“Love you, too.” He clapped Frayne on his arm. “I’m headed on to class. Roundabout!”
“Roundabout!” they said in parting.
As they headed the opposite way, Frayne handed her a small silver charm. The unexpected gift delighted her. However, there was one tiny problem.
“Zhaza! But... what is it?”
“I found it in the bathroom. It’s a human symbol.”
Her stomach shrank as her happiness died instantly under an onslaught of horror. “What?!” Why in the name of the divine goddess would he give her such a thing?
Frayne jerked his chin in the direction Xed had gone. “Xed dropped it from his bag. I had to look it up to find out what it was.”
“And what is it?”
“An ankie or something like that. The humans use it to identify each other and sympathizers to their cause. Just like they do those weird phrases from their books that we destroyed. You know, quoth the raven nevermore and hell hath no fury as a woman scorned.”
Suddenly, she felt sick with fear and dread. “What are saying?”
“That either Xed is a human being in disguise or he’s in league with their cause. It’s the only reason he’d have that. And whichever it is, you have to report him for having it. It’s your job now.”
She shook her head as true horror filled her. This couldn’t be happening. Not with Xed. There was no way he could be in league with the humans.
Frayne was wrong ... he had to be. “He’s like brother to me!”
“And you swore an oath for your office. Loyalty above everything. Even above blood.”
Daria wanted to weep at his dire tone and the cruel light in his dark eyes that said he was enjoying the thought of the authorities torturing and interrogating their friend.
One that was mirrored by Tamira’s.
How could they?
Worse was the unspoken threat that hovered in the air between them.
If she didn’t report Xed and see him arrested, the two of them would report them both.
And she would suffer the same fate.
Or worse.
So will my parents. More than that, she would shame the name Stazen forevermore. It might even become stricken from all their records. I can’t bring disgrace to our name. Her parents would never forgive her.
But how could she live with herself if she betrayed her best friend? Her brother?
Chapter 3
Daria? Are you all right?”
No. She was still in a fog as she staggered into her mother’s private sanctum and sat down, grateful that her mother was working at home today and not in her office downtown.
Over and over, she saw the way they’d burst into her final period at school and had taken down Xed.
Like some criminal.
No, worse than that.
Like a human.
The Dawners had come through the door en masse, weapons raised, and thrown her entire class into chaos as they forced them against the wall at blaster point. All of them had been treated like rabid animals the Dawners had feared would attack at any moment. They’d been forced to their knees, with their hands on their heads while everything they owned had been searched for human contraband.
Even her pockets had been searched.
One-by-one they’d been questioned.
Daria had just stood there while it happened. Traumatized. Guilt-ridden.
Horrified.
But the absolute worst had come when they’d thrown Xed down on the ground at her feet, checked his retinals against their records, and then asked her to verify that he was the one she’d reported.
His dark eyes had burned into hers with a hatred so profound that it seared her to her very Maten soul. He’d said nothing.
He didn’t have to. That look had said it all. How could you? We were family.
I will hate you forever.
More than that, his look had shriveled her like some kind of science fiction bio-ray to the size of a nanobot.
What was the term she’d once heard that humans use?
You suck, Daria?
She finally understood what that sentiment had meant. Never had she felt lower than when she’d nodded and handed over the charm that Frayne had given her. “It fell from his bag.”
They’d taken it and Xed, and in an instant the Dawners were gone. Gone as if Xed had never been a vital part of her existence.
Then her classmates had applauded.
Applauded and cheered. What sickened her most was the knowledge that just a few hours before that, she’d have done the same. Had it been anyone other than Xed, she’d have jeered at the capture, too.
But this was Tibor Xared.
Xed.
A boy she’d grown up with. They had played tag in his yard. He’d come to see her all the times she’d been sick as a girl, and had been confined to bed rest because of a rare illness that ran in her family.
When she’d been too afraid to start school because of her markings that made her “special” that she knew would make others resent her, he’d taken her hand and told her not to fret, that he would beat up anyone who said anything mean to her.
I’m here for you, Darus. Anytime. Anywhere.
All her life, she’d had Xed to depend on.
And she had betrayed him.
Like a human would do.
I’m no better than one of their lowly species.
She felt unclean and disgusting.
“Daria?”
She stared blankly at her mother, wishing herself anywhere else in the universe. “You haven’t heard?”
Her mother frowned. “Heard what?”
Their comm began a frantic buzzing, like a bumblebee seeking its hive. Daria knew that sound.
Xed’s mother, Tibor Cardea was calling hers. Calling to tell what had happened.
What she’d done to their family.
“I’ll be right back.”
She didn’t move as her mother answered it. And Daria knew the moment she’d been outted. There was no missing that sharp intake of breath that caused her own to stall in her throat. The startled gasp that made her stomach lurch.
How could her insides cramp so much, and hurt this badly?
“Is there anything I can ...” Her mother hung up and returned to the room to kneel in front of her.
By the grim expression on her face and the pallor on her cheeks, Daria knew there was no need to explain herself.
Her mother knew the horror.
Still, she couldn’t move. It was as if she were a bird on a branch, looking down at them. Seeing herself sitting here, detached and unable to feel anything. Her disgust at her own actions was just too great.
Was this shock?
She hoped so.
More than that, she hoped that whatever this cessation of emotion was, it stayed here. Because her worst fear was for this numbness to leave and for her real emotions to return.
When that happened, she had no doubt that she would start screaming and never stop.
“Daria?”
She blinked at her mother. “I am the lowliest life form in all the universe, Maja. I might as well be human, too.”
Where’s Daria?”
“Keep your voice down. She’s upstairs in her room.”