Enslaved (Space Mage Book 2) Read online

  "You read my mind?"

  "Not truly, as I said. I couldn't make sense of it."

  "This is delightful," I murmured.

  She swatted playfully at me. "Don't act like you're so surprised. We've been inside each other's minds already."

  "That's different!" Walter squeaked. "You two are bonded. You have a special thing, or whatever—which, by the way, I really want to study whenever we get an opportunity. It's quite mystifying."

  "I'd be pleased to tell you whatever you'd like to know about the yeva bond," she said. "But I'm afraid it's not possible to study it. My people tried for quite a while, back when it was rare but still occurred. They were attempting to duplicate it, I believe, but they were unsuccessful. The yeva bond is a gift from the gods, and no mortal can hope to touch it."

  There was a note of pride in her voice, and I found myself smiling in response. She was a very religious person, although I supposed anyone would be, given what she'd experienced.

  Can you deny the presence of her god, Vivoth? Really? He spoke to you. He used you to heal her. That was real.

  The thought made me uncomfortable, and it was yet another thing I couldn't ignore. I had never been a religious man. It was hard to believe in a higher power when you saw all the horrible things that happened not just on your own planet, but in the universe at large. I had fought in several wars now, and all of them had been brutal.

  No, I had never been a believer in any sort of god, though my mother had been.

  Vivoth was something I had to admit actually existed. Whether or not he was an actual god was still up for debate, to my mind, but I didn't deny that he was real.

  "Well, even if I can't examine it, I still want to hear all about it," Walter was saying.

  "I will certainly indulge you in that," she said, wrinkling her nose as she smiled. "As soon as we have seen these new people. And perhaps you will teach me to pilot the ship in exchange?"

  Walter arched an eyebrow. "You want to learn to pilot a ship?"

  "Of course. It seems a very useful skill to have, and I believe in maximizing one's potential as much as possible."

  "That's very admirable. Yes, if you want to learn, I'll teach you. I believe everyone has a right to whatever knowledge they seek."

  Yeah, if only the government felt the same way, I thought bitterly, but tried not to focus on it too much. It did me no good to wallow in thoughts about what the government had done or what they could do with my body.

  My body wasn't my own, not in truth. I had turned it over to the U.S. government when I signed up for the military, effectively voiding any rights I had had as a citizen before that, and they'd proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt when they experimented on me without my consent, modifying my genetic code and making me into something of a monster.

  No, don't think about that right now. It does no good. Just focus on what's happening around you, and you damned well better pay attention while you're on this planet. Something's going to go wrong here, and you need to be prepared.

  Xiva and Walter kept chattering until we landed in the docking bay we'd been directed to.

  Walter stood up at the same time Xiva did, and they both headed for the door, but I stepped in front of them with one hand raised.

  "Uh-uh. You're staying on the ship," I said, looking pointedly at Walter.

  "But I want to see the aliens, too! There's a whole culture to explore out there. I want to learn about them and immerse myself in it while I can."

  "No," I said firmly. I might not be able to stop Xiva, but I was damned well going to stop him. "You can't take care of yourself like Xiva can. I'm not letting anything happen to you. This is going to be a quick in-and-out trip, and you're staying on the ship while we do it."

  Walter wilted, looking quite put out, but I refused to feel any pity for him. I was just doing what needed to be done to keep him safe. I'd hate myself if anything happened to him because of me.

  Xiva stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Walter, a movement that was a little awkward for her because she was new to the concept of hugging, but it meant more that she would do it in spite of that.

  "It's all right, Walter. There will be plenty of cultures for us to explore later. Kaidan's right: you don't have the capacity to fight that we do, and if Kaidan is right about there being pirates, I wouldn't want to lose you. Maybe we can teach you to fight, just as you'll teach me to pilot, OK?"

  She was smiling at him tentatively, and at last Walter returned it.

  "All right, that's fair. But I want to learn from you!" He cast a dark look at me. "Not Kaidan."

  I shrugged. "Hold a grudge, kid, just as long as you're alive to hold it."

  I wouldn't ask forgiveness for wanting to keep him alive. There had been a time when I was suicidal, when I hadn't cared what happened to me or those around me, and I'd only just gotten rid of that. I wasn't going to lose him, not when he was one of the only two people I cared about.

  I couldn't.

  Kaidan

  As soon as we stepped out into the docking bay, Xiva went into a flurry of activity. Her skin, normally a pale white that had a blue hue, almost a glow, that pulsed whenever she felt any strong emotion, was flashing rapidly, and her eyes were more vibrant than they had been. She whipped her head back and forth, her long white hair lashing against her face and then swirling behind her, so she see everything around her.

  "It's just a docking bay, Xiva. There's nothing to get excited about here."

  "But look at all these ships!" She pointed at them. "They're so different, all of them. No two look alike, and just think! Each of them carried someone to this planet, or will carry them away. Think of all the people we're going to see. Oh, Kaidan, thank you!"

  She threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around me in a surprise hug that I didn't have time to prepare for. At first, I was stiff, too shocked by her outburst of emotion to know what to do, and then I softened. I wrapped my arms around her, one hand stroking her hair, and couldn't hide the smile on my lips.

  "I promised I'd show you the stars, yeva, and this is just the beginning," I said.

  She looked up at me, her eyes shining. "You don't know what it means to have left Eyrus and to see new worlds. I always dreamed of it as a child, but I never thought…"

  "You never thought you'd actually get to do it," I finished for her.

  She nodded. "Exactly. It seemed like such a foolish dream then, but now it's real!"

  I chuckled. "Yeah, yeah, it's real. Why don't we go see something worth getting excited over, though? You're going to see soon enough that this docking bay is nothing to squeal over."

  The look she gave me was not amused—she clearly didn't appreciate being teased—but she allowed me to lead her out of the docking bay. Her little gasp of surprise when she saw the bustle of people outside was all the reward I needed for taking her here, for being willing to risk a potential attack just to see the look of joy on her face.

  Xiva had lost a lot in her life. She'd tried to stop her brother from harming her people, but in the process, he'd ended up killing every last being on her planet, and then she'd been imprisoned deep underground for two millennia. When we dug her out, she'd had to learn that all of her people were dead, and then she'd seen the bodies in her temple. Yeah, she'd been through a lot, culminating with having to kill her own brother.

  Maybe it was foolish that I wanted to give her a bit of joy to temper the pain she'd lived with, but I couldn't help it. She was my yeva, my bonded fighting partner, and I could feel her pain whenever she thought of the past. I wanted to give her new experiences to push back against that pain, to show her that there was more than pain and regret to be had in life.

  We headed into the city, which wasn't really much of one. It began with something of a marketplace, with stalls lining several dirt roads. I wanted to get her through it as quickly as possible to see if we couldn't find a more civilized part of the planet to explore, but she kept stopping for every little thing.


  Every time we passed a stall, she had to stop and talk to the owner, to look at what they were selling, to exclaim over the differences from what she'd known on her home planet.

  It made me twitchy, but I fought to hold that at bay. It didn't help that she was drawing a hell of a lot of attention to herself. I'd known that it was a risk to bring her anywhere, because no matter where she went, she was going to be an exotic creature. She was quite literally the last of her kind, and no one had ever seen her kind before. Her people had never left their planet, and no one had even known they existed.

  Which meant that every time she stopped to talk to a shopkeeper, they wanted to exclaim over her as much as she wanted to exclaim over them. The amount of attention she was garnering made me anxious. What if the wrong sort of person took notice of her?

  The people of the Vinous system weren't known for their kindness, and I'd heard more than one rumor about slavery on a couple of nearby planets. The United Planetary Council, which had outlawed slavery, had no say-so here. They'd had some terrific battles with some of the civilizations that kept slaves, but there were limits to the UPC's power.

  I didn't want to see Xiva taken because she was what they considered exotic, which was why I wished she would stop calling so much attention to herself.

  When she stopped for what felt like the hundredth time, I took her by her elbow and pulled her closer.

  "You have got to stop making such a fuss over these things," I said, keeping my voice low so as not to attract any further attention.

  She looked up at me, her expression blank. "Why should I do that?"

  "For one, aren't you always going on about controlling your emotions? And, two, you're attracting a lot of attention just by being here, squealing about how amazing this thing or that thing is."

  For a moment, I saw a spark of anger in her eyes, and then it was smothered. I got the feeling she didn't appreciate me calling out her display of emotion; it was something she was very sensitive about. For some reason, she felt that emotion shouldn't be shown at all. From what I'd gathered, it was a belief that had been hammered into her all her life, which explained why it was so difficult to break her of it. But from the moment she'd set foot on this planet, she'd been nothing but a jumble of emotions. It was like she'd completely forgotten about her beliefs.

  "You're right. I shouldn't display my emotions so openly," she said smoothly, her face nothing more than a cool, unreadable mask. "I cannot believe I allowed myself to be so lax."

  I winced. "That isn't what I meant."

  "No, you're right."

  "Xiva, it's all right to be happy, and to smile about it. And normally, I would love for you to jump around like a little kid in a candy shop, but right now isn't the time. Everyone is looking at you. They've never seen anyone like you before, and it's making me damned nervous."

  Surprise flickered over her features before she hid it.

  "Why are they doing that? And why does it make you nervous?"

  "Like I said, they've never seen anyone like you before. You're unique and strange, and they probably want to figure out what you are. And it makes me nervous because I don't want the wrong sort of person to notice you."

  "What is the wrong sort of person?"

  "I've told you about the pirates already, Xiva."

  She snorted. "The pirates aren't going to get me, Kaidan, but I thank you for your concern."

  She patted my arm condescendingly and turned around to look at the stall she'd been about to examine, clearly dismissing me. That irked me; it wasn't the first time she'd done it, and it probably wouldn't be the last. She'd been the ruler of a country, back when her world was populated, and she was accustomed to a certain amount of power and respect. Someone like me, a soldier, didn't rank highly enough to hold a conversation with her, I suspected, though she would never indicate such a thing.

  I had to wonder if she thought it, though.

  I saw something shift out of the corner of my eye, drawing my attention. My internal alarms were sounding, telling me that something was wrong here, and I turned to see if I could find what it was.

  But there was nothing there but the rest of the marketplace, various aliens milling about and talking to one another. Nothing that stood out as something to be concerned about.

  With a sigh, I turned back to Xiva—and found her gone.

  My breath left me in a rush, as if I'd taken a punch to the gut, and I whirled around to try to find her, panic rising inside me.

  I knew it. I knew this place was trouble. Damn it, Xiva!

  I cursed under my breath but calmed somewhat when I caught a glimpse of her white hair flapping in the wind as she turned down an alley. I took off after her, not caring about the people I shoved out of my way. I was more than willing to be rude if it meant keeping Xiva safe.

  It was difficult to keep up with her, because she was damned fast, but I managed to keep her in my line of sight and reached her when she finally stopped, crouching in front of something. It took another second before I was at her side, and I saw that it was a small child she was crouching over.

  Or at least, I thought it was a small child. I didn't know the species native to this planet, and they didn't resemble humans at all. The child in front of her was more like a mixture of a wolf and a human, and it was hard to tell if it was small or young.

  "Damn it, Xiva, you can't go running off like that," I said, glaring down at her, but I couldn't bring myself to be too harsh with her.

  She was healing the being in front of her, her hands wrapped around a bloody gash in the alien's long leg, the golden glow of her magic coalescing around her hands and spreading into the creature's body. She was murmuring something in her native tongue, a soft language full of long, drawn-out 's' sounds. It was beautiful, but I didn't understand a word of it, which was something that made me feel a little guilty every time I thought about it. Xiva had learned Common, but I hadn't made the effort to learn her language.

  I really needed to fix that at some point. She was going to feel homesick soon enough if she wasn't already, and she would long to speak in her own language to someone else.

  But now wasn't the time for that. She had run off in a crowded market, racing down an alley she wasn't familiar with, all for a wounded creature.

  "What were you thinking?" I snapped, but she didn't respond. She just kept chanting in her language and pouring her healing light into the creature's body.

  I huffed out a sigh, rubbing at the back of my neck, and glanced around. There was no one else here that I could see, and I was grateful for that, but I still didn't like what she'd done.

  If something had happened to her, I didn't know what I would have done with myself.

  "Next time, could you at least let me know you're going somewhere?" I asked, making sure to keep the rough emotion out of my voice. I didn't want to upset her, not when I needed her to meet me halfway.

  She glanced up at me with a serene look on her face and finished her chant.

  "I am sorry I worried you, yeva. I will make sure to let you know what I am doing next time. I am not accustomed to working with a partner, and I will endeavor to keep your thoughts and feelings in mind in the future."

  Coming from anyone else, her flowery words would have set me on edge, but Xiva meant what she said. She was a relic of another time, and she was still getting the hang of Common.

  "Thank you. That's all I ask—"

  The world went black.

  Xiva

  "Kaidan!"

  His name was a scream on my lips as I lunged forward, but I was immediately jerked back by the chains about my wrists and ankles and the collar around my neck.

  Where am I? And where is Kaidan?

  He was my first concern, though I wasn't entirely certain why at first. My head hurt, and it was difficult to think; all I knew was that Kaidan was in trouble.

  I looked about, trying to get my bearings, and found that I was alone in a cell. The walls around me had some sort of
lights that ran from floor to ceiling, glowing a vibrant blue. There was nothing in the room besides the chains that held me to the wall, but there didn't need to be for me to figure out what had happened.

  I had been captured, just as Kaidan had tried to warn me.

  Stupid, arrogant fool! You should have listened to him.

  But berating myself would do me no good, and it certainly wouldn't help me get out of this situation. I took a calming breath, and then another, forcing my emotions back down inside me. I needed to be balanced if I was going to find a way out of this.

  As soon as my emotions had calmed, memories rushed in. I had been drawn away from the crowded marketplace by the sounds of a creature in pain and had found a small child with a dangerous cut on its leg. I'd healed it, of course, because that was what any good person would do.

  Kaidan had found me and chastised me for running off, and then something had loomed over him. I couldn't remember what it had been, but I did remember realizing that it meant us harm. I'd been about to warn Kaidan, but the darkness had claimed me.

  "Kaidan? Where are you? Can you hear me?"

  I had to know he was all right, that I hadn't cost him his life. I would feel his loss if he had departed this world. He was my yeva, and we were bonded for life, to fight and die at each other's side. I would know if he was gone, and I did not feel that.

  But I got no response.

  I sent my mind chasing down the trail that was the bond between our souls, and though I could sense him, it was apparent that he was not conscious. But it was confirmation that he was alive.

  That answered one of my questions. If Kaidan had been functional, he would not have left me in chains like this. He would do anything to set me free.

  But I didn't need him to set me free. I could do that on my own.