Rainbow Comet Chapter 29

“A flying city?”

“They were using angel blood to float it. When the alignment is changed, it will fall, collapsing earth’s core due to its size, in every dimension.

Brett

“Flynn! Get me out of this doorway!” I yell, my arms flailing as I struggle to get through.

It’s been a few weeks since he saved me from that nightmare, and my kingly girth has only gotten more intense.

Since my weight is tied to love, I guess that Flynn is truly loving me.

Since I’m bigger than I think any other king has been, I think our love is truly one for the ages.

Right now, it’s a little inconvenient though.

He turns back to me, putting his hands on his trim hips. “Well, well, what have we here?”

I flail against the doorway, trying to shove on either side. It’s not a very big door. I have been pushing hard to get through it lately, and told myself I would ask Flynn to take a side hallway next time.

But I was so busy watching his ass in those pants that I forgot.

“Come here, you,” he says, walking over and grabbing the front of my tunic. I can’t wear vests anymore.

He jerks at me and I come free of the doorway, flushing. Gods, he is strong.

He gives me a little pat on the back and I hug him. “Thanks for always being there when I need you.”

He ducks his head, nodding.

It’s been a while since I asked him to marry me.

I’m just trying to find the right time to propose.

And to ask what he feels about his family. If he has talked to them about us.

“Listen, Boreas, I talked to my family. A little over a week ago,” he says, almost as if he can read my thoughts. Then again, there seems to be a hidden wavelength between us. We often bring the same subjects up. “I told them about us.” He shakes his head. “My mother did not approve. She said I was dishonoring the family, and if I was going to be with you, she would cut me off.”

I gape at him. “No.”

He looks at me. “Have you talked to your father?”

I rub the back of my neck. “He apparently already surmised as such. He said I had his blessing on whatever makes me happy. Then again, he doesn’t really care what people think of us, only about having enough power for the universe. We’re very insular.”

“So you’ll keep us secret?” Flynn asks. “We’re only allowed because it’s private?”

“Gods no,” I say, waving both hands. “Everyone at every diplomatic meeting will know. I just mean that it’s easy for us to entertain big social changes because we don’t have to answer to anyone. So even though we’ve been a certain way for a long time, he’ll have no trouble adjusting.” I fidget. “Then again, I would have gone against him if he had.”

“What would you have done?”

“Form a new world, the way I want it. Refuse to rule the vale.”

“It’s that important to you?” Flynn’s eyes are soft and warm.

I walk forward to take his hands. “I want to make a new alignment. Where happiness isn’t the most important, though it will always be for my people. But love. I think that is more important. Because it makes us stronger. Makes us fight the hardest of all.”

Flynn flushes at that and comes in against me, and I tilt his chin up for a kiss.

Just two warriors, two kings, sharing energy, sharing everything.

But then I pull back, hesitant. “So what did you say to your family?”

“I told them I understood, but I had spent my whole life making other people happy, and the universe depends on me making you and me happy now. I told them I wouldn’t be able to see or talk to them either, until they were ready to accept me as I was.”

“And?”

“They hung up on me,” Flynn says.

“Oh, Flynn,” I say, heart breaking for him.

“Well, being king of the galaxy makes up for it. And how will I get them to come around if I’m always giving in to what they want?” He puts his hands behind his head. “I don’t want to betray myself. I don’t want people around me to want me to.”

I throw my arms around him again, practically crushing him. “I’m so glad you feel that way. So glad. There’s nothing holding us back now—“

“Prince Flynn! A missive from the king!” A mushroom guard interrupts us.

I turn to face him. “What is it, Hyrax?”

“This is not a meeting for you, Boreas.”

“Where he goes, I go.”

Hyrax looks torn between not wanting to anger me and wanting to obey orders from the king, but he nods finally.

I will be the new king soon, when I take Flynn as my groom.

“Follow me then, to the king’s office.”

We walk down the hallway and into my father’s office, which sparkles with glittering gold.

He looks up, holding a missive on a long crystal tablet. “I’m sorry, son, but I don’t think you should be here for this. There is nothing you can do.”

“If it involves Flynn, it involves me,” I say.

My father’s golden eyes grow sad. “You know there’s nothing I want more than for the two of you to be together. But something complicated has happened. Something Flynn and his people must deal with without us.”

“What could that be?” I ask, pulling out a chair for Flynn and making sure he’s seated before pulling out my own.

“His planet is on the verge of quarantine. Something terrible has happened. A lich king infected the local populace with dragon horde, gold that causes mind control after betrayal, and used it to make a bunch of them do things that would turn them into cursed immortals. They ate things no one should, including baby Gojiras.”

“No,” I say, stomach falling into a bottomless pit.

“What?” Flynn takes the tablet as the king hands it over. He reads over it. “This can’t be possible.”

“Earth has an anti-gay alignment. The two of you were sending up strong signals, and so this lich king made his attack, knowing he could never win against such a strong alignment. He and his lich goblins have been eating gay angels for power. Breeding them. So he will die if the alignment changes. So he wanted to make him and his army into cursed immortals. That is nice, because it breaks their bond away from any non cursed immortals. But it means the planet will soon go into quarantine. And something else. Read paragraph five.”

Flynn does, letting me read over his shoulder. “A flying city?”

“They were using angel blood to float it. When the alignment is changed, it will fall, collapsing earth’s core due to its size, in every dimension. The rest of the galaxy is set to look away. We talked about it in a meeting. Because so many dimensions are involved in eating dangerous things, and a dozen different elder gods, including the Gojiras, have every right to go to battle and eradicate Earth for this, no one is willing to step in.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Flynn asks.

“I don’t know,” the king says. “But I know some of your people are very worthy. If they have never hurt an innocent, they should be able to evacuate through mer portals.”

He looks to the side. “Normally I would send my son, but if he is there when the quarantine ring closes, he will be trapped there forever, until the core collapses. By the time I got him back, the galaxy would already be over. I have no other son. Please understand, Flynn.”

“I’m not letting him go alone,” I say. “No way, no how.”

“You can’t let us all down,” my father says, standing and planting his hands on his desk. “You know I’ve been supportive of the two of you together. You could be like a rainbow comet, flying across the sky. But this…changes things. If Flynn doesn’t go, and the core collapses, his people will die everywhere, because the last oxygen will be gone. Fire fae die without it, you know.”

Fear fills my heart. “And there’s no way to mass evacuate?”

“Not that I know of,” he says. “Even your dragon wouldn’t be big enough.” Tears glitter in his eyes. “I truly hate that this is happening.” He breathes hard, pulling the tears back in, composing himself. “But Flynn’s people are important to the galaxy. He must try to save them if he can. And you must stay here. But remember, with stardust, you can always be together—“

Flynn puts the tablet away and holds me, and we stay like that awhile.

“I have to go save my family,” Flynn says solemnly. “You understand, right Boreas? I would choose you over them, but the extinction of my people. I wouldn’t be the hero you love if I let them all die, the innocent with the guilty.”

“And we don’t know a way to evacuate only the innocent?” I ask.

“Not for such a big planet,” my father says. “It’s breaking my heart to see you both go through this, but there’s nothing we can do but pray that Flynn will be alright and that he and his people will make it through the portals safely before the quarantine ring is sealed. Or before the Gojira get there with their nuclear warheads. Whichever is first.”

I nod, but my heart is breaking. But it’s Flynn. My hero, Flynn. The strongest fire fae I know. The one who has done the impossible. He can do this too, I know it.

“I’m still going with him,” I say.

“You can’t, Boreas,” he says. “Please, don’t,” Flynn says. “I’ll be safer knowing you’re here. When I get back, you can propose.”

Darn straight I will, with the biggest red diamond in the galaxy. I’ll get it from K, from her diamond planets.

Red is the rarest color, and I want a orange red bicolor, just like his eyes.

“I will, Flynn.”

“This is nothing for a fire fae king,” he says. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

But my heart is still worried for him. A falling city, a core collapse, things the galaxy has never seen happen, despite existing many years.

“It was evil’s final stand,” my father says. “If they can’t win, they want to destroy everything.”

“So how can we let them?” I ask, standing, my hands in fists. “How can we let them just destroy Earth and clean up their mess, taking so many innocents with them? After all, Earth is a place with many gays. Some places have strong gay rights. Why can’t we protect them, along with the other innocents?”

He shakes his head. “Because the innocents among the wicked weren’t able to stop hate becoming the strong alignment.”

I press my lips together, refusing this. I can’t let Flynn go to such a dangerous place without me. But if I go with him, I’ll truly be leaving my kingdom, and the galaxy where he would live if we pull off such a mission, in a truly dangerous place.

There must always be at least two of us. And if something happened to me, and I was separate from my father too long, when he was weak like this…

Suddenly a poof of blue smoke fills a corner of the room, and my sister, K, the currently ruler of titan planet, appears in the seat on the other side of the office.

She’s seven feet tall, with long blue hair that used to be red, a face even more beautiful than mine, and a body more masculine than any warrior, rippling with muscle.

Her fae ears are always long and pointed, showing her fae blood. She grins and her fangs are in points, showing her other blood, her primal dragon.

One far more vicious, and huge, than mine.

“Maybe K have solution to your problem,” she says, putting her boots up on my father’s desk.

My father stands, incensed, his hands in fists. “Please tell your demon sister that if she wants to enter the vale, she needs to do it like everyone else!”

“Nah,” K says. “Me king of titan planet now. Go where I want. Plus, not demon anymore. Check the hair!”

“K, it looks amazing,” I say. “So, you’re now soul alignment?”

She nods.

I grin in approval. “Very strong alignment.”

Flynn stares at both of us, bug-eyed. “Could someone please explain what’s going on?”

“This is my sister, K,” I say. We aren’t really related in the normal way, but on a planet where we had nine parents each, we shared one parent between us, and we ended up soul-riding in one body. So we have always been bonded since then.

K is unbelievably strong, probably the head of dark alignment. She can go anywhere without a portal, even the vale, where no one else can reach without our help.

“Use your words properly, K,” my father says. “I can’t understand you.”

“Me think you understand fine,” K says. “You just snobby. This part of K alignment with creatures and not useless human who say too many words and pretend not to understand when others don’t.”

“Speak plainly.”

K pins him with a glare, sitting up a little straighter. “Your insistence on proper vernacular as you see it is classist and racist and excludes other creatures who have psychic powers and don’t need words, and so I choose to speak in a way that’s similar to psychic animal language, because I respect aquatic creatures and four-leggers more than I care to be eloquent for you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “In English?”

“It’s a choice, bitch.”

“Swears!” He yells.

But she merely rolls her eyes. “I have a solution to your problem, mushroom man. But I not give it until you calm down.”

He sits, putting his head in his hands. “There is no solution.”

“Said like a true mushroom person, who can never see the gray area.”

“Pardon me for not being a demon,” he says.

“I not a demon now, check the hair!” K insists.

“She’s right dad. It used to be red—“

“Get to the point, Flynn has to go soon.”

“And Boreas should go with him! Flynn is his soul bond! I saw him rescue Boreas, in a dream. He point his wand and say, “I fight for soul bond, prepare be dead!”

My father’s eyes soften as he looks from Flynn to me. “Is this true? I knew you were in love, but if you’re soul bonds…K is right. You can’t be separated.” He shakes his head. “What are we going to do? Why do I have to fade now?”

“Maybe you not have to fade, if K bring something interesting to you,” K says.

“Get to the point, K!” My father is practically yelling now. She’s the only one I’ve ever seen who could make him lose his temper.

“If you have other members of family, you not fade, right? If they not too far away.”

“Yes,” he says. “I suppose now you’re going to tell me there are other genetic unicorns with wish dragon blood just waiting to meet me and train to be kings and queens and save our planet and our people and keep me from fading.”

K grins, flashing a fang. “No, me going to say you have grandkids.”

His eyes go wide, then dreamy. He looks like he’s going to float away from the desk.

Nothing has ever made him insane quite like the idea of grandchildren.

Then his eyes go serious. “But Boreas is the prude of the galaxy. He refuses to breed until it’s totally safe, which will never happen. It’s been aeons.”

“Maybe he breed with his soul bond, soon. But on one of the dimensions of Earth, they breeding titans with Brett’s blood! Adopt them and marry off the mothers, they have no bond to Brett. But the sons and daughters, very high quality titans, with the blood you need. You have them and train them and love them, maybe you not fade, king!”

He blinks. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad you’re here, K.”

K grins. “Make K member of vale then.”

“Not that glad,” he mutters.

“So let Brett go with soul bond,” K says. “Even if it takes a long time, I know he and Flynn can make this right. They very strong, making new alignment. And I see future, see new titan coming for Brett, one that could save Earth. So let them go, great king, and I bring grandkids to you.”

“How long will that take?” He asks, drumming hands on his desk.

“A few days at most,” K says. “I need to prepare them. They came to titan planet after death on earth, and have no idea they linked to such powerful kings.”

He still looks so happy he could fly. Like he’s going to start glowing and hovering any moment.

“Imagine, Boreas, grandkids.”

“But you adopt, let Boreas only have kids with his soul bond, since these were had without permission.”

“All are welcome in our family,” my father says. “Imagine, so many, and just like Brett.”

“Just like him,” K says with a grin.

“Well, well, then, the two of you need to be off,” my father says. I’m a little offended he’s letting us go this easy, but I’m so happy I can fight with Flynn that I don’t care.

“Let me make you a portal,” my father says, and a rainbow one appears, whooshing with cupcake scented air. “Alright, go through now. The two of you can do this, I’m sure of it now. I won’t be faded, and I will be watching every moment, with grandkids by my side, keeping me from fading.”

“Then let’s go,” Flynn says, still looking confused by everything.

“Thanks for taking care of brother,” K says, giving Flynn a thumbs up. “You love him into being very fat. He going to need it.”

Flynn gives her a puzzled look, then a thumbs up back. As we move into the portal, he mutters, “I’m not sure what to think of your sister.”

I just laugh. “No one does.”

And then we jump through, falling together through a wormhole toward Earth.