MorningStar by Blaze Ward

Author:Blaze Ward [Ward, Blaze]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64470-144-7
Publisher: Knotted Road Press

40

Hadi liked to rise early. Resetting his personal clock to Court time on Earth had been easy enough, and it allowed him to get up well before most people and meditate on what it meant to be human.

What it had meant, when he had been one.

There was no doubt in his mind these days that he was Ishtan on two legs. When shaving in the morning, he was occasionally surprised not to find pink fur growing in.

The palace had a flavor. He couldn’t describe it using any other sense, because the humans around him lacked the necessary apparatus to understand what he saw.

What he tasted.

It was something like cookies baking and just pulled from the stove, but in his mind, rather than his nose.

Rhages had frequently tasted of anger and despair, both human and alien. Earth, especially the area around him, brimmed with purpose.

But something had changed. The flavor had moved from where it had been two days ago.

Two days?

Yes, something had changed yesterday. The implications were still moving outward like the waves a rock generated in a still pond, but the damage had been done.

Hadi reached out to locate the guards outside his suite. He was not a prisoner, but a valued guest. That had not changed. Those men were still in awe of him, in a good way.

But that was mostly because they didn’t know the truth. Either of them would have shot him in an instant had they learned.

And he did not have the power to turn a pistol’s beam like Daniel could. Hadi lacked the suit that Urid-Varg had created to contain and channel his powers in useful ways. At best, he might stop a knife by stopping the mind controlling it, if he had enough warning.

Thus were the humans on this planet safe. They could always shoot him.

The Ishtan part of his soul raged at the thought of dying before Daniel did, afraid of whatever evils that being might unleash on a defenseless galaxy. But the remaining human element, that might be all there was left of the original Hadi Rostami, was tired.

He had pushed and twisted so many minds around him that even Hadi could only tell when he looked at someone and saw the marks already in place. The Court at Tehran was safe. The Shah appeared to be an ally.

Hadi turned his mind that way, looking for the unique signature of their dread overlord. His jaw dropped open when he did.

That was the change in flavor.

The man smelled of revolution.

He knows.

Hadi had no idea how the man had pierced all their obfuscations and shadows, but he had.

A thought was sent in the direction of Amirin, but his light remained unchanged.

No, he also glowed with a new fervor.

The two must have met last night and worked out treason. Hadi was not offended to be excluded. Many of the Seven Clans maintained such a superiority about them. A classism that kept the lower ranks of society at bay, regardless of ability.

That, itself, almost defined the Sept Empire.

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