{The Seam}

“The amber of our bones brings out your eyes.”

Sagan closed them to Razor’s attempts at charm. Wearing a clean blazer that matched his bloody pants, he lounged back against the banister, mirroring her. He left the jacket gaping to show off his chest and abs. Plastered on an appreciative, almost shy expression.

Once upon a yesterday, Sagan would fall for it. Well, for the hope of an ally. But this man was not an alliance she wanted. Now her family paid the price for her naivete. Interrupting another of his grabs for time, Sagan confessed, “If you’d asked me, I might have said ‘yes.’” One more example of her guilelessness.

Razor shut his mouth and looked a question at her.

“For your surrogate. I think I would’ve said ‘yes.’ To save a dying race and take you for trips here?” She waved to encompass the Seam. “When you couldn’t return home on your own? I know I would’ve said ‘yes.’”

He gazed at Sagan with entranced white eyes. His short and stylish hair was white. In that suit, he reminded her so much of Korac that it knotted her stomach. After a stretch of silence, she swallowed the truth down hard. “But it wasn’t about me, was it? Or reviving your race. Or returning you here. You wanted to hurt Korac. What makes you think anything you have to say would save you now?”

Zero, the Exalted, and Korac’s father watched silently from above. The Exalted’s court waited in the Seam, whispering from the walls. Their bones took longer to assemble as they prepared for integration into the Atheneum. Into Korac’s bones. The Ancient explained it to her before she pulled Razor inside.

“Three Two Four prevents us. My remaining people searched for Korac. It was only during the Icarean invasion of Earth that they found him.”

Sagan’s brows shot up. “They?”

“My second youngest son was not telling the truth when he declared himself the last. That statement was inaccurate. There are many. Some only half or quarter Aegis. You know them. We disguise behind our perception shields. Three Two Four cannot recognize them and never knew to look.”

Perception shields? “Nox… He described Razor as appearing different from the Pain Curator I met.”

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Zero nodded sagely. “Three Two Four’s shield malfunctioned. The confusion it causes amuses his desire for chaos.”

Everything else he said sunk in all at once. Other Aegis. “I know them?”

“Soon. You’ll come to understand soon. Please free us, Seamswalker. Let us complete the Atheneum.”

Sagan learned some of Korac’s life from Nox’s Verse. At Earth-age twelve, he came to Cinder scarred and damaged. Reserved. A tear rolled down her cheek as she croaked, “It’s all your fault. You kept them from him. And Elden knows what you did to him on Gait.”

Razor watched her with eyes that warmed when the tear fell from her face. “So now I answer to you, the great arbiter.”

She lifted her chin and tried for a stony delivery. “I’m your executioner.”

“Imagine beginning your life three hundred and twenty-four times removed from greatness.”

What a line to start off a Verse. Razor set his head back against the balustrade and told the story, staring at the far wall. Empty.

“I couldn’t affect anything here. I couldn’t create. Innovate. It was already done. And my father spurned any of my attempts to invent something new.” Halfheartedly, he gestured at the glass ghost above them.

Sagan looked him once over before narrowing her gaze. “Is this where you innovated the pain market? Where you first invented the idea of paying one person for their pain to charge another for experiencing it?”

Razor stared at her for a long time. Eventually, he stood and crossed the width of the stairs to her. He crouched down and met her with those twin-pupiled eyes. “No. No, Sagan. That business venture occurred to me while my father and brothers ripped out my fingernails. They threatened to scald my tongue and remove my eyes. Banish me from our home.”

She glanced away and fell silent.

He sat beside her and pushed, “I like you, Seamswalker. I never wanted to lose you. We wanted to keep you.”

She returned his gaze straight on from inches away. “You like to keep people, Three Two Four. On your payroll, in cages, in chains, or on leashes. You control and manipulate especially those you like.”

“I’ll plead guilty to that charge. You’ve distilled it most adequately.” Razor lowered his gaze to his hands. They fidgeted, missing their fingernails. The empty nail beds bled yellow in the Seam. Softly, he added, “If I don’t control you, how can I ensure acceptance? How can I ensure you won’t engage in a needless war without heeding a drop of my council?” He gazed up the stairs at Zero’s amber skeleton.

The Exalted stared down at him without words.

Sagan couldn’t trust that a legitimate exchange took place between them. She couldn’t believe Razor understood remorse, let alone felt it. With Inanis, he mercilessly reduced his people by half and fed on the unrealized potential of the dissolved females. He hand-delivered the Aegis to the Tritans on a nacre platter. And profited off the treachery ever since—

Korac.

Wherever her lover was, he was thinking of her. He felt so lost. Lost and overwrought—

Razor brushed away a tear from Sagan’s face, and a blast of light consumed the Seam.