“So that means maybe?”
“Probably not,” Montague sighed. “I’ve tried something similar before. The hold over Alexandal is more powerful than just the copper in his blood. There are too many factors to depend on success. But it’s worth a try.”
“You never give up, do you?”
“I can’t,” Montague said.
Over the changing seasons, Montague had buried himself in thousands of pages of sacred text to try and predict the enemy’s plans. He’d read over material that he had already examined, and carefully analyzed text that he had not yet seen, hoping to find clues. He became accustomed to short, frequent naps, twenty to thirty minutes, resting only when his eyes could no longer stay open. Montague did not think he should spend even one full night sleeping, not while his people were in danger. There was vital information to gather. He could only hope that time was on his side. Whether the sun lit the sky or the moon claimed the night, as long as he wasn’t looking after Rayne Volpi, the new king, he revisited Gabriel’s Diary.
“I know the copper is what helps control Alexandal, but what does it actually do?” Gretchen asked.
“Copper is the mineral that the Nekrums use to mentally connect with their slaves. It relays the collective knowledge of every member connected to the host; instant communication. They form a hive mind, the host and his mages. The exiles of Illyrium found a leader in Demitri, the one controlled by the Nekrums. The aliens used their host to recruit them. They still do. Once the host infects the outcast’s blood, they become victims, programmed to live like savages and do what the host tells them to do while the Nekrums give the orders from above.”
“How powerful are they?” asked Gretchen.
“Later dubbed mages, the exiles were taught how to carry the Nekrums’ host’s spells. The host selects a series of words forming a melody of vowels and consonants, placed in a specific order, to generate sounds that manipulate material. The mage just has to pronounce the incantation correctly to apply the curse. But these mages possess no magical qualities themselves; they only act as deliverers. They wear black, the color that absorbs all colors—a symbol that represents the cleansing of life, ridding it of its beauty. Their numbers have tripled since the Great Flood of Illyrium. Something’s coming.”
Gretchen looked as if she was about to cry. “And Rayne…his skin… are you sure the boy isn’t cursed or one of them?”
“The boy is one of us,” Montague said, like a reflex. “We raised him. And he is the last Volpi.” But Montague wasn’t even sure if Rayne was the last Volpi. That answer never satisfied Gretchen. She’d asked him that same question many times before.
Gretchen turned her eyes to the floor. Tears fell.
“I know,” Montague said, holding her shoulders. “He is different…He’s not a narcissist.”
Gretchen laughed. He knew how to make her smile.
“I can’t yet be sure about what happened to Rayne, but he is healthy and his blood is pure.”
Montague and Gretchen accompanied the king just about every day from dusk till dawn since the day he was born. They were the only two people that had keys to the king’s room. If Rayne did leave the castle, he was escorted by guards of Montague’s choosing; men he knew he could trust. It was critical that the boy’s blood was protected and kept far from the enemy. Even though it seemed that Demitri was focusing his search on bastard children, potentially carrying Volpi blood, Alexandal, an assumed puppet of the Nekrums’ host had eyes and ears throughout the kingdom.
“For a long time, I knew that Burton was different,” said Gretchen. “He was my friend, and he taught me how to play all the instruments I know to play. He never directly told me anything about this hidden reality. So I had to put the clues together myself. When I’d ask questions, he’d change the subject after telling me that my involvement would put me in danger. But he never stopped me from listening in on private discussions among members of the Resistance, pretending that he wasn’t even aware of my eavesdropping. He trusted me. I know there’s something special about Volpi blood. Why would the Nekrums spend hundreds of years manipulating an entire race just for a single drop of blood?”
Montague knew what the Nekrums really desired—to find the Volpi that carried a special gene within the bloodline so that they could reconstruct their mutation. They had murdered countless Volpis in the past, searching for that secret. But every sample of blood they had taken throughout history was too diluted to work. So they would wait until the next Volpi was born, hoping for the miracle gene to be dominant within the body.
Their tragedy was sad and their quest for salvation was almost romantic, Montague thought. He remembered the story Burton had told him like it was yesterday.
Approximately six hundred years ago, the Nekrum race had poisoned another planet called Enot with the same microorganic intelligence that controlled Demitri, infecting human beings.
A malevolent humanoid people, the Nekrums were brilliant and deceptive, only standing about a foot tall with large heads. They didn’t feel empathy for intelligent races that they believed were beneath their own, and would conquer any species that got in their way, showing no mercy. As the other humanoid species among the five realms were much larger and stronger, their size prohibited them from physical confrontation. Instead, the Nekrums created virus-sized intelligences. With these, they were able to infect and thereby pilot living vessels to do their bidding. And as masters of genetic splicing, they had created many kinds of monsters to defend themselves.
Montague was aware that Gretchen knew that the origin of their people had begun on a planet other than Naan, in a civilization that was much more evolved than the colony in which they lived.
“No longer able
