Damn it, she didn’t want to die like this.
I don’t want to die at all.I want to live, with him. I want…
There was a spray of wild blaster fire, and her eyes sprang open to reveal a familiar figure hauling the guard into the air by his throat.
“Ren,” she breathed, hope spreading its wings in her chest.
Rentir slammed him down with such force that the floor rattled, and the guard fell still in an instant.
“Stop him!” Tellefan screamed, scrabbling backward.
Rentir’s eyes were starkly black as they met hers, flickering only briefly with recognition. Then he turned, scyra whipping through the air behind him, and she knew no matter what Tellefan shouted, there would be no stopping him.
Another guard recovered, untangling himself and raising his blaster, but Rentir leaned to the side as he pulled the trigger. The plasma bolt whistled past his head. He leaned down and palmed the visor of the male’s helmet. With impossible strength, he ripped open the visor, and his scyra plunged inside, cutting off the guard’s brief cry of despair.
Recovering from her shock, she scrambled forward on all fours, snatching up the first fallen guard’s blaster and aiming itat one of the two that remained. They were both totally focused on Rentir, discounting her as a threat.
She fired at the one closest to her, who was aiming his weapon at her male. The shot didn’t penetrate his armor, but it made his head jerk in her direction. Rentir tracked the movement, and a moment later, the male’s arm was bent at an impossible angle inside his armor as he screamed, the blaster abandoned.
The final guard fired at Rentir, and Cordelia couldn’t help the scream that bubbled out of her as a bolt tore through his shoulder.
His arm sagged uselessly at his side, and though the wound didn’t bleed, it gaped and sizzled as the flesh around his joint boiled. Rentir didn’t flinch, didn’t slow as he approached the male.
His unharmed arm reached out, claws screeching against the male’s helmet. He bashed him into the floor once, twice, a third time, until the male’s head was resting in a crater. His legs were pinwheeling, hands clawing at Rentir’s arm.
Rentir adjusted his grip, hand locking around the male’s neck, and on the next violent slam, the guard fell still.
When he turned toward Tellefan, the male blanched.
“Rentir, wait, wait,” he stammered, holding out a hand as he struggled to his feet within the snare of his robes. “You do not want to do this.”
Rentir laughed darkly, moving toward him with slow, purposeful menace.
“I command you to stop!” Tellefan shouted, sliding along the row of consoles he was backed up against, pointing at Rentir. “I am your maker, and you will obey me!”
Rentir’s scyra poised over his shoulder like a viper ready to strike.
“I made you!” Tellefan screamed, cringing back as far as the console would allow, causing the holoscreen behind him to flicker erratically. “You cannot do this! You cannot!”
“Are those your final words?”
All the fight seemed to go out of Tellefan at once. His gaze drifted to Cordelia, and he began to laugh. “Fucking females,” he said with defeat.
Rentir’s hand closed around his throat, claws biting so deep that arterial blood sprayed. His scyra plunged into one of Tellefan’s eyes as he gurgled, then the other. Cordelia had to look away or risk losing her lunch all over the deck.
“Cordelia,” Rentir called, punctuated by the heavy thump of a body hitting the ground.
Warily, she looked back at him. His dark eyes found her as he flicked blood off his hand.
“I thought you were dead,” she admitted, her voice cracking.
“I told you, where you lead, I must follow. I cannot leave this world while you are still in it.”
She staggered toward him and threw her arms around his waist, ignoring how the blood he was drenched in soaked into her own clothes. His arm banded around her, and his nose buried in her tangled hair. He breathed like a dragon, lungs working like bellows as he drank her in.
Drawing back, she looked up at him, frowning. “Where’s Thalen?”
His jaw worked, and he shook his head sharply. Her heart plummeted.
