I reached toward it, my fingertips itching to touch that impossible vision. Tears threatened. Around me, wonder and horror tangled so tightly I couldn’t tell which was which. I was breathing, and yet I was not. I didn't think it was air filling my lungs, and yet I didn't feel deprived. Neither did I feel the cold that I was supposed to in space. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, defied all the physics I had ever learned.
A glimmer cracked the void, a pinpoint at first, then a scorching streak of molten gold arced straight at me. My chest seized.No! No fucking way.I jerked sideways; all of my instincts were screaming at me to escape the comet.
My gaze flicked back to the purple world, and a mad thought ran through me: maybe I could dive into it and hide there. I stared, pouring every ounce of desperate hope into my look, and, to my utter astonishment, the planet obeyed. It surged toward me as if pulled by an invisible cord—or was I surging toward it? I couldn't tell—it grew larger until it filled my entire vision.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. What about atmospheres? It was too late now, though, and hadn't I already gone through one when I was pushed out here, whereverherewas? Well, whereverherewas, it didn't seem like they'd heard of Newton, Einstein, or Hawking. Orheresimply didn't care.
Either way, I didn't feel any impact —only a shift, like jumping on a trampoline. The darkness fell away, replaced by something warm and alive. My bare feet sank into lush, spongy moss. Damp air hit my lungs, heady with scents of wet dirt and alien blooms. I blinked, stunned, surrounded by a violet-tinged jungle beneath a canopy that shimmered like fractured starlight.
Giant vines the thickness of tree trunks coiled overhead, leaves edged in silver. Enormous flowers pulsed with soft luminescence, opening and closing as if breathing. My heart pounded so hard I thought it might burst, still reeling from the sight of that golden arrow slicing the void.
This wasn’t Earth. This wasn’t Heaven. It was something in between, a realm my mind had no map for. Or maybe I was dying, and my mind made it up. Even if that were the case, I would have expected an ancient landscape, not an alien jungle. I'd never been into sci-fi movies, so if this was something my mind conjured, then—. A thunderous crash rent the air, stopping my thoughts dead. I whipped around just as a fiery projectile slammed into the ground at my side, sending shockwaves through the jungle. Leaves shivered; vines recoiled. My breath caught in my throat.
Hewas there…
For one impossible heartbeat, I thought I was looking at an angel. His entire body glowed with a molten-gold aura; the glow spilled over his muscles, which looked like they had been carved from living marble. His broad shoulders strained against a black uniform that was cut to fithim like a second skin, the kind of severe lines that screamed soldier. Power. Control. Every part of him was built to dominate the space around him.
Totally, exactly, unfairly, my type.
His face was all angles, sharp cheekbones, a jaw carved with infuriating precision, a mouth made for both commands and sins. And his hair, brown shot through with gold, as though the light itself had gotten tangled in the strands.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I could only stare until his eyes found mine; only then did the air leave my lungs.
His eyes were pitch-black pools, endless as the void we’d fled—but not cold like the Cryons’. His were filled with fire and ache, violence and longing.
Though I didn’t know how, I knew they burned with wars he’d fought and desires he’d never let himself win. I felt my skin prickle, and my stomach curdle.
Maybe he was an angel.
But if so, he’d fallen. And damn, he terrified me.
I stood frozen, my heart hammering in my chest, and for a moment, he only watched me. That terrible, beautiful glow of his flickered against the violet jungle, gold devouring purple until there was nothing left but him.
“Well,” his voice rolled out smooth and low, but with a razor’s bite beneath, “what do we have here?”
He spoke a language I had never heard before, and yet I understood him thanks to the translator chip the Cryons had forced into my brain. The sound of it coiled throughme, warm and dangerous, like he’d already decided I belonged to him. I swallowed, but my throat was dry. Words clung to my tongue, uselessly. He was too much: too solid, too alive, too impossible to exist in the middle of a dead world.
He stepped closer. The ground shivered under his weight.
“You shouldn’t be here.” His head tilted, golden-brown hair shifting with the movement. “No being survives the pull of Nox Eternum. And yet…” His black eyes dragged over me, leaving my skin raw. “Here you are.”
Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my legs wouldn’t obey. I’d faced the Cryons with their cold efficiency, watched their ships swallow my world, but this man—thisthing—was worse. Because he wasn’t indifferent.
He was interested. And I had no idea if that made me lucky or already dead. My body screamed at me to back away, to put as much distance as possible between myself and this golden monster. But I couldn’t.
He terrified me, yes, but he fascinated me more.
Was he a demon? The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it stirred something warm and reckless in my chest. Why was I so drawn to him, drawn as if we were two halves finally finding each other across centuries?
This pull between us felt like destiny, a gravity older than names. He radiated danger and power, yes, but beneath it was a tenderness that felt like a promise.My mind insisted he couldn’t be real. No man should look like that. No man should move like that.
An angel, perhaps. Or a devil born from light—one my soul had been waiting for.
My hand twitched at my side, and the absurd urge to reach out and touch him rushed through me. To test if he was flesh and bone or nothing more than a hallucination conjured by my dying brain. But then the force of him pressed against me like a storm, and I knew he was very much alive.
Alive, and watching me like a lion studies a gazelle.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Every muscle locked while his gaze held me there; his black eyes glittered with something unreadable. My chest rose and fell too fast, like the gazelle’s, begging the predator not to pounce. Not to devour me.
