Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
I close my mind immediately and pull back. It takes great effort not to immediately begin to blurt out all I have seen.
We have been betrayed by our own leader; the one of us tasked with looking after all of us has been seduced by the Lizard King. No wonder she did nothing to rescue me. No wonder the DC have made such quick strides. She has been helping them. No wonder we have made ineffective moves that have done little to nothing. This is what she wants, a new world in which her consort is alien. The future is laid out, a twisted version of destiny tainted by what they want to have happen.
He’s using her, but she can’t see it. She’s too caught up in the rough passion he inflicts on her.
I cannot believe she has done this. To lecture me about what is ordained by fate, then perform this series of sabotages. The nerve she has is only eclipsed by her blindness. She is fuck drunk and she is a danger to us all.
Her eyes narrow, and I know she has sensed my disturbance. She is many things, but she is absolutely not stupid.
In a matter of seconds, I realize there is no way to hide my knowing from her. She already knows that I know something.
To hell with it.
“Will you bear live young?” I ask the question.
“What did you just ask me, you little shit?” Her patience was waning, and is now entirely gone. She wants to be able to rest on the laurels of her office and remain unquestionable. I have no intention of allowing that.
“I was captured,” I growl. “I was tortured. And you allowed it because it was what your lover wanted. How long have you been fucking him? When did he get to you?”
“I met him several years ago,” she says, answering me bluntly. “I was in a bar in a city in a place you would never go because for reasons that have always escaped me, you choose to hang out around ratty old space stations, mixing with the rabble of the universe. Kroc met me there, at the bar. We struck up a conversation, and over time I realized that he had more direction in his little finger than anyone here does in their entire body. He made it clear to me that he could elevate us all. We have been going about this in entirely the wrong way. We have been pruning around the edges of fate. But Kroc has something far greater in mind.”
I listen to her confession, and I know it does not matter because even if I were to tell every single Psyon in the realm what happened, they would not believe me. Alara is above reproach. She is our spiritual guide and soul protector. What she says, goes.
“I know,” she says. “It’s frustrating, isn’t it, to know something and to know that the knowing makes no difference at all. It’s a particular kind of dreariness, isn’t it. You believed in something that is now unbelieved.”
I don’t think that sentence makes any sense at all.
“Nobody will believe you,” she says, grinning quite wickedly. “It’s already been done, Freak. It’s already happened. Over and over. Again and again. There’s nothing you can do…”
* * *
Mara
I almost forgot what the main function of a prisoner is supposed to be. It’s actually very simple, really. Escape. I have to escape. I have to get the fuck off this lizard ship, I have to find Freak and find my dad, and I have to get water for the colony. It’s a very reasonable to-do list, really. The fact that I haven’t done any of it is probably some kind of indication as to what a damaged and terrible person I am.
I do not know where Freak is, but I know I cannot handle the idea of him being hurt on my account. I do not want him to be recaptured. I am bait, and I have to become not bait.
Escape is easier than it might be, because they do not have me tied up or caged, but it turns out there’s no real reason for them to do that because I am under reptilian observation at almost all times.
They laze about under steaming red lights for relaxation. They bask, they feed, and they never allow me to wander very far at all. The king seems to find me particularly amusing.
“Tell me again how you came to be trained as a pet?”
“I was drowning inside a booby-trapped spaceship designed to kill me,” I tell him again, giving him the shortest version of the story possible.
“Yes, because after your father went missing, you refused to be married off and allow his business to be absorbed into the families of your elders. You could have become a pawn in their games, but you refused, and instead you became an amusement for a Psyon.”