"Here." She tapped his temple. "In our minds."

His lips quirked. "It isn't your mind I want to hold."

"Eldri."

"Why do you worry so? If we like each other, you can come back. You will, won't you?"

Roca hesitated. The better she knew him, the greater her reservations about revealing his mental gifts to her government. If they took control of his life and the colony here, he and his people could end up losing as much as if the Allied developers exploited Lyshriol. And there was Kurj, her son. She dreaded how he might react to a relationship between her and Eldri. She reminded herself of Dayj, the prince everyone wanted her to marry, but all she could remember about him right now was his chilly reserve.

"I can probably never come back," she said.

He grasped her shoulders. "Don't say this."

G.o.ds knew, she longed to stay. But what she wanted was irrelevant. Too many people would suffer if she shirked her duties. She didn't want to add to the hurt Eldri was already suffering because of Jacquilar's death, so she said only, "Perhaps anything can happen in this universe." She motioned as if to encompa.s.s Windward. "This place has magic."

He spoke in a low voice. "Then for one night, let that magic be real. If I never see you again, gift me with memories of you, the golden woman from above the sky, that I can hold forever close to my heart."

Roca was more tempted than she dared admit. And Brad was wrong-if Eldri realized they came "from above the sky," he knew she wasn't from some other province. Or perhaps she misinterpreted his pretty words, longing to believe he understood the situation and despite that, he still wanted her.

"Is wrong for me to stay," she said.

"Why is it wrong?" He slid one arm under her knees and the other around her back, then stood up, holding her in his arms. "Never worry about tomorrow."

"Eldri-"

"One night," he whispered.

Perhaps if he had continued to tease, she would have resisted. But his intensity caught her. As he walked across the room, Roca couldn't stop looking at him. When he laid her on the bed, she put her arms around his neck and drew him down with her. They sank into handmade quilts turned soft from many washings.

Eldri was strength and warmth, and he held her with a need born as much from grief as desire. They undressed each other with both urgency and care. Scars covered his body, but whatever battles had left those marks hadn't injured his heart. Unrestrained in his pa.s.sion, he cracked the ice that surrounded her emotions. For the first time in years, maybe in decades, she felt no separation, no distance, no sense of standing behind gla.s.s, outside the circle of warmth a man and a woman could create.

They loved each other in the dim firelight, isolated in a mountain fortress, pretending for one night that no storms raged beyond their precarious refuge.

5.

Son of Stars.

Kurj Skolia, son of Roca Skolia, had no equal.

Rumor claimed Kurj was more machine than man. His ancestors had settled a low gravity planet and engineered themselves with larger, stronger bodies than normal humans. He stood seven feet tall and had a ma.s.sive physique. The military had enhanced his skeleton and muscle system, and he had personally arranged yet more augmentation. The biomech web in his body controlled his enhancements, with a micro-fusion reactor to provide energy. Nanomeds maintained his health and youth. Despite his size, he could move many times faster than an unaltered man. He thought nothing of crumpling a metal block in his fist. When he entered a room, he dominated it by the sheer force of his size.

He was a man of metal.

Kurj had inherited his coloring from his mother, Roca Skolia, who inherited it from her father, Jarac Skolia. His gold skin reflected light. His hair and eyelashes glinted, and his eyes were molten gold. His ancestors had engineered inner eyelids as protection against intense sunlight, and Kurj had inherited them from his grandfather. They covered his eyes with gold films. He could see through them, but to everyone else they were opaque, making him a cipher.

Kurj and Jarac could have pa.s.sed as twins, if not for the gray in Jarac's hair. But no one confused them.

Where Jarac was kind, Kurj was hard; where Jarac smiled, Kurj showed no emotion. As Imperator, Jarac headed Imperial s.p.a.ce Command, the military. His t.i.tle was hereditary; he split the actual command among his senior officers. With a proclivity for peace, he chose commanders who understood but didn't relish war.

Roca was next in line to become Imperator, a t.i.tle she would someday a.s.sume by joining the Dyad, the power link that controlled the interstellar information network known as the Kyle web. Kurj was next after her, though he had far more interest than she in the t.i.tle. He knew Roca intended to delegate authority much as Jarac did now, and that she shared her father's preferences for diplomacy over warfare.

Kurj had other ideas.

In his younger days, Kurj had flown a starfighter in the J-Forces, a branch of the military. He had fast become known as a ruthless and versatile pilot, earning rapid promotions until he attained the rank of Primary, equivalent to an admiral or general. At thirty-five, he was the youngest officer to hold such a high position. Now he oversaw all the J-Forces.

He had two obsessions.

His first was Eube, that vast empire his people called the Traders. Its aristocratic rulers based their economy on the buying and selling of people. The Trader Aristos enslaved over a trillion people on hundreds of worlds and habitats. Given the chance, they would conquer Skolia and subjugate her people as well.

As a pilot, Kurj had experienced Aristo inhumanity firsthand. The agony of their captives stabbed his empath's mind, even reaching from one ship to another. HefeltAristos savoring the deaths of the soldiers they killed. When his units had liberated Eubian captives, he felt the suffering behind their traumatized silences. He took it all in, sh.e.l.l-shocked and unwilling, until finally he could bear it no more. He raised impenetrable mental shields, cutting himself off from all emotion. Driven by his memories of a stepfather who had brutalized his mother as Aristos brutalized their slaves, he swore nothing could appease his hatred for the Traders except their destruction.

His second obsession was Roca.

"Youlosther?" Kurj slowly stood up behind the ma.s.sive desk in his office. "How the h.e.l.l could you lose her?"

Sweat beaded the forehead of the man facing him, an J-Forces officer named Render. "We aren't sure how the Councilor gave us the slip, sir, but she disappeared two days ago."

Kurj restrained the urge to grit his teeth. "I want every operative you have on the search. Find my mother. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!"

"And one more thing, Quaternary Render," Kurj added in a deceptively quiet voice.

Render stared at him. Prior to entering Kurj's office, the man had held the rank of Secondary, roughly equivalent to a lieutenant colonel in other branches of the military. Kurj had just demoted him to the lowest rank in the J-Force.

"Yes, sir?"

Kurj watched the man through the gold sheen of his inner lids. Render couldn't see his eyes, only an unbroken shimmer. "If you find my mother-and she is unharmed-you may manage to stay out of prison."

Render swallowed. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Dismissed."

Render saluted, crossing his clenched fists at the wrists and raising them to Kurj, his arms out straight.

Then he left-fast.

Alone now, Kurj paced along the window-wall behind his desk. Lost in thought, he only glanced at the spectacular landscape outside, far below his office in the Orbiter, the s.p.a.ce station where he worked.

Military experts had developed its biosphere to provide an optimum working environment for the powers of Skolia, but today he barely noticed the rolling hills, lush forests, or ethereal city.

Where the blazes had his mother gone? She must have discovered his plans. If she showed up at the a.s.sembly and voted, then those factions that opposed the invasion would win. If he cast her votes for the invasion, he still might lose but at least he had a chance.

It worried him far more, though, that Roca was out there alone. She could take care of herself, yes, but the risk of her traveling without bodyguards was too great.

The true value of the Ruby Dynasty lay not in their heredity, but in their minds. Only Ruby psions could create and power the Kyle web, a computer network in Kyle s.p.a.ce, a universe outside of s.p.a.cetime.

Physics as humans knew it had no meaning there, including the speed of light; as a result, the web made instant communication possible across interstellar distances. The Traders had no Kyle web because they had no Ruby psions. The Trader Aristos commanded a powerful military, but their communications were slow. That one disadvantage was all that kept them from conquering Skolia. And Skolia had only five Ruby psions, including Roca. Just five.

Once, after an on-planet battle, Kurj had found a Trader girl huddled in the ruins of an installation. She had been a provider, one of the slaves Aristos tortured for their pleasure. He would never forget her inability to talk, even to move, except to shake. He had wrapped her in a blanket, but she had only cried and struggled to escape. Her mind had been wide open, with no barriers to mute her emotions. Unable to blockade his mind from hers, he had lived her terror. She had no concept of kindness; she expected only cruelty from him.

He had taken her to a hospital, and eventually the doctors had restored her physical health. But they couldn't heal her emotional wounds. She had remained withdrawn and silent, never able to form normal human relationships. The memory of her lovely face and ravaged mind was only one of hundreds that haunted Kurj. The thought that his mother might fall into Trader hands was more than he could endure. If the Aristos had taken her prisoner, he would annihilate every last one of them even if it took his entire life and all the resources of ISC.

Kurj took a deep breath, trying to calm his thoughts. Chances were Roca would show up at the a.s.sembly, angry at him but very much free and alive. He would see to it she never evaded his security again.

Settling behind his desk, he activated its screen and chose a holo from thirty years ago, when he had been five. The image formed above the desk, luminous and three-dimensional, a tableau of his parents standing together, smiling. His father, Tokaba, held his five-year-old son in his arms, Kurj, a laughing boy with curly gold hair who in those days had rarely lowered his inner lids.

The image soothed Kurj. Tokaba had been the finest man he had ever known. When Kurj's anger threatened to explode or his wish for vengeance against the Traders became too intense, he found peace by thinking of his father.

He brought up a new holo, one of his mother dancing. She was balanced on one foot, high on her pointe shoe with her other leg straight out behind her. She stretched one graceful arm forward and the other to the side, her head held high. Her formfitting costume started out dark blue at the feet, turned into the pinks of a rising sun up her leg, and blended into yellow on her torso and arms. Her hair was flying out behind her, streaming along her body, so many shades of gold and bronze, with a metallic l.u.s.ter, incredibly thick, grown for decades. She had been performingLoss of the Sun,a solo ch.o.r.eographed for her by the artistic director of the Parthonia Royal Ballet.

Kurj switched off the holo, unable to face the conflicts it caused him. Looking at her, he saw a lovely woman. As a small boy, he had loved her the way a child adored a loving parent. He wanted that innocence back. He despised himself for noticing her beauty. Nor would he ever forget the last time she had dancedLoss of the Sun.After the performance, she had come home and found her second husband and her son trying to kill each other.

As much as Kurj had loved his first father, so he had hated the second. Darr Hammerjackson. Roca had met Darr when Kurj was eight. Before the marriage, Darr had made himself everything a lonely widow would want; afterward, he had shown the truth, a monster hungry for Roca's power. Even at such a young age, Kurj had seen how Darr threatened, manipulated, and strove to control Roca, and through her, the immense power she wielded. He knew the games Darr played with violence and with her emotions, building on her conviction that her duty as a Ruby heir bound her to him. No divorce. No disgrace.

Kurj had lain in bed at night, supposedly asleep, while Darr hurt his mother. The memories seared. She had thought she protected her child by shielding her mind, but his empathic link to her had been too strong. He had lived every painful blow, every hateful word.

He remembered vividly the day he realized he had grown taller than his stepfather. Kurj had been clumsy then, shooting up fast, struggling to adapt to his large body. Darr was berating him more than usual, ridiculing him for knocking over a vase. Agonized from knowing how Darr brutalized his mother, Kurj had finally snapped and attacked his stepfather, first with his fists, then with shards of the vase. He had felt Darr's anger that his unwanted stepson dared defy him, felt Darr's bitter jealousy that Roca loved her son more than her husband. Kurj fed on that rage, driven into a fury fueled by shame. If he had just been a little stronger, a little faster, a little smarter, he could have killed Darr.

He would never forget what Darr had said to him that day:You're a sick, dirty boy. You want her for yourself, don't you? You want to f.u.c.k her, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You should leave and never come back. Go, before your sickness corrupts everything decent.That moment had devastated Kurj's life, ruined the innocence of his love for his mother, and haunted him from that day forward.

He could do nothing more to Darr; his stepfather had died in prison. But Kurj would purge the universe of the Trader Aristos, who thought it their G.o.ds-given right to treat ma.s.s numbers of humans the way Darr had treated Roca. No matter what it took, even if it killed him, he would destroy the Traders. No one would hurt his mother again.

Especially not her own son.

6.

Hidden in Blue.

Roca drifted awake, content. Her face felt icy, but the rest of her was warm. She stretched under the heavy covers- And rolled into a warm body.

Sweet memories of the night washed over her, vivid and sensual. Pressing sleepily against Eldri's back, she put her arms around his waist.

"Ummm..." He turned over and gathered her into an embrace. "You really are here."

She kissed his chest. "So are you."

He gave a drowsy laugh. "Thisismy castle, after all."

"A beautiful castle." Just like its owner. "Do you think it stopped snowing?" Her node had been at work while she slept, updating her facility with English.

"I've no idea." He nudged her onto her back and slid along her body, pulling the blankets over his head.

Then he began to suckle her breast.

"Oh..." Roca closed her eyes, her hands entwined in his long hair. When he slid his palm lower on her body, she groaned. What he did with those hinged hands ought to be outlawed. Anything that felt that good couldn't be legal. His desire flooded her mind, until she couldn't separate it from her own.

Eldri kept at it until Roca lost control. Their minds were already blended and her peak burst over them both, intensified. He struggled to hold back, but then, suddenly, he pulled himself up along her body, bringing his hips between her thighs with a powerful thrust. Almost as soon as he entered her, he cried out. She felt his release as strongly as her own, a wild burst that took away her thoughts.

As Eldri collapsed on top of her, Roca gulped in breaths. She had forgotten how good it felt to be that crazed with desire and have it so soundly satisfied.

"I am glad I soundly satisfy you," he murmured smugly.

Her face flamed. "Stop listening."

"Listening to what?"

"My mind."

"Don't know what you mean."

"Then how did you know how I felt?"

"It is obvious." Mischief flared in his voice. "How could you not be pleased with me?"

She thumped his head. "This is certainly swollen."

Eldri laughed. "That's because you make me feel as if I could take on the whole world." His voice softened. "You are no ice queen, Roca. Not in your heart. Under that armor, you burn."

Roca didn't know how to answer. She had never before experienced such an intimate link with anyone, not even Tokaba, her first husband, whom she had loved deeply. Eldri scared her. After Darr, she had never risked opening her heart again. She wasn't ready for this. Her link with Eldri existed on many levels, s.e.xual, yes, but emotional and mental as well, and less defined qualities she barely understood.

She needed time to stop fearing the nascent connections they were discovering with each other. More than ever, she wanted to stay.

But nothing had changed: she had to leave.

They held the memorial service outside Windward.

The snow had stopped, and the overcast sky pressed down like a lid of blue-gray pewter. Dark blue fog wreathed the castle. The riders from Dalvador and the residents of Windward gathered in a ten-branched star pattern on the bridge that arched across the chasm to the castle. Roca stood in one branch with Eldri, Garlin, and a Dalvador couple.

A woman in a long red robe spoke the service, her voice like wind chimes. She wore her hair in a coil on her head, but when she finished, she took down the coil and let the wind whip the long tresses around her shoulders, a tribute to the rider who had lost his life while on the way to what the Lyshrioli also called the Castle of Winds.

Garlin spoke next, his voice deep and melodic. He stood at the edge of the bridge, with only a stone rail separating him from the chasm. Roca knew Eldri's people could never have carved that perfectly cylindrical rail. Its ancient supports rose straight out of the bridge, all one solid piece with no seams.