is never enough danger,” he replies. He takes hold of the stick on the console in front of him. “Let go of your control.” When I do, he says, “Come here and sit on my lap. I want to show you how to program a route and a destination.”
“Can you show me from here?” I ask reluctantly.
“No,” he replies.
I resist for a moment, but I really want to learn how to program a route. It’s a skill that can help me escape one day, and I’d be stupid to turn down the opportunity to learn. I disengage the seat belt and move to his side. Kyon reaches over and pulls me onto his lap. As he flies the Hallafast, he explains the way to input coordinates and determine the best possible route. The control panel is intricate, but I begin to understand it as I ask him questions. I relax against his chest. His deep voice is engaging. It’s confusing, this dance he’s doing with me—I’m his enemy, I’m his possession, I’m his lifeline to the future, I’m his slave, I’m his confidante, I’m his pupil.
Once Kyon finishes his explanation, the route and destination are logged in. He switches the Hallafast to autopilot. The console in front of us retracts and the manual joysticks shift back and disappear into the dashboard. It leaves just readouts in front of us, but little else to distract me from the view. I try to stand, to move back to my seat, but Kyon’s arms wrap around me and hold me in place on his lap.
“We’re almost home,” he explains. “There.” He points to where the buildings fall away. In the middle of this elaborate metropolis, where the skyscrapers reach into the clouds, there’s a large chunk of dead air. It’s called dead air because the elaborate, sprawling estate buildings on the site below it are only about twenty stories high. On Ethar, where most of the land is annexed, being close to the ground level—to terra firma—is afforded only to the very wealthy. It is an extreme extravagance to have unoccupied airspace. To have this much of it is borderline vulgar.
The city of Urbenoster is surrounded by mountains—a ring. The beautifully constructed skyscrapers wreathing the inside form another circle—a second ring. Kyon’s estate is in the middle of it all—a third ring—or the pupil of the eye, whichever way you want to look at it. A river cuts through the city from the mountains. It comes from a waterfall off a mountain peak. It flows directly to Kyon’s estate, then splits into two rivers that flow around the estate on either side and merge again on the far end. Thus, it acts as a wide moat separating the estate from the rest of the city.
“All roads lead to Rome,” I murmur. “I don’t understand at all.”
Kyon frowns. “What don’t you understand?”
“You!” I cover my face with both my hands and rub it. “Who are you?”
“You seem upset,” he observes. His cheek brushes the back of my hand. It feels a little like fine sandpaper.
“I am upset,” I reply. I take my hands away from my face and glare at him. “No wonder you’re insane! This kind of wealth makes people crazy! I bet you never relax! I bet you’re always obsessing about something—how you can beat something, or do something, or kill something, or win something!”
“Sometimes I sleep.”
“I’m serious!” I growl. I try to get up off of his lap again, but he pulls me back down.
“Don’t let this scare you. You’ll stay by my side until you adjust.”
“Staying by your side doesn’t help that—at all—in fact, it exacerbates the problem.”
“That wasn’t a request,” he says.
We fly over the moat; the landscape is so stunning that it leaves me breathless. The grounds are laid out to resemble a flower, but not just any flower. I recognize the intricate pattern—the perfection of it.
“What do you see?” Kyon asks.
I study it. It’s not really a circle, it’s a hexagon composed of evenly spaced overlapping circles. Every tree line, hedgerow, and garden path conspires to form the flowerlike pattern with a symmetrical structure of the hexagon. “I see a Flower of Life.”
Kyon exhales against my throat; it makes goose bumps rise on me. “What else do you see?” he whispers, his lips finding my pulse.
My heart hammers in my chest. In the dead center of the Flower of Life pattern is a majestic palace of epic proportions. “Your house is a castle. It has thirteen round