Page 77 of Akur

A strangled sob tore from Kon-stahns’ throat, and something inside him broke. His grip on his blades tightened, but for the first time in his life, the familiar urge to kill wasn’t enough. He lowered the weapons, the tips clinking softly against the smooth floor in their uselessness.

Violence wouldn’t fix this. Couldn’t erase what they were seeing.

Without conscious thought, he moved toward her. He didn’t know how to comfort—he knew how to fight, how to kill, how to conquer. But watching her shoulders shake, hearing those quiet, broken sounds… His body seemed to know what to do, even if his mind didn’t. He positioned himself behind her, close enough that she could feel his presence, but not so close as to crowd her grief.

“I’m…” What should he say? “I’m here, bright eyes,” he said roughly, the words feeling strange on his tongue. “You don’t have to face this alone.”

His life organ clenched as she turned to him, waters streaming down her face. The fading bruises on her jaw, the scrapes along her temple, the dried blood at the corner of her mouth—they should have made her look broken. Weak. Instead, they were badges of everything she’d survived. Everything she’d fought through. Even now, with the eye waters cutting tracks through the dirt on her face, she stood straight-backed before horror. Where his people would have channeled grief into rage, she let herself feel it fully while refusing to let it break her.

He’d never seen strength like that before.

As she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face into his chest, he couldn’t help but hold her. She stirred something protective and fierce inside him. Something that made him want to shelter her from more pain, even as he respected her strength in facing it.

It was while holding her, his attention split between her quiet grief and scanning the room for threats, that he saw it. His instincts hadn’t abandoned him even in this moment. Because there, across the room, something caught his eye. Something that made his muscles tense, even as he tried not to alert her.

“No,” he whispered, but Constance didn’t hear. Wiping her eyes, she whispered gratitude before turning back to the slabs. Moving from one to the other, she began checking the bodies for what he assumed was a pulse.

“They’re all dead,” she whispered, still moving from one to another. “And it’s strange…but…” She paused, focusing on one of the bodies as he took a step closer to what had caught his attention. “Their eyes are all open…their irises completely white, Akur. Like marble. Their mouths are all open, too. I’ve never…I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s like they were all killed by the same thing in the same way…but there are no wounds. Just…just terror. F-frozen in their eyes.”

He was still moving closer to that thing across the room, his own horror mounting. “What about the human the Tasqals brought here? The one that was on the vessel with you. Is she…”

”No.” Constance was still moving from slab to slab. “The silent woman…I don’t see her. I can’t find her, Akur.”

But he couldn’t even respond. For there, in the corner of the room, suspended in a complex framework of metal and crackling energy, was a being he never expected to see here. Tall and ethereal, the markings that etched all across the being’s skin seemed to shimmer with its own inner light. Delicate tendrils of the being’s hair floated around its head as if suspended in water, even though he was not.

Kon-stahns was suddenly at his side. “I don’t see her. She’s not here.But that’s good, right? That means…” she trailed off. He could almost sense the alarm go through her as she stood staring at the being before them. “What is that?”

“An Arois,” he breathed, his voice tight with recognition and something else. Rage? “They have an Arois.”

The male’s eyes were closed, his face serene despite the dozens of nodes attached to his body. Each node pulsed with a sickly green light that seemed to draw something from the Arois’ body, making his skin fluctuate between brightness and shadow. At the center of his forehead, the gem that all Arois have was dull. Unlit.

“What are they doing to him?” Kon-stahns whispered. The horror was evident in her voice.

Akur swallowed hard, forcing his eyes closed as he tried to temper the rising emotions in him. Fight. Kill. Fuhk. Everything was like a concoction ready to make him drunk.

He forced his gaze to the females dead on the slabs. None of them had swollen bellies. And with Kon-stahns’ observations—the white eyes, the open mouths, the lack of wounds or those sickening pustules that plagued the Tasqals… These humans weren’t used for breeding. They were used for something else.

The moment his gaze shifted back to the Arois, a horrible feeling developed in his gut.

He only knew one Arois. His name was Yce and the qeffer was a powerful being no one should ever cross.

“The Arois are psychic,” Akur explained quietly as they moved closer. “The strongest telepaths in known space. We have one on the Restitution. They’re peaceful, but their abilities…” He shook his head. “This is wrong. This is so wrong.”

The Arois didn’t respond to their presence, but something about his face suggested awareness. Pain, perhaps, or resignation.

“Why would they have a psychic here?” Kon-stahns turned, gaze scanning the room once more. “In this room, with these women. And that device they were talking about…”

He could sense her scanning the room for it, even as his focus remained on the Arois.

“It’s him.” His utterance was a whisper colder than the room’s frigid air. “They’re using him.” The reality of how much they didn’t know was crashing down just as a sudden noise at the door made them both spin.

As the door opened, Akur moved without thought.

A Tasqal stood at the entrance, its bulbous eyes widening in surprise before narrowing with cruel delight.

In one fluid motion, Akur crossed the room, his grip on the creature before the door closed and he slammed the Tasqal against the wall. One hand covering the Tasqal’s mouth while the other pressed a blade to its throat.

“Signal for help,” Akur growled, “and I’ll separate your head from your body.”

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