Born of fear for him, yes, but it was more than that. I recognized it now, the thing I had been fighting tooth and nail since he first snarled into my life. It wasn’t only the mind-shattering orgasm. It wasn’t only that he was themost arrogant, impossible, insufferable man I had ever met, though that was part of the problem. I had always liked arrogant, impossible, insufferable men, and he was the alpha of them all. But, no, that wasn’t all of it. There was something else. Something deeper. Something that drew me to him, no matter how hard I tried to shove it down.
Maybe he was right, and this was that weirdAelythbond twisting through us. Maybe it was fate or biology or some cosmic joke. But whatever it was, I couldn’t deny it anymore. I wanted to know. I wanted to see where it would lead, even if it were straight into the fire.
God help me, I wanted to explore it. Him.
So whatever the draw was, wherever it came from, I was done denying it. There was nowhere else for me to go, nothing I could do, so I might as well embrace whatever he was offering me. Whatever weird quest we were going on. What was the alternative? Lay here in bed and lament all the bad things that had happened to me? Because there was no going back to my old life.
"Fine!" I snarled into the room at large. "You win, universe. I'll do whatever it is you want me to do."
And I would begin with exploring this impossibly huge palace. Somewhere there had to be something like a library, maybe even a computer. If I was good at one thing, it was digging. Never mind if it was more often in dirt than in books. In the end, I always found what I was looking for.
I leftElla with her fingers still curled around mine, and a keening in my skull that no amount of violence could shake. I was not myself as I stalked the corridor. I was something older, something that reeked of blood and iron, of old nightmares that survived while the rest of me did not. I loathed the fact that I had to leave her. Especially now, when we were just getting to know one another, and I could feel her feelings for me awakening.
But my brothers’ voices rang louder behind me, a thunder of argument and anxiety. I hated to admit it, but they were right. The quest to contact the Pandraxian Emperor, Daryus, could not wait. The situation with the Mmuhr’Rhong was becoming more dire by the moment. A fact I hadn't allowed myself to admit to before, but it was true.
Soon, they would overrun us if we didn't do something drastic. I had no idea what that was, yet deep down, I wasconvinced that it had something to do with Ella. Why else would she have been thrown into my path just when we were becoming the most desperate? Why not a thousand years ago or a thousand years in the future? It wasn't like time mattered to my brothers or me.
Within the blink of an eye, I arrived at the Portal’s site. As always, the atmosphere seethed with storm. Not storm as mortals knew it, but a frenzy of forces drawn together to wrestle creation from destruction. A new galaxy was already forming before me. One would be thrust outward into the void like a child torn from its mother’s womb; the other dragged back into the Abyss, fodder for the endless hunger of the Mmuhr’Rhong.
The winds of power tore across the threshold, howling through the void, lashing against my aura until the black inside me strained toward it, eager to leap into chaos. Starlight and shadow collided in violent currents, all dragged into the vortex where the Abyss had devoured another galaxy whole.
Then, the storm broke.
Two vast spheres shimmered into being, twin mirrors suspended in the dark. They pulsed with stolen light, birthing the skeleton of a galaxy, a carbon copy of the one swallowed by the void. Stars flared like embers, nebulae unfurled in slow motion, spiral arms stretching outward as if daring the Abyss to strike again.
But it was hollow. Empty. Beautiful, but barren. No voices. No balance. Just the echo of life that once was.
We had made this. We, the Arkhevari, had tornopen the skin of the cosmos and forced it to bleed light, a counterweight to the Dark Abyss, a way to hold the scales steady. But each time I stood here, I wondered whether the Portal was our salvation… or the very thing that would destroy us.
I clenched my fists, turned from the radiance, and boarded the waiting craft. Duty called. Always duty. And there was no time to mourn the ghosts we had resurrected.
I boarded one of the ships hovering on the inside of the Portal, and keyed my coordinates into the main navigator, not for Pandrax, the Pandraxians' home world—security was too tight—but for an outpost on the dark side of their system. The navigator responded to my touch instantly, and, with a flicker of code and a check of the biosign lock, we were ready to go. I let my fingers drift over the panel, feeling the thrum of the engine beneath. The craft was built like a predator, sleek and fast, ready to strike and leave no survivors. I liked it.
A few heartbeats later, I launched, careful to stay beneath the sensor sweep of any possible ships that might be in close proximity, and punched through the atmosphere with all the subtlety of a bullet. The stars opened up around me, and for a moment, the silence was holy. I let myself drift, watching the blue-black swirl pass, as the distant glow of Nox Eternum receded behind. I had never been much for reflection, but the emptiness of space did something to the mind.
More of the ship’s controls blinked to life, cycling through news feeds, intercepts, encrypted bursts fromspecies all over the universe to keep me informed of the latest intelligence. I focused on news about the Pandraxian Empire, which I absorbed in moments. It left me stunned. The words glared back at me in the pale glow of the console, impossible yet undeniable. The Pandraxians had discovered theirmekarriesamong the humans—soulmates, anchors, the other halves they had believed long extinct, just like our Aelyth.
My lip curled. Eons of silence, of fighting in the dark with nothing but the Abyss clawing at us, and now the Pandraxians claimed what we had bled and lost? A species barely out of their cradle, fumbling with fire, and suddenly they were finding bonds the Arkhevari had been torn from?
It was time to contact the Pandraxian Emperor, Daryus. I could have simply forced my way into his mind, announced myself in a blaze of power, but where was the fun in that? I may have had no choice but to take on this mission, but I would do it on my terms, and my terms meant dramatic.
Not reckless. Just… unforgettable.
Besides, I didn’t want to shatter his mortal mind before I’d had the chance to speak. That was my justification, anyway. The truth was, this would take finesse. Better to let curiosity and anticipation do the work, to build rapport and trust, than to stomp in like a megatrom—a lumbering beast that flattened everything in its path. The easiest way was to slip through his comms. Not a declaration, not a demand. A whisper. A lure.One that would tantalize him enough to send someone he trusted to verify my claim.
I set the message to cycle through the encrypted bands, hidden so that only his intelligence channels could find it.
Message for Emperor Daryus
Emperor,
You do not know me, but you know the shadow of my kind.
I am an Arkhevari. The legends you call myth walk still. If your empire is to survive, if the worlds you guard are to remain yours, you will hear what I have to say.
I require no audience yet. Send one you trust to meet me, to see if my words hold truth. We will talk after.
—Zapharos, Praetor of War
