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  She caught a wisp of his hair within hers and twirled them together. He stopped abruptly and watched her finger. “I don’t have wings either. Maybe... maybe you were created this way to be with me on the ground. The ground is stable, it’s always there, and it doesn’t disappear. Like you? Even the sun disappears each day.”

  He caught their coiled hair and tugged on it. “I'll always be there.”

  “Me too.” It was a promise.

  He set her down on her feet on the wooden stairs and held her upright. Sundamar’s chest was bare but he wore his armored leggings, and looking between them, she wanted clothes of her own again. Yahiro took a step back and looked down at herself, stretching and testing her muscles at the same time. Her skin was marked and well-used, even bruised in some places from her valos.

  Quist landed on the step below her and lightly placed his hands on her hips.

  “We hurt you and the light didn’t heal you.”

  She frowned, remembering this conversation with Sundamar and her eyes landed on Quist’s side where his terrible stitches were still in place. “I heal slowly,” she said and reached down to brush her finger over his wound. “I should take those out now. I don’t think you need them anymore.”

  He pressed her hand against his stitches. “You’ll do no such thing, Yahiro. I plan on keeping this forever.”

  She let out a short laugh. “They’re going to fall out eventually, pushed out by your own body. You can get infected...” Sigh, they don’t get infections. She moved her hand. And the strings already looked to be part of his skin.

  Her attention shifted to the dull pain between her legs. That raw ache after really good sex. She opened her legs and looked down, knowing both aliens watched her do so. She bit the inside of her cheek.

  “Are you okay, pale one?”

  I’m clean. She pressed and moved her fingers over her and was only met with smooth skin. I don’t remember being washed... She’d expected her privates and thighs to be covered in dried golden alien spunk, but they were devoid of it. Her pussy tightened. The warmth inside her was all that remained of what they’d shared.

  “Yahiro?” Sundamar joined his hands on her body under Quist’s and kneeled to see what she doing. A blush plastered her cheeks as the stairs rocked and she could see the horizon for miles and miles.

  “I’m sorry, I was confused. How long have I been asleep? Your cum isn’t on my skin and I could’ve sworn I hadn’t been bathed...” Had she?

  She gripped Sundamar’s shoulders as both valos smirked up at her. Quist’s constantly roaming hands found their way between her legs again and dipped in and out of her pussy. Already, her body betrayed her of the danger of the situation and prepared itself to be used again. Why do I have to be wet already?

  “You were out for a full dawn and noon, and dusk is approaching fast.”

  Dipping in and out, probing, pressing, in and out, Quist added a second one. Her hips jostled and Sundamar’s hold on her strengthened.

  He continued, his voice growing hoarse in tandem with her body. “Our seed turned to golden dust in direct sunlight.”

  “Oh?” she whimpered, aware of Quist shifting behind her.

  “Like my feathers when they fall off in the sky,” Quist added with a grunt at her ear.

  Her eyes held onto Sundamar’s narrowed ones. His nails bit into her skin. He slowly stood up and became a barrier, a post for her to hold on to. She squeezed her eyes shut when two hands gripped her buttocks and pushed them apart. Another hand pressed into her lower back, forcing an arch out of her trembling body while a blunt tip pushed into her pussy.

  Yahiro thought there had to be some proof that aliens probed their abducted victims. The way her aliens treated her was proof enough.

  It was slammed into her, making her scream and stiffen, taken. Quist took her hard, his strange alien grunts breathed into the back of her scalp as he hovered over her body and rutted. Tears sprang to her eyes from the raw pain and the accompanying pleasure.

  Her whole body was placed on the edge of a pedestal, a precipice she couldn’t reach.

  When he was done, the thick molten seed was back between her legs. “Watch,” he grunted with a final thrust.

  Sundamar pried her from Quist’s arms like a ragdoll and put her directly into the sun. Almost instantly the seed turned into golden dust. Moments passed as she played with it, running the weightless glitter over her until that too was taken by the light.

  “How convenient,” she murmured. When she turned around, both aliens regarded her curiously. “Nothing where I’m from vanishes like that.”

  “You mean the stars.” Sundamar nodded toward the sky. “I don’t know why your creator made you fall or left you.”

  Yahiro’s heart sank but she stretched out her limbs, still flustered from a lack of climax, and sneaking glances at her valos’ groins. “I wish I knew myself,” she whispered and took a step up, loving the feel of the sun against her skin. “There was no warning.”

  “We had no warning either.” A hand squeezed her shoulder and she nuzzled her cheek against it.

  “It’s not... nice.” She knew the word suck wouldn’t be slang in their language.

  “That’s why I’m going to make Lusheenn atone for his sins!” Quist snarled.

  The three of them slowly ascended the steps together.

  “I hope you find him.” She really didn’t, not wanting Quist to risk his life, but would never try to stop him. “I’ll help you kill him.”

  Sundamar grumbled and slowly brandished his sword, making them both drop the subject of Quist’s revenge quest.

  I would help him. I don’t care what Sundamar thinks. I’m just as good at killing as the two of them. Papa trained me too well. Some secrets she was going to take to her grave.

  Yahiro tugged at her hair and glanced back at her valos. She didn’t want to lose them. The thought strangled her heart, stabbed her through all of her many aches and pains. I’m not Yahiro Ere here. I’m not! Each step grew heavier. I’m Yahiro of Quist, of Sundamar. The smooth wood beneath their feet creaked in symphony from the three of them, prolonging the silence until she couldn’t stand it anymore. It drew her attention because unlike Earth, Sonhadra had enough wood to make a staircase of a hundred-thousand steps. She brushed her palm over the guardrail, finding it hard to be fazed that even she was amongst what would be wealth in her world.

  All around her, everything was bright, vibrant, and colorful, and all of it was washed in gold light. The deep green trees went on endlessly, the mountains stood tall in the distance, and she could just barely make out a sliver of ocean, where the storm above it remained riotous.

  Her stomach knotted. I don’t belong here. She had to look away and back down at her feet or she might cry, and crying was the last thing she wanted to deal with in front of her valos. Whatever drove her to the top pulled on her harder.

  But the stairs were colorful too, pale beige, with bronze designs. Nothing about it was man-made, nothing about Sonhadra was grey.

  Grey was her color. It was her place. She was used to grey and murk, and smog, where the sun could only be seen as a blurry ball behind industrial clouds. She could hide within that grey and vanish, become a part of the world she’d been raised in. Why did my creator make me fall here and leave me? Her belly dropped further as she remembered judgment day.

  A digital courtroom, her handler and her department watching from behind a camera she couldn’t see, the voice of the prosecutor, the condemning questions that went on and on and on. There had never been a time when she had felt more exposed than that day, even hyped up on drugs from being in medical for over a month. She hadn’t been ready, hadn’t had time to come to terms with what had happened, and hadn’t even remotely begun to heal before she was sentenced to the Concord.

  “Did you shoot to kill William Ere? Was it in self-defense? Is that you in the video? What about this one? And this one? How long have you known that your father was involved in drug smuggling an
d sex trafficking? Why hadn’t you come forward before now? Why did you stop contacting your handler?”

  The questions had gone on for hours.

  “Is it true you only joined the police force to provide intel for your father?”

  That was the question that haunted her the most... No matter how she answered it, it still wouldn’t be the full truth. Regardless of the threats, the brainwashing, the trust, and her own wills and desires, that question always stumped her.

  Her calves burned but she kept moving forward.

  On one hand, the truth was yes, yes she did join for her papa, but on the other hand, no. No, because she joined for herself, and before she became entrenched, being able to do some good was better than nothing. Being able to hunt down and apprehend criminals made her feel good at night when she tried to sleep. It was never enough to equalize the evil, but it was better than nothing. Even desk duty and paperwork made her feel like she was doing some good in the world. That she was more than William’s eldest daughter.

  That was all before the police force knew the business her family was in, and long before they had intel about a drug and trafficking ring in their midst.

  Her mama knew, knew from the beginning what her papa was, and wasn’t bothered by it. Some women prioritized money and power over humanity and decency. Mama had always been her mama though, and even after everything, she missed her with each bleeding beat of her heart.

  And her sister, her baby sister, who was born with a brain defect. Yahiro envied her sister for grasping onto her innocence so tightly that even after she emerged into the grey world of Earth, she was able to keep it. William and Mama never sent her sister off, never abandoned her, never abandoned either one of them, and even in her darkest moments of hate, that knowledge always pulled at her emotions, always gave her a glimmer of hope that there was good amongst the evil. It messed with her head.

  Because, after all, her parents were still her parents and never tried to be anything else. Not even when she joined the family business, and not even when she’d been caught.

  “Here,” Sundamar’s voice broke through her thoughts and a hand filled with her orange, torn up jumpsuit appeared at her side. “You’re shaking?”

  She took them with a nod, her pulse fluttering, and quickly put them on. I’m human once again. It was oddly satisfying to be back in her prison clothes.

  “Thank you,” she said, righting the material.

  “You’re still shaking.”

  “My heart feels heavy.”

  “Why? Is it engorged with too much blood? Light?” His misplaced concern was sweet.

  “No, it’s a saying. I have a lot on my mind. And what’s on my mind makes my heart feel... spoiled.”

  He nodded. “I know what you mean then.”

  Yahiro turned to continue climbing, looking up and sighing at how far they still had to go.

  “What’s on your mind that makes your heart so?” Quist asked.

  She pursed her lips and wondered what to tell them. “I was thinking about the place where I’m from. It’s very different from Sonhadra.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a lot more people. So many people that that,” she waved her hand at the landscape, “no longer exists. It’s all been killed off to make room for all of us and even when that wasn’t enough to sustain us, we built structures far up into the air. My world is one giant ball of tarnished chrome.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  She shrugged. “We kept growing and having families, kept needing more and more resources and took those resources from the Earth. Eventually, even before I was born, we’d run out of a lot. Space travel was a thing, privatized though, and some years back Earth thought of a great way to get rid of a lot of its people.” She gulped. “I was one of them and that’s how I ended up in space—”

  “—which brought you here.”

  “No.”

  Sundamar kept in line with her steps as she spoke.

  She continued, “I don’t know what brought me here. If it was the workings of some celestial being, a creator of some sorts, I’ll never know. One day, I was in—on a ship, the next day I was in a shipwreck and here.”

  “And in my sights,” Quist added.

  Her lips twitched before her face went grim. “Not at first. Most of the people on the ship I was with didn’t survive. Before you found me, before I was hiding and before I found the stone, I was with a few survivors—the humans I told you about. We crash landed that same day, and me and Charlie and Preta, two other women who were with me, and s-some guards—our group was in charge of scouting the nearby terrain and finding water and food.”

  Both her valos had gone silent and when she didn’t continue, Sundamar grunted and finally replaced the broadsword still in his hand back into its sheath.

  “How long before I found you was this?” Quist asked.

  “Hours. Dawns in your time, I think, hours in mine. It was still day when I was with them. We were attacked by forest beasts.”

  “I know.” Sundamar scowled and it put her on edge.

  “How?”

  “I found the remains of a being like you, the bones, among an ak’rena nest after I followed a bloody trail. There were footsteps scattered about, and what looked like plucked fruit strewn across the ground. The tell-tale signs of a fight.”

  “Oh.” She chewed on her lip, suddenly feeling horrible. “Do you... did you happen upon...” she didn’t know what to ask for, “any intact corpses? Orange jumpsuits? Female bodies?”

  “Like your clothes? No, only stripes of blue and white. As for the sex, there was nothing but blood and bone. Not all of it was of your kind.”

  She hugged herself and hoped the others, the ones who were nice, had gotten away. Yahiro stopped for a moment and squinted her eyes, searching for the crash site. Quist brushed his wings over her back, comforting her.

  “You won’t see the killing ground from here,” he said.

  “I’m not looking for that. I’m looking for the ship I crashed here on.” She glanced at Sundamar. “Did you come across a metal structure? It would be jagged, burnt along its sides and would have a skid trail that went on for half a mile?”

  “No.”

  She returned her attention to the landscape but found nothing. Once my belly is filled and I’ve gotten a little sleep, once this agonizing tug lets up and I procure a weapon, I’ll come and search for you. Yahiro balled her hands into fists and swallowed before turning away.

  That pull to keep going tugged at her and she continued up the stairs.

  QUIST

  His eyes trailed after Yahiro and Sundamar as they ascended, his own feet lagging from the effort. He had never once, in his long existence, taken the winding, endless trail to the city. The wings on his back hooked inward and he followed after them.

  No wonder my brother envies the other valos with wings. I’d envy them too. It had never been a thought to plague his mind but now that it was there, it stayed. He didn’t feel right jumping off the side and hovering when his brother and Yahiro couldn’t.

  He tucked his member back into his pants and kept his eyes on his family. That damning tug, the invisible one that had set him on the path to find his female, had grown worse the closer they traveled to the City of Dawn. Quist glanced up, already knowing that Galan awaited them at the top.

  There had been moments of reprieve when he and his brother mated the female, where the pull had almost vanished. It was blissful, that quiet. When it was quiet, his thoughts weren’t scattered and he was able to focus. When it happened the day before, all he saw was her, all he had felt was her, and it had been sublime.

  Despite mating her again, it hadn't vanished. He roved his eyes over the smooth curves of her body and wondered if he should try again. If she’d let him. Quist cursed his cockstand to the deepest shadowed pits on Sonhadra.

  His steps became a little more forceful.

  What he felt now was strangling. They were nostalgic and we
re akin to something he felt when he was first created. When he was in the presence of his Creator. But unlike that painfully raw feeling, it was softer. It didn’t stop him from wanting his vengeance and it didn’t stop him from pursuing everything in his midst.

  It didn’t stop him from hardening his feathers into a thousand blades. This pulse thrummed.

  The taste of sweet blood in his mouth.

  Lusheenn is near.

  Chapter Eleven

  YAHIRO

  Every bone in her body had turned to dead weight when she saw the last flight of stairs and the end of the golden railway come into view. She was exhausted physically and emotionally from the arduous journey but now that her eyes were on the vast structures over the top, she knew it had been worth every step.

  Everything was light and mirrors, crystals and reflective surfaces. Even the buildings had a translucent, airy gleam to them. And from what she could see, there wasn’t a corner that was cast in shadow. Her eyes were blinded by it at first and although they had adjusted, sunspots stilled filled her vision.

  Yahiro pushed herself over the last several steps. Her heart lightened and her excitement burst at the seams.

  She glimpsed a pair of wings as she climbed the last step. Sundamar’s hand poised on her lower back. The link between them practically vibrated with energy when Galan came into view.

  Her mouth dried up instantaneously and a sense of perfect harmony flooded her. Sundamar grunted next to her and helped her off the landing. Her eyes never left Galan.

  “Hello,” she whispered, softly, shyly. His wings hooked over his back like talons while the longest feathers caressed the ground. They sparkled like the rest of the city that surrounded the courtyard they stood in.

  His eyes narrowed on hers and he made no move to come closer. “Yahiro,” was all he said, his voice barely above a rasped whisper, nearly lost to the breeze. Her skin turned to gooseflesh as a needle-stab of unease shot through her.

  Behind, a bell tolled, and shortly after, the city shifted under her feet. She startled and spread her legs for balance when Quist held her upright.