“Can you show me from here?” I ask reluctantly.
“No,” he replies.
I resist for a moment, but I really want to learn how to program a route. It’s a skill that can help me escape one day, and I’d be stupid to turn down the opportunity to learn. I disengage the seat belt and move to his side. Kyon reaches over and pulls me onto his lap. As he flies the Hallafast, he explains the way to input coordinates and determine the best possible route. The control panel is intricate, but I begin to understand it as I ask him questions. I relax against his chest. His deep voice is engaging. It’s confusing, this dance he’s doing with me—I’m his enemy, I’m his possession, I’m his lifeline to the future, I’m his slave, I’m his confidante, I’m his pupil.
Once Kyon finishes his explanation, the route and destination are logged in. He switches the Hallafast to autopilot. The console in front of us retracts and the manual joysticks shift back and disappear into the dashboard. It leaves just readouts in front of us, but little else to distract me from the view. I try to stand, to move back to my seat, but Kyon’s arms wrap around me and hold me in place on his lap.
“We’re almost home,” he explains. “There.” He points to where the buildings fall away. In the middle of this elaborate metropolis, where the skyscrapers reach into the clouds, there’s a large chunk of dead air. It’s called dead air because the elaborate, sprawling estate buildings on the site below it are only about twenty stories high. On Ethar, where most of the land is annexed, being close to the ground level—to terra firma—is afforded only to the very wealthy. It is an extreme extravagance to have unoccupied airspace. To have this much of it is borderline vulgar.
The city of Urbenoster is surrounded by mountains—a ring. The beautifully constructed skyscrapers wreathing the inside form another circle—a second ring. Kyon’s estate is in the middle of it all—a third ring—or the pupil of the eye, whichever way you want to look at it. A river cuts through the city from the mountains. It comes from a waterfall off a mountain peak. It flows directly to Kyon’s estate, then splits into two rivers that flow around the estate on either side and merge again on the far end. Thus, it acts as a wide moat separating the estate from the rest of the city.
“All roads lead to Rome,” I murmur. “I don’t understand at all.”
Kyon frowns. “What don’t you understand?”
“You!” I cover my face with both my hands and rub it. “Who are you?”
“You seem upset,” he observes. His cheek brushes the back of my hand. It feels a little like fine sandpaper.
“I am upset,” I reply. I take my hands away from my face and glare at him. “No wonder you’re insane! This kind of wealth makes people crazy! I bet you never relax! I bet you’re always obsessing about something—how you can beat something, or do something, or kill something, or win something!”
“Sometimes I sleep.”
“I’m serious!” I growl. I try to get up off of his lap again, but he pulls me back down.
“Don’t let this scare you. You’ll stay by my side until you adjust.”
“Staying by your side doesn’t help that—at all—in fact, it exacerbates the problem.”
“That wasn’t a request,” he says.
We fly over the moat; the landscape is so stunning that it leaves me breathless. The grounds are laid out to resemble a flower, but not just any flower. I recognize the intricate pattern—the perfection of it.
“What do you see?” Kyon asks.
I study it. It’s not really a circle, it’s a hexagon composed of evenly spaced overlapping circles. Every tree line, hedgerow, and garden path conspires to form the flowerlike pattern with a symmetrical structure of the hexagon. “I see a Flower of Life.”
Kyon exhales against my throat; it makes goose bumps rise on me. “What else do you see?” he whispers, his lips finding my pulse.
My heart hammers in my chest. In the dead center of the Flower of Life pattern is a majestic palace of epic proportions. “Your house is a castle. It has thirteen round spires—it resembles a snowflake.
“That is its two-dimensional shape. What else do you see?” he asks me.
I see a few possible shapes: icosahedron, dodecahedron, octahedron, hexahedron, and star tetrahedron. “Your house is the shape of Metatron’s Cube—seventy-eight possible lines connecting the thirteen circular spires.”
“I knew there was so much about you to like,” he murmurs.
The structure is gorgeous, made from the gray stone that appears to be quarried from the mountains surrounding the city. The architecture is a mix of glass and stone walls with multiple roofs of slate. The height is only about twenty stories at its highest point, but it’s massive in breadth and depth. It makes the palace in the Isle of Skye look quaint.
The Hallafast descends like a bird of prey to a hoverpad in the middle of an intricate garden. Topiary mazes continue the Flower of Life patterns over the lawns. We touch down in the middle of one; it shrouds the hawk-shaped airship from the house. I pull the earpiece from my ear, placing it on the console.
Kyon allows me to rise from his lap as he places his earpiece back on the console. He stands too, looping his arm around my waist and holding me to him when I would’ve walked away. The feelings he provokes in me are confusing—fear and desire. I need to get away from him, but I can’t. I hold my breath and wait to see what he’ll do as his hand sweeps my hair away from my neck in a caress. “I’m going to miss having you all to myself.”
“You’ve never struck me as someone who enjoys sharing.”
“I don’t share—” his fingers gently caress my nape “—not you, not ever.”
“Let’s make sure the Brotherhood knows that. I have no intention of being their toy.”
I push away from his embrace without looking at him and walk to the door. He follows me. I wait as he opens it. Kyon’s arm goes up, barring the doorway. “You never go first, Kricket. It’s not safe. You always allow me go first so that I can take whatever fire is meant for you.”
“That’s not a good plan for you. What makes you think I won’t shoot you in the back?”
His lips twitch as he suppresses a smile. “You’re right. Together then?” he asks.
“If you insist.”
“I do.”
Kyon takes my hand as we disembark. Once on the ground, the privacy we shared for the last few rotations is gone. Armed security is everywhere, stationing themselves along our route to the house and by every door and every stair that I see. People stream from every direction to gawk at us.
I look straight ahead, keeping my eyes on the impressive entryway. It’s at the top of wide stone steps. The wooden doors are enormous, making it appear as if giants live here instead of just really tall Etharians. The edifice itself with all of its cathedral-like detail makes me feel like a munchkin. The lintel is made from marble and contains carvings of Ethar’s two moons: Inium and Sinder.
Before we reach the massive entrance of the castle, a tall soldier approaches us. I lose color when I recognize him. He’s the soldier who I tricked into trusting me right before I shot him in the neck with my stolen tranquilizer gun and escaped from the doomed Ship of Skye. It makes me shudder, remembering my feeling of desperation as I tried to leave then—the raw fear. What was his name? I wonder with dread. His blond hair is cut shorter than it was—it doesn’t touch his ears anymore. The change makes his massive shoulders look even broader.