“Show no mercy to the traitors.”
The roaring of rushing water filled Tate’s ears drowning out Jax’s next words.
Tate read his lips, making out the words. “And trust your friends.”
Then the world ripped around her sending her into darkness once again.
* * *
It was cold. So very cold. The kind that bypassed reason and made you forget you ever knew what warmth was. It extinguished all feeling, leaving nothing but her mind to hover in that cold, dark reality. Silence wrapped around her, so deep and encompassing that she knew if she screamed the void around her would swallow the sound before it could even exist.
Since she could no longer sense her body, Tate didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed. All she knew was that she was surrounded by an unrelenting black, so pure it was what she once imagined existence after death would be like.
Was she dead?
Tate didn’t know nor did the thought give rise to fear. There was a certain peace in this place. A serenity that couldn’t be put into words.
Gradually, she became aware she wasn’t alone in the emptiness. Beside her, a bright light hovered, containing all the radiance and beauty of a supernova. Within its dazzling core rested a curled-up dragon, tiny paws clenching its tail as it dreamed.
Ilith, a part of Tate whispered. Her dragon. Her friend.
Tate felt drawn to that existence as if it called to the deepest part of herself. She yearned to embrace the light, to warm herself by its fire. Without it, she wasn’t complete.
Yet, no matter how she struggled, she couldn’t take the first step in the dragon’s direction. She could only watch. And admire. And hope the dragon’s dreams were sweet.
Tate didn’t know how long she floated there, watching over her dragon in the darkness. The change was gradual. Almost unnoticeable, as feeling slowly seeped into her limbs and the black faded away.
Tate opened her eyes to a white ceiling. She was lying on her back, a glass cylinder encasing her body.
For a moment, only a split second, fear gripped her by the throat as a sinking dread filled her at the thought of having lost herself again. Of time passing without her knowledge. How long had it been? Decades? Centuries? Were her friends still in this world? Was there even a world left?
Reason reasserted itself almost instantly. She still knew who she was. Her name. The faces of her friends. The events leading to her current predicament. If she’d gone into sleep, she’d have woken with none of those things. She’d be lost again, her history wiped clean.
Not much time could have passed, she realized. Still, that thought didn’t give her the comfort it should have. She didn’t know why she was in this glass cylinder or who had put her in it or what had happened after the events on the palace lawn.
Were Ryu and the rest alive? Had Nathan already killed them? Had he managed to raise the ship?
Not knowing the answers to these questions sent adrenaline coursing through her veins. One step at a time, she told herself.
As if sensing that thought, the glass cylinder around her receded.
Tate sucked in a huge breath of air. Even though she could breathe in that cylinder, it felt good to taste the outside. To breathe air that wasn’t enclosed in glass.
“You’re awake.” A familiar voice came from somewhere to her left.
Tate didn’t immediately respond, sitting upright and touching her chest with a wondering expression. How was she not dead? The sword had done extensive damage. She didn’t think she’d imagined that.
“I put you in a med pod, which sustained your life long enough for your relic and the pod to repair the damage. Now that we’ve gotten that cleared up, perhaps you could do something about these two,” Peter said.
Tate looked up and blinked several times at the view in front of her.
A Veles with the same fur pattern as Night stood upright on two feet in a humanoid form that was much furrier and more terrifying than the other Veles she knew. He had Peter pinned to a wall, his hand covered in fur and tipped with dangerous looking claws wrapped around Peter’s throat. With a simple flex of his fingers, he could tear out the other man’s throat.
On his shoulder, Rath crouched, his lips lifted to expose sharp teeth. Every muscle in his body was poised to strike, and the way he watched Peter said the other’s death was a foregone conclusion.
“Night?” Tate said, not hiding her shock as she looked at the humanoid Veles.
The events immediately preceding her loss of consciousness came back to her. Night’s desperate leap. Rath’s determined dive. The way they’d landed in her arms right before everything went dark.
