by Keary Taylor
“Was that close to where you lived?” Edan asks, hitting the pause button.
I nod my head. “It was only about four kilometers away. If it’s everything within ten, that would be my old work, too. What…what are they doing for power if they’ve ripped Horne Energy out? Have they just thrown everyone off the grid?”
It makes my stomach sick. That Dominion can be so heartless and self-centered. There are still billions of people stuck on that planet.
“Sounds like you got off just in time,” Edan says as he pushes play once more.
“And speaking of that mine,” Arden continues. “Dominion has upped the reward for the capture of Reena McDyer by ten percent. And that woman, the one from all the pictures, with the mask, the weapons manufacturer? The reward for bringing her to Cyrillius was doubled today.”
My blood goes ice cold.
“Why?” I say, shaking my head. “Why…why would Cyrillius want me so bad? I’m…I’m nothing. I’m not the only Neron weapons maker in the galaxy. He…he can’t know I can do what I can do. Why would he want me?”
“Calm down, you maniac,” Edan says, furrowing his brows and putting an arm around my shoulders. “He’s probably just a big fan of your work. Maybe he wants you to make something for him.”
Cyrillius will use you, Valen had warned me once. And then kill you.
Use you.
It doesn’t really make me feel any better, but it does explain things just a little. There really can’t be any other reason.
Seeing that I’m thinking about what he said, Edan presses play.
“So stay safe, Reena McDyer and mysterious masked woman,” she says. “I pray to the stars that Valen Nero isn’t looking for you. Because no one has seen a trace of him in the last two weeks. And I can only imagine what he’ll do if he finds either of you.”
A wave of goosebumps flashes over my skin and Arden signs off.
Valen hasn’t been seen in two weeks.
“Never mind what I said earlier,” Edan says as he takes his audobud out and hands it to me. “Salypso might be mighty boring, but the rest of the galaxy is batslag crazy.” He climbs to his feet and extends a hand to me. “Guess I’ll just take up diving for sharks as my new hobby and learn to deal with this new safe-and-sound life.”
I offer a little, amused smile, but really, I hardly heard a word he said. And I don’t hear any of the others he says as we walk back to the house. I don’t even remember to say goodnight before I slip into my bedroom and shut the door behind me.
I don’t even undress for bed. I lie on my back, staring up at the ceiling, my booted feet hanging over the end of the bed.
Over the past lunar I’ve forced myself not to think of Valen. I’ve made myself ignore that door in my brain. I’ve pretended that other presence in my mind was not there.
But hearing his name just now . . . it’s all I can think about. It echoes through my mind like it was shouted in a giant cave.
Valen.
Valen.
Valen!
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to blot out the memories.
But they still come. They crush over me with the strength of a tidal wave.
Our lunars of speaking to one another. The deep conversations. The trust. The excitement at hearing his voice.
And then seeing him for the first time on Korpillion. I can’t forget the rush of excitement and attraction that washed through me when he’d taken off his mask. I can’t forget how he healed me with the Neron, how he cleared the path for me to escape. How he made it possible for me and my family to get off Korpillion and get somewhere safe.
Emotions well in my eyes when I remember how he immediately came for me when I asked him. I hadn’t been so excited for anything in so long as I anticipated his arrival for those six days.
And then when he arrived. And when I saw him once more.
And when he cracked my version of right and wrong when he showed me his history. His time on Starvis. His beatings in the Dominion army. The manipulation he withstood from Cyrillius.
And I will never, ever, ever forget the kiss we shared.
It fractured my soul. I’ve felt broken since then, and I know it, like I know I breathe oxygen, that I’m never going to be put back together.
Because I felt everything in his arms. I felt my future and I felt his and I felt destiny.
But then I’d pleaded with him. I’d screamed at him. I’d made threats.
Valen didn’t leave Cyrillius.
No one has seen a trace of him in the last two weeks.
The words Arden spoke echo back through my brain.
I sit straight up in my bed. And my thoughts are spinning out of control.
What if?
What if…
I squeeze my eyes closed once more and flop back onto the bed.
No, I tell myself. There’s not a chance. Valen told me that he couldn’t leave Cyrillius and I believed him. I know he wasn’t guessing. He wasn’t unsure about what he said.
My throat feels tight. It’s hard to breathe, but I don’t want to breathe right now.
I hate myself. I want to be stronger.
But I can’t lie to myself.
I want Valen to be looking for me. I want him to have left Dominion. I want him here. I want him in this bed. I want his arms around me. I want his breath against my neck. I want to run my hands up his bare back, pulling him closer to me.
I want everything.
But I still know.
I know reality. I know the truth.
Valen has free will. He’s the most powerful being in the galaxy.
If he wanted to leave Cyrillius, he could. If he didn’t want to kill thousands of people, he wouldn’t.
Valen Nero is an evil man.
So I can’t be in love with him.
I feel a soft hand on my skin, and my eyes slide open. I find myself nose to nose with the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. I stare into a set of Neron blue eyes.
“Valen,” his name whispers over my lips with reverence and desperation.
“Please come with me, Nova,” he says the words like a prayer. I’m not the only desperate one. “I promise I will make it all worth it. I promise that I can be what you need.”
I sit up in the bed and Valen backs up only slightly. I can’t stop myself when I raise a hand, brushing his black hair back from his face. “I can’t, Valen. I still have so much to learn. I’m not ready to leave.”
He reaches up and covers my hand with his, holding my palm against his face. “I can teach you everything you need to know, Nova. I swear to you, I can be your teacher and I will never leave you alone.”
His words pull agony and desire and loneliness from the pit of my stomach into my broken heart.
“Valen,” I whisper as I break.
“Nova,” he says my name and I see in his eyes, he’s been breaking, too. This time, this distance has been torture. “I can’t do it anymore. All I think about is you. I can’t eat, I hardly sleep anymore, nothing else occupies my mind anymore. I can’t do it a day longer.”
His expression is fractured. His beautiful face is contorted in pain and desperation. He looks exactly how I feel.
“Please come with me, Nova.”
I’m powerless when he says my name.
I look into his Neron blue eyes, and I’m done.
I bite my lower lip slightly to hold myself together. And I nod.
The relief and gratitude in his eyes could convert the most cold-hearted person in the galaxy to believe in pre-destined partners. It floods me with peace. With happiness. With . . . love.
I take Valen’s hand, and quietly, we walk through the stone house. I follow him out the door, and together, hand in hand, we walk to his ship, into The Black Arrow.
“You can do this, Nova,” a soft but rough voice says low in my ear. “We’re almost finished. Just focus.”
I feel his hands on my arms, warm and strong. I raise my hands, concentrating on t
he ground beneath my feet. I reach out, I feel. I grab hold of the Neron with my will and I pull.
The ground raises and takes form. The building before me takes shape, rearranging with the material I add to it.
I move the earth. I shape it to my will.
And then it’s done.
I drop my hands and an exhausted breath slips between my lips.
“You did it,” he says, and I hear the pride in his voice.
A beautiful, quaint cottage sits in front of me. Made of soft gray stone and a slate roof. There are windows and a door and a fireplace.
It’s perfect.
Just for the two of us.
“Come with me,” he says quietly again. His hand slips into mine and we step forward together. He reaches out and opens the door. But before I can step inside, Valen sweeps me up into his arms. I give a shriek of surprise, but he just laughs and looks down at me with the galaxy’s most incredible smile.
“Welcome home, Nova,” he says softly as he steps across the threshold.
I don’t even look around at it. It could never be as incredible as the miracle I’m currently looking at.
I bring a hand up to the side of his face, and even though he’s holding me, even though I’m touching him, it isn’t enough. I can’t ever get enough.
The look in his eyes deepens, and I see the hunger forming in them. His grip on me tightens and his breath speeds up.
“Valen,” his name whispers across my lips in a breath.
With haste, he crosses the space and then we’re through another door. He lowers me and then my back is against something soft. But I can’t process the bed or the room. My hands slip into Valen’s hair and I’m pulling his mouth to mine as his lips take command, claiming my own.
Desperately, I pull him down to me, and his knee presses into the bed between my legs. He snakes one hand behind my back and hoists me further up on the bed, lying me flat beneath him.
My hands greedily slide down, slipping beneath his tunic, finding toned, hard skin. His hand slides up, tangling in my hair as he lowers most of his weight down onto me.
His lips are not gentle. They take mine. He pulls. His tongue lays its claim.
I breathe him.
He is everywhere. On my body. In my mind. In my heart.
Valen, I whisper in my mind, letting him hear me say his name.
Nova, I hear him echo into my own brain.
Don’t ever let me go, I beg him.
Never, he promises.
I’ve just finished cooking breakfast when a knock on the door sounds. With his long legs, Valen strides out of the bedroom and goes to it. He pulls it open, and before I even see his face, I feel the air in the room grow heavier.
Valen gives a small bow and my chest tightens as Cyrillius steps inside.
“I hope you have enjoyed your time here,” he says. And he looks totally different. His expression is light. He wears a pleasant, genuine looking smile. He walks to the kitchen counter like he’s a friend visiting. “It is such a lovely home the two of you have created together.”
Valen comes to stand at my side, wrapping an arm around my waist. I look up at him, but he does not seem concerned. There is no weight on his shoulders. He looks at Cyrillius, waiting for whatever he will say next.
“There is still work to be done,” Cyrillius says, and in his voice I hear weight. I hear how tired he is. I hear responsibility. “The galaxy will always need you, Valen. And with the two of you, we can accomplish so much more than before.”
My brows begin to furrow and I look up at Valen.
He looks down at me. And I see it all there in his eyes. The hard life he has always lived. The dark circumstances.
But here, looking at me, I see peace in him. I see a purpose. I see a man who is finally alive.
“Always together?” he asks me. He’s searching for that promise.
And looking up at him, the anxiety in my heart subsides. There will always be darkness in this galaxy. There will always be hardship and trials.
But as long as we are together, I can make it through anything, as long as we get to come here, back home, and be in each other’s arms.
“Always,” I promise.
He bends and presses his lips to mine, pulling me in close, and I know that as long as we’re together, it doesn’t matter what else happens.
He releases me and I see Cyrillius smiling at us proudly. “Come,” he says as he turns toward the door. “There is no time to waste.”
Hand in hand, Valen and I follow him out the door, and across the field of grass, to the open hatch of The Dominion.
“No!” I yell at the two figures walking into the massive Class 1 ship. “No, no!” I extend a hand out toward them, fear and horror gripping me from head to toe.
But there is no Valen to grab, no me walking senselessly to join an evil corporation.
Only cool, dark air.
I suck in a breath as it all washes over me.
“Nova?”
My father rushes through the door, nearly ripping it from its hinges. “Nova, what’s wrong?”
He sits on the edge of my bed, gripping my upper arms, looking me over for signs of damage.
But I hardly even see his face. Time punches my heart and a sense of loss drowns me.
Lunars. The dream—the vision—felt like lunars. It felt so real. It felt so tangible. I was there, in our home. I could feel the Neron I used to help Valen build it. I can still feel his hands on me, still taste him on my lips.
But none of it was real.
Our life, everything we built in those lunars. None of it was real.
“No,” the word breaks over my lips as emotions crack me. Tears rip from my eyes and I feel myself trembling all over. My father’s rough hands on my arms are not Valen’s hands. This rough and uncomfortable bed is not the one I share with Valen on another planet far from here.
“No,” the word fractures as it crosses my lips.
“Nova,” my father says, concern ripping across my name.
But it’s not Valen saying it, reverent as a prayer.
None of it was real.
“No,” I cry as I collapse into my father’s arm. And I completely fall apart.
“I know he is here,” I growl, staring at Zara from across her desk. “I need to speak to him. You have no idea how important this is!”
“Then why don’t you tell me the details,” she says, looking at me from under her lashes. Her expression is hard, her mouth set firm.
“It’s private,” I say, losing a little bit of my hot air. “Will you please just let me see Evander? I have to speak to him. You can’t help me with this.”
She glares at me, and I can see the evaluation she’s executing right now.
In the entire lunar I’ve been here on Salypso, I’ve never once seen Evander Nero. But I know it in my bones that he’s here.
“Please, Zara,” I say quietly. Emotions well in my eyes. Which makes me angry. But I’m too filled to the brim to stop them. “Please let me speak to him.”
She looks at me for five more seconds, and my stomach sinks.
There’s a reason Evander is hidden away, even from us students. She’ll never expose him.
But suddenly, she stands and crosses her office to the door. “Come with me,” she says softly.
My heart breaks out into a flutter. Not wasting a second for her to change her mind, I hurry after her.
She immediately heads to the stairs, rising up to the third floor of the Tabernacle. And then on to the fourth. She looks back at me, pressing a finger to her lips for me to be quiet, making me promise to never breathe a word of what I’m about to see. I nod.
She goes to the enormous painting of the Eon galaxy and swings it out, revealing a door.
“Leave your expectations here once you enter his chambers,” Zara says quietly, her hand resting on the knob. “Evander…has never been seemingly normal. He often is unaware of what timeline he is in. If he seems odd…he is, and h
e isn’t. But we have learned more about the future of mankind from him than all the other Nero before him. You will treat him with the respect he deserves.”
I nod.
Zara takes one breath, locking eyes with me. “You are something special, Nova. Do you realize that?”
Her suddenly serious statement jars me. My jaw tightens and I feel a weight sink onto my shoulders. I shake my head. “I am nothing.”
Before she can argue with me, I take the knob and turn it, pushing it open, and step inside.
I find myself on another set of stairs. The lighting is dim, even though my surroundings are the same white stone. The light is up ahead, and swallowing my nerves, I ascend the stairs.
It smells musty up here. Like that door and the windows haven’t been opened in a solar. The room is dim because there have been curtains pulled over most of them and light only peeks through in small slivers between sheets of green and red and yellow fabric.
I turn when I reach the top of the stairs, surveying the space.
There is only this one room here at the top of the Tabernacle. As far as I can see, there are windows surrounding the entire room, but all of them are covered. There’s a bed pushed into the far side of it, a row of bookcases stuffed to the max is against another wall. There’s a desk next to the stairs, its surface covered with books. A massive rug is spread over the floor.
Sitting in a chair, looking behind the curtains out at the lightening day, is a figure.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Evander Nero,” I say, bowing my head slightly. I stop just beyond the stairs, not quite in the room, and close enough I can make an escape if I need to.
If I startle him, he doesn’t give an outward show of it. He takes a breath and drops the curtain, turning his frame toward me.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come, Nova,” he says.
I strain my eyes to make out his features in this dim light. But as his features come into focus and my eyes adjust, I wonder for a minute if Zara has tricked me.