Page 97 of Silent Lucidity

Abella smiled and slid her hand to the nape of his neck. “Never.”

Nineteen

Abella glanced down at the tiny red mark on her wrist for what must’ve been the thousandth time and brushed a fingertip over it. In another day or two, it would fade away, but its significance would remain with her forever.

Alkorin had kept to his word—in four days, he’d created two ID chips with complete background information and integrated them into the Consortium systems. His delivery of the chips as promised had been enough to finally earn Tenthil’s trust. They’d theorized together that Tenthil and Abella had been sold out to the Order by one of the informants who’d originally guided them to the forger. Alkorin had vowed to rectify the matter.

But none of that could bother Abella now; she and Tenthil were registered citizens of Arthos. They were free to go wherever they wanted.

Smiling, she looked at Tenthil as he maneuvered the hovercar into an upward-slanted express tunnel. His face—along with the rest of his body—had already healed the injuries he’d suffered at the temple. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d mentioned he healed fast. Abella, on the other hand, still sported some faint green and yellow bruising on her cheek.

Leaning toward Tenthil, Abella pressed her lips to the scar at the right corner of his mouth.

He smiled the sort of easy, carefree smile she never would’ve expected him capable of when they first met. “Look outside.”

“Why? All these tunnels look the same to me. I much prefer looking at you.”

“Trust me.”

With a chuckle, she turned her head to look out the window.

The lights, other vehicles, and signs—the latter of which were in alien characters she didn’t understand—flitted by in an almost hypnotic blur; it reminded her a little of the antigrav trains she’d taken to visit her family after she’d moved away for dance school, many of which had traveled at high speeds through long, subterranean tunnels.

The quality of the light changed gradually, growing brighter and somehowpurer. She faced forward to see a wide opening ahead.

When they exited the tunnel, she had to lift a hand and squint to shield her eyes from the intense light. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, and a few seconds more to realize it wasnaturallight. She hadn’t seen natural light in years.

The hovercar climbed at a sharp angle, moving with the nearby vehicles through several free-floating rectangular frames that must’ve been there to guide traffic. Abella found herself staring up at a sky tinted pink, orange, and gold, dotted with soft clouds stained the same colors. She quickly blinked away the tears suddenly misting her eyes.

When the hovercar finally leveled out, Abella’s breath caught in her throat. A massive city sprawled out before her, stretching beyond the limits of her vision. Buildings of wildly varying size, shape, and architecture stood all around, many of them towering over the hovercar, which itself had to be hundreds of meters off the ground. Streets and walkways spanned gaps above and below in numerous tiers, reminding her a little of the Undercity—but this place was open to the air.

Plants in colors and varieties she couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams adorned many of the buildings, and there seemed to be fountains, statues, and waterfalls everywhere. Sparkling canals of pure, cerulean water wound through the city, culminating at a massive lake far to the hovercar’s left. More buildings stood along the lake’s far shore. Countless vehicles darted between and above the buildings, following the rectangular frameworks in seemingly endless streams, and tens of thousands—if notmillions—of aliens wandered the streets and walkways.

Several clusters of buildings stood out from the rest—taller, more majestic, each group unified in its own unique style and coloration. They shone like beacons amongst the somewhat disjointed but no less beautiful structures surrounding them. She’d heard just enough about the city above the surface to guess that those clusters were the sanctums—the strongholds and sanctuaries held by the races comprising the Consortium.

But it was the city’s backdrop that awed her more than anything else. The source of that bright, natural light wasn’t a star like she’d expected—the sky was red near the horizon, colored by what looked like a huge, swirling cloud that was brightest near its center. A beam of light pierced its middle, fading somewhere high above. Though the beacon-like sanctums were dim compared to that column of light, they each seamed aglow just a hint of its impressive luminosity.

“What is that?” she asked.

“A quasar,” Tenthil replied. “The Consortium draws energy from it to power this city.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, I vaguely recall hearing about them, and I think I’ve seen a picture or two, but Earth has nothing like this.”

“It doesn’t.”

Something in Tenthil’s tone pried her attention away from the beautiful, alien sky.

Abella turned her head to find him staring intently at her. Her face warmed under the intensity of his gaze, and she smiled. “There are plenty of others like me on Earth. Everywhere you look, there’s another human.”

Tenthil shifted his gaze back to the airspace in front of them. “No.”

“What do you mean,no?”

“There’s no one like you anywhere but right here.”

Abella’s heart quickened, and her belly fluttered with excitement. She clasped her hands together to stop herself from reaching for him. For someone who didn’t speak often, he sure as hell seemed to know the right words to say.

She ran her eyes over him, seriously contemplating climbing into his lap. “Are we almost there?”

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