Shrouded: Heartstone Book One (14 page)

Nothing would stop them when they decided they wanted his world. They’d find a way past the Shroud eventually. Vashia looked out at the miasma and prayed it wouldn’t be any time soon. She watched the blush and swirl of the Shroud and prayed it could keep them out long enough for her to get lost under it.

T
hey found
the Palace despite “a bit of variance.” The heavy transport that carried them from the elevator platform trundled along just above the surface of the core, managing to find its way somehow along the natural magnetic lanes. The vehicle, unlike the elevator, hadn’t been designed for sightseeing, and it required piloting as well. Vashia was grateful for that much. She managed to enjoy the short trip in a fairly calm state, tucked in beside Tarren, pretending she couldn’t see the nasty looks shot in her direction from the others.

When they entered the canyon, the ship bounced and then dove forward and down. Vashia glanced to the front and caught a glimpse of buildings before the craft leveled out and surged ahead again. Shrouded aesthetics favored curves and crystal. The clear material flashed as they passed between structures. She saw long, translucent corridors and huge opaque structures that looked like factories or storage. All the Shrouded buildings, however, seemed clean and well maintained—something she hadn’t encountered much in her part of the galaxy.

The whispers started again once they’d landed. Vashia hung back, and this time Tarren stayed beside her even when the princely duo stepped forward. Nerala handed out the tube necklaces that would help them filter out any atmospheric toxins. They’d practiced with the devices on the moon, but these would be theirs to keep. She pulled hers over her head and tucked the tiny tubes into her nostrils as Nerala mimed the process from the doorway.

As the group exited the ship, spilling down the ramp onto a narrow platform, they fell silent.
What could possibly be said under the weight of that sky?
Vashia joined them, craning involuntarily to gaze up at it. They all did.

Shrouded civilization burrowed into the planet’s solid core. The people built their cities and structures in pits, cracks and craters where their technology could easily manufacture pockets of breathable atmosphere. The manual had explained as much. The sheer stone on three sides of the hover platform agreed, as did the hewn stairway leading up to the next level of the canyon. But no book could prepare them for the view up, for the solid moving wall of color resting on the canyon’s rim.

“Holy shit.” Tarren summed up succinctly.

Vashia heard Mofitan grunt agreement. She smiled. Those two probably
would
work well together.

“It’s so heavy,” she said. “Do you ever get used to it?”

“Yes,” Dolfan answered, “and no. Even we live in awe of it.”

“Your whole lives?” Vashia turned to him. She saw his love for his home, saw his pride blazing in the reflected pinks and yellows. “No one ever leaves? Ever wants too?”

He shrugged. “We have the moon. Change comes slowly to us, I suppose.”

“But it does come?”

His eyes sparked. He nodded, and she caught the hint of things in his expression, complicated things that she was still enough of an outsider not to understand—even with the crackle in the air that linked them in some secret, Shrouded way.

“What about the brides?” Tarren joined the thread. “They aren’t used to—” She pointed a finger straight up. “They don’t ever want to leave?”

“The Heart binds us to the planet as well as to one another.” Dolfan’s mouth curled into a gentle smile. His look deepened, and Vashia felt her cheeks warm. “No one who has felt the Heart has been disappointed with the results.”

“Huh.” Tarren missed his innuendo, but then she hadn’t been the target of that gaze. “What about the ones that don’t do the whole bondy thing?”

“They are
usually
grateful for all we provide them,” Mofitan growled again.

“Huh.” Tarren jabbed Vashia with her elbow. “Must be a pretty sweet deal.”

Maybe it was. She tore her gaze from Dolfan’s and eyed the solid sky again. She hoped that meant a good deal for all of them, that Murrel and Tarren and even Jine would carve out some happiness in whatever crater they settled in. And as Madame Nerala led them forward, and the first of them surged up the staircase toward her destiny at least, Vashia prayed that Dolfan would not be “disappointed with the results.”

It never occurred to her to question what those results might be.

H
e saw
his future in her eyes. The Shroud turned her cheeks to rose and cast her eyes into a sparkling reflection of the storms above. Dolfan tried to tell her, to reassure her without starting a war with Mofitan or scaring her even further. He put the force of his beliefs behind the words and prayed she’d understand as much.

They took the stairs and stopped again while the women digested the breadth of the plaza and the height of the Palace dome and turrets. He heard the gasps and felt his spine straighten. His chin lifted. He couldn’t help but enjoy the reaction. The building awed him as well, and he’d been living in it for months now.

Nerala pointed out the flags and all fourteen heads spun to examine the system that they’d come in time to trust with their lives. The banners fluttered in a pattern he knew meant their breathers were optional. Still, he saw several of the group reach up and check their devices. He approved of Nerala’s training—better to be safe now than sorry later.

They followed her up the wider staircase to the Palace doors, which had been thrown open in welcome and secured against the moderate wind. Two shadows stood just inside the entry, and one stepped out into the light to greet them.

Vashia stopped walking. Dolfan nearly trampled her, had to stumble to one side to avoid colliding. She stared, and Dolfan recognized the disquiet in her expression. He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder, and Mofitan surged forward to shadow her other side.

“What?” He had to raise his voice to battle the wind. “What is it?”

“Another prince.” She turned back to the stairs. Haftan already descended toward them.

“How did you know that?” A leaden lump settled in his stomach.
How?
Dolfan watched her eyes and he knew the answer, though she didn’t speak. Haftan marched to a halt directly in front of her, and they exchanged steady gazes.

“What’s going on?” Mofitan snarled.

“The Kingmaker has come,” Haftan announced.

“Him too?” Mof turned to her. They all did, but Vashia stared at her feet.

Dolfan could feel her trembling under his hand. He wanted to get this over with, fast, but a seed of fear wedged into the back of his mind. How could they all sense her? If she knew Haftan on sight, then perhaps, she could sense the others as well. Perhaps she didn’t feel anything different with him, anything special. He ground out the thought, refused to let it formulate. He knew what he knew.

Still, when Haftan turned and led them up the stairs, he couldn’t help but agree with Mofitan’s muttered curse. He couldn’t help the shaking in his legs anymore than he could the nasty whisper in his mind that said, maybe not.

I
f she’d had
any doubt about her fate, it vanished when she met the remaining princes. They buzzed like a swarm of bees, even across the huge throne room. They stared at her. Seven pairs of eyes fixed on her position against the far wall, and her brain hummed back at them as if it were their hive.

Between them, the huge crystal sat under a clear dome. Her eyes kept dancing back to it, from Dolfan to the Heart to one of the others in line and then back to the stone. That thing, that dark faceted piece of gemstone would decide her future. Vashia shook her head. It all seemed fairly ridiculous.

She already knew which one she wanted. She frowned at the Heart. Did they really need a magic crystal to announce it? The old buzzard priest shuffled forward, and the hush that fell over the hall said they did. At least the Shrouded did. They took their big stone very seriously.

Tarren nudged her in the ribs and whispered something she couldn’t make out. The women gathered around her sounded like insects, too. At least that sound was audible to everyone present. Even Madame Nerala’s fussing was a whispered hiss in the presence of the Heart. It sat dark, under glass and still managed to dominate the wide room.

The dais might have been higher, and the pair seated there loftier, but the Heart ruled the throne room.

The priest sang to it. He danced around it, waving a pot of smoke and working his free hand in the air. He drew invisible symbols with long, exaggerated motions and his voice rose and fell like the beating of a drum. He wore a black silk wrap that billowed and swirled until he seemed like only a shadow of a person, a hologram circling the dome and the stone that lifted in a sharp point just a hand’s span higher than his head.

The smoke filled the room with a sweet smell, resinous and reminding her of the brothels back on Eclipsis. The air grew thick with it. Impossibly, she found her vision narrowing as she peered through the haze. A brazier that small could never fill a hall the size of the Shrouded King’s, yet Vashia smelled the smoke thick in her nostrils, and her eyes strained to see anything beyond the light flaring at the crystal’s point.

Light flaring.

Her knees wobbled. She could see light there, light lining each facet as if somewhere inside the stone a hidden bulb glowed. That was probably exactly what it was, a light. Someone had flipped a switch and the crystal lit up like a candle—except the room had gone fuzzy too. She blinked. The whole world was haze and smoke but for the path cleared in front of her.

Vashia stared down the tunnel, past the Heart, and found a pair of eyes watching. She knew them, had known them since the dawn of time, perhaps.
Dolfan.
Her legs moved. She took a step or two, locked her gaze to his and walked forward.

The hum faded. The static buzzed far away, and something flooded in to take its place. A pulse drowned out the interference. It beat against her temple, in her heart and at each point where her feet touched the ground. She felt it in waves. Joy. Pleasure. Calm. Each crest moved her, took her one more stride closer to the Heart.

The smoke shifted. Tendrils wound between them. Threads linked and bound their bodies to the pulse, tied their hearts to the crystal and to each other. Vashia blinked against the fog of incense and tears and something that neither could explain away.

The rhythm drew her forward, and her mind didn’t have time to question. Her rational, educated mind bowed to the impossible. She saw the crystal glow. She heard the heartbeat that pulled her onward, and she felt an attraction with no boundary in space or time.

She reached a hand out. Her fingers longed to touch the Heart, but a barrier kept it at bay. She stroked the smooth surface of the dome and watched the lights shift and pulse within the stone below.
The Heart. Hello.
A smile flirted with her lips. She let the pulse seep into her veins until her own heart beat in time to the crystal. Hers and another’s.

She found Dolfan again, could have found him in total darkness. He stood far at the edge of the room. His eyes had gone dark. A frown graced his brow and horror touched his gaze. It flicked from her for a second, and she had no choice but to follow it.

A stranger stood opposite her. His hand also rested on the dome, and his eyes filled her vision. The pulse engulfed them both.
Wrong.
Vashia tried to lift her hand, but the Heart held it fast. She tried to look away, to find Dolfan, to drag him to her, but her body seized against her orders. She stared into the wrong face, and it stared back.
False!
The stone screamed the word, and yet, it wouldn’t release her.

The priest sang again. His voice chanted her doom, a drum calling her back from the smoke. The room clarified. The figures stood in place. The priest announced the doom of her mistake.

“Haftan,” he called. A whisper circled the room. It echoed his raspy pronouncement. “Haftan. Haftan the King!”