Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback by Catherine Asaro Read Free Book Online Page B

would have meant abdicating any claim I had to become
Imperator.”
    Rex made an incredulous noise. “What did this Jato expect
when he married an Imperial heir?”
    I looked down at my hands. “I got pregnant. I didn’t know. I
was injured in battle and lost the child.” I made myself look at Rex. “It was
just too much. Jato stayed with me until I recovered. Then he left.”
    “Soz,” Rex murmured. He tried to put his arms around me, but
I held back. I’d always wondered if my brother knew how much Jato and I had
wanted a child. But that was another item hidden in my mental file of things
not to think about.
    “You ought to know I wouldn’t leave you,” Rex said. “I don’t
expect you to retire.”
    I turned the idea over in my mind like a child with a newlyminted
coin. Kurj couldn’t keep me in combat forever. With my rank and experience it
made more sense to have me behind a desk now, planning strategy. If he killed
off all of his heirs, he wasn’t likely to get more any time soon, at least not
as adults. None of my other siblings were remotely qualified.
    Rex was a good man, I’d known that since I first met him. He
was also a potent telepath, probably the strongest I would ever find. He wasn’t
Rhon, but I couldn’t spend the rest of my life looking for that
one-in-a-trillion person whose mind matched my own.
    The only time I had ever shared my mind with another Rhon
psion had been an accident; usually only lovers had close enough ties to make
that bond. But once, when my younger brother Kelric was seven and I sixteen, we
went hiking. A storm caught us, pale blue sleet raging down from the sky. We
took shelter in a spine-cave hidden among the cliffs of the Backbone Mountains.
As Kelric and I huddled in the cave, clinging together for warmth, our minds
merged.
    It lasted only a few hours, the most fulfilling link I had
ever made with another human being. And it never happened again; the bond was
too intimate to share with a brother. But neither of us forgot. After that day,
I knew I would search everywhere to find a Rhon mate.
    Except there weren’t any. In all the studies trying to
engineer a healthy Rhon psion, my grandmother had been the only real success.
In the generations since her birth, on a thousand plus worlds and a billion different
peoples, we knew of only two people who had been born naturally—and
survived—with the full complement of Rhon genes: my father and my grandfather.
The rest of us, fourteen in all, were their descendents.
    “Soz?” Rex touched my cheek. “Where are you?”
    I looked at him, really looked at him in a way I had
never done before. This was the man who had been at my side for fifteen years,
gone into combat with me, laughed with me, mourned with me. We had traveled
together across Skolia, both on duty and off, learning to know each other with
an intimacy that had nothing to do with sex. Could I lie with him as wife? The
answer was easy, now that I considered it. The only surprise was that it had
taken me so long to realize it.
    I smiled. “Who else would want me inflicted on him for the
rest of his life?”
    “What were you planning on inflicting?”
    “My sense of humor.”
    Rex grimaced. “I’ll try to endure it.”
    “Yes.”
    “Yes?” He tilted his head. “Yes, what?”
    “Let’s do it.”
    “Do what?”
    “You know. The thing.”
    “What thing?”
    “You know.”
    He put his hands on either side of my head and mussed up my
hair. “Say it.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “Go on.” He was laughing now.
    I scowled at him. “Keep this up and I’ll change my mind.”
    “I don’t know, Soz. If you can’t say it, how can I believe
you’ll do it?”
    “All right. I’ll marry you. Satisfied?”
    He stopped grinning and spoke in that strange gentle voice
he had been using tonight. “Yes.”
    So. It didn’t feel so strange after all, now that it was
said. I touched his chest, sliding my hand across the black sweater he wore
under his