I awaken surrounded by the dead. A sea of staring faces, Syldrathi Waywalkers caught in a final moment of fear or pain or defiance, mouths agape, eyes wide. Adults and children are piled together, no longer pinned to the crystal walls above us by the force of the Starslayer’s will.
I lie among them on a floor littered with shards of crystal, catching sidelong glimpses of the bodies through my lashes as I force my aching eyes open, then lose the battle and slam them closed once more.
I can’t sense Kal’s mind.
Everything hurts—every muscle in my body screams, my head pounds. But beneath the throbbing ache, I hear the echoes of the power I summoned—that massive burst of energy pouring through me into the Weapon and out again, running out from my spine, all the way to my fingertips. And the memory awakens something like … exhilaration.
I ignore the pain, focus my thoughts, sending a midnight blue tendril out through the last remnants of the Way walkers’ dying screams. It’s like searching for one particular tree in a thick, overgrown forest. But even the faintest hints of those screams are fading now, and my silver-laced blue finds nothing, nothing, nothing.
He must be too far away.
I must be too weak.
The last thing I remember is the Weapon firing—that colossal burst of energy meant to destroy the sun, and Earth and everyone on it. I couldn’t stop it, but I tried to turn its energy inward, to protect the fleet around us, to protect the planet, its sun, to stop …
… Caersan.
The Starslayer.
I scramble onto all fours, heart pounding and head swimming with just that effort, my own breath harsh in my ears as I fight to stay upright.
The man responsible for the murder all around me is close, lying at the foot of his crystal throne, his red cloak splayed around him. He’s stirring groggily, braids thrown back to reveal the ruined side of his face. The glow of his eye shines through the spiderweb of scars along his temple and cheek, as if he’s lit from within. The light pulses softly, maybe in time with his heartbeat, and I sit back on my haunches, lifting one hand to the right side of my own face. The skin feels rough beneath my fingertips.
I can’t sense Kal anywhere.
Then his father’s mind brushes up against mine, the dark red of dried blood, and a gold that’s too like Kal’s, and his eyes snap open, focusing on me.
He did all of this. He’s responsible for every drop of this blood, this destruction, this pain.
And as our eyes meet, he smiles.
I’m moving before I have time to think—I grab a sharp shard of crystal and push up like a runner coming out of the blocks, lunging for him like I’m going to stake a vampire.
He surges up to one knee to meet me, and his backhand sends me stumbling into the throne, the world whirling by—I grab at it to stay upright, and he’s swaying too, dark purple blood dripping from his nose, his lips drawn back in a snarl now.
He did this.
The dead Waywalkers.
Children, some of them.
His own people.
The blank space where Kal should be.
I’m going to kill him.
All around us, the Weapon thrums, crystal humming and singing as it cools, and over all of it, the harsh rasp of my breath as the two of us stand, gathering ourselves.
Then our eyes lock, and I throw myself at him again, blindly smashing him to the ground, my scream echoing back at us from every direction, the breath knocked out of him as I drive a knee into his rib cage.
He rolls, and his hands are at my throat, squeezing, crushing. On instinct, I clasp my fists together and punch up between his forearms, forcing them apart and breaking his grip.
I’m going to kill him. That’s all that’s left to do.
I grope blindly for another shard of crystal, fingers closing around it, and I drive it up and into his side. It shears off his armor, but as he twists away, I roll out from underneath him.
We both scramble to our feet, backing up a handful of steps, and I shift my grip on my crystal knife. He’s huge, and he moves like a warrior even now, even injured. This is the man who taught Kal to fight.
But my mind feels like a sponge with all the water squeezed out—there’s no way I can use my power against him, so this is what I have. His own mind must be just as weak, or he’d have squished me like a bug by now.
It only takes one lucky hit.
This is what I’ll do with the time I have left.
He breaks first, lunging forward with impossible speed to strike at my throat. I skip back, step on something soft, stumble, lunge forward to slash at his ribs while he’s close.
He snarls his fury, but neither of us is in the mood for words. I follow up, dancing in for another swipe, but in a movement too fast to follow, he grabs at my arm and tosses me through the air like I weigh nothing.
My feet leave the ground, and everything’s suspended for a second before I crash into the base of the crystal throne, ears ringing, vision closing into darkness.
There’s a dead Waywalker staring straight at me, only silence where her mind should be, and her braids are a mess, and I want to smooth them for her, and I want to tell her I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and helplessly my mind reaches out for Kal’s once more, a desperate midnight-and-silver unfurling in search of …
… is that … ?
… the faintest flicker of violet and gold.
Joy explodes inside me, and I whirl around to search the carnage for him, because he’s here, he’s alive, he’s …
“Wait!” I throw up one hand, and Caersan pauses, lip curled as he stares at me like I’m something that belongs on the bottom of his shoe.
“Weakling,” he sneers. “Now you seek mercy? Too late for your courage to fail you, girl.”
“No, I …” I’m grasping for words, and I lift my hand to gesture, to take in our surroundings. In my search for Kal, I’ve opened my mind, and abruptly I realize something’s changed. “Can’t you hear?”
He scowls. “I hear nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Caersan tilts his head, and at the edges of my own mind I can sense his cautious questing. Sniffing the wind from behind his barricades, refusing to make himself vulnerable.
I can’t hear anything out there. When we fought during the attack, the gulf of space around the Weapon was a whirl of battle, the minds of the humans, the Betraskans, and the Syldrathi pilots and crews—their fear, their anger, their focus. Somewhere in the midst of them I was aware of Finian, Scarlett, and Zila, my squad, my family.
But now … there’s nothing. Or rather, not nothing—not an absence, like they’re all simply dead. But something else. It’s like waking up on a snow day, like the world is strangely muffled.
“Where did the fleet go?” I ask quietly. “The battle?”
He frowns, and I ease up onto all fours, and finally I can see Kal, lying crumpled on the other side of the throne.
Keeping one eye on Caersan, I crawl around toward his son—the Starslayer notes the movement and dismisses it, returning to his contemplation of the strange silence outside.
Kal’s curled on his side, wearing the same peaceful, vulnerable expression he does when he sleeps. I woke up before him most mornings in the Echo. For half a year, I saw him like this each day.
I wrap one hand around his, and though I’m trembling with exhaustion, I drag up the energy I need from my soul itself, making my mental touch so delicate that I barely brush against his bruised and battered mind.
I breathe gently onto those violet and gold embers, infusing him with my strength, careful not to snuff them out or overwhelm them.
And slowly, slowly, they glow a little brighter.
And his fingers tighten around mine.
I can’t stop my eyes from flooding with tears, relief breaking something open inside me. Here he lies, dressed in black, a warrior of the Unbroken. But he was never one of them. He came here for us, even after we cast him out.
For me.
“There is … something.” Caersan’s voice cuts through my reverie, and I glance up. He’s frowning, almost uncertain—I mean, it’s just the tiniest twitch of his brow, but by his standards he looks completely freaked out. “That way.”
He’s pointing beyond the crystal walls of the Weapon, out toward the space beyond. Perhaps toward Sol, or Earth—I have no sense of direction left. I’m wary of him, and reluctant to make my mind vulnerable, but the truth is that he’s the Archon of a cabal of fanatical warriors. Though I put on a good show just now, if he wanted to break me in two, he could.
And now, Kal’s hand in mine, I have something to live for.
So I’m careful as I let myself feel, probing with my mind in the direction he points, ever at the ready to snap back to safety if he tries to strike. But he doesn’t. He simply watches me, head tilting at the moment my eyes widen in horror.
Because somewhere out there, just at the edges of my range, I can feel it. The world humanity came from. The cradle that birthed our entire civilization. The planet I was born on, and would have died to protect.
Earth.
It hangs in the darkness, a pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam, and just for a second, it feels like home. But then I sense it, creeping, crawling, covering my entire world. Something silvery-green-blue-gray, something teeming-writhingcoiling-growing, something full of a sickening kind of life.
The Ra’haam.
Mothercustard …
The Ra’haam has taken Earth.