ElyriasEcstasy by Amber Jayne and Eric Del Carlo

they didn’t. Despite how close they were in some
respects, they were still separated by an unresolved emotional gulf. By a
shared but indistinct past.
    Before Rune had deduced that the women were part of a
breeding program, he had assumed that they were meant to keep the two males
unwound, so that they wouldn’t be distracted by carnal urges in other
situations. So much for that. He had also concluded that they likely came from
the border towns rather than from the more prosperous populace of the city
surrounding the Citadel or even the nearby outlying towns of the Safe proper.
He was at least certain that the women weren’t actually housed somewhere here
on the compound, stored like so much equipment. Now there was a morbid thought.
    But he’d never bothered to ever ask one of these females
anything about her background. It didn’t matter to him, in the end. He
performed with them in here like he performed with Urna out there, and that was
as much as he needed to know.
    They all had jobs to do.
    Lavinia, no longer exuding an air of wounded dignity,
dressed as quickly as he did, slipping the gossamer garment over her head,
lifting her heavy length of hair out from under the fabric. The two of them had
been interrupted once before, on a night when a lone Passenger had crossed into
a border town undetected by the Guard. One of Rune’s commanders, bursting in
here, had been treated to an eyeful of Lavinia’s naked, writhing flesh. On that
occasion she either hadn’t trusted in Rune’s phenomenal senses or believed his
warning that someone was rapidly approaching the room. And though she hadn’t
blushed at her exposure that night, she was apparently in no hurry to recreate
the incident.
    As she pulled the thin slippers that barely qualified as shoes
onto her feet, Rune’s thoughts dwindled back to that same night, to what had
happened after the officer had issued his orders. He and Urna had strapped on a
pair of waiting wings and set out. It had been early on in their careers, when
they were still learning the outer limits of their incredible abilities. In
those days they’d been on call for border incidents. The missions into the
Unsafe hadn’t yet been implemented by military policy. The Weapon/Shadowflash
division was just then being formed, apparently around the two of them.
    The lone daring Passenger had attacked a young boy and the
rundown border town was already erupting into panic. Initial reports that were
indistinguishable from rumor told that the child had been outside chasing an
escaped pet, foolishly leaving the relative safety of his family’s shabby home
several hours after the midnight curfew. By the time Rune and Urna were
tracking the Passenger, several arrests had been made in the town for other
curfew violations and the Lux back in their city were starting to panic
themselves. Any civil disorder was a threat to the delicate balance that had
allowed them to stay in power so long, despite being, according to population
numbers, a clear minority.
    When they’d located the Passenger a short time later,
retreating back into the Unsafe, there had been a crust of gore on its hands,
all the way up to its spindly wrists. Gruesome lace gloves was how Urna had
described it, whispering back to Rune across a half-mile of deserted wasteland
as he ran the creature down. He’d also said the beast appeared disoriented,
almost lost, liked it had strayed into the town by accident.
    Rune had never seen that Passenger himself or the disfigured
face of the child they had avenged. Nevertheless the images were burned into
his mind, as he suspected they were burned into his Weapon’s.
    “This is fucked ,” Urna had said to him that night,
looking directly into his face as he’d wiped black ichor from his sword. Rune
hadn’t been sure if he meant the night’s incident in particular, or if it was
some larger comment concerning their own military status. Or maybe it was a
criticism of the Safe’s society, which