Copyright© 2025 by Lynn Patterson All rights reserved.
Chapter 71 Vindelt Rhycin
Vindelt Rhycin remembered a catastrophic failure. It played inside his head, inside his body, inside his prison cell.
“One cold metal chair, one hard pallet, a single blanket, a rough stone floor. The glaring lights. The silence never stopped. This cell. My prison for years unless grandmother crushed Borrabi’s fleet.”
What ruins would cloud his perfect vision of himself? Or his brother? His other self. Time shredded in his mind. The secrets of the Gravity Key eluded him. More than legend, and the truth lay buried inside Gail Wilder.
Rhycin rubbed his bleary eyes. The mind fog smothered him for days. Or was it years? He had lost track of time.
Was he a drugged prisoner in the Sormax prison? No, that was his brother. Borrabi’s dungeon, the brig of Rykona, his old command, held him.
Was the Rear Guard his Supremacy Fleet, all painted red like the coats of Death’s Dark Veil?
“No. It was stolen from me by an arrogant old fool.”
His mind deteriorated before his mind’s eye. Since joining with Wilder, he felt less like Vindelt and more like his brother Amiril: frightened and bitter. They shared one mind, and every memory, deed, and word of one brother was experienced by the other.
Denise had crushed him, warped his mind with mental force, and flung him like a stone.
“The Gravity Key is real.”
In Wilder’s hybrid mind, he found Denise, his lover, before she stole the artifact from Lavinia’s collection. No one knew it was a Gravity Key. Just a strange trinket of crystal from the days of the Overlords. To find Denise again, years after she abandoned him, taken his gold and heirlooms and lied about everything, especially about loving him, filled him with agony and homicidal rage.
“I will kill her.” An involuntary whine sang from his throat. “I will kill them both.”
How long did he languish in the Sormax?
“No, the Rykona brig.” So hard to remember. Two heads with one mind merged into madness.
“Stop it, brother, my other self. I was there when you sired Ambiyon. You were there when I mated Denise, who inflamed us both and drove you to the darkness. Her electric passion seared our minds and flesh. More exquisite pleasure with one human than we ever found in Piri, or Nibiyon, or a thousand reckless encounters.”