Miekil groaned as he leaned face-first into a tree.“Left or right?”
I blinked heavily at what the fuxx he could be talking about, but then I saw.We found ourselves facing two identical corridors made of the same invisible shimmer on the cloaked ship, right in the middle of the Xenoxx forest.On Klio-3, I could kind of understand the randomness, but here?My home?This forest was just that.A forest.
The corridors shifted and twisted like a rollercoaster, seeming to hang us upside down for a moment.
That was too much.Both of us collapsed.
Miekil grunted.“We need help.”
No kidding.I reached for the communicator on my wrist, but I had no hands.No sense either since everything was so damn funny.
All we could do was lie here and laugh as the forest burned.
Chapter thirteen
Nera
“Nera,no!”Axxelheldme back from the fiery pit on the cliffside that must’ve once been a cloaked spaceship.“It’s too late.”
I shook my head because I refused to believe it.“We don’t even know if that was Maxx who triggered the self-destruct.”
Axxel’s fingers dug harder into my arms as he ducked his head to look me in the eyes.“Iwill check.You don’t need to do that.”
“You did it before too.At the embassy when he and his wife…” I swallowed thickly, unable to finish that sentence.
“I did.I will do what needs to be done, Nera,” he said, his voice firm.“You have my word.”
I couldn’t process all that he meant right then.Do what needs to be done.Still, I saw the worry and heartbreak written clearly on his face, which he tried to hide with a mask of grim determination.
How would it feel to lose your king not once, but twice?
He turned to Roxxanne and gave her a brotherly kiss on the top of her head and then glanced back at me.“Watch after Roxxanne.I’ll be right back.”
While he hurried away, Roxxanne and I clung to each other and cried softly.It was the longest couple of minutes of my life, the waiting, the wondering.
I had no idea if I would ever forgive Maxx, but I didn’t want us to end like this.In a violent explosion of more of Earth Space Fleet’s lies and deception.We were better than that.Hedeservedbetter than that.
“What if he’s gone?”Roxxanne whispered.
I almost answered with the truth.That Axxel would drag out another Maxx clone and plug it into Faid tech to power him on, but she didn’t know the truth yet.Axxel had said he was the only Xenoxx who knew what Maxx really was.Silly me, but also shame on me for helping him keep Roxxanne in the dark.
“Then you’ll have me,” I told her honestly.“Always.You won’t ever be alone.I swear it.”
She cried harder then and held to me tighter, and pain slashed at my heart with irrevocable precision.I hated the shoes she was in, with her mom dead and facing the possibility that her dad was too.It wasn’t fair that someone so young had suffered so much.
Axxel sprinted back toward us, tension pulsing his jaw.“There’s not much left, but what is left is burning the forest.I couldn’t tell if Maxx or that Killian were in there or not.I’m sorry.”
His voice shook on his last words, and blinking hard, he rushed back to the castle.
The two of us stood there, Roxxanne breaking apart in my arms while numbness crashed over me.
He might not have been inside.
He might have been inside.
My thoughts switched between the two options, back and forth, ticking down the seconds until I knew for sure.The not knowing was killing me from the inside out.
A bell began to ring, and Axxel and a horde of Xenoxx warriors armed with buckets and hoses and water drones poured from the castle.
