Flames danced in her vision. Kedar had rebuilt the fire the moment the wind shifted again and then moved to the farthest corner of the cave. He was currently driving her mad by throwing balls of hail into one of the tunnels, his back to her.
Vessa resolutely ignored him, too. She was too busy contemplating her life choices to care anyway. Her entire life would be different if she had never met Kedar. She’d be life-tied to Nikel. Be the mother of his children. Would she be happy—would she have grown to love him?
She snorted softly. No. But she also wouldn’t be stuck shivering in this death cavern with her former comrade turned greatest enemy. She would behome.
When she’d been banished, she didn’t get to say goodbye to her parents. They had been on the eastern border, dealing with aterritory dispute. One moment, she had a faction. Family. A best friend. And the next, she had nothing.
But most of her favorite moments in her thirty-four years of existence were with Kedar. Five years of deep friendship and camaraderie. A single moment of destruction. Then seven years trying to forget him. Beneath her anger, beneath the pain of betrayal, there was something else. A depthless ocean she had refused to cross.She had never truly let him go, never dealt with the aftermath. Nevergrieved. No wonder this was such a mindfuck for her.
A ghastly howl echoed in the distance, pulling her from her thoughts. It was a sound that didn’t belong to the storm.
Tilting her head to listen, she flicked her eyes to Kedar. He was preternaturally still. Was it Orcru? Some other nasty beast that lived on this dreadful planet?
When nothing followed, Vessa set the warming blanket aside and rose to her feet slowly. She crept toward the front of the cave with her raze sword, carefully stepping around the few remaining hail pieces. Kedar was beside her before she even took two steps. He signaled for her to hold using gestures they had come up with together long ago.
“What?” she signed back and the bastard only motioned for her to hold again. “Fuck. Off.” Vessa purposely took another step forward.
She only paused when she thought she heard something else. Whatever it was, it seemed like it was coming fromabovethem. She glanced upward.
“Move!” Kedar barked at the same moment an arrow shot through the snowy curtain.
Vessa shifted enough that it missed her by just a sliver. Then it detonated. The explosion caused a few icicles to fall from overhead. Qo arrows, then. They weren’t made for surface detonation; they were made to explode near orinsidesomeone.
Two more bolts whizzed through in quick succession. She cut one in half, defusing it before it could detonate above her head.
A shadowed form appeared in the storm. Vessa’s hand tightened around her hilt with anticipation. Shecraveda fight. There was no room for emotions or memories in combat. And gods, maybe it would warm her up.
The Orcru pushed through. He was dressed in armor tailored to him, and there was a deeper intelligence in his eyes. His posture was better and his muscles defined. A war Orcru, then.
He sent another arrow flying into the cave. Kedar caught it and turned it away from him as it burst. Show off.
The Orcru threw his crossbow at them before unsheathing his thick-bladed saber. Another one stepped in behind him.
“Let them come to us,” Kedar said, powering his plasma dirk. The light of it cast them into a red haze. “If there’s more, they can funnel in one at a time to meet their fate.”
She wholeheartedly agreed with him, which was exactly why she stepped forward to engage them anyway. He wasn’t her gods damn commander and these were her kills.
Kedar growled something behind her, and she drew up short. But not because of him. Behind her opponents, a strange shadow hung on the other side of the snow. A dancing, creeping thing. There one moment, gone the next.
Definitely not Orcru.
A thick, blue leg reached through the snow. Then another. Fromabove.
Vessa took a step back. The war Orcru took her retreat as a sign of victory. He confidently stepped forward to close the distance.
She only had eyes for the Vydera, though. Without a sound, it came through the snow. Eight opalescent orbs were trained on the second Orcru’s back as two more legs anchored it inside thecave’s entrance. It raised its fangs, stilled. Then its eyes,all of them, slowly rolled to look at her and Kedar.
Fear was ice in her veins. She couldn’t look away. Couldn’tmove.
Vessa felt another presence within herself. It brushed against her awareness with a feather-soft touch, and understanding washed over her in a way she would never be able to explain. It was there and gone just as fast. Kedar’s plasma dirk powered down. Had he experienced the same thing?
Vessa held the Orcru at bay with a swing of her raze sword. He finally reached them in the same moment the female Vydera struck his companion.
She was a silent assassin. Her attack was so swift and exacting the second Orcru didn’t have time to scream. He was pulled up and out. The only evidence of his fate was a sickening crunch that could be heard over the storm.
The remaining Orcru whipped around, giving his back to Vessa and Kedar. She could have easily stuck her raze sword through a weak point in his armor, but that wasn’t the deal.
“You belong to her now,” Kedar said with an ominous finality.
