Auhrnyah's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

By morning Auhrnyah had a plan, and she hated it. She stood in the great hall of the mushroom-and-crystal palace, where faceted walls threw pale light across the floor. Her small orbs drifted near her shoulders, quiet now. She had spent the night studying the crystals her people grew. The truth was simple and cruel. To heal Nerion's gray fields, she would have to strip her own world bare. Both peoples would still die. There had to be another way. Nerion arrived as she called for him. He came fast, boots loud on the stone, cape trailing behind him. His ember eyes searched her face. The lavender marks on his blue skin pulsed with hope he could not hide. This was the man who had lied to reach her, and who had shown her his dying children. She trusted him too much and not at all. "You found something," he said. "I found a wall," Auhrnyah answered. "Your fields need more crystal than my world can spare. If I send it, mine dies too. There is no amount that saves us both." His marks dimmed. He turned away and pressed his hand to a glowing spire. "Then I take what I can and go. My people cannot wait." "That path ends with everyone gone," she said. "Listen to me. My crystals do not just glow. They grow. They spread on their own if the ground is fed and cared for. A cut stone dies. A living one multiplies." He faced her. "You cannot plant your world on mine. The dreams crossed space, not seeds." "No," Auhrnyah said. "But two worlds can be bound. Trade. Shared farms. My people tending your fields for generations, teaching yours to grow crystal instead of stealing it. That takes trust no treaty gives." She held his gaze. "It takes a union. A marriage. Yours to mine. My world to yours." The hall went still. One orb spun once and stopped. Nerion did not speak. His hand fell from the spire. "Your people will call it surrender," he said quietly. "Mine will call it weakness." "Both will be wrong," she said. "It is the only thing that saves the children in your fields and the fields under my feet. I will not hand you my world. I will share it. That is my price." He crossed the floor. He stopped close enough that his marks lit her lavender skin. For a long moment he only looked at her. Then he knelt, slow, and bowed his white head. "I accept," Nerion said. "I will marry you, Auhrnyah. And I will keep my hands off your crystals until they grow." She had won. Both worlds might live. But as he rose, she saw the weight in his eyes, and felt it settle in her own chest. She had promised herself to a man she barely knew. Now her people had to be told.