“Do you know there is no Syldrathi word for goodbye?”
My eyes flutter open, light slipping through my lashes as I groan. Saedii is seated beside my bed, picking at her fingernails with a long, beautiful knife.
“Wh-what?” I whisper.
I force my eyes open again, head swimming. I’m surrounded by the soft hum of medical equipment, the light low and gloomy. Looking down, I realize I’m shirtless. Again. There’s a dull ache in my belly, a derm patch over the wound from Erien’s blade. But this is an Unbroken battle cruiser, and their med facilities are top-notch—the pain isn’t even that bad, to tell you the truth.
I mean, for a brutal stabbing and all.
“It is true. Syldrathi believe that people once united can never truly part.” Saedii waves the knife toward the derm patch. “Even were you to perish today, the atoms of your body would remain. Over eons, those particles would break apart and coalesce, become incorporated into other beings, other planetary bodies. Drawn into collapsing stars and scattered again by supernovae. And the last, when the great black hole at the heart of this galaxy draws everything back into its arms, all things shall be reunited. Thus, we do not say goodbye when we part. We say an’la téli saii.”
“What’s that mean?” I groan.
“I shall see you in the stars.”
She tilts her head, and her soft smile fades. “I tell you this because you seem to be in an extraordinary hurry to die, Tyler Jones.”
“A mere flesh wound, madam.” I press my hand to the patch, wincing. “Your lieutenant needs to work on his aim if he wants to kill me.”
Saedii scoffs. “Erien is a First Paladin of the Black Circle. Maker of a thousand orphans. If he wished you dead, you would be dead. I am talking about Antaelis, Erien’s betrothed. You made rather a mess of his beloved’s face. Antaelis wanted to challenge you to a duel for Erien’s honor.”
I shake my head, sighing. “Like we don’t have anything better to do, with the whole galaxy ending and all.”
Saedii leans back, lifting her boots and resting them across my thighs like she’s claiming a piece of territory. Her gaze roams slowly over my body, drifts back up to my eyes. That trace of amusement flickers between us again, tinged with a low, pulsing anger.
“You still do not understand where you are, do you?”
“I know exactly where I am. And who I’m with.”
“If that were so,” Saedii says, eyebrows descending, “you would not have called me an idiot in front of my crew.”
I wince. “Yeah look, I’m sorr—”
She raises a hand. “Do not compound your foolishness with cowardice. At least have the courage of your convictions, Terran.”
“I swear, you are the most …” I shake my throbbing head, teeth gritted. “Does everything have to be a fight with you?”
She smiles then, tongue to tooth. “If you wish.”
“Maker’s breath,” I growl. “Will you quit with the games?”
“I like games.”
“Well, I’m not in the mood to be your plaything.” My skull is pounding, my mouth dry as ashes. “What are you doing in here, Saedii?”
Her smile fades, black lips pursing as she looks me over.
“I reviewed footage of you brawling with Erien,” she finally says. “You had him bested in the fray, but you faltered at the final strike. Clutching your head as if it pained you. I had the med team scan you for brain trauma, perhaps caused by your Fold exposure. But you are suffering none.”
“I didn’t know you cared, Templar.”
I see a flicker in her eyes at that. Just a heartbeat, and it’s gone. This girl’s moods swing hot to cold and back again in the blink of an eye. But looking closer, behind the bravado and the sneer and the Unbroken princess thing, for a second I think I catch a glimpse of—
“I heard you,” she says, tapping her brow. “Crying out in my head when you fell. Not as if you were hurt. As if you were … horrified.”
I run my hand across my eyes, sighing. “I … saw something.”
“You mean a vision?”
I draw a deep breath, nodding. “I’ve been seeing things since I woke up here. It’s like … like I’m dreaming awake. I see a Syldrathi girl, covered in blood. But in the dream, I know it’s my blood, not hers. We’re in a massive chamber. Crystal walls. A throne. All carved out of rainbows.”
Her eyes narrow. “That sounds like the inside of the Neridaa.”
“It’s being destroyed in my dream. Cracking to pieces.” I swallow hard, my belly filling with ice at the memory. “And there’s a shadow beyond the walls. So big and dark I know it’ll consume everything if I let it.”
“Have you ever dreamed awake like this before?”
“Never.” I meet her eyes. “I can’t explain it, but I think … Saedii, I think something terrible is about to happen.”
She looks away from me, eyes focusing on some distant point past the walls. I can still feel the trace of her thoughts, the Waywalker blood she inherited from her mother speaking to the blood I got from mine. From a woman I’ll never know, because my father isn’t here to tell me who she is, how they met, how I came to be.
Despite Saedii’s ice-queen facade, the mind games, I can tell she’s uncertain. And as her eyes meet mine again, again I feel that flicker, beyond the aggression and the taunts, the scorn and the Unbroken warrior front, a flicker of …
Warmth?
“More news of strife is breaking across the feeds,” Saedii says. “A dozen more incidents like the ones you spotted. Old grudges dredged up. The fires of wars past reignited once more. The stars drip with blood.”
“It’s the Ra’haam, Saedii. You know it is.”
She sucks her lip, twirling that knife through her fingers. “Your brethren in the Aurora Legion are doing their best to douse the flames, at least. An emergency summit of the Galactic Caucus has been called to address the ‘growing tide of unrest among the sentient races of the Milky Way.’ It will be convened at your Aurora Academy in five days’ time.”
My heart surges, wounded stomach aching as I sit up on the cot. “At the academy? Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did say so. Why is that of import?”
“My dream,” I breathe, heart racing. “The … vision. It was different this last time. I saw Aurora Academy, shining like a lighthouse in the dark. But I reached out toward it, and it … it exploded right in front of me.”
I see it again, a sudden flash of pain in my mind, that image of the academy blown apart, the galaxy’s last hope extinguished with it.
… fix this, Tyler …
I shake my head, my pulse pounding. “If the heads of the Galactic Caucus are all in the same place and the Ra’haam strikes it …”
“They are fools to gather so.” Saedii scowls, considering. “But if you believe the academy is under threat … perhaps I could allow you access to our communications array. You could send them warning.”
“You think that’s a transmission Legion comms is going to answer?” I scoff. “Let alone believe? The GIA framed me as a terrorist, Saedii. A mass murderer. A traitor to the Legion and his own people. And the transmission will be coming from an Unbroken ship.”
“Surely you have contacts within the Legion who still hold you in faith? What of the ones who left you those gifts on Emerald City?”
“Admiral Adams and Battle Leader de Stoy,” I nod, mind racing. “They know something. But I’ve got no way to contact them direct. If I was aboard Aurora Station, I could send a message to Adams on the academy network. But with something this important, I can’t just fling a warning out into the dark and hope some grunt on academy comms kicks it up the chain.”
I shake my head, more certain with every breath.
“You have to take me there,” I declare.
Saedii’s eyes are sharp as glass. “Have to is not a phrase to be spoken to Templars, Terran.”
“If the Ra’haam destroys the Caucus, it’ll throw the galaxy into chaos! And every day spent picking up the pieces is another the Ra’haam has to grow! Saedii, we have to stop—”
“There are those words again.”
“Maker, will you listen to me?” I shove her boots off my thighs, rising off the cot. “We might be the only ones alive with a clue what’s happening here!”
“I have larger concerns than—”
“Larger concerns?” I shout. “The whole galaxy is at stake! We know the truth! We have a duty to stop this thing!”
“Do not dare preach to me of duty, Tyler Jones!” she snarls, rising up to meet me. “You know nothing of its weight! Our Archon is vanished into the Void without a trace! A dozen warlords of the Unbroken are poised to seize control of this cabal, and I am the only one who might keep us from shattering to pieces. The future of my people teeters on the edge of a blade! And you whine I should divert course into enemy space to save a pack of shan’vii idiotic enough to risk gathering to talk at a time like this?”
“They’re trying to broker peace!” I shout. “The Caucus doesn’t know the Ra’haam is out there!”
“Foolish and blind, then.”
“Saedii, you can’t just let them—”
“Do not tell me what I cannot do!” she roars, face centimeters from mine. “I am a Templar of the Unbroken! Blooded in a hundred battles! Daughter of the Starslayer! I do what I wish, I go where I please, and I take what I want!”
She stands there glowering at me, teeth bared in a snarl, out of breath. Her eyes are sharp as the blade in her hand, and she’s pressed against me so close I can feel her heart thumping under her skin. Her mind is bleeding into mine again, her thoughts soaking me through.
She’s rage. She’s fire. Pushing like a knife into my chest.
I do what I wish.
I go where I please.
I take what I want.
And I see it then. As her eyes drift from mine, down to my lips and back up again.
Maker’s breath, she wants me.
We crash together, so hard the split in my lip opens again. She breathes into my lungs and my fingers weave into her hair, and the thought of how stupid this is is drowned out by the feel of her in my arms as I lift her off the ground.
She cinches her legs tight around my waist, gasping as we collide with the wall, her fingernails drawing lines of fire across my bare back as my hands squeeze her tight, pushing her hard against the metal. Stupid as this feels, crazy as it is …
The whole galaxy might be at war tomorrow.
We might all be dead.
Live for tonight. Tomorrow we die.
Her mind is entwined with mine, drenching me with her want and redoubling my own. It’s hard to breathe. To think. I’ve never felt anything like this, never needed anything so desperately, but this is insane, this is …
“Saedii … ,” I gasp, twisting my head away.
Stop speaking, Tyler Jones, comes her voice in my head. There are better things for you to be doing with your mouth.
Yeah, okay.
Hard to argue with that.
Tyler Jones: 2
Saedii Gilwraeth: 2
• • • • •
“Well, that was … intense.”
We’re lying on the floor of the med bay, gasping for breath, a thin silver sheet of insulation thrown over our bodies. The room is in chaos around us, furniture overturned, glass shattered on the floor. Saedii is pressed against me, long black braids draped over her face, black paint smeared across her mouth. We’re both slippery with sweat, salt stinging in the welts she scratched across my back.
“I think I might need more stitches,” I wince.
She doesn’t reply, face pressed into my neck, heart thumping against my ribs. Her breathing is slowing, but otherwise, she’s completely motionless. Completely silent.
“I mean, I’m not complaining,” I say, trying to elicit a laugh. “But maybe we should have a liter of O negative on standby for next time?”
Again, she doesn’t reply. Doesn’t move. Her thoughts are still in mine, leaking through like ink spilled across paper, but where a moment ago we were so entwined we could’ve almost been one person, now she’s slowly withdrawing. Her feelings cooling just like the sweat on our skin.
It’s like someone turned off the sun.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Without warning, she rolls off me and sits up. Her head moves in the gloom, eyes sweeping the chaos, and rising to her feet, smooth, graceful, she hunts among the debris for the pieces of her discarded uniform.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing is wrong,” she replies.
“Well … where are you going?”
“Back to the bridge.”
I blink. “Just like that?”
She recovers her briefs from atop the supply cupboard where I hurled them, drags them back on. “You were expecting something else?”
“Well …” I sit up, silver sheet crumpling around my waist. “I mean, I’m not sure how Syldrathi work, but Terrans usually, y’know … talk afterward.”
“And what should we talk about, Tyler Jones?”
“… Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” She pulls on her bra. “You were perfectly adequate.” I cock one eyebrow. My scarred one, just for added effect. “Lady, I was in your mind through that whole thing. If that’s what you call adequate, Maker knows what—”
“I am not here to assuage your ego in matters of performance.” She retrieves the long knife she’d been carrying when I woke, straps the sheath back to her leg. “You still have both your thumbs. Make of that what you will.”
I get to my feet, wrapping the sheet around my waist, wincing at the sting of sweat, the low, thudding ache of the stab wound in my stomach.
“Are you … angry with me?”
Saying nothing, Saedii turns away, looking into the mirror on the wall and starting to finger-comb her braids. I step in behind her so she can see my reflection, then reach out to brush her shoulder. “Hey, talk to—”
“Do not touch me,” she growls.
I lower my hand. Feeling a little stung.
“That’s not what you were screaming inside my head a minute ago.”
“That was a minute ago.” Her eyes return to her braid, fingers moving swift through the thick, ink-black locks. I feel her closing herself off like she did in the war council. Slamming her mind behind towering doors of iron. “We have taken our pleasure in each other, and now we are done. Do not make this out to be anything more than what it was.”
“… And what was it?”
“A pressure release,” she says. “Understandable after our captivity together. Meaningless.”
“Why are you lying to me?”
Her hand falls still, her gaze locking back on mine. “I should cut out your tongue, Terran. I should rip it from your skull and—”
“Saedii, you were in my head just now.” I search her eyes, my voice soft. “I’m new to this whole telepathy thing, but I know what you were feeling. This wasn’t just some wartime fling. This wasn’t just blowing off steam.”
“You flatter yourself,” she scoffs.
“Saedii, talk to me.”
I grab her shoulder, turn her to face me. And though I feel a stab of rage run right through her as my hand touches her skin, beyond that, again, I catch that glint of approval.
This girl is a fighter. A leader. Born for conflict. Bred for war. She doesn’t want obedience, she wants a challenge. An equal.
I kiss her. Hard. Pulling her into my arms and crushing her against me. Her body tenses, her fists clench, but her mouth melts against mine like snow in fire, a sigh slipping past her lips as she throws her arms around my neck.
And beyond the clash of push and pull, want and not, again I catch a glimpse of it through the cracks in the iron she’s wrapped herself inside. Something so big and frightening she can’t bear to look at it for long.
I reach toward it. She pushes it down. Stomping it beneath her heels and pulling back from my kiss. And I look into her eyes and realize what it is, why she’s trying so hard to pretend this means nothing to her.
Because …
Because it means everything.
“You’re being Pulled,” I whisper.
Saedii’s eyes flash, and she pushes herself out of my arms with a snarl. I watch her turn back to her reflection, seething, busying herself with her braids with shaking hands. But I can see the truth behind the ice of her eyes, feel it inside her head, flooding through her despite her best attempts to keep it dammed in. The Syldrathi mating instinct. The almost-irresistible attraction they feel to people their souls are fated to be with.
Kal feels it for Aurora. He once told me that love was a drop in the ocean of what he felt for her. And looking into Saedii’s eyes now, thinking about all the times she could have killed me, should’ve killed me …
Maker, what an idiot I’ve been… .
“How long?” I ask.
She says nothing. I step up behind her, searching her reflection.
“Saedii, how long?”
She holds my stare, fury and sorrow and hateful, defiant adoration washing through her thoughts. In her mind’s eye, I see an image of me aboard the Andarael, in the depths of the Unbroken fighting pit with a dead drakkan behind me, staring up at her, bloodied but victorious.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “I mean, that would’ve gotten a nun’s motor running, so I can’t really blame you.”
She scoffs, trying not to smile, stalking away across the med bay. I can feel her seething anger. Self-loathing boiling under her skin. A part of her wants to snatch a shard of broken glass from the floor and stab me to death here and now. A part of her wants to crash into my arms and hold on to me so tight I break. She hates that she wants me. But she’s thrilled by it too.
“You didn’t know it would feel like this,” I realize.
She glowers at me, lips thin.
“Saedii, talk to me,” I demand.
“I have had … suitors,” she finally sighs. “Pleasurable distractions. But not like …” She hangs her head, sharp teeth gritted as her fingers curl into fists. Laughing softly as she shakes her head. “The Void truly has a dark sense of humor. To fashion me a fate such as this …”
“Am I so bad?” I ask softly.
“You are Terran,” she hisses.
“Half-Terran,” I say. “But so what?”
“So our people are at war. And my father would turn your spine to glass and shatter it into a million pieces if he suspected so much as your finger had graced my skin.” She chuckles, bitter, almost to herself. “Void knows what he would do to me if he knew that I … that we …”
Her voice drifts away, temper rising as she crouches to yank one of her boots out from underneath a medi-cot.
I walk across the room, run one hand over her bare back as she stands. I feel her shiver, even as she pushes back against me. The ache in her is so real I can feel it in my own head.
“Saedii, your father isn’t here,” I tell her. “And our people don’t have to be at war. You have the power to end this.”
“Don’t,” she growls.
“Come with me to Aurora Acad—”
“No!” she snaps, whirling on me. “Do not ask me again! Everything my father fought to build could crumble into dust now he is gone! Any one of a dozen Templars might try to seize power over the cabal! I am the Starslayer’s daughter! In his absence, it falls to me to hold the Unbroken together!”
“None of that will matter if the Ra’haam is allowed to hatch!”
“My duty is to my people!” she roars. “And our people are at war!”
We stand there in the gloom, and I can still feel her body pressed against me, the furious warmth of her emotions lighting up my mind. There’s so much to this girl I’m only beginning to see. She’s like sunlight encased in a shell of black iron. And even through the tiny cracks she’s shown me, I can tell how deep and hot she burns, how wonderful it would be to lose myself inside a heat like that. The Syldrathi blood in me calls to her, the bridge between our minds echoing with its song.
She’s beautiful. Fierce. Brilliant. Ruthless.
This girl is like no one I’ve ever known.
“So let me go,” I hear myself say.
“What?” she whispers.
“If you won’t come with me, let me go.” I swallow hard, seeing a tiny flare of rage and pain light up her eyes. “Give me a shuttle and some credits. Drop me off at a starport. I’ll make my own way to Aurora Academy. I’ll stop the Ra’haam alone.”
“You know nothing of its plan,” she says. “You are a fugitive, wanted by your own government for Interdiction breach and galactic terrorism.”
I smile, lopsided. “Sounds like a challenge to me.”
“You are charging toward your death. You are a fool.”
“Who’s the bigger fool? The fool himself, or the fool in love with him?”
Saedii scowls and turns away, and I step in front of her, press my hands to her cheeks. As I kiss her, I feel the thrill of it run through her whole body, fingertips to toes. She surges against me so hard she almost knocks me over.
I stumble back and we hit the wall, her body pressed tight into mine, fitting together like the strangest puzzle. Her curves are hard as steel and her lips are soft as clouds, and for a moment it’s all I can do to not lose myself in her again, to not close my eyes against the war around us and the shadow rising above us and just make her mine.
But then I realize she’s drawn that knife again.
Holding it just shy of my throat as she searches my eyes.
“I do not know which I hate more,” she whispers, the blade brushing my skin. “Pulling you close or pushing you away.”
“I know which one I prefer.”
She wavers then, just for a heartbeat. In the silence, I take hold of her hand, ease the weapon away from my throat and kiss her knuckles, searching her eyes for that warmth, that light.
“Help me, Saedii. We can do this together.”
But she looks over my shoulder, and at the sight of herself in the mirror, the iron curtain descends, that blazing fire inside her burns suddenly cold. Saedii clenches her jaw, pulls back, shaking her head.
“My first duty is to my people, Tyler Jones. Not my heart.”
I search her eyes, swallowing hard.
“Then you have to let me go.”
“To your death,” she snarls.
“Maybe.” I shrug. “But I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
I see defiance flare in her then. Rage. The daughter of the Starslayer unveiled. I can sense the menace in her, like a shadow rising beneath her surface, just as dark as the fire that warmed me a few moments ago. One is cast by the other, I realize. Each a part of what makes her who she is: beautiful, fierce, brilliant, ruthless.
She lifts her hands between us, the bloodstained fingers of her left entwined with mine, the right still holding the knife as she searches my eyes.
I know she could force me to stay if she wanted.
Kill me if she wanted.
Saedii Gilwraeth is a girl who gets what she wants.
Have to is not a phrase to be spoken to Templars, Terran.
But in the end, she unwinds our fingers. Unstrapping the sheath from her thigh, she slides the knife home, presses it into my palm. Folding my grip around the graven handle, she kisses my knuckles, soft and warm.
“I will see you in the stars, Tyler Jones,” she says.
And she lets me go.