Prologue

“NO!”

I bolted upright in my bed, sweat pouring from my skin, my single eye wide in horror at the memory of the dream. I gasped, unable to breathe.

“Easy, Grif. You’re all right.” Arms surrounded me, strong and secure. Copper hair, looking like flowing ribbons of blood in the moonlight, spilled over me.

“Helios….” I groaned in bewilderment and laid my head to his chest. “Oh… Lio….” I reached up to stroke the beautiful lines of his face. Alive. Safe. I stared at him, reminding myself of the here and now. His heart beat strong and steady; his skin was warm with sleep. But still, the nightmare had been so horribly vivid.

He gently laid me back on the bed, his arms still wrapped around my body. I breathed then, gasping, surrounding myself with his warmth and fragrance.

The dream seemed real because it had truly happened. I remembered that day, watching the atrocities as the Landaun broadcast themselves to all ships and planets in neighboring systems. Markus Dayspring had stood next to me on the bridge of a rescue ship. He’d watched and, in horror and pain, collapsed to the floor at the wholesale slaughter of his family. All the while he’d been a traitor. He’d known what was to come. Had he been that good an actor, or had his treachery rebounded on him? His grief had been as agonizing and poignant as my own.

I also remembered the ritual execution. The blade flashed through the air and then came to rest on Helios’s bared neck. They’d spared him, chortling over his future as a whore and a slave. To the Landaun, surrender was a fate worse than death. Surviving defeat was to be forever shamed. The fate they’d planned for the warrior who’d fought them so valiantly was literally the worst they could dream of.

But Helios had survived and returned to us. He was here on our mysterious new world in a strange section of the system. He was alive and in my arms.

Did he remember that day? I’d asked before, and he’d always said he had no memory of his surrender. I believed him; his memories were patchy at best. The slave chip that had been implanted in his brain by Warlan slave traders had been deactivated, but Helios might never regain all his memories, even of that most horrific day of our lives. So of course I believed him. There was no reason not to believe.