Unknotted

Chapter 9

Sanity and Lectures

Rokan

“No!” I slammed against the terminal gate again, but it was too late. Whoever that woman was, she was gone. Blasted through the Between to another portal station. I backed up and read the destination flashing above the gate in red digital letters: New Castxmin, Nabia.

“Tides.” I pushed the hair back from my face. She would be in Tredema. The sane portion of my mind, the part embarrassed and baffled about this predatory urge to chase this stranger, told me it was too risky for a member of an ultra’s inner circle to follow. But the cords stretching from me to her said to go anyway. And my dominance salivated to.

I rounded on the troll who had explicitly ignored my orders. She was leaning on the dashboard behind the protection of the booth’s glass, smiling at me. Anger rumbled deep in my chest. I stepped so close to the glass that my breath fogged across it. “Who was that?”

She tucked her purple hair behind pointed ears and batted long lashes. “Trying to kill her without even knowing her name…” She clicked her tongue. “Shame on you.”

“Tell me now!” I thumped the glass with a fist.

The troll didn’t flinch. “You have anger problems.”

“Open the gate. I’m going through.”

“Where’s your ticket?”

“Trust me. I don’t need one. Do as I say—”

“In case the green skin and tusks haven’t given it away, I’m a troll. I don’t fall into whatever dominance pyramid you have here.”

“Open the gate,” the portal station’s manager shouted at her from behind my shoulder. He was short for a troll, about as tall as me, with a large waistline. He had abnormally large tusks that dimpled into his chubby cheeks. “Open it or I’ll fire you.”

That pulled me up short, slapping some sense back into my dominance. “What? No, that’s really not—”

The gate troll slammed a button on her dash, and the cracked gate doors squealed as they opened. The manager frowned at them, then at me, and then decided not to voice a complaint.

I swore steam was rushing from my ears, I was so angry. My dominance had no interest in settling until it made that snarky hybrid beg for mercy. The magic tightening around me wasn’t helping either. Usually it sharpened my senses, eased the tension that nagged at my muscles, and balanced me. But ever since she touched me, the ground felt as though it were tossing beneath me like a sea filled with grumpy Ripples. Only when she had submitted—or pretended to—had that storm settled. Then she had rejected me again, and my dominance and the half-formed pragmora knot went to war. Driven mad by the conflict, I didn’t know if I wanted to love that she-devil or kill her.

Before I could jump into the capsule, Tydeus and Chet caught up. Tydeus caught my arm, whispering harshly, “What are you doing?”

I growled in warning. I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture, especially not from someone so close to me in dominance.

Tydeus quickly lowered his eyes, avoiding a fight, as he pulled me away from the gate. “You can’t make the jump. You know that.” His voice was softer, more pleading than demanding.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and drew on the power of the coavani knot to ground me. Magic gently flowed from the bare earth of the terminal floor into my naked feet. Calm crept up my legs. The earth’s rocking slowed and the colors that seemed to be bleeding together eased back into clarity. Still, the knot pulled. My dominance was huffing like a bull who had been poked one too many times. “I must. The Core demands it.”

Tydeus jerked back, eyes widening. My mentor was always rambling on about trusting impressions received from magic. He claimed it was the Core’s way of communicating. To not heed a message from the Core would be a sin in Tydeus’s eyes.

Face paling, Tydeus nudged me toward the capsule. “Go.”

“What?” Chet exclaimed. “He can’t go to—”

“You-who,” came a catcall from the gate.

I whipped around to see the insubordinate gate troll standing in the capsule—my capsule—the doors nearly closed. “No! Wait!”

“Sisters don’t give each other up. Find yourself some anger management classes or something.” She thumped a fist to her chest twice, then flashed me the peace sign.

I rounded on the manager. “Get her out of there, now!”

The troll bowed his head. “Yes, yes, of course. She can’t launch anyway, not unless someone—”

Inside of the gate booth was a gremlin with red hair styled to look like his head was on fire. Like all gremlins, he was short, about chest high on me, with long pointed ears, slim fingers, and angled eyes. He had a tattoo of gears on one temple and was dressed in a fine brocaded suit. He winked a rust-colored eye. “Ready to launch, cheesecake?”

“No!” I roared for what seemed like the millionth time that night.

Of course, like everyone else had on this abysmal evening, the gremlin didn’t listen. He smacked the launch button. Energy crackled beneath the obstinate troll like sparks off rainbow-filled lightning.

She crossed her arms, swung her hip to the side, and looked me up and down. “You know, you are delicious to the eyes. Shame you turned out to be rabid.”

Then magic blasted her into the portal.

I spun around and narrowed my glare on the gremlin. The short dynamist shrugged, palms upturned. “Better luck next time, beast breath.” He jumped up onto the control panel, shrinking smaller than a thimble before he landed, and squeezed himself underneath the large launch button.

“Core between!” I grabbed a chair from beside the booth and hurled it into the glass. A loud pop sounded as the glass cracked and the bent chair rebounded off its surface back at me. I smacked it aside. Who were these infuriating people?

I grabbed the chair and hurled it again, dully noting Chet and Tydeus shouting for me to stop. More cracks raced across the protective glass. My dominance had never burned so hot. My vision narrowed until the only thing I cared about was that blasted woman with gleaming topaz eyes. She had played my dominance like a fine-tuned piano. Nuzzling me with tenderness, licking away the pain of her first rejection, only to bite me the moment I showed mercy.

I felt like I was playing tug-a-war with someone who didn’t understand the concept of the game. She was desperately trying to release the rope, while I was pulling with everything I had. While our knot drifted farther from her, it drew closer to me. By all accounts, I should have been winning, but it felt as though I was on the verge of losing more than a simple game. If she let go, the magic would crash into me and drag me into the Void and insanity.

The glass shattered and poured down like rain made of knives. As my fingers gripped the control panel inside the booth, the tide shifted. I froze, as if someone had thrown me into a pool of ice water. Colors faded until the panel’s colorful buttons became different shades of gray. Sounds and smells dimmed in intensity. My dominance withdrew its control over me.

My heart was pounding in my ears. Slowly my awareness of what I had been doing sharpened. I pried my fingers off the panel that I had managed to dent and pulled away from the booth.

I didn’t want to look behind me, to acknowledge all the people I felt staring, whispering nervously about the savage animal I had become. What… What had happened to me? My dominance had rarely seized control, and certainly never with that level of intensity.

“Hey, man.” Chet bumped my elbow lightly. “Have you come back to the territory yet?”

I shook my head to clear it and brushed the pellets of glass off my shoulders. “Yeah… I don’t know… I don’t understand….”

While Tydeus spoke with the manager, Chet wrapped an arm around my shoulders, saying, “So, you lost control of your dominance a little bit. Which of us hybrids haven’t? Honestly, I think you have been overdue for a bit of dominating for a while now.”

“I haven’t—I don’t lose control.” I blinked quickly as the sane part of my mind raced to comprehend everything I had done during the last tide. “I would have killed—” I was choked by the bile rushing up my throat. Beside the acidic burn in my mouth was the metallic taste of blood. Her blood. “Tides… What have I done?”

(Chapter continues in part 2)