“I had a sister. She died a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry, Syn. I lost mine, too, when I was a teen. I still miss her.”
Syn patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss, too.”
Awkward silence filled the room until Syn finished his review. “You’re making good progress. Tomorrow, we need to get you up and moving. I’ll schedule a physical therapist for the afternoon. And my surgeon friend will be by day after tomorrow to look over your hand. I’ve already sent him the scans. He thinks you’ll have a full recovery.”
Ture felt a rush of excitement at those words. “Thank you, Syn. Seriously.”
“No problem. Now you two stay out of trouble and rest for tonight.” He turned toward Maris. “And that means you, Mari. I know you haven’t slept for two days and you’re still healing, too.”
Maris gave him a very sarcastic military salute.
Syn ignored it and left them.
“You haven’t slept?”
Maris looked away. He started not to answer— that was his standard mode of operation around others— but for some reason the truth came out before he could stop it. “I don’t sleep well on my best days. And battle always brings out the worst in me.”
“How so?”
Memories surged with a vicious bite as he relived battles he wished to the gods he’d never fought. It was hard knowing the beast that lived inside him— knowing what he was capable of when pushed into a corner. Nothing made him sicker than some of the things war and his family had forced him to do in his past. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
Ture shook his head.
“It’s not like you see in movies or programs. It’s gory and scary. Disgusting and horrifying. Seeing the look on their faces and in their eyes that moment when they realize their life is over. . . . And every time you send someone to their grave, a part of you goes with them.”
“Then why do you do it?”
Maris felt his throat tighten. “I stopped fighting for myself a long time ago. But as much as I despise killing, I hate losing someone I love a lot more. How, with all my training and skills, can I stand back and let the ones I love most risk or lose their lives and do nothing for them?”
Ture nodded sympathetically. “I get it. So how old were you the first time you killed someone?”
Maris flinched at the horror of that nightmare. “Seventeen.”
Ture gaped at the age. “You were a child.”
“Not on Phrixus. I was in my second year of obligatory military service.”
“It was a battle then?”
He shook his head. “Phrixians are not like other races. We have a very screwed up system of government. And one of the things that greatly differentiates us from others— we have no police force.”
“I don’t understand. Who enforces the law?”
“The citizens. My people believe that if you can’t defend yourself and those who fall under your protection, then we don’t need your DNA in our gene pool. We take survival of the fittest to its extreme. But that being said, we mostly leave each other alone because we know how highly trained and armed everyone is. The only time someone is attacked is when they’re seen as weak.”
Ture scowled as he tried to understand the terrifying world Maris described. “You were attacked?”
“My younger brother. I was late picking him up for my father.”
Ture winced at the pain he heard in Maris’s voice. “Thank the gods you were there.”
Maris let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, but that was the reason he was attacked in the first place.”
“You’ve lost me again.”
There was so much agony in those dark eyes that it made Ture’s tear up for him. “They thought my brother was me since they’d been told that was where I’d be at that designated time. Had I been on time, my brother wouldn’t have been beat to a pulp.”
His jaw went slack. It would be hard enough to have your brother attacked. To then find out it was supposed to be you . . . How awful. “Why did they go after you?”
“Swabbing the gene pool.” Maris looked away as he remembered the laughter and mockery that had been shoved down his throat.
“You’re a pathetic waste. I should have cut out your heart when you were born, instead of wasting family resources on you.” Maris could still see the hatred in his father’s eyes as he’d sneered that at him.
He met Ture’s gaze and tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. “It’d gotten out that I’d had trouble sustaining an erection in a whorehouse with a woman. And such a thing is considered shameful and considered a grave mark against my family and their honor.”
“You’re kidding.”
Maris shook his head. “Erectile dysfunction is deemed a capital offense in our empire.”