[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 14 - Damon

Damon walked in the center of the group of Resistance members--Elise beside him, Milla behind, and Luc dressed as one of the guards ahead. They stopped at the airlock that would lead into the Countess' station.

Luc had to be in pain from his injuries, but he didn't show it. He stood like a wall, his sheer presence a challenge. He met Damon's eyes and gave a small nod. An acknowledgement, and approval.

Damon stiffened and looked away. He hadn't wanted Luc to see him like this, all fussed up like an imposter in another man's clothes. He hadn't thought Luc was coming at all until Luc had shown up as a guard saying Campa had cleared it. That had to have taken some arguing.

Damon caught Milla's eye. She rolled her eyes and made a face. It startled him enough that he choked a laugh, earning a glare from Elise.

Damon's shoulders loosened. He remembered to breathe.

Elise tapped her hand comm. "Campa, we're boarding."

The airlock cycled, and they passed through into the docking tube.

When Damon stepped off the ship, his senses dulled. The red metal tunnel was darker now, the air not as cold. His shirt didn't feel as clammy where it clung beneath his jacket. And there had been a rumble in his bones that was quiet now--he hadn't noticed it until it was gone. The rumble of the ship? But he hadn't felt this when he'd left the ship for Andavar.

Damon tensed and looked back to the airlock where the last of the guards waited to come through.

"What's wrong?" Elise asked. Her hand slid to her arm, but she didn't draw the halo.

Luc wasn't so discreet. His halo snicked out, blades extended.

"Is it a dampening field?" Damon asked. But the office in his master's house had had a dampening field, and it had never felt like this, a whole muffling of his self.

Elise squinted around her. Luc's brows knitted together.

They didn't feel anything, did they?

"It's nothing," Damon said quickly. He started forward, going two steps before he remembered that he had to keep his eyes up now.

Luc retracted his halo but he did not, Damon noticed, slap it back into his arm. Luc motioned to the other forward guard, and they went down the ramp first.

When they came in view of the docking bay below, Luc hissed a curse. Three guards were waiting for them--not a match for their six--but it wasn't their weapons Luc was staring at, it was their gaudy uniforms. They wore maroon jackets, embroidered in gold from collar to waist with the Caelian Crest.

No, not the Caelian Crest. There were curved blades where there should have been interlocked circles.

"Steady," Elise said under her breath. "It is an affectation. She's flaunting her power with those colors."

The muscles in Luc's jaw flexed.

"What do the colors mean?" Damon asked in a low voice.

"Maroon and gold was for the Imperial Guard."

Ohh.

The Countess' guards stood in a ready position, watching them approach. They held rifles, but the barrels were pointed at the deck. When Damon's party stopped, the center guard--a tall, narrow-faced woman--pressed her open palm to her chest and jerked a bow.

"Kynaston," she said in a clipped, flat accent Damon couldn't place. "I bring the Countess' welcome. If you would please follow us, the Countess eagerly awaits an audience with you."

The guard waited, palm still to her chest.

Damon glanced at Elise, but she didn't look back, so he licked his lips and said, "Thank you." He didn't know what else to say. In that moment, everything Milla and Elise had schooled him to say fled from his mind.

The guard didn't seem to notice. "Follow me." She turned and marched her squad back the way they'd come.

They followed through cramped, mostly-empty corridors, stopping only to take a cargo lift down a few decks. This place wasn't Andavar. The walls were gray and almost military, the only sounds their boots on the deck and the occasional squeak of a heel.

Damon felt air all around him. Even with the Resistance guards, he was too exposed. Was this how his father--his true father--had felt? Landon would have had guards wherever he went, always keeping watch for threats. But even the Imperial Guard hadn't stopped Iuri Kosef from killing him in the end.

They reached a large hatch that parted into a cargo bay. The deck was bare for twenty meters or so until it met a solid wall of crates--ten of the Countess' guards stood in rigid formation in front of them. And in front of the guards sat a woman who could be no one else but the Countess. Her chair was metal and plastic, but she sat it like a throne. High cheekbones sharpened a bronze face with quick brown eyes.

Damon's heart began to pound in his throat.

The Countess rose as if she was doing him a favor. She sauntered forward, completely ignoring Luc and the other forward guard, and extended a hand that glittered with rings. Did she want him to kiss it?

Damon's stomach turned, and he met her eyes. He tilted his head ever so slightly. "Countess."

Heat flashed through him and he thought he might faint. But he straightened, and held his breath for what the Countess would do next.

She smiled. When she spoke, it was with the same clipped accent as her guards. "Elise told me she'd found a high-ranking Kynaston." She barely flicked a glanced at Elise.

"And Elise told me you were someone I should meet. Was she right?"

The Countess cocked her head. "Your accent is Halian. Affectation or true?"

"I was born there," Damon said. Then he extended his own hand for her to kiss, in the manner she'd presented hers. Elise would be fuming beside him because he'd gone off her script, but he couldn't think about that now. This was necessary.

He smiled at the Countess. "My name is Damon Barenin Alyras Kynaston."

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