Harmonious Hearts 2017 Read online

  As I’m about to spit out some random excuse to leave, though, his voice reaches my ears. “What do you want to know?”

  I glance up at him, pausing to think about what I have to say before letting the questions come out. “Do you like me?”

  His eyes sharpen, annoyance clear in his features at the question. Maybe he sees how insecure I feel about his answer, though, because his gaze loses the hard edge and softens as he looks down at me.

  “Probably not the exact same way you like me, but yes, I do.”

  Frustration forces a few tears to my eyes as I try to clarify my question. “Could you try to explain it to me? Please? I really want to understand this, but—it’s hard.”

  He lets out a gentle huff before continuing. “Sexually, no, I don’t feel like that for you. I don’t feel sexual attraction for anyone, which just happens to include you. I do have romantic feelings for you, though.” The tiny smile he gives me with those words makes my heart flutter just a bit. “And that’s all I really care about. I want to be by your side, as long as you and I are on the same page.”

  Okay, I can get that. “How did you find out that you’re asexual? Have you tried having sex?”

  He raises a brow at that, the curl of his lips teasing. “How did you find out that you’re gay? Have you tried kissing a girl?”

  I deserve that one. Shame flushes my cheeks, and I duck my head down to avoid his gaze. “Point taken. That one was a dumb question.”

  “Hey.” Aras is so much closer now, his gentle hands lifting my chin up so I can meet his tender amber eyes. “It’s fine, Salil. I’m glad you’re trying. To be fair,” he rolls his eyes, “I tried it a few times, and trust me, it’s similar to eating mediocre food. Like, it’s all right, but I wouldn’t actively try to do it again.”

  “Oh.” Well, when he puts it like that…. “You couldn’t have tried explaining it like this to me earlier?”

  “If you remember correctly,” he teases, flicking my nose lightly and chuckling when I scrunch it up, “you kind of jumped on me before I could prepare myself.”

  I wince at the reminder, pursing my lips when I remember how I ran out on him while he was trying to talk to me. “Sorry about that. Again.” His smile is forgiveness, and I brace myself for the next question. “One last thing I have to ask.”

  “Anything.”

  I pause, gathering all the courage I have in me to whisper the words. “I never… you didn’t mind it when I kissed you, right? I never forced you to kiss me or do anything you didn’t want?”

  “Never.” The response comes immediately, and he pulls me into a crushing hug. I let out a deep breath, sinking into his warmth with joy in my heart. His chest rumbles as he speaks, and the sensation is soothing. “Not everyone likes to kiss, and some don’t even like to touch. But I promise that everything we have done till now, I did not mind at all. I love touching you, love kissing you”—he gives me a quick peck when he says this—“and I’m fine with a lot of things as long as it doesn’t involve—”

  “Our lower regions?” My lips pull up into an involuntary grin at his nod, accompanied by a sarcastic huff, and I can’t stop my heart from melting all over again. I try to cover up my crimson cheeks with a teasing quip. “Then you wouldn’t mind giving me a kiss now?”

  A laugh bursts out of him, and before I can say anything, Aras tenderly claims my lips. I giggle into the kiss, the smile never leaving me as he continues to hold me close to him.

  SENGTDAVANH KINNAVONG, aka just Seng, is a teenager who lives on the dangerous continent of Australia, where insects and spiders roam freely, and no one is safe. She is the only child of two loving parents, making her an awfully spoiled brat. Her friends never fail to remind her of that fact, but she’s fairly certain that they adore her as much as she does them. An introverted vampire, she hisses at the very sight of light and spends the majority of the day hiding in the darkness of the lounge room.

  Other than stories, her passions range from movies and musicals to games, and she can become obsessed very easily—her most current obsession involves a game focusing on assassins and parkour. Often told that she stresses too much, which is a very sad truth, Seng finds comfort in immersing herself in stories, whether she’s reading or writing them. She spends more time nitpicking and researching for her stories than she does writing them, but once she starts, it’s impossible to stop her!

  Mortuus Feles

  By Arbour Ames

  Sulvan, a young man from a tribe of assassins so lethal most consider them mere legends, is found at the scene of a brutal murder—and allows himself to be arrested. Kyel, the detective investigating the crime, is more familiar with the assassin tribes than anyone can imagine, and it’s her job to learn who is the real killer, why Sulvan allowed himself to be taken when he could’ve easily evaded the police, and if there’s something bigger at play. Only then can she convince Sulvan to aid her against their mutual enemy.

  ON THE one hand, there’s a giant mess to clean up. Blood everywhere. Sulvan’s pretty sure that’s brain matter or something similar on his forehead, sliding slowly down to his eye. He flicks it off, grimacing, and steps around the body.

  On the other hand, the coppers are going to arrive soon. And Sulvan’s covered in blood. And he’s holding the murder weapon.

  It’s going to be hard weaseling his way out of this one.

  There are sirens in the far distance, and they’re coming close fast. Sulvan needs to make a decision now—beat it and leave the body to be found by the coppers, or stay here and try to sort through the mess. Either way, there’s going to be suffering involved. There’s a tracking chip in his hip now, and there’s no conceivable way he’ll be able to wash off all this blood from the wall before the cops get here.

  The sirens are getting closer.

  Well, he can always try to make it so he’s implicated less. Which means he needs to get rid of his weapons. He looks down at the one hook sword that remains in his hand—Jenzen—and then at Korey, who’s lying across the room.

  “Shite,” he mutters, stepping over to Korey and scooping it up. They’re much too big to hide on his person—and anyway, it isn’t like the coppers won’t search him. So he deftly slides past the puddle and leaps up, bracing one foot on the nightstand and then the other on the wall in a small hand-width circle of spatter-free wood. Now taller, he’s able to push up one of the ceiling tiles and stash Korey and Jenzen in the crawl space. Coppers are pretty dull, he reasons as he drops back to the floor. They’re probably not smart enough to check the crawl space. They’re probably not even smart enough to check the pissing washroom connected to the bedroom they’ll find the body in.

  Sulvan moves back around the blood and the body and takes the chair away from where it’s wedged underneath the doorknob. There. Now everybody can come in without any struggle. They shouldn’t have any reason to complain, really, except for the body and the mess. And the fact that they won’t find anything on him.

  “Hello!” somebody shouts. “Police!”

  Sulvan opens the door and steps out, lifting up his hands. “In here!”

  The copper comes around the corner, and Sulvan takes in his distinctly Pluvish features—wide, flat nose; deep-set eyes; thin mouth; and apparently he has a Pluvish temper too, because he starts screaming as soon as he sees Sulvan.

  “Get on the ground! Get on the pissing ground!”

  Sulvan’s mouth curves into a smile and he complies, slowly and carefully. Pain shoots up his side as his knees hit the floor. The copper has a Pluvish accent too, so when Sulvan speaks, he rolls the words down his tongue just like Pluves do—“Better call your forensics team.”

  There’s a brief moment where the copper drops his gun and his jaw. “Why?”

  Sulvan just tilts his head toward the bedroom. The copper lifts his gun up again and, without taking his eyes off Sulvan, shouts into the rest of the house.

  “I need backup over here!”

  It doesn’t take long for a
couple more coppers to show up. They all lift their guns too when they come into sight, and Sulvan doesn’t blame them—the mask that covers the lower part of his face is gruesome—the nose is hooked, the mouth twisted into a ghastly snarl. And it’s realistic too. It’s so realistic, in fact, that it could probably be mistaken for his actual face at a distance. Probably doesn’t help that it’s spattered with blood.

  “Is that a—”

  “Shite.”

  “—a—a ghoul? A pissing ghoul?”

  “Take the mask off,” one of the coppers snaps.

  “No. Don’t.”

  “We need to see his face!”

  “No! I heard that ghouls, they—they—”

  “Whatever you heard, it’s a legend. Remove your pissing mask, lizard.”

  Ooh. That was… not cool. Normally Sulvan would do something about that, but he can hear about ten floaters outside, and he’s not going to kill that many coppers just because of a slur. He’d like to, but he won’t.

  So he just glares and lifts his hand, unhooking his mask’s hold on each ear, then pries it off his face and drops it next to him. The hard plaster clatters when it hits the bamboo, and some of the cops around him shudder. Sulvan doesn’t blame them for that either.

  Once the coppers tear their eyes away from the mask, they’re able to properly study his face. Sulvan almost wants to tell them they’re lucky—nobody’s seen his face since he was eleven years old. That’s years of changing without anybody able to see the progression. He has, of course, seen himself in the mirror, and he knows he’s nothing impressive to look at aesthetically, but he also knows the years of this job have really taken a toll on his resting expression.

  The coppers, staring at him, can see all the pent-up anger underneath his mouth and eyes. He knows that. He knows they can also sense the danger.

  “Who are you?” one of the coppers asks, tightening the grip on her gun. Sulvan smiles.

  “Don’t you know?” he says. “I’m the end of your world.”

  THE COPPERS take Sulvan immediately to the station—they handled him pretty carefully when they shoved him into the floater, but then they found the body and they treated him a lot more carefully after that.

  “Your name,” the copper who’s leading him into the station says. She’s a younger woman, maybe a decade or so older than Sulvan, maybe more. Her face is tired and her hair is cropped short against the sides of her head, longer on the top. A purely Spiow Shua style: modern and effortless. “Sully, right?”

  “No. Sulvan.”

  If the copper was at all connected into Sulvan’s world, she would have winced, maybe run away screaming. But instead she just purses her lips. “And that mask. Where’d you get it?”

  “Same place every other hitter gets their mask. My Hand.”

  “That’s a ghoul mask.”

  “A little inaccurate. It’s a finis mask. But I guess, to you, they’re one and the same thing.”

  The copper shivers a little. “That’s the stuff of legends.”

  “Indeed.”

  “It isn’t real.”

  Sulvan slides his gaze toward the copper. “Am I real?”

  “You could be faking.”

  “I think you know I’m not faking.”

  They go inside a small room together, and the guards lock the doors shut. The copper opens Sulvan’s cuffs and nods at the gauntlets. “Take those off.”

  He unstraps them both and drops them into the bin she provides.

  “And your holsters.”

  He undoes the leather closures on them too. The coppers had taken his guns as soon as they could, which made him a little bitter. His preference in weapons is always his swords, then his pistols, then his rifle, then his gauntlets. And now he has none of them. He could certainly fight without them, but he misses the weight he’s familiarized himself with.

  “So,” says the copper. “Finis. Must be some very secret underground thing, huh?”

  Sulvan doesn’t answer. He drops the holsters in the bin and hooks his thumbs into his pants, pulling them downward. The copper hands him a new set of sickly green clothes—a complete set, he notices. Shirt and pants and shoes and everything. Sulvan just takes the pants, and she frowns at him.

  “You need to wear all of it.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You need to wear all of it.” Her voice is harder, the nice-copper routine fading away quickly when she realizes he’s not cooperating. “It’s regulation.”

  He presses his lips together.

  “Sulvan.”

  Their gazes lock. She is, at first, fairly steady, but Sulvan knows it’s easy to break people who don’t have lives like his. Sure enough, she starts wavering only a few seconds in. Certainly longer than other coppers would have lasted.

  He’s both impressed and sorry for her.

  “Fine.” Sulvan snatches the rest of the clothes from her hands and pulls them on. He can’t help but notice the copper is particularly interested in his scars. “What?” he says. “You want to say anything? Maybe you can call me a lizard too?”

  “I won’t do that. Did somebody do that?”

  He shrugs, already over it. “Ask your Pluve friend.”

  “I’ll look into it.” She puts the cuffs back onto his wrists and lifts a hand, signaling for the guards to unlock the doors on the other side. “You ever been through the system, Sulvan?”

  His chin lifts.

  “Not gonna answer? Okay, well, I’ll lay it out for you. You’re wearing the uniform for your own protection. Other prisoners can’t tell if you were in a tribe or if you….” She gestures to Sulvan’s chest. “Or if you had any diseases they’ll use to discriminate against you. You’re going to stay in prison until the cops—sorry, you call them ‘coppers,’ don’t you?—until the coppers sort everything out. That’s a pretty grisly murder.”

  “All murders are grisly,” the guard they’re passing says. Sulvan stifles his laughter, and the officer at his side gives him a stern look.

  “Once all of that is figured out, they’ll decide whether or not they’re going to keep you. If they are, we’re going to have to put you through trial.”

  Sulvan glances over at her. “Do I get a lawyer?”

  “You might.”

  He tightens his jaw.

  “That hit a nerve?”

  “No. I’ll be out of here before then.”

  “And if you aren’t?”

  His eyes glitter. “The finis will take care of me. They don’t let people like me run their mouths.”

  Now she stops, and her grip around Sulvan’s arm prevents him from continuing forward. “You mean they’ll kill you?”

  “If that’s what they want, absolutely.”

  “And that doesn’t scare you?”

  He just looks at her.

  “You know, we can protect you. You tell us everything you can on finis, and we’ll give you the highest protection we have.”

  Sulvan chuckles.

  “This is no laughing matter, Sulvan.”

  “Yes, it is. Firstly, your sector would never stand a chance against me, let alone a couple more trained finis hitters. Secondly, I’m not scared to die. If they kill me, so be it. I won’t fight.”

  The copper opens up a cell, and Sulvan steps inside. When the door’s closed, he sticks his hands through the bars and she undoes his cuffs. Pissing fool.

  “You a good fighter?”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “I’d like you to talk to me, Sulvan. It doesn’t have to be right now, but maybe we can give it some time, get to know each other?”

  Sulvan goes over to the thin mattress in the corner and takes a seat. “I’d like my mask back.”

  “You can’t have it back. Remember what I said about other prisoners targeting you?”

  There’s a stain on one of his pant legs. Nice to know, he thinks, that the department of Spiow Shua really cares about the well-being of their prisoners. They probably don’t even
bother washing the uniforms between uses.

  No bother.

  He pays careful attention to the guards and other coppers when the lights eventually turn off. The short-haired copper who led Sulvan to his cell—her name is Kyel. His guard’s name is Rylan. The guard who’s mobile—the one who’s pacing through the cells, dragging his jitte across the bars—her name is Adryel.

  Kyel and Adryel—those are Datrian names. That’s helpful. People who grew up that far north have particular values, some of which Sulvan can use to his advantage in certain situations if he absolutely needs to. Now, Rylan—that’s a more modern name. But his features (doe eyes, deep cupid’s bow, thin bottom lip) are largely Trebian.

  Shite. Trebia was once the easternmost part of Spiow Shua before it officially seceded, which means it’s smack-dab in the middle of other compounds and therefore spits out irritatingly diverse Trebians. Rylan will be a wild card until Sulvan gets to know him a little better.

  “Still up?” Kyel raps her jitte across Sulvan’s bars. “You should be sleeping.”

  “Should be,” says Sulvan.

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  Sulvan rolls over on the cot so he’s facing the wall. There’s nothing more to watch—he’s learned all he can from looking.

  “You’re very young,” Kyel observes.

  “You’re very astute.”

  “Did you kill that… whatever was in there?”

  “Whoever,” Sulvan corrects. “Not ‘whatever.’ And shouldn’t these questions come after the scene is processed? There’s no way your fornies are done yet.”

  There’s a long moment of silence. Sulvan suspects she’s suppressing nausea. Soft-stomached, then.

  “It was… very messy.”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “Did you do that? Do you know who it was?”

  “What, they can’t identify the body?”