Prince of Luster (8 page)

He barely nodded, but he’d understood.

With new purpose and courage to go with it, Nova re-covered the stranger’s torso with his cloak and shirt. She gently touched his cheek one time before making her way back up the rocky hillside, over the dead, and through the garbage.

She ran faster than she’d ever run in her life.

Please let him be alive when I see him again.

Marcos lay in pain so deep that he began to imagine someone had come. That was the cruelest part. To lie there believing another soul said they’d help, only to really be alone, was worse than anything he’d ever experienced.

He begged again to die.

Every move he made pulled more loose skin from his body and drove him into a new round of torment. The rocks beneath him felt like glass wedging its way into his body. Every breath he took was worse than the last. He looked into the night sky and thought of home, his siblings and their families. And he thought of Darius’s two-year-old daughter, Cory, and all the other nieces and nephews in the castle nursery he wouldn’t hold again. The children he wouldn’t ever conceive with some woman drifted into and out of his tortured mind.

The worst part was knowing his family would never have a shred of his body left to bury.

Marcos began to cry, using the last of his body’s fluid in the process. The damage done to his torn, bleeding, and burnt form was nothing compared to what was being done to his spirit. It was as though someone had ripped who he was, and all he’d been, away. He reached up to the sky as best as he could and bitterly pled for his family to know where he was and to have them find some small remnant of his remains: a finger bone or a lock of what was left of his hair. Anything they could bury with the dignity that was now denied him.

The whole thing was his fault.

He’d wanted to save that elderly merchant, had gone off mission and paid the price. Anger over seeing an innocent tormented—and disgust over witnessing how a young girl was forced to beg for a man’s life—had driven him to open his mouth when he should have kept it closed. But no one else had stepped forward.

Too late, he’d learned why.

The entire colony had been so terrorized that no one would dare speak. He now knew what the scorch marks on the buildings meant. For every one of them, some soul had probably died; someone who might have stood for what was right, just as he’d tried to do.

Look where it’d gotten him.

He was lying among the refuse of Delta Seven with the dead and the garbage of a doomed world piled around his burned shell of a body. The pain was so great he could well wish himself dead a thousand times, but his stupidity in landing there would never be undone.

At times his mind drifted to why he’d done it. Then he’d decide again that he’d had no choice. What did it matter? That girl, the elderly man, and scores of others would probably die anyway.

Perhaps the slugs, who had to be working with consent of the governor, would kill everyone before they moved on to plunder some other world. Then what would his brave act mean? He uttered one croaking plea to the heavens.

“Please …want to … see my family again … the pain … want to die … c-can’t be d-dishonored … n-not like this.”

• • •

Nova stopped at the top of a small rise, only a few feet from where Green Eyes slumped. She heard his plea, and her heart broke.

For two years, she’d seen the result of public torture. Friends no longer knew friends. Longtime business adversaries no longer quarreled because there was nothing left to fight over. The Limaxian pirates and the traitor Adaman Forrell had taken everything for themselves. In that one small way, they were all united. Indeed, the citizens had two things in common: their hatred of the governor, and the loss of hope.

The first time the fire
plasma was used, that display had taken all fight from every heart. The second and successive times were meant to make scurrying cowards of every man, woman, and child.

Nova renewed her vows of hatred for an empire where an allied king—one who was supposed to have periodically checked on planets within the alliance—sat on a rich throne, ordering his League of Enforcers to ignore small, unimportant colonies like Delta Seven. While her world wasn’t ruled by King Starlaw, as head of The Constellation League of Enforcers it was the man’s duty to make sure that all law enforcement alliances were honored. So where was he? Surely he had to know something on her planet was very wrong. Even normal messages weren’t getting out, at least not without Forrell’s approval or censorship. And this had been the case as far as anyone had known.

She moved forward and knelt beside the weeping, green-eyed warrior.

“Don’t die, Green Eyes. You’re not dishonored. You stood against a malevolent beast when no one else would; even as I did nothing. But I’ll help you now. I promise I’ll always be here and I’ll help you.”

“Y-you came back.”

“I wouldn’t break my promise. I’ll stay with you.” She gently wrapped her gloved fingers around his wrist. “This is going to hurt worse than anything you can imagine. But you have to try and get into the hovercraft. We don’t have much time. I’ll take you someplace safe, but we have to move quickly. Understand?”

He nodded.

She took a deep breath and prayed he wouldn’t cry out too loudly. When her fingers tightened around his wrist, pain sent him into spasmodic convulsions. She immediately released her grip and tried to overcome the revulsion of his burned flesh. The smell of it was unholy. But she could do him no good if they couldn’t move.

“What’s your name?” she quietly asked. She repeated herself several times while trying to keep him from injuring himself further. His body flailed against the rocks in a twisted, ghastly way. She almost had to sit on him before his thrashing subsided. Eventually, he breathed deeply and tried to answer her repeated request.

“My n-name is M-Marcos,” he muttered.

“All right, Marcos. I’m called Nova Drayton. So we both know each other.”

He simply gasped.

“We’ll try again. Can you push yourself up without my help? Even just a bit?”

“N-No.”

She leaned very close to him and knew the words she’d say would be cruel. But they might be what motivated him to move. “I can’t carry you; you’re too big. If you don’t get up, then you’ll be incinerated here tomorrow. There’ll be nothing of you left, and anyone who ever cared about you will never know what happened. No one will admit you were ever here. It will be as though you simply disappeared.”

He breathed harder. The man seemed panicked by the idea that such a thing could happen. Whatever made him do so, whether it was her words or thoughts of his own making, he finally rolled onto his side and pushed himself into a sitting position.

Nova put her hands to her face when his screams of agony echoed off the rock quarry pit around them.

“Goddess … forgive me for what I’m about to do, but I have to get you out of here.”

Without telling him, Nova pulled her cloak tighter around her body to protect herself against residual plasma on his. She lifted one of his charred arms around her shoulders and pushed herself straight up with all her strength.

“Stand with me.
Now!
” she commanded.

Clumsily, Marcos did as she ordered and moved where she led. He stifled more screams as they progressed. She didn’t know where the strength came from—hers or his. She simply moved forward, pushed his massive form into the hauler on the back of the hovercraft, then leapt into the driver’s seat. The open design of the silver, flat transport allowed the air to flow around her and the injured man as they moved. She heard him tearing at the metal of the hauler bed with his hands. The air on his burned skin had to be agonizing. But he didn’t cry out again.

She couldn’t imagine the willpower it took for him to remain as silent as he did. Suppressing that kind of pain would likely cost him later. Given everything he’d been through that day, and all she’d seen of him, he was either the bravest man she’d ever known or the most foolish.

Whatever he was or wasn’t, he was now her responsibility. And she wouldn’t let him be caught again.

She drove straight to the outskirts of town as fast as the transport could move. There, in a small dense forest were hillsides where the miners used to work. The caves there were devoid of any sizable stones. Miners now worked on the other side of the small colony, under the strict supervision of Prometheus, his slug minions, and Adaman Forrell.

She knew every bush, rock, cave, and cranny. It was here, in a place where her father had told her it would be safe, that she now made her home. Slugs never came here, and she knew she and her green-eyed victim would be safe. He might not live the night, though some instinct told her he
could
.

The transport maneuvered effortlessly, right in front of the small opening to her cave. For someone of her size, it was easy to walk right in. But for man Marcos’s height, he’d half to duck and then get on his knees before entering the small, inner chamber where he could finally stand. Standing right now wasn’t the issue. Just getting him out of the transport and into a position where he could move at all
was
.

Nova hopped out of the driver’s seat and loped to the hauler. Marcos lay there on his side, staring blankly and curled into a fetal position. But he was still breathing. Again, her heart melted when she saw him lying there so helplessly. His current position was in direct contrast to the bold man who’d stood up to Prometheus.

She put her face close to his and stared into his eyes. “We’re someplace safe. I’ve been here for almost two years, and the Limaxians have never found me. Neither have Forrell’s guards or the constables. They’re all in collusion. But none of them thinks this place is worth the dirt piled here. You’ll be safe. I have things that can help heal you if you want to survive. Do you want to live, Marcos? Do you?”

Even in the muted moonlight, even as he lay so still and quiet, he turned his gaze toward her. The expression in his bright green eyes said
yes
.

“All right, then. You’re going to have to hurt some more. I have to move you inside this cave.” She pointed behind her. “But once there, you’ll be safe. Will you try and help me one more time?”

Slowly, Marcos pushed himself up from the floating platform. She saw the massive agony his movements caused. His eyes rolled back in his head several times, and painted an eerie picture in the moonlight surrounding them.

The pain almost sent him into unconsciousness again, but she kept talking to him. Still, he never cried out.

She witnessed strength that must have been delivered by the Goddess herself. He pushed himself into a sitting, then a standing position, and actually walked. It was one slow step at a time but he moved.

“Gods of old … I-I know what this is costing you, Marcos. But once you’re inside the cave, you can cry out all you want. It’s deep within the hillsides and no one will hear. I know. I screamed for days after the plasma hit
me
.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t been as badly burned as he was.

He kept stumbling forward, and almost fell at one point.

When she reached out to help, he held up one hand in denial. The flesh from that arm dangled like skin from a roasted foul.

“D-don’t touch me … may still have plasma … b-burn you.”

Once more that day, Nova openly wept. Even now his concern was for someone else. “I’ll use my cloak. It’s eel skin, dried from creatures caught in the lakes. It’ll resist the plasma for the little while it takes to get you inside the cave.”

Marcos stiffly turned his head toward her, but still waved off her assistance.

She watched as, one small step at a time, he kept moving forward. He fought again to maintain his balance, and she saw his eyes roll back into his head again. His breathing came in rasping gasps.

Finally, when he actually got to the cave entrance, he fell to his knees. She watched him dig his way forward by clawing at the red dirt. Unable to hold back the sobs of sympathy any longer, she pushed the hood of her cloak back. His cloak and shirt, placed on his shoulders to keep more dirt from blowing into open wounds, now lay in the hauler. She grabbed them up as they were now the only clothing he had without any plasma attached. What was left of any other clothing was now burned into his skin. It’d be difficult to tell cloth from flesh.

Rather than put her hands on him again, she simply let him crawl forward at his own crude pace. And when he was finally through the entrance and lay on the ground in the chamber beyond, she knelt beside him.

“I have to return the transport I stole. I’ll be back soon.”

He lay on his side and simply stared at the cave wall. In the belief pain had taken him to a place where he couldn’t hear her now, she hurried outside again.

It took but a few minutes to return the hovercraft and its attached hauler. The tavern lights were out now but she was careful to put everything back exactly where she’d found it.

Luck was with her. Almost as if her actions had been ordained and approved by the Creator Goddess herself, she heard loud snoring coming from the open iron doors of the tavern. The slugs had passed out where they’d partied. Apparently, the tavern owner had retreated to his dwelling for the night, unwilling to waken the drunken Limaxians and endure their wrath.

She crept carefully back to her cave and arrived just as the sun was coming up. Fear of finding her rescued green-eyed hero dead made her approach his still figure slowly. Light from her perpetual stone kept the chamber illuminated enough to move about. The stone had been one mined by her father when he was still alive. He’d given it to her when he first suspected there’d be trouble with Adaman Forrell. While it couldn’t provide much heat, it kept the darkness at bay.

It was a time long ago when her father had made this cave into a retreat for Nova, her mother, and himself. Sadly, her parents had never been able to use it. Because of her sire’s foresight, she now had a place to survive the cold winters and hot summers in reasonable comfort.