Zahn.
“Nor?” His hand came around her shoulder, pulling her toward his bare chest. “I’m here. Everything is fine, I’m right here.” He cooed into her ear, attempting to calm her erratic breathing.
“I had the dream again,” she whispered. “It was...so dark.”
His lips were on her skin, his breath warm as he spoke in a low, even tone. “I’m going to open the curtains.”
His naked form slid from the bed, leaving it feeling unfamiliar and empty. An ache spread through her chest, reminding her of the dream.
Across the room, the curtains slid open. Nor shielded her eyes from the red haze of early morning as it drifted toward her. Zahn seemed to become one with the shadows of her bedroom as he stepped away from the window.
“Come back to me,” she whispered.
He trotted back to bed then pulled her to him, chasing the monsters of her dream away.
The heat that radiated from him was so comforting, warming her shivering body, unlike the fiery hell she had fallen into during her dream.
By day, Zahn served as her personal bodyguard, protecting her from physical harm. By night, when she had the same nightmare over and over, he was here to perform this dance.
No one but Zahn was allowed to get this close to her. Not just physically, but emotionally, beneath the layers she’d surrounded herself with. No one, not even Darai, was allowed to see her so vulnerable.
“Tell me about it,” he whispered. “Was it the same?”
She nodded. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think, Zahn.” She lifted her prosthetic hand to her face to wipe away the tears, then dropped it, disgusted by the sight of the gold metal, of the scars marring her upper wrist. Disgusted with herself for feeling so weak.
But Zahn gently wrapped his warm fingers around her metal ones, then pressed his lips to her cheeks. Kissing away the tears.
“You’re safe,” he said with a sigh. “I will always protect you, Nor.”
“I don’t need protecting,” she whispered.
His soft chuckle sent a shiver down her spine. “Everyone does, at one point or another. You don’t fool me, Nor Solis. You never have, and you never will.”
She leaned her head on his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.
Strong. Steady. The only constant in her life, besides her desire for revenge.
To many people, Nor was the stone-cold ruler who haunted the nightmares of her foes. But to Zahn, she was just Nor. The love of his life, as he was hers.
It had been just the two of them since The Cataclysm took both of their families years ago. He’d seen her at her weakest, and without him she would have lost herself to grief. He was her only friend; the only person she loved. He’d broken through her walls when her father died, and then kept breaking through them until she no longer wished to shut him out.
Leaders, fearless and honest in all the ways that seemed to count, still had other dimensions to them. Other secrets.
Zahn was Nor’s best kept one.
“Don’t leave me,” Nor said, looking up into his eyes. Seeing the passion mirrored there.
“I would never dream of it,” he said.
Their lips touched, and his hands slid down her bare back, gentle at first. Then hungry for more as she let him lay her back down.
“I love you,” Zahn said. “My Nhatyla.”
The lingering fear from her nightmare trickled away as a very different sort of feeling took its place.
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
DEX
DEX HAD FORGOTTEN how fast Andi’s reflexes could be when she was mad.
Furious, actually, he thought, as he watched the shock on her face melt into a mask of pure, boiling rage.
He had only the briefest of seconds to ponder his possible mistake as Andi pushed some sorry fool out of her way. Then Dex’s chair was in Andi’s hands as she lifted it high over her head.
“Dex!” she screamed. And was that a growl he heard coming from her lips?
He barely had time to lift his arms over his head before she slammed the chair down on top of him. Dex crashed against the table, toppling over three glass mugs that shattered against the metal floor.
“What the hell?” Andi yelled.
Dex groaned as he stood, swiping glass from his shirt. Without a doubt, that was going to leave a bruise or two. But at least his plan, painful as it may be, was working.
He turned back to smile at Andi. “That’s all you’ve got, Captain?”
He just needed her to play along, make a big enough show to draw in the Lunamere warden. That would be their ticket inside.
Andi spat on the ground, then rubbed her lips with the back of her sleeve. For one moment, she looked purely Andi, angry as a wet feline and terrifyingly beautiful. Dex felt smug, like he could strut for hours with his head held high.
Then he saw the moment when Andi’s face changed. She transformed into someone else entirely; an actress playing the perfect part.
“How dare you cheat on me!” she snarled.
Dex’s hands fell to his sides. “Wait...what?”
Lira appeared, hands on her hips as she leveled a death glare on him. “So this is the other girl, Dextro?” She looked Andi up and down, then back to Dex. “I’m not very impressed.”
What in the hell were they doing? This was not part of his plan.
All around them, people stopped talking. The music faded as yet another voice joined the mix, and Dex heard heavy footsteps approaching.
“You honestly thought you could screw around with two other girls,” Breck said, stepping up between Lira and Andi, “and not get caught by us?”
Dex lowered his voice. “Ladies...”
“Girls talk, Dextro,” Andi said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She looked to Lira, then to Breck. “He deserves to be taught a lesson about relationships.”
Her voice grew louder with every word, more bar patrons craning their necks to see what the ruckus was all about.
Rubbing his still-stinging forearms, Dex quickly whispered, “What exactly are you three doing?”
Andi ignored him. “Who wants the first shot?”
Breck cracked her knuckles, and people began to rise from their chairs, slowly surrounding them in a circle, ready for what looked to be a promising fight.
“You can have him,” Lira said. “He’s a waste of my time.”
“Mine, as well,” Breck agreed as men hooted and hollered, laughing at the cheater caught in a bind.
“Come on, ladies,” Dex drawled, catching on to their plan. If they had to give the onlookers a show, well...they’d get one. “It was just one little kiss.”
“Like hell it was!” Breck howled.
Before he could prepare himself, her foot slammed into his gut.
Dex went flying.
He landed with a sickening crash against a table, all air gone from his lungs. The table tipped, and more glass mugs shattered as cards and Krevs spiraled into the air, a flurry of black and red and gold.
Dex slid to a stop, his head slamming against the back wall.
That was going to leave a mark, too.
Silence swept through Dark Matter, and as Dex’s vision began to clear, the only sounds were the crunch of boots on shattered glass and the constant dripping of wasted alcohol pooling over the table’s edges as its previous occupants stood, surrounding Dex in a half circle.
The giantess had catapulted him right into the middle of a table full of Lunamere guards, every single one of them looking as furious as the last.
“Pardon me, boys,” Dex said. “I seem to have fallen right into the middle of your little card game.”
The guard closest to him, a brute as tall as Breck, curled his upper lip and actually growled like a feral dog.
“Y
ou disrespected those ladies,” the giant man said. “And you messed up my game. I had a winning hand.”
“Easy, big guy.” Dex held up his arms in surrender. “We can talk about this.”
The guard reached out with a meaty hand and grabbed Dex by the collar, twisting his fingers into the fabric. Then he hoisted him up until their noses were nearly touching, Dex’s legs dangling below him.
“No talking, then?” Dex asked.
Andi’s chuckle from behind him was the only sound in the room.
Then the guard swung, and all hell broke loose.
* * *
Dex wasn’t the tallest man by Mirabel standards, but what he lacked in height, he made up in speed and agility—and above all, the desire to win.
Besides, he’d never live it down if he couldn’t take out a few dozen drunkards in a bar fight.
He was all grace and glory as he spun and whirled, taking out Lunamere guards as they rushed forward in hopes of sinking their knives into his gut. Two men lunged at him, and Dex swiped out with a knife from a nearby table, a snick sounding as he caught one of them in the cheek.
Blood splattered a one-eyed woman at a nearby table, who promptly howled about her ruined meal before rushing into the fight. Her companion dove in after her with a black club he’d pulled out from under the table. Dex leaped, narrowly avoiding a hit.
One step, two steps, leap.
Dex landed on the bar top, his boots skidding as glasses fell over and spilled the contents on their owners.
An entirely new group of pissed-off patrons screamed and rose to join the fight.
Ten men from the left.
Six from the right, all hefting weapons.
And Andi, sprinting from the back with...
Dex’s eyes widened as he dodged a chair sailing past his head. Were those meat cleavers clutched in her fists?
* * *
Angry shouts filled the pub, music to Andi’s ears as she joined the fight.
The world melted away, every patron turning into a single muddled shade, until all she could see was the swinging of too-slow fists, the swish of a dulled blade cartwheeling through the air to stick itself in another man’s back.
Andi sprinted forward, plucked the blade from the man, then whirled around and drove it down into a Lunamere guard’s thigh right as he rushed past her in pursuit of Dex.
He howled and dropped, and then she was off again, leaping over his fallen form, her hands itching to raise hell, draw blood and spread the glory of her name.
The Bloody Baroness was here.
She’d make sure every single one of them knew it.
* * *
Dex laughed as he swung a bottle at a guard’s head. It shattered as he grabbed another and another, sending them both sailing across the pub to explode against the metal walls.
Everywhere was a symphony of sound, bats swinging against metal, men and women shouting at the top of their lungs as people too far under the influence swung at everything and nothing at once.
Chaos circled throughout the room, building like a wildfire.
Speaking of fire... Dex thought as he took on two men at once. Andi was by the bar, but where were Breck and Gilly and Lira with their Sparks? He ducked down just as the man in front of him swung. The man’s fist connected with the person behind Dex instead. There was a crack and a shout, and the two sorry bastards went down fighting, hissing and spitting like cats thrown in water.
The plan was in place. Everything was glorious, beautiful, blessed disarray.
They just had to keep it going until the warden of Lunamere arrived.
* * *
Andi searched the bar for a clock, her eyes scanning past the swinging fists and people standing on tabletops to get a better view of the brawl. The holo on the wall above the bar said 13:23.
Plenty of time to raise a little more hell.
Dex was cornered with his back against the bar, fresh green blood oozing from a cut on his brow. Three men had closed in on him, one hoisting a broken chair leg as a weapon, another snarling with thick red canines bared. The little table-waiting droid spun in circles nearby, one of its squeaky wheels missing. Beside it, the six-armed bartender was using the missing wheel to bludgeon another man’s head.
Every part of Andi’s soul told her to get the hell out of there before the Sparks went off. She could abandon the mission. Leave Valen Cortas in prison, with Dex beside him once the warden of Lunamere caught wind of this.
But as she stood back and watched the clock tick down, some tiny part of herself, some animal thing deep down, began to claw its way back up and out into the smoky pub light.
The Bloody Baroness never turned away from a fight.
With a sigh, she pushed herself forward, swinging her borrowed knives as if they were extensions of her body. Little pieces of heaven clutched in her hell-raising fists.
She hacked through the crowd and cleared the area in front of Dex just in time to pull him down behind the bar.
“Time already?” he asked.
She didn’t even have a chance to nod before the Sparks went off.
Then the whole world exploded around them.
Chapter Twenty
* * *
KLAREN
Year Eighteen
THE GIRL STOOD atop a hillside on a dying world, watching the sky drip acid rain.
The journey here had been long. Yet, like she’d always dreamed, the girl had survived.
Sickly green clouds blocked out the horizon, but through the shroud, she could just barely make out the top of the Solis Palace in the distance. Towering spires made of black glass stood at its highest point, shimmering panes of red woven into the black like trails of dripping blood.
Below the spires, deep in the belly of the palace, the King of Xen Ptera prepared himself for a long-awaited meeting.
The wind blew, tossing the rain about. The girl shivered and pulled her cloak tighter, the protective wrap around her face closer, to better save her skin.
Today, she’d make her first move.
“It is time, Klaren,” a voice said from her right.
The girl turned. Her greatest ally, her trusted adviser, was not the kind of man many would wish to gaze upon.
Something had gone wrong in his Formation, leaving half of his face mutilated, as if it were made of melted, discolored wax. His eyes shimmered, their color nearly as black as the palace spires far below. Bits of metal held together his flesh.
A gruesome creature Darai was.
But the girl knew his soul, and she knew that it was pure.
He had, after all, given her the blade that ensured she would be the only Yielded standing when the Conduit chose.
“I’m ready,” the girl said. She took his arm as he helped her into a stolen carriage.
“Remember what we spoke of,” Darai said softly as a borrowed servant snapped the reins on a sleek, spidery Xentra, its many legs clicking as it crawled down the hillside. The wheels of the carriage slipped into motion, pulling them downward, where they joined in with the countless others heading toward the palace. “Remember what is at stake.”
The girl nodded, then turned her gaze to the window. As they neared the palace, she felt for the thread of the dreams that she kept locked away in her mind, like a constant glowing trail of embers that never quite burned out.
She felt its warmth and tugged.
The future spilled into place, flooding her mind.
She could see a man’s face, gentle and kind, but with sharp edges when the girl really looked. His green eyes, bright as emeralds, met hers as she stepped into the light and pulled her hood back to reveal her perfectly sculpted face. Her womanly curves. She could almost hear his heart beating, almost taste the desire spilling from him as he looked at her, took her hand in his and pressed it to his lip
s.
A hundred girls stood around her, and yet in that moment, they all paled in comparison. She was everything this king wanted. Everything he’d ever dreamed of in a wife.
“Are you certain you will succeed?” Darai asked now, pulling the girl from the thread of her dreams.
“I am certain,” she said, without a hint of doubt in her voice. She lifted her chin proudly. “Just as I was certain years ago, during my Yielding, that I would be chosen.” She smiled sideways at him. “I will do anything, Darai, to ensure that my dreams become a reality.”
Darai inclined his head. “You are a worthy sacrifice.”
The girl smiled. She had worked her entire life to claw her way here, fighting with her words and her wit and her smile to get noticed by the right eyes, to speak into whatever ears would listen. It had taken everything she had to make it here, to stay alive, to grow strong enough to secure a spot in the king’s lineup of potential brides.
Today, it would all come to fruition when he laid eyes upon her, when she spoke the words she’d practiced, year after year.
The carriage rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill. Acid rain pelted down from the skies, thunder booming as the carriage shook.
“May the light be your guide,” Darai said, opening the door for her.
The girl lifted her hood and stepped out into the acid rain.
Soon, very soon, she would become queen.
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
LIRA
GLASS RAINED DOWN on top of them.
Lira opened her eyes to see Breck hunched over beside her, coughing smoke from her lungs, eyes watering and red.
Mountains crumble, Lira thought.
How strong had Gilly’s homemade Sparks been? Perhaps they’d been a bit too generous with the amount of powder they’d poured into the orbed casings.
Lira rolled to her hands and knees and crawled past the scattered playing cards, bottles of broken liquid and moaning bodies on the floor. Somewhere across the room, the bartender howled out curses over the wasted liquor.
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