Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series (16 page)

“It’s better than letting Radovan stay in power,” Guarin said. “Remain in defiance to the Grand Lumis. At least you’ve set a precedent for dissenters.”

“What a noble precedent,” Kastor said. “Swear absolute fealty or you and all your people will be ground into dust.”

Guarin recoiled in shock, then laughed. “What’s wrong with you? You’re supposed to be the most fearsome man in the galaxy. Did losing your woman turn you into one?”

The room froze. Kastor’s hands curled instinctively into fists. A burst of hot fury erupted in his chest. Guarin stared at him with his jaw set and his eyes unyielding. Guerlain looked up from the kitchen area with bored eyes but said nothing. Kastor could free himself of his Swan burden. He could kill them both with his bare hands.

Trajan stepped toward Kastor and shook his head lightly, pupils wide and ominous. But Trajan didn’t understand. He didn’t feel the fire in his gut that screamed for vengeance. He couldn’t possibly know what it was to lose half his soul to a beast without one. He couldn’t possibly know such hatred. Kastor trembled in rage the longer he let his thoughts roam free. But some other feeling grew behind his rage. An agonizing amalgam of sting and ache. The pain of a fathomless wound yearned for escape.

Kastor loosened his fists and swallowed his emotion—all of it. He couldn’t get rid of it piecemeal. It had to go all at once. His heart hardened until no feeling remained. He didn’t have only his own honor to consider. He represented the honor of the Regnum.

“We’ll speak in the morning,” he said in a defeated voice, then trudged to one of the bedrooms.

* * *

On the far wall, a wide window split the rock and gave an expansive view of the valley below and the opposite cliff face. Lights beamed from structures built into the cliff or peeking through it. The glass panels of the greenhouses glinted in the waning light of evening, but evening wouldn’t last. Upraad’s other, smaller sun would rise soon, casting the planet in a weak, reddish glow—the closest thing they had to night. Thick curtains hung on either side of the window, waiting to block out the hellish radiance to come in the morning.

Kastor sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the river below. Emotion and thought had long since drained from him. He thought of nothing, felt nothing, only watched as the waters flowed on and on, following their course like they had done for a million years, burrowing deeper and deeper into the valley. A careless obedience to destiny. Never once fighting the timeless rules of nature. Such grace and peace, drifting from horizon to horizon without concern for the happenings all around.

The bedroom door clicked shut on the far side of the room. Kastor flinched and turned to look into the darkness. Shadow veiled the other side of the bed.

“Who’s there?” He waited for a reply but none came. He wondered if his imagination had conjured the sound. Then he heard a soft footstep sink into the carpet.

“A visitor,” a sultry voice trickled through the blackness.

“Identify yourself,” Kastor commanded. As his eyes adjusted, he made out the vague silhouette of a young woman.

The silhouette stepped forward, coming into the wan light from the window. Kastor stood and retreated a step as she emerged. Slender, sleek, tall—almost as tall as Kastor—and utterly naked. The woman bore the face of a goddess—radiant magenta irises, skin like smooth satin, and wispy hair as black as endless space. She was flawless, the work of a master genesmith.

Her naked form made something in him quiver, but not in attraction. Quite the opposite. She revulsed him. Her lurid beauty only turned him away more. Nothing tattered a maiden’s honor worse than indecency—especially to a man with whom she had not been paired. Her bare form befouled his mind.

“Seraphina of Upraad,” she said, unfazed by her exposure. “Princess of Lagoon.”

Kastor thought for a moment. “Have you been sent to persuade me?”

Her eyebrows furrowed, creating only the slightest of lines between them. “Persuade you of what?” Her lips curled in a coy smile.

“Radovan must be desperate,” Kastor said, averting his eyes.

Seraphina draped herself across the bed, resting her head on her palm. “Radovan didn’t send me. My mother did.”

“Your
mother
?”

She laughed under her breath. “You wouldn’t know what it means to have a mother, I suppose.”

“Surely you weren’t—”

“No,” Seraphina answered. “She didn’t birth me. But she raised me.”

Kastor crossed his arms and faced the window. “I don’t know why you’d claim such a relationship with your matriarch. As if she produced you from her own body, the commoner way. It summons vile images to the mind.”

“You haven’t been around commoners much, have you?” Seraphina asked.

“Have
you
?”

Seraphina’s reflection in the window smiled. Kastor focused his gaze past it to the river.

“One can’t escape the commoners on Upraad. They live and work alongside us. They’re part of our world as much as we are of theirs.”

Kastor couldn’t decipher the meaning behind her words, whether the softness in her voice indicated compassion or something else, but he let it go.

“So your . . .
mother
. . . sent you to do some horizontal diplomacy, did she?”

“You can’t blame her,” Seraphina said. “After all, it’s how she became queen matriarch.”

“She isn’t Radovan’s pair?”

“Of course she is. Pairs are formed as adults in Lagoon, when we’re actually able to think and speak and choose for ourselves.”

“Does anything separate you from the common people here?”

Seraphina giggled, an elegant rather than girlish sound. The bed shifted. Kastor watched in the window’s reflection as she got up and stepped to him. She touched his arm, and he shrugged her away. A tense span of seconds passed between them.

“Let me explain what things are like in the Regnum,” he said, voice frail but holding firm. “Genesmiths craft the DNA of two beings simultaneously, one male and one female, physically and mentally compatible in every way. They develop from zygote to infant in the same incubator. They are birthed together. They are raised together. They train together. Their bond other has no beginning . . . and no end.”

“Do you think I’ve come to replace her?” Seraphina asked.

Kastor turned toward the princess, keeping his eyes on her face. “I don’t know why you’ve come. But you should leave.”

She stared back at him with defiant eyes. “No.”

“I mean it,” Kastor said. “Leave.”

“I haven’t said what I’ve come to say yet.”

“Then say it,” Kastor replied. “And get out.”

Seraphina let out her breath and returned to the bed. Kastor looked away as she sat.

“I know the decision you must make,” she said.

Kastor shook his head. “It’s Radovan’s decision. I have no choice in the matter.”

“You always have a choice, Kastor. No matter how much talk of ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ has been bored into your brain, it isn’t true. And until you see that, you’ll never escape the narrow confines of a black and white world.”

“Those ‘confines’ are what make us nobles,” Kastor said. “They distinguish us.”

“They
imprison
us,” Seraphina replied. “You know this. You did what you had to do in Zantorian’s court, but you knew it was wrong.”

Kastor ground his teeth until his jaw hurt. He pulled himself away and stepped to a closet door in the wall. “Sometimes it hurts to do what’s necessary.” He slid open the panel door, and a light flicked on. He removed a thin robe from the hanger and held it out for her.

“Don’t give me platitudes,” Seraphina said. “They don’t change what you know in your heart.” She snatched the robe and yanked it on, tying it at her waist.

Kastor felt a weight lifted from him. He could look at her now. Nothing like Pollaena. Softer. Skin that almost glowed, buffed and void of freckles. Narrow-boned and delicate. A walking crown, designed for ornamentation over utility. Shame crept back as his eyes lingered, admiring.

“Sure you didn’t come to convert me?” Kastor asked. “Recruit me into your lumis’s ranks?”

“He would be endlessly pleased if I did,” she replied. “That’s why my mother sent me. But no. I came to deliver a message of my own.”

Kastor crossed his arms and beckoned her to continue.

She straightened, as if preparing to make a formal speech. She didn’t, but spoke with confidence and conviction all the same. “You are the Champion of Triumph. There’s power in you. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched you from afar since the first day of the tournament. You were magnificent. In your hands is the capacity to change the galaxy, to shift the balance of power. And it’s not limited to Zantorian’s orders. You have other options.”

Kastor shrugged, unimpressed. “Such as?”

Seraphina trained her big, pink eyes on him. “Make your own way.”

Kastor almost laughed. “Are you some sort of oracle?”

“No.” A smile broke through her serious demeanor, but faded quickly. “I came to give a simple message, one you’d do well to heed.”

“Why would you want me to change the galaxy?” Kastor heard his voice soften. “You’re a noblewoman with a great heritage. You’re the jewel in Radovan’s scepter.”

“What happens when the jewel wants to be something other than a shiny object to be enjoyed? What if she wants to stop appearing naked in strange men’s rooms? What if she wants a different life?” She untied the robe and pulled it off.

Kastor turned away by reflex and faced the window again. “Perhaps she should gain a better grip on reality.”

“Or perhaps she makes her own way as well.”

Her voice receded from him, and when he glanced over his shoulder, she had disappeared—hidden in shadow. The robe lay across the bed.

“We’ll meet again soon, son of Eagle.”

The bedroom door clicked shut.

A violent rumble shook the bed and woke Kastor. He tossed himself onto his back and waited. Listened. Felt. Had he dreamed it? Perhaps the time spent on Triumph had accustomed him to feeling tremors at night.

Another burst swept through the room, rattling the light fixtures and rippling the curtains. A red line of light slid between the curtains as they swayed open for a second. Kastor thrust out of the bed and to the closet, where he had hung his clothes. Trajan burst through the door just as he finished his slapdash job of dressing himself. The retainer gave his master a once-over followed by an apologetic look. Rarely did a champion have to dress without assistance.

Another rumble shook the ground. Kastor thought he felt a deep crack somewhere far below. “Any idea what the hell’s going on?” he growled in a groggy voice.

“None, Master,” Trajan replied. His morning voice was high and nasally. “The palace network is down. I can’t get anything on my slate.”

“Rebels, then,” he muttered. “Must be jamming the satellites.”

Trajan hurried past him to the window and threw apart the curtains. Small craft whipped around the valley. They had dark-tinted windshields—manned shuttles—and chain guns welded to the underside of their wings. Triangular military drones zipped down from above, startlingly close to the window, making it shudder as they passed. The makeshift war shuttles engaged the drones. Bullets sprayed in every direction, making bright, flickering lines—a chaos of rounds flinging against the cliffs and into the pale red sky. Some tore through metal and sent umbrellas of debris falling to the basin. The drones whipped through the air with blinding speed, but the shuttles had stronger firepower and thicker armor. One shuttle took fifteen seconds of constant pounding from the drones before spewing smoke and spiraling downward.

Guarin and Guerlain rushed through the bedroom door, immediately entranced by the dogfight outside Kastor’s window.

“Shit,” Guarin hissed.

“Trajan,” Kastor said, thinking through an escape plan. “See if you can call up the shuttle. Have it ready—”

“Already tried that,” Trajan said. He pulled out his slate and tapped at its large screen. “Only way to contact them is through the palace network. And it’s—”

“Offline,” Kastor said, wincing at the connection he should’ve made.

Out the window, a line of rounds swiped a drone’s wing, sending it careening straight at them. It spiraled through the air, growing larger, creating a helix of smoke behind it.

“Oh, shit,” Guerlain muttered, getting louder as she continued. “Shit, shit,
shit!
”

Guarin and Guerlain dashed out of the room as Kastor sprinted to Trajan, grabbed his narrow frame, and hauled him further into the suite. The servant gasped as the incoming drone blocked out the light streaming in from the window.

A shockwave hurled Kastor through the wall as he shielded Trajan in his arms. Glass shot through the air and burrowed into furniture. Rock ground against rock. Lights sparked. Fire spread through every open space, growling like a team of lions, then receded, replaced by smoke and dust.

Once everything settled and Kastor realized he was still alive, the aches and pains set in. Mainly in his back and arm, where a shard of glass stuck out of his forearm. He rolled off Trajan onto his back and glanced around. They were in the next room over, where Trajan had slept. The place was wrecked, only the furthest wall recognizable.

Trajan panted and felt around his body for wounds. He had none. Kastor had made a decent shield.

The outside air rushed in, mixing with their breathable atmosphere. They would pass out soon without breather masks. Kastor gritted his teeth, grabbed the glass shard, and yanked it from his arm. Blood gushed from the hole, and Kastor growled with the throbbing sting. It would stop soon. He had worse things to worry about.

“Guarin! Guerlain!” he called out.

He heard coughing, then Guarin called back, “We’re alright. You?”

“Alive,” Kastor replied. “Find oxygen masks.”

He fought past the newfound kinks and stiffness in his back to stand, then helped Trajan up. Once again, the servant bore a look of shock. A moment of recognition passed between them. Kastor didn’t want gratitude. Trajan knew but nodded anyway.

Kastor led the way through the haze of dust and piles of rubble. A few small cave-ins dropped jagged rocks on either side of them. They found themselves on the intact half of the living room, where Guarin pounded his fist through a sheer screen in the wall and pulled out a handful of rubber masks. He tossed them to everyone. Kastor started to feel tingles of lightheadedness as he secured the mask to his face.