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“You said, ‘if you ever hurt my daughter, I’ll hunt you,’” he said, wiping his face with a hand. He stared at the deck as he said it, but when the other man didn’t respond, he looked up, and saw that Uye’s eyes had brightened, too.

  “You know she is pregnant?” Uye said.

  Revik nodded again. “Yes.”

  “Are you the father?”

  Revik swallowed, then shook his head.

  “Is Dalejem the father?”

  Revik exhaled slowly. “I don’t know.”

  Uye nodded. A faint knowing rose to his eyes. “You do not think it is him. Dalejem.” At Revik’s stare, Uye motioned towards him with a hand. “Do not be afraid to voice this suspicion. You are not the only one who’s felt it.”

  Revik felt his jaw harden. Thinking for a moment, he shook his head, staring at the deck. “I need to talk to my wife about that,” he said. “What I think now doesn’t matter.”

  Uye seemed to consider his words. Then he nodded, once.

  “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps any additional information isn’t mine to share. Perhaps you must wait and ask your wife who else the father could be.”

  Revik looked up sharply at that, frowning, but Uye didn’t meet his gaze.

  Clicking under his breath, the older male shifted his stance, and Revik winced involuntarily, unable to help himself.

  “I’m not going to hit you,” Uye said.

  “I apologize, I––”

  “Don’t apologize. I want to hit you. But I promised my daughter, months ago, that I would not harm you. So I will not.”

  Revik nodded, swallowing.

  Sighing louder, Uye let real anger reach his voice. “I understand that you lost your parents at a young age. I understand that you have not had any guidance at all apart from Vash… and he is a monk. He spent most of his life celibate, despite his relationship with your aunt. He is also dead, so not available to counsel you any longer.”

  Revik nodded again, not speaking.

  “Will you accept some advice from me?” Uye said. “As someone who is married and mated? As an elder?”

  Revik felt that pain return to the middle of his chest. “Of course.”

  “Of course?” Uye snorted. “Gaos. I want to hit you just for saying that.” Uye growled at him next. “Look at me, Dehgoies.”

  Revik looked up, fighting his gaze and his expression still as glass.

  “You know what I am asking you,” Uye said, colder.

  Revik nodded. “I do.”

  “Then fucking address me properly, or I’m going to forget my promise to my daughter.”

  “Yes, father. I accept your help. I’ll transfer my penance to you. Unequivocally.”

  The harder glint in Uye’s eyes faded. He nodded, once.

  “Good.”

  Exhaling again, he combed a hand through his sun-bleached hair, then sat heavily on the other chair bolted to the deck, across from where Revik sat. When he spoke next, his voice was lower, and for the first time, Uye opened his light.

  “Do you want to stay married?” Uye said.

  Revik felt his chest constrict. So much pain washed over him, he couldn’t see through it for those few seconds. “Yes,” he managed.

  “Does she?”

  Revik stared at the deck. He remembered how she’d been by the wall, how her light felt. Even so, and as much as he wanted to read into the message there––as much as he’d felt her wanting him to read into it––he couldn’t answer for her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dugra drahk. You do know. Bonded mates always know.”

  Revik felt his jaw harden. “Yes.”

  “She wants to raise her children with you?”

  Revik nodded. “Yes.”

  As he said it, he felt that harder pain in his chest loosen. Not all the way, but enough that he could breathe again. He was staring at the deck when he wiped his eyes. He didn’t feel the other male move. He was so lost in what Uye just got him to voice aloud, he jumped violently when the other man leaned closer, laying a hand on his arm.

  “Revik,” Uye said, his voice an open warning. “If you ever do anything like that again… if you ever use your own wife and marriage in some kind of military operation in that way again, I’ll do everything in my power to separate the two of you.”

  Revik nodded, feeling that tightness in his throat worsen.

  “The only thing that makes it marginally forgivable is that I know the two of you did this to free that little girl,” Uye said, his voice gruffer.

  Revik didn’t answer.

  “I know you love your wife.” Uye clicked softly. “I know both of you have been through a lot together already.” He grimaced. “I also know that your ‘uncle’ frightens you. I know you feared for your wife’s life. I know you feared for your family. But gaos, son.”

  Revik started to speak, but Uye blew a faint warning at him, and Revik closed his mouth, making his mind still. He couldn’t help his light reacting from what the other seer called him. Not only the word, but what he felt behind it that time.

  “What do you intend to do?” Uye said. “Now, Revik. What do you intend to do now?”

  Revik let out a humorless sound, wiping his face. “Besides grovel?”

  “Yes,” Uye grunted. “Besides that.”

  “I don’t know.” Revik frowned, staring at the deck. “I know what I want to do.”

  “Yes, what is that?”

  Revik raised his eyes, cautious. He relaxed somewhat when he saw the calmer look that had taken over the other male’s expression. His pale blue eyes evoked the ocean once more, most of the worst of that heat dimmed.

  Revik exhaled, half in relief, but also in thought.

  “I want to finish the bond,” he said honestly. “I want to take her somewhere and finish it.”

  Pausing, he frowned down at the deck.

  “I know I probably can’t take her anywhere. Not now. Not given everything happening here. We can’t stop operations until we’ve assessed the threat level at least, caught Chandre and retrieved the American President. We need to know what kind of retaliation we’ll be facing… and whether another war is coming, at least. But I’d like to find some way to finish it anyway. As soon as possible.”

  A flicker of light touched Uye’s eyes when Revik looked up. Then he surprised Revik by nodding. He only nodded once, but again, a lot lived behind it.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice holding an open approval. “I think that is best.”

  “She loves him,” Revik said, still watching the other’s face.

  He said it in part as an asking of advice.

  The other male seemed to feel that.

  “Ah,” Uye said, exhaling. He thought for a few minutes, then shrugged. “You allowed it. You knew it was a risk.” He met Revik’s gaze, his blue eyes holding that harder glint. “Let it go,” he advised. “Let her have that. Do not ask her to answer for it.”

  Revik thought about that, then exhaled.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You would never have done this, if the two of you were fully bonded,” Uye added. “You know that, don’t you? This would never have crossed your mind, Revik, if the two of you had completed the bond.”

  Looking at him, Revik frowned, then nodded slowly.

  That felt true.

  “I won’t do it again,” is all he said.

  5

  SUNRISE

  THE SUN WAS rising.

  Two nights had passed since we’d turned the Russian helicopter around, and now I gazed out over rolling, dark blue waves with foam crests, watching the yellow disc of the sun rise over the water. It threw golden rays over the ruins of what had been part of the city of Tokyo, reflecting on glass and steel.

  It had been a very long three days.

  After we talked about what Revik and Feigran told me, and what Balidor knew about the Myther cult, we’d discussed how best to get back to the ship without getting everyone killed.

  Thankfully, none of them do
ubted that I’d really been talking to Revik through Feigran, or whether or not we should heed his warning to find a more circuitous route back to the ship. Balidor even mused aloud the same thing I’d wondered––whether Revik’s abilities would change now that Menlim could no longer strangle aspects of his light.

  For the most part we focused on our immediate problem, though.

  We patched Varlan in via a comm link so he could weigh in on that part of the discussion, as well.

  In the end, despite some back and forth with Wreg and Balidor, they agreed pretty quickly on our best course of action.

  Balidor, Jon, Wreg and I strapped on parachutes and jumped as soon as we were back over mainland China, all of us tightly shielded as we descended to the ground, leaving Varlan to take the helicopter in the direction of Hong Kong.

  I had to go down tandem.

  They said it was because of my leg, but I knew that wasn’t their only reason. I felt their awareness of the pregnancy, an almost cloying awareness of it, and the fact I’d said I was already going sight-blind from it.

  I knew they were conscious of my leg, as well, and even the still-damp courtesan dress I wore, which wasn’t exactly ideal jump attire, along with all my scrapes and bruises––but those felt more like details.

  Rather than try to unpack their reasoning on all of it, I didn’t argue when they said I couldn’t jump out of the helicopter alone, parachute or not.

  Wreg took me down. I was fine with that, too.

  Once we landed, the four of us found a truck.

  We drove most of the next day and a half over bumpy and winding roads, making our way down the coast of China and into North Korea. After crossing the border into South Korea, we drove a few more hundred miles, a lot of it to get all the way around the capital of Seoul, eventually going back north when we hit a number of roadblocks and militia activity.

  In the end we ended up back in North Korea, on the eastern side of the country that time, where it was mostly wilderness and mountains. We found a military airport Wreg had been looking for, one he remembered from the time of the Korean-American war.

  We spent most of the next day fixing up and fueling an ancient military plane, the least terrifying one we could find locked up in the hangar.

  Only then did we feel it was safe to finally contact Yumi and the others on the ship.

  Even for that, we took the precaution of not using our own semi-organic transmitters. We spoke to them instead on dead-tech transistors from the base’s control tower, which Wreg somehow managed to get working again, using a jeep battery and a lot of rusted tools.

  He claimed only in North Korea would they have working dinosaur tech so old, no seer would even know how to look for it.

  After sending a team from the ship to go find and pick up Varlan, we told Vik and the others the new rendezvous point where they could find us.

  Then we somehow got that North Korean military plane up in the air.

  The thing was ancient––so old, I can only credit Balidor and Wreg’s sheer power of will that it didn’t explode at some point during take-off or landing, or at any point while we skimmed the top of those high plateaus and later the jungle canopy. The military base had thankfully been secluded in the middle of the abandoned part of the country, which is why Wreg chose to look for it, rather than approach one of the larger cities.

  If it hadn’t been so far out of easy reach of either China or Seoul, all the fuel and most of the planes likely would have been siphoned off and stolen months ago.

  As it was, we didn’t see a living human or seer anywhere near the abandoned base.

  Wreg was our pilot.

  He got it up on the first try, but never took us much above the jungle’s canopy. Flying through valleys and between the flat-topped mountains, he kept us low enough to practically graze the tree and rooftops over most of the Korean peninsula, avoiding cities altogether to keep us below the hard deck.

  When he veered out over the water, we remained so low I felt I could have reached down and touched the spray of the waves with just my hands.

  He kept us under the radar, literally, for the entire flight there.

  We reached Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport at around four a.m. that morning.

  Landing hadn’t been easy.

  None of us really thought through the logistics or the current status of Japan as a whole, much less the shape the Tokyo airport would likely be in––not until we were right over it.

  I’m sure that says something about the amount of stress all of us were under by then, and our anxiousness to get back to the ship, since all of us realized how obvious the problem was, once we’d arrived. We simply hadn’t thought about how much of that airport would likely be underwater, given the fact that Japan had been dealing with field crashes and energy shortages for months now.

  All we thought about was, the Dreng didn’t have a large presence in Japan.

  Shadow and his people more or less abandoned Tokyo when the fields fell, along with most of the rich people living here. We also knew from Vik’s satellite scans that ship traffic in that part of the Pacific would be light.

  Despite the severe flooding and the fact that we couldn’t see a single operating landing light, or a light anywhere in the vicinity of the airport, Wreg decided to go for it rather than find us a new rendezvous point.

  I think by then, he just didn’t care.

  In typical Wreg fashion, he cursed for about five full minutes when he saw the state of the runway with his seer’s sight, then told us to sit the fuck down and buckle our goddamned seat belts, or our heads were likely to make friends with the roof of this flying tin can when he brought it the fuck down.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  It was shocking, hitting the water.

  It yanked me hard against the seat belt, lurching my stomach like I’d been punched in the chest. It also yanked hard on my injured leg. The latter made me gasp in pain, then grip the fresh bandage Balidor taped around my thigh after he finished cleaning it earlier that day.

  The plane bumped, hard, throwing up huge plumes of wake.

  I thought it might break up, honestly, or at least plow us into the cement under the lapping water when the nose hit.

  Thanks to Wreg and a lot more cursing, we made it down in more or less one piece.

  We opened the exits not long after the plane skidded to a stop.

  Luckily, the water wasn’t deep enough to submerge us, although the waves were already pushing the body of the plane to and fro. We used North Korean military emergency rafts to get to shore, paddling until our arms ached to reach a building tall enough and wide enough that we could break our way inside and climb the stairs to get up to the roof.

  We didn’t see a single human or seer soul in the building, either.

  We saw ocean birds, a few pigeons, some rats and insects, but that was about it.

  That’s where I was now––sitting on that same roof on the outskirts of Tokyo, a city I’d always wanted to visit back when I lived in San Francisco.

  It was a bit anticlimactic now.

  I sat on cold cement, shivering and soaking wet, watching Wreg pace while Jon lay on his back, trying to keep warm and to doze while we waited for a boat to come pick us up.

  Balidor sat next to me, staring out at the same view I did.

  Even from up here, with the sun shining on the nearby buildings, we hadn’t seen any people through any of the windows or on any of the roofs. I’d seen more sea birds as the sun came up, mostly seagulls and cormorants, but also a few pelicans, a heron and a number of kestrels. I’d even seen a few butterflies and dragonflies buzzing over the roof.

  But no people. We hadn’t seen any people since we’d gotten here.

  It felt strange, for it to be so quiet and still.

  After a few minutes, I felt Balidor looking at me, and returned his gaze.

  He studied my eyes for a few seconds. Then he took my hand, surprising me by kissing the back of it. His light tu
rned affectionate, and almost fierce.

  “It was a damned stupid thing, what you did,” he said. “Both of you.” Tears came to his eyes as he continued to search my face. “But thank you, sister. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the world like this. Even if they kill us, perhaps it is worth it, to have done this much, to have rid the world of so much darkness, even for a short time.”

  For a moment, I only looked at him.

  Then a smile spread slowly over my face.

  “Oh, ‘Dori,” I said, clicking at him in mock sorrow. I patted his hand with my bruised and cut one, grinning wider. “This is so not over yet, my wildly, wildly optimistic friend.”

  For a few seconds, he only looked at me.

  Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he burst into a laugh.

  He was still laughing when the voice rose back in my mind.

  He says that was well done, sister, Feigran said. He says you lost them. This will work well, at least until the ship is forced to return to land.

  I nodded to myself, keeping my expression still for Balidor.

  Why not let me talk to Revik directly now, Feigran? I sent. He’s awake, isn’t he? I’ve felt that they took the collar off him. Why not let me hear everything directly from him? Rather than you having to play go-between?

  Feigran went away for a few seconds.

  When he returned, he clicked at me softly, his mental voice holding regret.

  That Revik doesn’t want to talk to you yet, sister. You will see him soon, though.

  I frowned, feeling my chest clench. That Revik? Did he mean the conscious part of Revik? The part that actually lived down here? My husband, Revik?

  So which Revik was I talking to now?

  I bit my lip, tensing my arms where they supported my upper body.

  Okay, I sent, not sure what else to say.

  Feigran let out a regretful sigh.

  Don’t be sad, sister. The sunrise is beautiful, is it not?

  I wiped my eyes, clearing my throat. You can see it?

  Through you, yes.

  I nodded, fighting a harder pain in my chest as I fought back more emotions that wanted to arise from his words.

  Thank you, brother Feigran, I sent back. We will be waiting here.