Exile by Julia Barrett Page A

power. He got neither. In his eyes, my sisters and I are each an abomination.” Aja hesitated.
    “What else?” Kyr asked.
    “My father is no longer so certain he wants us dead. I was able to glimpse the new direction he is considering. It would appear he wants to make sons with my abilities.” Aja winced at the violence she saw in Kyr’s eyes.
    “He won’t touch you, I swear it.”
    “Oh, he doesn’t want me for himself. Thank the Gods, he wouldn’t dare break that taboo. If he did, he knows he would consign himself to the lowest of the Seven Hells. He wants to breed my sisters and me with other males of the Blood, to try to produce a male dominant bloodline that will have the same power as the female line.” She shook her head. “He should know that’s impossible. He’s already tried and failed three times.”
    “But that’s genetic tampering and it’s against his own laws,” said Davi.
    Aja nodded. “The General, in a very large sense, is the law, until he’s dead and then he won’t be the law. It’s very simple, Davi. General Bom and other men like him rebelled against the Empress because they did not want women to possess any ability a man didn’t. In their view, a powerful woman makes a man, how would you describe it, impotent?”
    Kyr nearly choked on his cavitt.
    “Well, that’s one answer.” She suppressed a grin. “But perhaps the better answer is this‌—‌he hates us because my mother chose the father of my heart, Dua N’ib, as consort. She chose him out of love. She couldn’t give Dua N’ib daughters, but she wanted to give him sons, my two brothers.”
    Kyr nursed his bitter cavitt for a moment. “Why couldn’t she give him daughters?”
    “Because the man I call father, Dua N’ib, does not possess even a drop of the Royal Blood. She could only give him sons. It’s very complicated. His daughter would not have survived infancy, just as General Bom’s experimental sons did not survive.”
    “So, let me get this straight,” said Davi. “You can choose the sex of your child? And if you, pardon me, mate with a man who is not of the Blood, you can only bear sons?”
    “Yes, those of us directly descended from the Empress Ya, that is. My mother chose the sex of her children. I can. I suspect my sisters can. Our line is very pure. If I were to mate with a man not of the Blood, yes, I would make certain to give him only sons.”
    Both men sat back in their chairs. Aja noted that they seemed to avoid eye contact with each other and with her. It didn’t take much intuition on her part to know both were thinking about the implications of Kyr’s bloodline if his grandmother had indeed possessed the Royal Blood.
    Aja sipped her cavitt, giving the men a few moments to digest the answers to their questions. She asked, “Do you wish for the long version of the story? Or would you prefer the abbreviated version?”
    “Whichever version you choose,” said Kyr. “I want to understand how this, how you, are possible. I want to know how Bom tracked us and why you didn’t sense it immediately. And I want to know what the hells we do now.”
    Aja smiled. “The tracking chip is easily explained. It must have been implanted in the lab before I regained consciousness as a safety precaution in the event I managed to escape. It became a part of my own body and I didn’t sense anything different until Bom activated it. He used his own blood, not much, a few microns, but enough to track me. And he took my blood. He must have injected it directly into his right temporal lobe. That’s the only way he could feel me. How do I explain?” Aja tried to find the right words.
    “Kyr, if you were to draw some of my blood and inject it directly into your brain you would see what I see, at least for a short time. For instance, you would be a better pilot. You would be able to see some of the pathways to the future. Not as clearly as I can because you don’t have the training, but you would sense at