I would choose her in every lifetime, every timeline, every possible configuration of the stars.
This woman is going to drive me insane for the rest of my very long life.
And I cannot wait.
“Rynn!” Her voice cuts through the music. “Henrok’s almost there! We need to hold them thirty more seconds!”
Thirty seconds. I can do thirty seconds.
I grab another rifle, slap in my last charge cell, and throw myself back into the fight.
We fight like we were made for this.
No—we fight like wechosethis. Chose each other. Chose to stand together against everything the universe wants to throw at us.
Polly fires from her elevated position, calling targets with preternatural accuracy. I move through the chaos at mid-range, using speed and precision to hold the line while Henrok tears toward the charges.
The bond hums between us, bright and fierce. I don’t need to check her position—I feel it. She doesn’t need to warn me about the elite flanking left—I’m already moving. We flow around each other like water, like starlight, like two halves of something that was always meant to be whole.
Two on the catwalk,she sends.
Seen them.I fire twice. They fall.
Three more coming through the smoke on your right.
Cover me.
She does. Her rifle cracks, and I’m already spinning, already engaging, trusting her to guard my blind spots while I guard hers.
Henrok reaches Generator Two. I hear him roar something in Zaterran—a curse, a prayer, I cannot tell—as he rips the charge panel open.
“Sixty seconds on the timer!” he bellows. “I need time!”
We give him time.
Polly drops two more. I take out three in close quarters, the fighting brutal and ugly and nothing like the elegant dueling forms I learned in my father’s court. Blood and smoke and screaming, and through it all, that terrible song playing like the universe’s worst soundtrack.
Fifty seconds then forty.
A suicide squad breaks through—four soldiers, sprinting for the generator, armed with backup detonators. They’ll blow themselves up to take us with them if they have to.
Polly and I move without discussion.
She takes the two on the left, rifle switching to full auto. I take the two on the right, plasma fire and ancient reflexes combining into something deadly.
They fall. All four.
Thirty seconds.
Rynn.Her voice in my head, tight with warning.Behind you—
I spin, but not fast enough.
The plasma bolt catches me in the side, right over the existing wound. The pain is—
I hear myself scream.
The floor comes up to meet me. Or maybe I fall to meet it. Hard to tell when the world is fracturing into white-hot agony and the only thing I can feel through the bond is—
