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  Looking back at me, Balidor refolded his arms, sighing.

  “There’s an element of human racial superiority inherent in all of the various strains of Myther doctrine, of course. Even so, they had a number of seer-run cells, as well. We know somewhat less about those… and they were definitely a tiny percentage of the whole, likely around one percent of total membership.”

  Exhaling, he ran a hand through his chestnut-colored hair.

  “Central to all Myther doctrine is the idea of separate spheres, bloodlines, and historical roles for each of the three main races. They didn’t preach non-interference, like the traditional seers; rather, they saw seers as corrupt by birth. They called them children of the Nephilim, and viewed them as an animalistic, soul-less, sin-infused version of humanity.”

  Glancing at me, Balidor added,

  “The Elaerian were seen as an older version of Sarks, bred from fallen angels of a much darker and more powerful variety than that which bred Sarhaciennes. There is an odd element of worship that goes along with this, where they view seers almost as mystic guides, as prophets or harbingers of some kind… but we are also inherently corrupt. Myther doctrine views humans beings as a correction of that ‘fundamental error’ made with Sarks and Elaerian. Rather than being born of fallen angels or other lesser beings, humans are said to be the direct descendants of the One True God.”

  Gesturing in an irritated wave, Balidor grunted.

  “Ironically, many equate the intermediary ‘Dragon’ with their One True God. So there has been significant mixture with seer religion, as well. Some of this mixture is obvious, such as the shorthand name of ‘Mythers’ given to the group. However, many of the more esoteric elements of the religion are shared only with the highest initiates in the Myther religion.”

  Now I was grimacing, too.

  Nodding to Balidor’s words, I looked around at the other three.

  Wreg and Jon were both clearly thinking about Balidor’s words.

  Jon still looked angry, but I could understand that. Mythers were pretty active in San Francisco when we were young. They arranged protests, hassled seers on the street, picketed businesses that used seers in various capacities and of course picketed seer fetish clubs.

  Also, they were credited with dozens of terrorism attacks in the United States alone.

  “And they were assholes,” Jon added in annoyance, clearly hearing some of my thoughts. “I guess them being a Dreng group explains why the Feds and SCARB never managed to shut them down… despite their offices and recruitment centers being friggin’ everywhere, and their jackass spokespeople making threats against groups they didn’t like on a daily basis. I just figured they had a powerful lobby, given all the rich assholes who seemed to be into them.”

  Balidor nodded seriously, his arms still folded over his chest.

  “Indeed,” the Adhipan leader said in his precise voice. “And yes, that was true, too… about the ‘rich assholes.’ Even before the Mythers’ brief period of being in vogue in the United States, however, it was always clear to us they had outside help of some kind. We just assumed the bulk of that help to have come from humans.”

  Silence fell among our small group.

  My head had started to pound slightly once more. I don't know if it was the remnants of the rice wine, the talk of religious fanatics, stress, my leg, fatigue… the pregnancy.

  Either way, I was grateful when no one broke the silence for a few minutes.

  We glided over the dark ocean, heading back for the main continent of Asia as the moon rose, reflecting on the surface of the sea. I watched us head back in the direction we’d come, flying away from our friends and family, and I fought a wave of grief. As much as I understood the need for it, every part of my being felt like we were going in the wrong direction.

  I wanted to go home.

  More than anything in the world, I just wanted to go home.

  For now, however, that would once more have to wait.

  3

  TWO MEN

  REVIK WOKE WITH a start.

  Immediately he tensed, his light igniting.

  He’d forgotten the collar he wore around his neck. Grimacing in pain when the mechanism kicked in, he gritted his teeth, looking around for what woke him.

  The cell was silent, though.

  He found himself looking at Jem, who’d been chained to the opposite wall.

  The other man was sleeping now, lying on his back on a cot, his palms resting on his ribs, his cuffed wrists on either side of his chest.

  Unlike Revik, Jem didn’t wear a collar.

  Then again, unlike Revik, Jem couldn’t snap Revik’s neck in half just by looking at him.

  Neither wanted to be sharing space with the other seer.

  Revik fought them on it, the instant he woke up in here the first time, after they’d ordered him drugged. He told them it was a fucking terrible idea, leaving them in here together. He warned them he’d find a way around the collar at some point. He told them if he did, he’d likely kill the older seer, intentionally or not––especially if they couldn’t find some way to shut Jem the fuck up.

  They’d ignored him.

  Even Jon ignored him while he was still here, before he, Wreg, Balidor and Varlan left in that battered Mi-8/17 Russian helicopter to go pick up his wife.

  This was their friends’ idea of “letting them work it out.”

  Revik suspected he had Balidor or Wreg to thank for this particular form of torture.

  That, or Kali, Allie’s mother.

  Regardless of where the order originated, Kali was the last one to talk to them, on her way out the door.

  “Work this out,” she’d said.

  Her voice turned uncharacteristically hard as she aimed a finger pointedly at first one of them, then the other. She gazed at each of their faces with her dark green eyes, real anger shining out of her usually far-seeing and preternaturally calm irises.

  “Work it out, or you’ll be in here a lot longer than a few days, Illustrious Brother.”

  Her stare fell heavily on Revik then, her eyes openly warning.

  “Your wife’s coming back here.” She pointed at Dalejem, without taking her eyes off Revik’s face. “If brother Jem is telling the truth… if your wife, the Esteemed Bridge, is with child again… that child has to come first. You get that, don’t you, brothers?” She glared at Jem equally hard. “You get this, brother?”

  Her California accent came out when she got angry, Revik noticed.

  Given how similar it was to his wife’s, he couldn’t help but find it disarming.

  Glaring between them both, Kali added,

  “We’re at fucking war. Does that still matter to either of you?” Her accent grew stronger as she focused her ire back on Revik. “You both made this devil’s bargain, thinking you could walk away unscathed. You’re just going to have to live with it now.”

  Jem opened his mouth as if to speak, but Kali cut him off viciously, glaring at him.

  “––You loved one another once. You’re brothers. You’re friends. I remember, even if you don’t. Do you really want to kill each other so badly now that you’re willing to dick fight in the middle of a goddamned war? Have you both forgotten there’s a greater cause here? That we’ve all sacrificed since this started? That we’ve all lost people we love?”

  Her sculpted mouth curled in a frown, again looking unnervingly like Allie’s.

  “Grow the fuck up!” she snapped. “Both of you!”

  Revik hadn’t answered her.

  Neither had Jem.

  Minutes later, she’d disappeared, locking the door behind her.

  After that followed probably the worst twenty-four hours in Revik’s life.

  He did his best to block most of it out, but he hadn’t managed to block out all of it.

  Truthfully, he hadn’t been able to block much of any of it.

  He could still hear Dalejem’s voice, echoing in his mind.

  “…You fucking wh
ored her out! Your own goddamned wife! Don’t you dare put that on me, you gaos d’ jurekil’a piece of shit! From what she told me, you slept with every courtesan in the Forbidden City…”

  Revik said nothing at first.

  He said nothing for a hell of a long time.

  In the end, he’d broken a few times, though.

  “Jem, I need you to listen to me. Now. While I can’t act on it. I need you to take this to heart. The op is over. You need to back the fuck off now. Stay away from my marriage, stay away from my child, and stay away from my goddamned wife––”

  “You’re the one who pulled me into it… little brother. You asked me to do it, remember? You asked me to fuck your wife. Now you’re pissed I fucked her too well?”

  Revik forced himself not to respond.

  He gritted his teeth, not sure if he was grateful for the collar or about to break it with his bare hands.

  “Are you going to deny it? Are you––”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to deny you slept with half of fucking Asia while you were there?”

  “She knows what I was doing there. She knows why I did what I did.”

  “Does she?” Jem grunted, staring at him through the dim light of their mutual cage, the cage Revik’s so-called friends locked him in. “You sure about that… Rook? Or are you just being the same self-centered, sex-addict piece of shit I remember from Brazil? Hiding behind your daughter this time? Pretending that was the reason––”

  “You need to shut up about our daughter.” Revik’s voice grew colder, so thick with anger that time, his German accent overpowered it. “Right now, Jem. I won’t be wearing a collar forever. I don’t want to fucking hurt you. I’m grateful for what you did––”

  “Grateful?” Scorn filled Jem’s voice. “You’re ‘grateful’ to me? You want me to tell you what your wife was grateful about, when it came to me?”

  Once more, Revik forced himself silent.

  But Jem couldn’t leave it alone.

  He wouldn’t fucking leave it alone.

  “I don’t care why you did it,” the green-eyed seer snapped, straining against the chains holding him to the wall. “I don’t care why you told yourself you did it. No one gives a shit, Dehgoies. No one. Do you get that? Do you really think this makes you a good father, what you did?”

  Revik didn’t answer that, either.

  He could feel Jem jabbing at him, wanting him to yell back, wanting to fight with him. Revik could hear it, could know where it came from, could feel the base, biological pull of it, and still know he’d kill the son of a bitch if anyone let him go.

  He tried shutting down his light, closing his mind.

  He tried exiting the conversation, just not listening.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do any of it. And now, looking at Jem asleep on that cot, he knew it was only a matter of time before the seer woke up, before it started all over again. Just thinking about it made his head hurt, more than he could bear.

  When the locks to the door clunked in the metal door, he was already grimacing.

  He knew it was the guards, likely here with food.

  Even so, he looked at the cot, clenching his jaw painfully when he saw Jem’s eyes open, when he saw the older seer pulling himself up into a seated position, rubbing his eyes. They’d already fucking woken him up. Revik had barely had three minutes of peace where he wasn’t passed out, and now they’d stolen that from him, too.

  By the time the guards finished unlocking the metal, oval hatch, Jem was already glaring at him from the cot.

  Revik was already tense enough that his headache was worse.

  “What’s your problem?” Jem said, his voice hard. “Didn’t you sleep?”

  “I slept,” Revik said, terse. “Just not long enough for this.”

  Jem clicked at him, his voice colder. “What’s wrong, Rook? Worried about Allie coming back? Worried which of us she might choose, now that she’s had more time to think about her options?”

  Gritting his teeth, Revik looked away.

  Turning towards the two guards now walking in with trays and water bottles, he couldn’t stop himself from glaring at them when he saw their faces. He couldn’t help blaming them for ruining the quiet, for waking Jem, for forcing him back into this nightmare when all he wanted was a few hours of uninterrupted fucking silence.

  “Drug me,” he growled, looking between Poresh and Vikram’s faces. “Leave me something, before you go. Goddamn it, Vik… at least give me the option! Before this piece of shit starts talking again and I end up killing him with my bare hands.”

  Even then, Jem couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut.

  “Drug you,” he muttered.

  When Revik looked over, Jem grunted, his voice dripping with disgust.

  “Sounds about right. Back to your old ways, is that it, Rook? Did you get your addict on again, while you were in the Forbidden City?” Grimacing, he motioned at Revik’s body with one cuffed hand. “Is that how you managed to burn through so many hookers? Snorting cocaine off their bare asses until the wee hours of the night?”

  Revik glared at him. “Just shut the fuck up, Jem.”

  “Sounds like I hit a tender spot.”

  “Jesus fucking christ,” Revik snapped. “Shut up! Are you capable of being silent?”

  “What do you even care?” the older seer snapped back. “What gives you the right to act so outraged, so wounded? I’m the one who sat with her every night while she cried over what you were doing to her. I’m the one who comforted her. I’m the one she confided in. I’m the one who fucked her. She’s not your wife to me anymore, don’t you get that? She’s my goddamned girlfriend. And she’s pregnant with my kid now, you covic mila’te davos…”

  Vik and Poresh both stopped dead when he said it.

  Revik forced himself silent, too. Heat flared off his light in a terrifying wave at the girlfriend comment, then––

  Nothing.

  Panic and pain jackknifed in his heart, even as his mind went numb. He just sat there, riding the silence and pain that came after Jem’s words.

  Then Jem’s voice came out harsher, maybe at whatever look had come to Revik’s face.

  “Let’s just see if you can keep me the fuck away from her now,” he spat. “She’s already using my sight to compensate for the blindness. Did you plan to take my place, Dehgoies? Are you planning on depriving my damned kid of their rightful father?”

  “Gaos,” Poresh stared down at Jem, his dark eyes murderous. “Shut up, you mak rik'ali piece of shit. Who the fuck do you think you are? That’s his gods-damned wife you’re talking about! He won’t be the only one to kill you, if you don’t learn some manners––”

  He was already stepping towards Jem as he spoke, towards where he was chained to the wall, but Vik stopped him, placing a hand on his chest.

  “Pori, no.” He turned to Revik, his eyes worried, then towards Jem. “Maybe we should drug him. One of them, anyway.”

  “How about I just beat up this fuck, instead?” Poresh said, still staring at Dalejem like he couldn’t believe what he’d said. “Teach him how we feel about wife-poaching ridvak who can’t keep their mouths shut?”

  He was about to say more, when a different voice rose from by the door.

  “Brothers, I would like a word.”

  All four of them turned, staring at the door.

  Revik turned with the rest of them. Standing in the doorway of the cell was the last seer he would have expected to see, but maybe the first one he should have expected.

  Allie’s biological father, Uye, stood there.

  He gazed across all four of their faces with his ocean-colored eyes, pausing to stare the longest at Revik. Then he looked to Vikram, who he obviously sensed had been left in charge of guarding whatever was happening here.

  “I would like to assert my rights,” he said.

  His voice came out harder that time, louder.

  Revik heard the pain there,
and winced.

  “As a father,” he clarified. “I am here to assert rights.”

  He looked directly at Revik.

  “…I have received permission from the elder of your family. I cannot ask my daughter, as she is still out of communication with us, but my wife knows that I am here. That gives me consent from elders in both of our joined families, if not the one who joins us.”

  He paused, his jaw hardening.

  Revik saw pain reach his blue eyes, eyes that never left his.

  “As father to your wife, I would like to assert my rights,” Uye said. “Will you grant me that right, brother?”

  Revik felt his throat close. He glanced at Dalejem without thought, then back at Uye, who remained standing in the doorway, suddenly looking taller to Revik than he’d ever looked. Those blue eyes didn’t waver, or change expression.

  He’d asked Tarsi if he could be here. Tarsi had said yes.

  He’d asked Kali, too. Kali also consented.

  At Revik’s continued silence, eventually Uye looked away, his eyes shifting to Dalejem before his full mouth turned in a frown.

  “I have rights,” he muttered. He looked at Vikram, then at Poresh. “He is fatherless. I am within my rights to discuss certain things with my daughter’s mate.” He looked at Revik again, and that anger shone harder. “Whether he wishes to grant me that right, he has to listen to me. He has to hear me out. It is my right to do it. It is not to cause him pain. But he must listen.”

  Vikram gave Revik a nervous glance.

  “Brother,” he said, his voice diplomatic. “I do not dispute those rights. But his wife is not here. Can this not wait until––”

  “It’s all right,” Revik blurted. “It’s fine. I acknowledge his right.”

  He glanced at Vik, then at Poresh, before his eyes glanced past Dalejem.

  “It’s fine,” he repeated, clearing his throat. “I’ll hear him. I acknowledge who he is to me, and his rights over me. He can do whatever he wants.”

  When he looked back at the door, Uye was staring at him, a harder fire in his eyes.