Everything was not all right. Every word Rayne spoke in her sleep had struck a chord in Xelan’s nightmarish symphony, currently ongoing. Celindria. Umbra. The Pretiosum Cruor. Cinder. He plastered a good, calming facade for her benefit, but the mission ahead had weakened his resolve.

Somehow or another, Rayne needed to get to Cinder, and Xelan would take her. He’d spent almost ten thousand years away from his home planet. Would it be the same? How would Nox’s defeat at the hands of humanity cause him to alter it? More war machines, more soldiers, and more callous avarice, no doubt.

“Suture kit,” Xelan stated in an unwavering voice. There was no belying his fears during an important procedure on the most important person this side of Enki.

Sagan held Rayne’s good arm, maintaining a proper breadth for Xelan’s ministrations. Even so, Rayne’s eyes stared at him a little too wide, her jaw was clenched, and her breath panted out in quick bursts. Something about the dream had amped up her usual concerns to outright paranoia. At first, he mistook it for a reaction to the anesthetic, but this went deeper.

Turning down the volume, adding a little depth, and clear annunciation manipulated Xelan’s voice into a more reassuring tone. “We are about to start with the sutures. If you decide you want to watch, Sagan can hold a mirror. If for any reason you want me to stop, just say ‘banana,’ and I’ll do my best to stop, immediately.”

Xelan tracked Rayne, processing the information through the adjustments in her facial expression. At “sutures” she almost winced, at his proposition for the mirror her brow creased, and at the word “banana” her brows shot up and her face relaxed altogether. A snicker beside her cut the tension, and both girls laughed. Pablo, also recently at adulthood, joined them. The jovial sound filled the room, and the nervous strain vanished.

“Is that a safety word?” Pablo asked.

Sagan nodded at him. “Well, what do you use, Pablo?”

Pablo’s eyes widened as he contemplated the inherent lack of need for one. “I guess ‘banana’ will do. What do you use?”

The girls peeked at one another and giggled so hard Rayne tested the restraints.

“Moving right along,” Xelan’s exaggerated voice changed the subject back to the matter at hand. “All ready?”

Rayne, face flushed from the laughter and double entendres, stared at him with an openness he remembered during their training. She trusted him to do this right, and he refused to fail her.

Braver than Rayne realized, she said, “Ready.”

Xelan said, “You can talk to us. It doesn’t take much concentration. Ask us questions to keep your mind off of it. I’m going in, now.”

He leaned over her arm and kept the suture needle hidden from her view. “Suction,” he requested.

The three other technically grown adults in the room snickered again. Pablo complied, using the wand to expose the internal attributes of the wound.

Xelan snagged one side of the tissue and pulled it to hook the next.

Rayne grew stiff. What else could she do? The sensation would border on bizarre.

Sagan sensed the tension returning and asked, “How’s it looking in there?”

Welcoming the opportunity to discuss human anatomy, Xelan explained, “Well, it looks—”

“So gross,” Pablo interrupted him.

Xelan stopped meeting the suture to stare at him.

“There are red bits and squishy dark ones.” As Pablo continued on his cataloging of the colors and textures of open muscles and capillaries, Xelan’s eyes widened and his jaw slacked.

He heard bubbling laughter beside him.

Rayne was staring unabashedly at his face and laughed.

Beside her, Sagan mused, “Pablo, you might want to stop. I think Xelan’s about to kill you.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Over a thousand generations of following the descendants of Xelan’s hybrid experiments and this lot never ceased to unmake his careful composure at every turn. They’d studied medical science in their school program. They wanted to learn about medical biology and how to tend wounds the best. Yet here they were in the middle of a prime example of complex bone setting and internal suturing, and they couldn’t stop giggling.

Xelan said, “Children. You are all just children.” He shook his head and tied off the stitch.

“I don’t feel like a child,” Rayne’s voice, so small and so brittle, punched through his fortitude. He shut his eyes against it, but she kept going. “I feel like an orphan.”

There was a sniffle, and Xelan stopped.

Rayne laid there looking into his face as he sutured a debilitating wound delivered to her by the same brute who’d murdered her parents.

Xelan had yet to find the resolve to tell Rayne her arm may never function again. Her eyes had matched the battle-worn and weary of his ten thousand years on earth in six brief hours. He promised himself to never call her or the others ‘children’ again. They were soldiers.

A mirror popped up beside him. The angle was pointed to Rayne’s wound. Sagan held it across Rayne’s body. Her voice came soft and easy from the side. “Remember the time we thought we could practice with weapons when Xelan wasn’t around?”

His attention snapped back to Rayne, who lowered her eyes down the gurney to Sagan. “He’s standing right here,” Rayne squeezed.

Sagan nodded at him, saying, “We practiced with a mace without you, Xelan.”

Xelan wanted to protest and admonish them, but something in Sagan’s face prevented him from starting in. Instead, he managed to ask, “Did you, now?”

Sagan smiled with the brightness of sol and went on, “We did. We took turns fighting with it.” She peered at Rayne. “You were much better at it than I was. You seemed to know exactly where I’d swing and dodge. I learned so much that day.” As she told the story, Xelan looped another internal stitch. “But I also wanted to get you back. I wanted to teach you that I knew all of your weak spots, too.”

Xelan’s heart ached at Rayne’s small smile. It carried with it a great sadness.

Rayne rasped, “I guess you could say you did just that.”

“How so?” Xelan asked as he finished another. Four more to go. Then onto healing the rest of the damage his brother had caused.

Sagan’s voice lifted and sped up in excitement. “I waited for her to back up on the hill right behind my house. You know the one, Xelan? I fell down it right after my birthday?”

He nodded to move her along, tying off the very last stitch on the inside.

Sagan continued, “Well, I tackled her, and we both rolled down the hill. The mace made it down first, and—”

Rayne groaned.

Xelan snipped the thread and leaned over her face. “Did I hurt you?”

She laughed back at him. “No, I’d just rather not remember this.”

Xelan afforded her a brief smile before returning to his work. Pablo handed him the external suture kit with little attention spared for the task. His enraptured expression was saved for the story and not the medical procedure. Xelan repeated a mantra in his head. Try not to get mad they trained without his guidance on safety and form. Try not to get mad at how this story was obviously ending. Try to breathe and use the opportunity to stitch the outside together.

Ignoring his instincts, Xelan spurned the story on, “What happened?”

“Rayne landed sitting up. Right. On. Top of it!” Sagan exclaimed with more than a hint of triumph.

Rayne groaned again. “I thought I sat on a grenade.” Both girls broke into full belly laughs.

Xelan let this carry on with the surgical needle poised. He knew moments like this would become rarer and more precious throughout the war ahead. He allowed it. Snickering from beside him alerted him to Pablo’s errant attention span.

Xelan shook his head and said, “I am ready to close the wound. Try not to laugh as hard.” He nodded at Pablo, who straightened up. Without glancing back at Rayne, Xelan asked, “What did you do after that? And how did you keep that from me? You must’ve been sore.”

Sagan’s face beamed. “Do you remember the time she got the flu and couldn’t train for almost two weeks?”

Xelan nodded. “Yes, I—” He paused for a moment to look at Rayne. “You lied?”

Rayne said, “Only the once and never again. I couldn’t sit for a week. There was so much blood. Sagan took one of the wound kits you gave us, just in case—”

“I spent almost half an hour hiding her in my bedroom stitching her ass,” Sagan finished.

Xelan pulled a stitch tighter. He ignored Rayne’s wincing and twitching at the sensations. He needed to finish this with as much efficiency as possible. “How many other incidents did you hide from me?” Although he maintained a lighter tone, he needed to know how much the girls had gotten up to with weapons and medical equipment he’d set aside. Maybe fighting without him revealed strengths or weaknesses they didn’t explore with him.

An entire minute passed in silence before Xelan looked away from the wound to check on them. Sagan watched Rayne, and Rayne watched him suture her arm in the mirror. Sagan’s eyebrows peaked in the center as strain aged her around the eyes. Her lips were drawn in a thin line.

Naked concern.

Rayne’s skin turned as gray as his own. Her eyes blinked out of reflex. Nothing wavered her attention from the nightmarish sight of thread seaming one side of her flesh over to the other.

Xelan’s brother had done this to Rayne. The rampant, arrogant, destructive crucible of a sibling. The ruler of their race. She experienced so much trauma on the count of his fiendish whims. The fight lasted a scant twenty minutes at most. While Xelan stood on the rooftop unable to help, he’d watched it all. The moment Rayne engaged Nox in battle, he knew his brother could break her in half like a twig. She’d represented no threat to him. One minute into the fight and boom. Dead young woman. The resistance, over. But Nox wanted more. And he’d taken it from her.

Xelan looked into her eyes, saying, “Rayne, I have to tell you something.”