A Bond of Shadow and Stars (Bond of Fate Book 1) by Keary Taylor

Author:Keary Taylor [Taylor, Keary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

20

Valen’s eyes slide over to meet mine, though he doesn’t turn his head to me. He just looks at me for a long moment. I wonder what he sees. Why he can’t look away, just the same as I can’t. I wonder if his mind is filled with as much turmoil and confusion as mine.

“I was born on the planet Starvis,” he says. “It’s a desert hole with only two hundred thousand people on it. There’s little food, the sun only sets in the winter, but the temperatures don’t change with the season; you always feel like you’re dying.”

He looks back out the window, but I know it’s not the black sky of space that he’s seeing.

“There is no Neron on Starvis,” he says. “There is little food, and little water. There’s no economy and no commerce. Starvis is a planet of savages.”

I’ve heard as much. I can’t even imagine it, how brutal the planet itself must be. And I’ve heard the people there are even more ruthless.

“There are essentially four family tribes on the planet,” he continues to tell me the story of his formation. “One lives on the south side of the planet, where the sun never sets. They’ve found a way to survive, and they keep to themselves. But the other three are constantly at war with each other, fighting for the night and the water.”

I look back out at space. I try to remember where Starvis is. The L sector, maybe?

“We never had an actual home,” Valen says. “We constantly moved to wherever there was water. We were camped at the base of a mountain, my parents planned to stay for a few nights, to rest. We’d been outrunning one of the other tribes for a week, and we finally lost them.”

I let my eyes slide closed, because I think I know where this is going.

“It was late, and me and my friends should have turned in for the night. But we were playing some game in the sand. Then we heard the screaming. The sounds of slaughter.”

I shake my head just a little.

“There were twelve of us children off playing on our own,” Valen says. He says it so evenly, so calmly, like he isn’t telling a story about the end of his family. “Every one of our parents were killed by the other tribe. We waited for them to leave, to move on, and then we all had to bury our parents in the sand.”

“How old were you?” I dare ask. I hug myself tight, my heart breaking for that little boy. I can just imagine him digging in the sand with his bare hands, hauling his parents’ bodies to it, and then having to cover them up and leave them there.

“Seven,” he says.

Emotions spring into my eyes again.

“Dominion arrived two days later,” he says. “They were re-scanning our sector and made it to Starvis. Our planet didn’t have a trace of Neron. In fact, the natural Neron on Starvis is the lowest in the entire galaxy.

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