“Armor is at amber,” Exxo noted lazily. “Despite my initial diagnostics, our shields were not fully powered or functional. Odds are looking grimmer with each passing moment.”
That made no sense. Systems didn’t simply glitch and fool even Exxo’s rigorous inspection.
Ved had no time to contemplate the implications of this as the enemy craft closest to him deployed its grappling claw. It clanked and scratched against the left wing, looking for purchase. “Seems like their orders are to capture us alive if possible, or kill us if not,” he said over the comm line, and Kravis grunted in acknowledgment.
Ved was able to maneuver his shadowdrifter out of the claw’s grasp, only to take two more critical strikes as the other vessels closed in around him. Flanked on either side, he was trapped between them. There was an attempt to attach the grapple again, but he rammed into the offending ship, knocking it off course. Alarms flashed withthe impact. As Ved peeled away from them, his vessel shook with more hits.
Nevskol.He refused to die here.
“Armor at black,” Exxo reported, meaning in the next few hits, his ship would be nothing more than debris. “I will not tell you the probability of survival at this point. I will, however, begin to back up my data, and if you like, I can sing the lament of my people in our final moments.”
Ved growled, but before he could respond, a burst of light paired with Kravis’s battle cry echoing in his helmet told him his bruvya had just destroyed his target.
One down.
Ved let his shadowdrifter dip, barely dodging another blast. His opponent wasn’t so lucky. Lining himself up, his cannon hit perfectly. The enemy craft’s armor collapsed, the hull was breached, and two Xaal were pulled into the black. One used his final moments to shoot at Ved’s ship with his phase rifle before succumbing to the dark reaper that was space.
Two down.
But it was the final ship, who had been cooking their blasters, that would end him. As the deep violet shot came for him, the world seemed to slow. Exxo said something, and Kravis was bellowing at him as he raced across the sea of black, but all Ved could think was how much of a waste it all was. Every torturous moment he’d endured, every being he’d meticulously hunted, every battle he’d bled for, and every skull he’d collected to forge the might of Clan Cleave.
It had been for nothing.
He braced for impact.
Instead, his shadowdrifter was dragged backward violently. The ship before him was being pulled, too, even as its thrusters burned hot in a futile struggle.
Exxo was attempting to analyze the situation, but one thing was clear—some tear in the cosmos had been made behind him, and they were now caught in its gravitational pull.
Rips in space were deadly. Lifeform-created ones even more so.
There was no escaping it.
He wondered if Marlep had foreseen this. Even if she had, would he have heeded her warning?
This wasn’t the death he wanted. He deserved a Xaal’s death—covered in the blood of his enemies, his body finally broken. His name should have been carved into the Spire Stone, his skull placed among those in the sacred temple, his bone dust scattered across Cleave territory.
Instead, it was into nothingness he would go.
Two more enemy ships materialized from warp, targeting Kravis immediately. He wouldn’t make it out alive, either.
Ved raged as powerlessness rose up to choke him.
Weak.
His thrusters burned, lighting up the devouring void before dying altogether. Kravis roared his name and made violent vows in the old tongue.
And then Ved was sucked into the depthless chasm.
Chapter 2
Isobel
Isobel Nott wasn’t one to obey the rules of polite society.
At least, not all the little pesky ones that kept her from doing the things she loved most. Coupled with that, she was notoriously hard-headed.
“It is just a short walk,” Isobel said despite the piercing glare her brother, Henry, pinned her with. The reasons for today’s rebellion were her insatiable desire for the written word, and for consuming those words in the lavender gardens behind Nott Manor.
