His Fire Maiden (12 page)

Dev didn’t answer. He stroked her hair away from her face.

“You never mentioned that you’re cursed by a spirit.” She traced the red line on his skin. “Should I be worried?”

“More like tormented by one. Zhang An gave a vague prophecy that is open to interpretation. The idea was meant to worm its way into our heads to plague us.” He skimmed his fingers down her arm and back up again.

“What was the prophecy?”

“It was for Rick, Lochlann, Jackson, Evan and me. She said something along the line of, we’d find our love hidden within the mystery of the five elements of the Lintianese people—water, fire, wood, earth, and metal. One element for each of us. Our assigned element will hold the secret to our future happiness. But, since she didn’t tell us which element was ours, we have no idea what we’re looking for. Apparently, if we don’t recognize our fate, we’ll be cursed to living our lives alone. How did you hear about the curse?”

“Lucien in communications.”

Dev chuckled. “I should have known you would try to go to communications.”

“So does the curse plague you?” Violette continued to trace the lines on his chest. “Are you looking?”

“Sadly, yes. It is hard not to contemplate the idea that my future happiness hinges on signs that I must see. The danger is, when you’re looking, it’s possible to see signs in everything.”

“I think you’re metal.” Violette pressed her hand flat against his chest. “Because you have a hard shell like the hull of a ship and you have a stubborn personality.”

“Rick things I’m fire because I’m Bevlon, and they first met me when I was about to be set on fire by heretics.”

“No, that’s too obvious.” Violette shook her head in denial. She ran her hand down between them to the unyielding length growing between his thighs. “I definitely think you’re metal. Molten, red hot steel.”

“And are you trying to break my curse?” he asked, angling so that he lay completely on his back to give her access to his body.

“Oh, fireballs, no.” She leaned over and kissed him as she crawled to straddle his waist. The heat of his stomach hit her sex, instantly moistening it. She winked teasingly at him and slid back until her ass was against his arousal. “I don’t believe in curses and predetermined fates. I believe we make our own happiness and destiny.”

“And, right now, with me, are you happy?” he asked.

“Yes.” The honestly of the answer surprised her. “Right now, with you, I’m very happy, Dev.”

He growled and pulled her down for his kiss. No more words were needed, but then neither one of them had been incredibly forthcoming about expressing themselves with conversation. They spoke a much more primitive language, one that didn’t need words to be understood.

I
ce Complex Five
, Florencia’s Fifth Moon, Four days later…

Stepping out onto the surface of Florencia’s Fifth Moon was like climbing inside a biofreeze container in her underwear. The two-piece snowsuit offered protection, but even that wasn’t enough to stop the cold from creeping into her fingers and toes. Dev had given her the thick, black clothing to wear. It matched the others, except for Jackson who was in white. She doubted they’d come by the Federation snowsuits honestly. The fact they still had patches on them proved they were not decommissioned uniforms.

Jackson’s white suit had the ESC emblem for the Exploratory Science Commission, as did the skintight jumpsuits they wore underneath. Thinking of it, she glanced at Dev. The elastic material had stretched to fit him, molding to his body to hide his flesh while showing every sexy detail of his frame. She could still picture the firm look of his ass in tight black without even closing her eyes.

“How are you?” Dev asked.

“Unconcerned.” She took a deep breath. The cold stung her cheeks and nose. “I’m not worried about what we’re going to find here. I have every confidence that what you think is going to be disproven by what we see here.”

It was a lie. She wasn’t confident of that fact. Doubts had started to creep into her thoughts ever since Josselyn had her say about family history.

Besides Dev and Jackson, Rick, Lucien, Viktor, Evan and Josselyn also joined them on the planet’s surface. Lochlann stayed on the ship where he could monitor them from the sky. The craft hovered in orbit after dropping them off.

“I can see why they chose this place,” Violette said. The moon revolved around an uninhabited planet. At one time it looked as if it had been cultivated to support life, but that would have been a long time ago. Now ice had claimed the surface. “It makes for a perfect prison. Isolated. They would be able to see unauthorized ships coming before they even flew into orbit. If anyone escaped, they wouldn’t survive long on the surface.”

Jackson gave a humorless laugh. “I don’t think escape is what they were concerned about.”

“No, they only cared about hiding what they had done,” Rick muttered.

“If we find proof of who is responsible, we’ll make sure it’s known,” Lucien said. “Secrets have a way of coming out eventually.”

“Be careful, some people don’t want their secrets known.” Violette saw the way that the crew looked at her. She was the outsider to be watched, tied to the evil Federation boogeyman.

Her gaze moved toward Josselyn. The sisters hadn’t spoken since the incident in the spaceship corridor. Even though Violette stopped saying she wanted to kill her sister that didn’t mean she’d given up on bringing her father’s killer to justice. She had to know the truth and then she would decide what justice meant.

For the women’s safety, the men had decided to keep the sisters separated as much as they could. On the ship, it had proven to be easy. Violette preferred spending her time in Dev’s tiny room to mingling with the crew. Now, they kept them apart by putting two crewmen between the sisters at all times. For a moment, her gaze locked with Josselyn’s. Evan leaned to his wife and whispered. Josselyn nodded and looked away first.

Violette shivered and found herself gravitating toward the heat of Dev’s body. The cloudless blue-gray sky seemed as dead as the frozen earth. When he glanced down in surprise at her sudden affection, she muttered, “I hate the cold.”

He lifted his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer.

Quietly, so the others couldn’t hear, she asked, “How are you doing with the temperatures? The cold is not hurting you is it?”

“I’m fine as long as I stay in the suit.” Dev showed her the device on his wrist. “Viktor rigged it so I can monitor my temperature.”

“You’ll say something if it becomes dangerous?” she insisted. “I remember what you told me about Bevlons and the cold.”

He nodded.

Violette needed to be here, to see the truth for herself—whatever truth there was left to see. But, that didn’t mean she
wanted
to be here. She wanted to be a child again, feeling trapped by the sands churning outside the windows for the military base, before her father gave her a scar and started this mystery she’d been tormented by.

“Someone blasted a hole in the weather shuttle. We saw it the first time we landed,” Rick said. “Whoever it was wanted this moon to stop thriving. It probably froze over in less than a day.”

Josselyn had said as much.

“If you need proof, we can fly past it once we get back to the ship,” Rick added.

“It was so beautiful here,” Josselyn said, more to Evan than to anyone else, but Violette heard her clearly. They each puffed white breaths of air. Maneuvering over icy terrain wasn’t easy, but she doubted that is what caused the pained look on Josselyn’s face. The woman continued, “On clear nights you could see the weather shuttles moving over the skies. There was a control room where we could modify the weather schedule, but it was best to let the seasons run their cycle. Though, I remember my father making it rain for my mother one warm night. I watched them dance from a window.”

Violette said nothing. It was hard to think of her mother’s first marriage, of a life she was never allowed to have, of moments and memories. Her mother was an idea, a holographic picture, a story told—and possibly fabricated—by her father. Josselyn’s mother was a dance in the rain, a series of gestures and movements available to reminiscence upon at will.

Violette tried to ball her hand into a fist, but the gloves made it difficult. Josselyn had the life a daughter should have. She had a husband who adored her, friends who would give their lives to protect her, and a past of love to draw from.

Violette was jealous, and she hated that about herself. The general had loved her, but he was a busy man, always off on some mission doing alientarian work. Violette looked at Dev. His arms tightened around her. Even her own lover was on Josselyn’s side. The whole reason she was here was because Dev wanted her to stop hunting her sister.

“The first days of summer were so brilliant when the sun was closest to the shuttle, and we could feel the magnified heat.” Josselyn shivered, rubbing her hands along her arms to generate warmth. “And now, look at it.”

Violette pulled out of Dev’s embrace with the excuse of navigating the arctic trail. She did look. Time had frozen on the icy surface creating sculptures of the past, preserving it like some dead curiosity. Crop rows were organized over the gentle slope of the outlying landscape. An orchard stretched into the distance, the many limbs contrasting the lighter sky like shiny black fingers. The crew followed a trail of footprints along the field’s edge. She had the feeling of walking through her sister’s memory, a place where time had stopped.

“Take away the ice and everything is how I remember it.” Josselyn turned her attention to the prison complex. “Except for that.”

The metal building was out of place on the small moon. The sharp corners of the structure were in typical military fashion, and it sat in a spot of convenience with no thought to the surrounding aesthetics. A prison was for function, not beauty.

Violette felt a hand on her shoulder. She knew it was Dev without looking. He wanted to continue to comfort her, but she couldn’t allow it. Already she was nervous about what this place would reveal. It was taking all of her energy to remain strong.

“It doesn’t look as if anyone has visited since we were last here,” Dev said. “The compound should be easy to unlock.”

Though it was an older style discontinued a hundred years ago, Violette knew the basic layout of the prison before entering. The metal walls kept out the snow but not the cold. Sensors kicked on at their presence, and the biocell still provided enough power to light the hallways and switch on the facility computer monitors.

Rick led the way with Jackson, quickly stepping as if he wished to hurry through this part of his mission.

“Grab anything of value,” Jackson ordered. “This will be the last time we come here.”

Dev strode alongside Violette, not touching her again. Lucien and Viktor whispered amongst themselves. It sounded like they bickered, but she couldn’t hear what their argument was about.

“We should wait here in the hall,” Evan said to his wife. “I don’t want you to see them.”

Josselyn evidently didn’t listen as their footsteps continued to follow into the large prison hold in the center of the compound. The open room served as a staging area for those locked in stone. Lucien and Viktor took off to explore the far rooms for valuables.

The first statue prisoner wasn’t what Violette expected to see. The Federation’s official images of the failed immobile prisoner project had shown men with bound hands standing dignified in a red stone-like state. Their expressions were serene and their posture relaxed. The Ice Complex prisoners were terrified. Arms rose eternally to hide faces as if that gesture could have saved them from this fate. After being imprisoned, they’d been murdered in their defenseless states. Their body parts had been broken off. Skulls had been crushed. Stone limbs were thrown into piles. Violette walked past a woman’s head. Every detail of her screaming mouth could be seen. Another man was locked in what looked to be prayer, or perhaps he was begging his captors for mercy.

“The perfect prisoners,” Rick stated with a sarcastic drawl. “They don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t piss, don’t beg for mercy.”

“Bastards,” Lucien swore, having heard Rick’s comment as he came out room only to disappear into another one.

“No one deserves this,” Jackson agreed.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” Violette said. There were, at least, a couple dozen prisoners, maybe more. None of them were dressed in prison-issued suits. They were in gowns and tunic shirts. Even their hair wasn’t the standard prisoner cut from a hundred years ago. She had hoped that there might be a way to free whoever was left here. They’d thawed Josselyn from her prison, and Violette could get her hands on more medicine to reverse the effects of an imperfect freezing process. But, there was no saving the people here. If the prisoners were thawed from their stone state, they would instantly die from their injuries.

Violette pulled the dark cap from her head to expose her ears and head. She breathed hard, looking at the red dust coating the floor. They stepped on bits of the statue. Footprints marred the dust, presumably from when the crew had visited the prison the first time.

“No, no, no,” Josselyn whispered, rushing past Violette to go to a small boy on the floor. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen years. Long hair hung over his eyes. “I know him. This is Tyson. He played with my brother. They put him in stone and then shot him as if he were some target for practice. There are laser marks on his chest. He…” Josselyn turned and pointed to a woman close by. “And that’s his mother. Murielle worked in my home in the kitchens. She didn’t do anything to anyone. She…”

Violette inched away as Josselyn’s grief built. There was nothing that could be done.

“Do you see?” Josselyn demanded, turning to find Violette. “This is why I had to…”

This was not what Violette expected to find. Yes, what happened here was horrible, but that didn’t mean her father did it. He had tried to rescue Josselyn. The holo-box proved that. He pardoned her. He tried to get her out.

“I know all of them,” Josselyn told Evan, crying. He murmured something comforting to her.

“These rooms are clear,” Lucien announced as they rejoined the group.

Violette had to get away from the misery in Josselyn’s voice. She followed the old footsteps on the floor, assuming they would lead her to what she needed to see next.

“There is no honor in this,” Jackson approached Josselyn. His tone was flat, almost militant in its clipped tone. “And nothing we can do to change events. We will honor them by telling their story.”

“Jackson is right,” Lucien said.

“We’re prepared to scavenge for the truth this time,” Viktor added.

“Medical laboratory is this way.” Rick brushed past Violette. “It’s where we found the lot numbers for the prisoners on a handheld. We couldn’t assess the computer because we didn’t have the code, but we’re hoping you’ll have more luck being as you’re Federation.”

“I’m not Federation,” Violette denied.

“Close enough, starshine,” Rick answered. The endearment didn’t sound very pleasant. She found herself almost wishing he’d call her Velvet Violette again, or some such ridiculous nickname.

“I’ll bring up the screen,” Lucien said, moving to the system console in the medical laboratory. “I don’t have the codes to do much else.”

Violette stared at the floating screen as it appeared over the computer console. Lucien stepped out of her way. All portable equipment had been cleared from the room, as was protocol when decommissioning a facility, but since the computer was wired into the main complex, it remained intact.

She slowly sat before the console and contemplated what she should do. Lying was always an option, but then she’d come for the truth. It was the only way she could decide what path to take. She closed her eyes, trying to remember how to calculate the code to unlock the device.

“Can you open it or not?” Jackson asked.

“I can’t concentrate with everyone staring at me,” Violette snapped. She gave him a hard look.

“Wait outside,” Dev ordered the others.

With some reluctance, they agreed.

“Thank you,” Violette said. “I promised you’d I seek the truth, but I can’t think with all of them staring at me like I’m the gatekeeper of all things evil.”

“They don’t think that.” Dev leaned against the counter. “They believe you to be an honorable person.”

Violette arched a brow.

“Misguided, but honorable,” Dev amended. He ran the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “And beautiful.”

“I doubt beauty enters into the equation.” She leaned into his hand. “How are you still warm?”

“Your face is almost as red as mine. Put your hat back on.” He handed the cap to her. She didn’t remember dropping it. Taking it, she slid it over her head. It was warm from his hold.