explain why you didn’t have it and why your adoptive family was holding on to it until now.”

“Or he could have gone out for an entirely different reason and lost his ring when he died. That’s ridiculous, Kora, you can’t assume just because—”

“What is the set of your birth?” Serek asks, and his tone makes me pause. He almost sounds … concerned? Is he actually considering this?

I glance at him. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not Asha’s son.”

“Don’t be stubborn, Eros. Just tell him.”

I shake my head, but answer anyway. “The thirty-sixth of Summer, eighteen cycles ago.” I pause. “On the full lunar eclipse.”

The cabin falls quiet. Serek leans back in his seat and runs a hand through his hair. Kora is biting her lip and nodding, staring at the ring on my finger. My stomach twists—humans and Sepharon may be on different calendars, but the eclipse that marked my birth is an event that only happens once every twenty cycles. And if they’re taking this seriously …

“That’s when Asha died, isn’t it?”

Kora nods. “They found him the next morning.”

Heat drips down the back of my throat and slips around my lungs, squeezing slowly. This all has to be some weird coincidence, right? I mean, I thought the gold-eyes thing was weird, but I figured some distant barely royal relative did something thoughtless. But the
Sira
? If Asha is really my father …

“Roma will kill you,” Serek says, finishing my thought.

My stomach turns and this port is broiling. I can’t get air. My breaths aren’t enough and my head is spinning and sweat drips down my spine and I’m going to throw up that dried meat I ate all over Serek’s polished shoes.

I gulp down sweltering air. “Stop the port.”

Serek arches an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Stop the port. Now.” Air air air. I don’t have enough air. This isn’t happening. This isn’t right. This isn’t real.

“Eros—”

I can’t be Asha’s son, because if I am, it means I’m a royal. No, worse than a royal, I’m a
high
royal—I’m one of the very people I’d grown up despising, one of the rulers of all who sees no problem with an enslaved race and the murder of innocent people.