“The thing is, we are… popular. Among a certain set. Specifically, the slaver worlds. They consider us djinn, or non-humans, and because our fertility is tied to our bond, a forced bond or even sexuality among the unbonded can’t reproduce. They didn’t want to make the same mistakes that the corpies made with nymphs, but at the time they weren’t exactly… sympathetic to the plight of outworlders.”

  “But you said that some of your grandparents were technically not a voluntary bond?” I asked.

  She nodded, “Yep, it was complicated, but they are not my physical grandparents. They loved each other, though they were technically unbonded, for… complicated reasons, mostly because my grandmother was in a position where she was going to get force-bonded, so she asked my grandfather for his help to prevent it from happening, or rather, she asked to be force-bonded to him so she wouldn’t be force-bonded to someone she hated. I wish they could have waited long enough for it to happen naturally. My grandfather is wonderful, but it was… an emergency. I am descended from my second grandmother, but they always considered her children to be all of theirs.”

  “It is complicated, though… my second grandmother is bonded to my grandfather, and to my first grandmother, even if my grandfather and grandfather are not directly bonded. But it worked out.”

  I needed to change the subject, to step back from that abyss. This conversation was veering into territory that was covered by my… our… shared predicament. “Do you mind if I ask Taera a question? About whether or not I can reveal part of a quest?”

  She shook her head, looking curious. “Not at all.”

  “Fair warning,” I said, hauling myself to my feet and grabbing a towel to wipe the sweat from my face and chest. “She will definitely want you to bond with me. That way, she stays loyal to Timur and also gets her carrot.”

  “Carrot?” She looked genuinely puzzled.

  “You know, carrot and stick?” At her blank expression, I shrugged. Right, kidnapped from a backwater world. Cultural gaps. “It’s an old expression. A carrot is a reward dangled in front of you to make you move. A stick is a punishment applied to your backside for not moving. For me, her reward is a joke, but for her, even the first part of it is a dream come true.”

  I focused inward, pulling up my UI. The blue-hued interface flickered in my vision, a familiar comfort. I composed a quick, tight-beam message to Taera.

  Kushiel- Talking to Reynard. Don’t get wet, just talking. Can I share first benchmark?

  Her reply was instantaneous. The woman never slept. Or maybe she just had a standing alert for any message containing both my true name and Gabrielle’s.

  Taera- if I could, I would. Be my guest.

  I lifted my hand, projecting the message window so it hovered in the air between us, translucent and glowing.

  Gabrielle leaned forward, her eyes scanning the text. “Who’s Kushiel?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

  I sighed, letting the window dissipate. “Me. My original name. For some reason, the System considers it my true name. I think it means ‘punishment’ or ‘rigid one of God,’ something depressingly apropos like that.”

  Her expression softened. “I like Kushiel, though… it sounds soft and comfortable. Like a counterbalance to how hard you are.” She blinked, and I realized there was absolutely no innuendo in her statement. It was a pure, innocent observation. She thinks my real name is soft. Hell of a thing.

  I snerked, a half-laugh, half-grunt. “Yeah. Well, the first benchmark for her was to find me and make sure I didn’t deviate. But her overall goal is the same as mine: to keep you from being enslaved, bound against your will, or turned into a political tool.” I paused, the weight of the unspoken ‘how’ hanging between us. “Her stick is a hell of a lot worse than mine, though. I just lose Paladin if I fail. If she fails, uhh… the bad things start happening.”

  I shrugged, a gesture that cost me energy I didn’t have. “I’m not positive if the benchmarks are necessary to win the quest. I mean, if I die, she doesn’t get her carrot. And if you live and stay unbonded, or finally bond with the right guy, no stick for her. We all win.”

  “So what is her carrot?” Gabrielle asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  I shrugged again. “If she can keep me from deviating, she gets a True Name and a spiritual root.”

  Her eyes widened comically, her jaw going slack. “As a Taer? Oh my God!”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I nodded, feeling a strange pang of… something… perhaps concern? for the XO and a little bit of surprise that she could immediately grasp what had taken a bit for me to get. “Yeah. That means she could eventually gain a Gold Core and go through an evolution, maybe two, and become a real boy… or girl.”

  Gabrielle was already shaking her head, her mind racing ahead with a technomancer’s precision. “Not without meridians or a Dantian, no Gold Core. But with a True Name… Kushiel, don’t you see? She’s made out of barely differentiated T-cells, right?”

  “Which means?” I prompted, feeling out of my depth.

  “It means she starts differentiating! She won’t have to go through a rejuvenation or a cloning vat to become a real… whatever. A spiritual root turns her mortal. Mortal humans come in male and female varieties by default. Probably.” Her words were tumbling out now, filled with exhilaration. “Without a Dantian or meridians, she will eventually grow old and die, just like a baseline human. But she could have sex, have babies, have a life…”

  The enormity of it hit me. Taera’s dry wit, her fierce competence, her strange blend of alien logic and very human yearning—it all clicked into place. Her quest wasn’t for power; it was for existence. For a chance to feel the sun on skin that was truly hers. “A kiss on a bridge covered with locks that she can feel to her toes,” I murmured, finally understanding the XO’s driving motivation. She had immortality, and was probably thoroughly exhausted by it… But her Pinocchio quest remained.

  Gabrielle nodded vigorously. “I guess so? I am not sure what the locks are about, though.”

  I laughed, a short, sharp bark that echoed in the empty gym. “Me either. Some old Earth thing, I think.” The laughter died away, leaving the most important question hanging in the ozone-scented air between us. I looked at her, this fierce, innocent, terrifyingly powerful girl. “So. The most important question is, do you want to be bonded?”

  She looked at me very seriously, her head tilted again. “Is that an inquiry or a request?”

  “That’s an inquiry.” I snorted. “If it were a request, I’d be doing it very, very differently. Probably involving less sweat and more… I don’t know, dramatic music.”

  She sighed, a sound of genuine regret. “No.”

  I nodded, not surprised but feeling a peculiar twist of disappointment deep in my gut. I covered it with pragmatism. “I guess, because it’s too big a step? And you just matured? Need time to… I don’t know, be you?”

  She shook her head, a firm, decisive motion. “Oh, no! I was hoping to bond and considered mentally mature enough, long before I got kidnapped. I’m very glad I hadn’t started to mature physically yet, though.” A shadow passed over her face, dark and cold. “Or I’d probably be on Montav or Allabad getting sold or licking some smelly Scrothead’s feet clean right now.”

  The image was vile and all too plausible. “The problem is,” she continued, her gaze steady on mine, “you are a Paladin. I have goals. And you are a knight in shining armor.” She said it not as a compliment, but as a statement of irreconcilable difference.

  “What goals?” I asked, though I feared I already knew the answer.

  She didn’t hesitate. “Finding the people who have been raiding my world, killing most of them, and torturing the survivors into telling me where and to whom they sold my sisters.” Her voice was flat, cold, devoid of emotion. It was the tone of someone reciting a simple, undeniable fact of life. The sun rises, water is wet, I will torture slavers. “And then I plan on torturing them to find out where they sold them, and to whom. And then finding and slitting all of their throats while they sleep. And then killing my sisters so they don’t go insane.”

  The gym felt suddenly colder. The gravity seemed to press down harder, not on my body, but on my soul. Here it was. The core of her. The beautiful, broken, vengeful heart of her. It was so stark, so absolute, it was almost pure.

  I nodded slowly, absorbing it. “That’s dark.” I met her gaze, not flinching from what I saw there. “I am a Paladin, not a pacifist. These people are evil. There are like a million better ways to force the truth out of evil people than torture, but I am okay with the killing part. Is the torture and murdering your sisters thing optional?” Please let them be optional.

  She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a crack in her certainty. A sliver of hope. “Possibly? I mean, I don’t know if I can actually do the torture part. But I HAVE to know where they were taken. My goal in the end is the same as the Timur’s, I just haven’t nailed down how to do it permanently yet.”

  I let out a long, slow breath. “It’s impossible to nail down all evil permanently, Gabrielle. You can’t kill it all. You can only manage the symptoms. Even Paladins know that.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Her jaw set in a stubborn line I was coming to recognize. “But there has to be a way to nail down this evil, here and now. To hurt them badly and frighteningly enough that the NEXT evil people that come along might choose to avoid the same possibility.”

  She leaned forward, her eyes blazing with a conviction that was both terrifying and magnificent. “I believe in redemption, I truly do. But the first step in any redemption is always hurting or scaring someone badly enough that they feel they need to change. And that’s what I intend to do. Even if I never bond, never have a family, and die angry and alone. The next step is theirs, but the first step always has to come from the outside, or they never even think of changing.”

  I laughed.

  I couldn’t help it. It was a raw, startled burst of sound that ripped out of me, echoing off the gym walls. She looked at me like I’d just struck her, hurt and confusion flooding her features.

  “Sorry,” I said, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. “I’m sorry. But you just described what I went through. Both the experience and the decision process, when I became a Paladin.” I looked at her, this avenging angel in a loose top, and felt a surge of something that felt dangerously like pride. “If you were Life or Divine affinity, you’d make a fine Paladin yourself. But with Spiritual…” I grinned, a real one this time. “I’m betting that when you go Copper, the first option on your list will be Crusader.”

  Her confused expression melted into one of dawning, profound understanding. The hunter had found someone who spoke her language. The knight in scarred, tarnished armor saw the same fire in the eyes of the maiden he was supposed to protect. And the gravity in the room finally felt like it was pulling us toward the same inevitable point.