The three Aurelians don’t respond, but Diana looks at me with soulful eyes – silently pleading for me to explain.
“The… the Scorp-Blood tribe doesn’t recognize me as their fated mate,” I explain. “There’s to be a fight for the right to… to have me,” I continue, and when I say the words they somehow feel more real and more terrifying than they did before; as if the mere act of proclaiming them to the morning light cemented them in stone.
“What the hell are you talking about? They can’t… They can’t do that!” Diana is still blinking the sleep from her eyes, but I can see the horror as she realizes that she’s not fated to any triad – and if this is setting a precedent, she too will be fought over and claimed.
I swallow hard. I always do that when I’m nervous.
“I wasn’t expecting this either,” I admit. “I didn’t know what I was expecting, coming to this planet… Oh, Gods, Diana. I’m so scared.” I shudder in front of her. “I’ve been trying to be a rock since the Scorp first attacked Barl. It feels like that frantic escape from the city was years ago. Now there’s no one to be strong for.”
Diana rushes to me and grabs me in a big hug. “Whatever happens, I’m on your side,” she promises, and I feel instant guilt for thinking of her as a stuck-up noble who’d be constantly looking down her nose at me.
“Thanks Diana. I’ll be there for you, too,” I say, breaking off the hug to wipe the tears from my eyes.
The three Aurelians stand in the first breaks of daylight. They’ve never looked so alien. Their eyes are narrow and stern, without a trace of mercy. Every muscle in their bodies is tense, and I understand that they are made for war. The Aurelians are born for fights like this, and I was foolish to think of them as anything but warriors – born and bred for battle.
“Did you learn anything about the sickness?” Diana asks, trying to change the subject.
I feel like a failure. There are hundreds of sick people in the cave, and I haven’t been able to help any of them.
“No. Not yet.”
Diana nods. “When I have a problem like this, I try to list out the facts. What do you know?”
I breath in the early dawn air and think. “Well, the sickness got worse in the last couple days. But Forn got better. Umm… I don’t know what else. I guess… I guess that means there’s something about this jungle, or else that’s a red herring and Forn’s body just beat the virus.”
“I’m not sick. You’re not sick, and you went into the jungle too.”
I furrow my brows. “You’re right,” I say, thinking deeply about what makes me different than the sick people in the cave.
What else? The blackness on the lips and beards of the sick?
The sun rises, and once it hits the zenith I know I’ll be out of time. My brain works rapidly, trying to find another way out of this situation.
If I can heal the Aurelians, then maybe – somehow – they’ll accept that I was brought here by fate itself and not some distant human’s experiment gone awry.
Anything to stop these warriors from fighting and dying. I’d do anything. It felt so right last night. It felt like everything was perfect, if only for a moment. I can’t go back to a world without these three amazing men.
The three Aurelians stretch in the dawn light. The sunlight dances against their bodies, glowing against their pale flesh and bringing out the venom green of their tattoos. They start to spar, lightly, practicing their unarmed combat. I wish that I could have brought their weapons to them, but there was no chance in the escape from Lord Aeron’s manor. They’ll have to battle with only their knuckles and the balls of their feet.
My stomach rumbles. Diana reaches into a pocket and pulls out a piece of jerky. “They gave this to me. It’s all we’ve been eating since we got here… I wish we could have some vegetables, or some fresh game.” She hands me a piece of dried meat.
I take it gratefully and chew until my jaw aches. I wonder idly what strange beast from this jungle planet died to make this jerky.
Not a fish, that’s for sure.
“Forn,” I say in the guttural language of the Aurelians. He ducks a jab from Darok. I feel guilty for interrupting their training, but there’s something I need from him.
Forn walks to me. My heart breaks at the way he stares at me, as if he’s already resigned to losing me. I’ve never had anyone I cared about enough to hate the idea of losing them – at least not like this.
“My love,” Forn says, and his words make me shiver. I’m shocked there is a word for love in his violent language, and as he says it, I see the humanity in him. It’s almost enough to make me forget that he’s going to be trying to beat members of his own species to death in just a few hours.
“I… I need your dagger,” I tell him. “If… If something happens to you, I’m not going to go with those fish-eating bastards.” I take a huge breath in. It feels like I just got a huge weight off my chest by saying those words out loud.
Forn pulls out his Orb-Dagger. He hands it me, and our fingers touch.
Forn meets my gaze, and I meet his.
“To activate it, all you need to do is want it to exist.”
I nod, holding the hilt in my hand.
The irony was that to Forn, the weapon might merely be a dagger. To me, the length of it was more the size of a short-sword.
Exist.
The blade hums to life, shimmering in the air. I remember when I was rushing out of Lord Aeron’s private chambers and I so desperately willed the blade to exist,
