conflict—Tyler keeps his mind on the task at hand.
“And now your sister wants what? To kill you?”
Kal hears the note in our Alpha’s voice and sits up straight once more. “She wishes me to embrace the war in my blood. The fact that I have not joined the Unbroken is a shame to her. And she will not stop pursuing me until she has her way.”
“We’re pretty good at dodging pursuit, Kal,” Scarlett says. “We’ve had a lot of practice lately.”
The Syldrathi shakes his head. “The Waywalkers among my people are sensitives. Empaths. And though she was raised Warbreed, Saedii inherited a touch of our mother’s gift. My sister can … sense me. She has been able to do so since we were children. Not from an infinite distance, but certainly while we are stranded in the Emerald City.” He pauses, lifting his chin in the manner I have learned often proceeds one of his pronouncements that owe more to nobility than sense. “I am a danger to all of you. It is better that I leave, and draw away the peril.”
Aurora begins to protest, but is cut off by Ty, who lifts one hand—even that movement is pained—and speaks.
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” he says.
I am only half listening. My mind is humming as loudly as the tubes around us, and as I watch another pair of bodies shoot past, I am recalling Adams’s face in his message. The rhythm and inflection of his words.
They have violated our trust.
Tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
They have broken our code.
Tap, tap, tap.
My cheeks heat with a momentary flush of embarrassment that it has taken me so long to understand. But there is no time for such indulgence. I take out my uniglass and begin my calculations.
“Can you sense your sister too, Kal?” Aurora asks. “Because when I’m … when I use my powers … I can see something in you. Feel something in your mind. Maybe you have a touch of your mother in you too?”
“It is possible, be’shmai,” he replies. “The gift is passed through the blood.”
I scroll through another round of calculations and—filing away with interest the fact that I feel the urge at all—allow myself a small smile of satisfaction.
“Zila?” Scarlett notes my change in demeanor, glancing at my uniglass. “Do you have something you want to share with the class?”
“Yes,” I say, eyes still on my calculations.
“… Well?” Scarlett asks.
“Admiral Adams has not abandoned us,” I declare. “His broadcast contained a coded message.”
I turn my eyes to Tyler.
“And I have just broken it.”
5
KAL
We have not even kissed yet.
My squad members would say this is a strange thought to be entertaining in the middle of a crisis. I know Aurora herself would probably think it foolish. And that, in essence, is the heart of the problem. Because I am not feeling what humans feel. I am not feeling like, or lust, or even love.
I am feeling the Pull.
Syldrathi poets have spent millennia trying to describe it. I studied the work of our most renowned maesters back on Syldra. Sometimes I put their verses to music and played them on my siif beneath the lias trees outside our home. Billions of words over thousands of years. Songs and sonnets, couplets and hymns. All trying to evoke even a fraction of how this feels.
Having lived it now, I know not a single one of them has come close.
The Pull is more than words.
Love is a drop in the ocean of what I feel for her.
Love is a single sun in a heaven full of stars.
And I know Aurora cannot really understand it. That humans do not feel as Syldrathi feel. And as much as I want her, I do not wish to rush her or—spirits forbid—frighten her away. And so I keep all this inside as best I can.
But we have not even kissed yet.
Spirits of the Void, this is torture… .
“Get over yourself, Pixieboy,” Finian mutters.
“… What?”
The Betraskan blinks his large black eyes.
“I said get over here, Pixieboy,” he repeats. “We gotta run through this.”
I breathe deep, run my hand across my brow. My squad has gathered in the cramped living space of our so-called apartment. This place is smaller than an Enlei’s den, and smells twice as noxious. But we have little choice with our available funds, and with my sister now on the hunt through the Emerald City, we must lay low, among the dregs who ask no questions. At least with Zila’s powers of deduction—nothing short of brilliant, I must admit—we