Page 91 of Fractured Souls

“Maybe, but my black heart can’t stand the feeling of you not being in control of your own body. I was this close to…”

“Killing someone?”

A puff of air escaped his lips—a small release of tension. “I don’t do well with this kind of thing.”

“Oh, you’re doing just fine.” She turned and looked up at him, searching his hard face, finding heat in his eyes.

“I am now,” he said thickly. He grasped her wrist. She didn’t resist him.

Ektans and his men stared at them as if they’d both grown horns.

Lodan wore an amused half-smile.

She became aware of several more Kordolians standing in the dark corners of the room; they’d been there all along, but they were so still and silent that they’d blended with the shadows, their faces like silver masks.

It was cramped in here. There were a lot of big, armed males in here.

Nythian practically bristled all over with protectiveness, and suddenly all she wanted was to be alone with him.

“So I take it Rucha here is going to lead us to this Eternal Portal of Souls, then?” Lodan moved to his captive’s side, making the poor Tharian jump. “You can be my navigator in the cockpit. You know how to lead me there by landmarks, yes?”

“I can. I will guide you there,” Rucha agreed, switching to heavily accented Universal. “But once you have released my Queen, you must leave here and never set foot on our planet again.”

“Nope. Can’t do that,” Nythian said bluntly. He leaned forward a little, and Alexis got a sense of how intimidating he could be when he wanted. “See, some old enemies of ours are sniffing around on the other side of your planet, and we can’t have that. You should be thankful to your queen for forcing us to come here. We’re the enemies of your enemies. You’d be wise to not forget that, Tharian.”

Twenty-Three

They were in the air again, flying over Tharos’s barren landscape. The red dunes gave way to a grey wasteland of rocks and stunted trees, and suddenly they hit the edge of civilization.

“Marenja,” Nythian said softly.

Lodan flew low and dropped their speed, surveying the area.

Alexis could only stare out the window, numb with fascination and horror. The scene was both familiar and new. Anuk’s memories were etched in her mind; she’d practically lived the devastating blast.

The white fire was long gone, leaving blackened ruins and rubble.

Marenja was a shell of its former glory, but it was still astonishing.

The first thing that struck her was the symmetry of it all. The Tharian city radiated outward from a single tall spire in the center, rings upon rings of concentric circles formed from thousands of domed black structures. In places, the black surface had crumbled away to reveal glimpses of pale pink stone.

There were no roads, only smooth paths lined with red dust. There wasn’t any sign of advanced technology. No vehicles or machines, not even burned out ones. Occasionally, she’d catch sight of a shallow channel lined with verdant green vegetation, crystal clear water flowing through it from some unseen spring or well.

The calmness was eerie, the afternoon sun casting perfectly curved shadows behind the charred domes. Abandoned to the howling winds and creeping sands of the vast desert, the city looked ancient and otherworldly.

Setting foot down there would feel like some sort of sacrilege.

“Too much power,” Nythian said quietly, his expression hard and inscrutable as he stared out the window. The sunlight had changed, becoming warm and bright, burnishing his features with a golden hue.

He looked like a sculpture, a statue, a mythical god of war.

The mood was strange. Everything felt surreal.

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s what happens when you have weapons of vast destruction at your fingertips. A word to the sylth and you can decimate entire cities in the blink of an eye. Some of the Lords used to get off on it. They would find any excuse. Destroyed planets on a whim, just because they could.”

“On a whim? How could anyone do something so mindlessly cruel?”

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