Bree has recovered from surgery, but we’re still scheduling these ahead as we work on a secret project! Mwahahahaha! This serial was originally posted (mostly!) on Patreon, and has been edited and finished to be posted live on our blog over the next few weeks. But for those who just want it NOW, or who hate reading on a blog and would like an epub… Well here is the epub!
Return to the world after the Beyond Series and meet the residents of Sector Three…
When Ashwin asks Six & Bren to take in an emotionally fractured Makhai soldier, there are a thousand things that could go wrong. But they are hard at work building their school and rebuilding their sector, and Sebastian is a genius who can fix anything. Anything. In return for his help, all they have to do is give him a safe place to find out if his emotional wounds can be healed.
Just one traumatized supersoldier in the middle of a school filled with former feral street kids, war refugees from exclusive brothels, and a few dozen kids who barely know what a school is.
What could go wrong?
—
DISCLAIMERS: this is a serial meant for existing readers of the series. it contains full series spoilers for the Beyond Series and may not make sense if you haven’t read it.
It is also NOT erotic. This is the first part of a very very very slow burn romance between a broken Makhai soldier and an artist who escaped Sector Two after the bombings. There may also be a few other romances a brewing… consider this more like a TV show with multiple members of the cast up to hijinks, even if there are two main characters.
—
It took Sebastian a few days to come and see her.
Callie had determined not long after her talk with Six that it had to be that way. Any further contact between them had to happen by his choice–even if that choice was to never speak to her again.
But when the soft knock echoed through her empty studio, her shoulders sagged with relief. She hadn’t realized how much it meant to her for that not to be the case. How much she needed him to want to speak to her again.
“Callie?”
“I was hoping you’d…” Her smile froze in place as she turned and caught sight of him. She couldn’t quite read his expression, but it was rigid. Grave. “…come by.”
He hesitated in the doorway, a small brown paper bag gripped in one hand. Then, squaring his shoulders, he stepped into the room. “I came to apologize.”
No. “You don’t have to do that,” she protested. “What happened was my fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he countered quietly. “And maybe it wasn’t mine, either. But I knew I was uncomfortable and I wasn’t honest with you about it. I don’t have the luxury of that. Not with the harm I’m capable of.”
It wasn’t precisely true–or fair to him. “You were honest. I pushed.” She gestured to the sofa. “Would you like to have a seat?”
With a slight nod, he crossed the room and sat, his body still tense and the bag resting on one knee. “I wasn’t sure you’d want an apology gift,” he said, holding it out. “But Six said everyone likes donuts. It’s not as fancy as a picnic…”
Callie accepted the bag, biting her lip to quell another smile. “Thank you.”
That seemed to relax him somewhat. “Can I be honest again now?”
“Please do.”
“A week ago…” He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “A week ago I was locked in a basement, being chemically and psychologically tortured. I’d been there since they bombed Sector Two. I tell myself that I should be fine, because it’s over now. But I’m not.”
Callie’s throat constricted in a sudden ache. Six had told her, but that wasn’t the same as hearing the words from his lips–especially the trembling thread of pain that lurked beneath them. “Fine? How could you be, Bast? You’ve only just begun.”
“I’m Makhai,” he said, as if that was an answer. “We were designed to endure.”
“And you did.” She could barely force out the words. “But now you have to heal.”
He opened his eyes, and his lips quirked in a sad, almost wistful smile. “That’s never been part of our training. But I think it’s why Ashwin brought me here.”
“Makes sense.” She mirrored his smile. “We’re all healing here.”
“You were…” He hesitated. Flexed his fingers. “I don’t want to ask if you don’t want to talk about it.”
Blood rushed in Callie’s ears, and the bag crinkled in her hands as they clenched into fists. She’d only told Six, and she wasn’t sure the other woman had fully realized what she was saying. What she was admitting. Though, in a burst of morbid humor, it occurred to Callie that if she told Sebastian the truth, perhaps he’d stop treating her like she was helpless, delicate.
Innocent.
A muscle in her cheek jumped, and she smiled wider to cover the tic. “It’s not a pretty story. But I’m willing to tell it.”
“Then I’d like to hear it.”
Slowly, Callie moved to the other end of the sofa and sank to it. She forced her fingers to relax, opened the bag of donuts, and held it out. “You might as well help me with these.”
He reached in and pulled one of the lop-sided but well-glazed donuts from it. His brow furrowed as he regarded it with some suspicion, but after a moment he took a bite. Both eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline as he chewed and swallowed. “That is…very sweet.”
“Yes.” His almost comical shock jarred something loose in her chest. “I murdered my patron back in Two.”
Sebastian froze with the donut held in front of him. His gaze swept her face, assessing and intent. Then he took another bite, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “From everything I’ve ever heard of Sector Two, he undoubtedly deserved it.”
Maybe he was right–or maybe it was just easier to think so. She passed him the bag of donuts and clasped her hands in her lap to hide their shaking. “I told you before that I was a Dahlia. Do you know what that means?”
He shook his head.
“Dahlias are all about innocence. It’s their singular allure. When a man procures a Dahlia, that’s what he wants. The wide-eyed, untouched flower.” She fixed her gaze on a spot on the wall, just above a drawing one of the children had done for her. “My patron prized purity, but he also believed that his attentions spoiled it. You see the problem.”
Sebastian set the bag aside, and his half-eaten donut with it. Then he turned more fully to face her, his gaze serious. “He hurt you,” he said softly. Not a question.
“Yes,” she allowed, even though he couldn’t possibly know why he was correct. Not yet. “I was his third flower. Every time he tired of one, he would beat her until he tired of that, then sell her and buy another. Reselling is against District rules, but you know how it is. Rich men do what they like.”
The roaring in her ears returned as she plunged ahead. “I had managed to avoid the abuse because of my art. I’m very good at forgery. I can copy anything on canvas. So I made him a lot of money. Too much money.”
Sebastian’s serious gaze didn’t waver. “Why too much?”
Callie could hear the soft music her patron liked to play during meals, feel the cool silverware growing hot under her fingers. The knife in her hand. “He was celebrating. He had commissioned another girl. And he said–he said–”
I can have as many as I like, my pearl. Thanks to you.
“He was going to do it all again. And I made it possible.” A hot tear slipped down Callie’s cheek. “I had to stop him, so I stabbed him in the neck with my steak knife. Then I stood there with his blood drying on my hands and wondered what the hell I was going to do next. That’s when the first bomb fell.”
“You endured,” Sebastian said quietly.
“I endured.” She wiped her cheek and laughed, though it sounded shaky and almost desperate, even to her. “See? Compared to my patron, dealing with you is a piece of cake. You’re not evil, you’re just…”
“Broken?”
Broken. A memory tugged at her, and an idea formed. “Have you ever heard of kintsugi?”
He tilted his head, but after a moment shook it. “No, I don’t think so.”
“It means golden seams.” She shot off the couch and went to her shelf, looking for the book she needed. “It’s an ancient Japanese art form. If a ceramic bowl or vase broke, instead of throwing it away, they would mend the cracks with a mixture of lacquer and a precious metal like gold.”
She found the book, a volume Ace had brought back to her from one of his forays into the defunct art museum in Reno. Flipping through it, she quickly found the section she was looking for, and laid the book in Sebastian’s lap.
He traced one finger over the page, studying it in silence. “Is this what Six and Bren are doing with Sector Three, then?”
With the sector, and with the people in it. “Broken things can be fixed,” she whispered. “And they can be even more beautiful than they were before.”
He nodded, his finger stilling on the image of a delicate bowl in midnight blues shot with gold. “The world changed while I was in that basement. Eden has fallen. Ashwin Malhotra is in love. The Base agreed to give me a chance to heal instead of throwing me away. It might take me some time to catch up.”
“That’s okay.” Her hands were shaking now, as the real import of what she’d confessed began to hit her. She’d told Sebastian what she’d done. And now–”Do you think less of me?”
“For protecting yourself? For saving other young women like you?” He closed the book and faced her again, his eyes gentle. “Of course not.”
“But you…” She struggled to articulate her fear. It wasn’t that Sebastian needed her to be ignorant and naive–a Dahlia–but he’d seemed to expect it. “You were so insistent that I couldn’t understand the threat you pose. You thought I was nice. And now you know I’m not.”
His brow furrowed again. “Why do you think you’re not nice?”
Because she had killed her patron, then let everyone believed he’d died in a bomb blast. Because she’d committed crimes for him in order to save her own skin. Because she’d failed in her trained purpose.
Because she wasn’t a very good Dahlia.
She shook her head. “Like I said, we’re all healing.”
“Here’s what I know now,” Sebastian said quietly. “You’re a woman who was given too few choices. You found a way to survive a hell no one should have put you in. And when you thought your choices might endanger someone else, you removed the danger immediately. Not to protect yourself. To protect the next girl who was given too few choices.” His lips quirked in that sad little half-smile again. “And you got it done, which is more than I can say for myself.”
Callie’s first instinct was to refute his words, because surely he was only trying to make her feel better. But they held the ring of truth, a desperate, fervent honesty that she had to return in kind. “You would have only gotten yourself killed, Sebastian. And I’m really glad that didn’t happen.”
“I’m glad too. I think.” His face tightened, as if the words had hurt to say, but he clenched his jaw and repeated them. “I’m glad.”
That something lurched in her chest again, followed this time by a warmth that spread outward until it tingled through her fingertips, and she knew she could fall in love with him. The tantalizing, terrifying possibility of it played through her mind in snapshots and flashes, so clear she stood abruptly, pulling the art book out of his hands.
Shaky steps took her back to the shelf, and she stowed it in its place before hauling open a drawer. “Here.” She pulled out the lightly textured pages and thrust them at Sebastian, “I promised I’d give you these. My–your sketches.”
His fingers curled around the pages, but he didn’t look at them. “Don’t you want them?”
“No. You can sit for me again. Someday.” Someday, because she could tell by the look on his face that it wouldn’t be soon.
“If–” He paused. His jaw clenched again, but he forced the word out, calm and even. “When I’m feeling better. We can do that.”
“When,” she agreed. It was a much better option than if.
He rolled the sketches up carefully. “Thank you for trusting me with your story.”
“That’s what friends do, Bast.”
“Friends.” He seemed to be testing the word out. “I’ve never had friends before.”
“Now you can. You do.” She smiled encouragingly, even though the words were bittersweet on her tongue. “I’ll see you around, okay?”
He rose and started for the door, pausing on the threshold to glance back over his shoulder. “Is there anything in your studio you need fixed? Something I can work on?”
There was nothing, and she hated that. No reason for him to stick around. “I’ll check and let you know. Thanks.”
He nodded and slipped silently into the hallway.
Callie wasn’t sure when she’d see him again. He needed time, but he also seemed to need distance, at least from her.
She’d just have to live with that.