How many lifetimes had he lived without her? She’d always wanted to share her future with him, to fly among the stars and travel to new worlds. Finding him in the next life should have been easy with the right technology, but twenty lives…
She pressed a hand to her mouth to suppress a sob.
Raindrops splattered against her hand and dotted the screen as a pre-recorded video of Kale played.
“I wish I could see your face,” he whispered, rubbing a hand across his buzz-cut blond hair. Kale’s thin-stretched voice was no match for the haunted pain in his eyes. “Do you remember what I told you? About courage and fear?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes as someone shouted again. That was three directions now, an invisible noose closing around her neck.
But she couldn’t leave Kale. Not yet.
Kale rubbed his head again, something he did when under a lot of stress. Even his pale complexion seemed dull with exhaustion. “I know what my father’s done to you, Jàden. It’s not your fault.”
She leaned her head against the pod. Frank—Kale’s father. Thanks to that asshole, she’d spent two years before hypersleep locked in a cage without so much as a glance at another human being. The lights on bright through day and night cycles. He’d tortured her with sensory deprivation to unlock the strength in her power while simultaneously making her weak.
So much time had passed. She could only hope Frank had suffered a long and horrible death, but some deeper instinct told Jàden she’d never be that lucky.
Kale’s voice pulled her thoughts back to the present as he pressed a button on his console.
“I’m going to get you back to our ship. It won’t be easy, but you’re not alone. I’ll be with you every step of the way.” An image appeared below his face—a zankata with its wings spread as if about to take flight. The bird’s black feathers faded to bright indigo fletchings beneath its wings. “This is your symbol now. Here is where you’ll find safety.”
“Not after four thousand years,” she muttered. Raindrops splattered against her cheek to hide the tears.
“No matter what happens, know this: I’m out there somewhere, reborn into a new life.”
A new body, a new face. How would she ever know who he was if she couldn’t recognize his features?
“I’ll find you, baby.” She needed a pilot to take her back home, to Hàlon, and he was the only man she trusted.
Kale pressed his hand to the screen. “Find your zankata and go back to the beginning. I’m coming for you.”
The bands of light disappeared.
“Kale?”
She smacked the empty transmission panel to bring it back to life as grief swelled in her chest. Glowing hypersleep serum smudged the dark screen as she slammed her shoulder against the glass.
“Don’t leave me!”
A surge of electricity frizzled across the screen, flames bursting through the metal welds and dissipating into wisps of smoke.
“No!” Jàden pounded the glass. “Don’t turn off. Don’t—”
She couldn’t handle his loss again, not so soon after his death. Clutching her head, Jàden screamed the ache in her heart.
“Come back, please.”
Sparks trailed through the connecting walls, and one by one, the other pods hissed open. Hypersleep serum splashed to the ground, followed by several waking sleepers crashing to the mud.
Voices shouted in the distance, and something pounded against the ground. It sounded like horses, the noise so familiar from her childhood that Jàden whipped around.
The last pod hissed open. An old man fell to his hands and knees, vomiting up stasis fluid. The others sleepers crouched, gagging up green ooze as if unaware of the danger.
“Run,” she whispered. Before Frank catches us.
She needed to move her ass too.
Jàden had barely stumbled a few steps when the pod tubes tugged at the needles still embedded in her skin. She winced in pain.
Midnight black horses charged across the clearing, riders in woodland browns and greens with hoods over their faces. One looked right at her, and she shrank against the smoking console. The other held a wooden bow with the arrow pulled tight. The weapon was legendary in the hands of Saheva, Guardian of the Breaking Sun, but Jàden had never seen a real person use one before.
As the rider fired the arrow, both hooded figures and their horses disappeared into the trees. Which was exactly where she should be headed—somewhere to hide.
In their wake were half a dozen more riders in black leather uniforms closing in from all sides, a silver emblem on their shoulders but not one Jàden recognized. One of their company fell to the ground, an arrow buried in his neck.
Fear gripped her, but Kale’s voice echoed in her head. Go back to the beginning.
Of what?
She’d figure it out later. First, she had to get out of this place before she was captured again. Jàden yanked a hypersleep needle out of her arm, wincing at the sting.
“Dalanath san drapo!” a rider shouted and pulled back hard on the reins. His companions wrangled their horses around and raced back into the clearing.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
All of them carried weapons and looked meaner than an angry pilot with an itchy trigger finger.
A uniformed rider fired an arrow into the old man still coughing up fluid. His withered hands clawed the shaft, and he fell to the mud, lifeless eyes staring at Jàden.
If they tried to capture her, she couldn’t defend herself, not without the Flame. She pressed her back against the empty pod as the uniformed man strung another arrow and turned it toward her, his companions spreading out to corral her and all the other sleepers in.
She jammed the needle between the seams of the bracelet to trigger it open. But the metal shaft snapped. The stone was too hard or the needle too thin.
A black horse charged into the clearing. The hooded figure on its back unsheathed two long daggers and crashed into the bowman.
The arrow loosed and plunged into her shoulder.
Pain ripped through Jàden as she crashed to the mud. The long, thin rod wedged into her body like a giant rock into her joint. Hot agony seared in her arm as she cried out in pain.
She grasped the shaft to yank out the arrow, but a dagger sliced to the ground next to her hand.
The hooded figure stood amid uniformed men who circled him with their horses. They drew their swords, and he raised his hands in surrender. His eyes met hers, filled with a deep-seated anger masked by strong determination.
It was the same man who’d stood outside her pod before it opened. Maybe he wanted to hurt her too.
Or to help.
Clinging to that thought, Jàden grabbed the dagger and dug the blade into the bracelet’s seam until the circlet sprang open.
The Flame’s light rushed into her veins like unbridled fire.
Breathing in her power as the hooded figure pulled a man off his horse, she dropped the knife and gripped the empty pod.
She hesitated, not entirely sure how strong her power was anymore, only that it had grown during her years in captivity. A hand went flying past her head and smacked the smoking console, spraying blood against Jàden’s cheek.
Without another thought, the Flame’s energy surged through her arms into the metal, sparks shooting in a dozen directions until the tubes holding each sleeper burst from their seams, releasing them from their pods.
“Run,” she blurted out, her voice faltering when a muscular woman in Enforcer grays attacked a rider.
Four silver petals lay against her shoulder around a red orb.
The bloodflower. An emblem of peace and protection.
Except every Enforcer on Hàlon had orders to kill Jàden because of the power she wielded. Terror seized her heart as other Enforcers yanked out tubes and scrambled to their feet, their hardened bodies healthy and muscular. One woman with short-cropped hair yanked a dagger off a rider
’s hip and shoved it into his back.
Power surged through her, riding the wave of fear and pulling enough of the Flame’s energy to power a starship. White light crackled along every vein and capillary until she could no longer keep it contained.
Oh, shit.
Too weak to fight like the others, the more blood she saw, the harder it was to control the Flame. She clenched her eyes shut.
Please don’t kill them.
The ground rippled beneath her feet. Metal hypersleep pods shattered, tearing along the wall and shaking loose wires into the mud. Horses screamed and pounded away as fountains of rock burst from the ground, swirling up to jagged points.
Jàden opened her eyes, for one single moment her body free of all pain.
Dust rained down over bodies scattered in the mud, both uniformed men and the sleepers they’d killed.
The last from her world had swords buried in their chests.
Only one uniformed man remained, a silver ring around his arm below his emblem, likely their leader. He swung his sword at the hooded figure, who barely ducked the blade in time. The two men circled one another, feinting attacks and dodging each other’s blades with the occasional punch to the face.
The Flame’s power swirled in her veins as she leaned against twisted metal and shattered rock, pulling needles out of her skin.
The leader roared in pain as the hooded figure clutched his wrist.
In half a breath, he had the black-clad figure on his knees with a giant knife buried in his throat.
For one moment, she considered what it might feel like to have his knife in her throat. To end her pain and the anguish of Kale’s tragic death.
Nothing but peaceful bliss until her next life started.
But Kale might already be in his next life with no memory of their shared past. If she died now, she could lose him in the seas of the afterlife and forget all they were to one another.
The hooded figure yanked his weapon out of the leader’s throat and twisted the knife against the flat of his arm, speaking words she couldn’t understand.
Jàden scrambled backwards along the line of pods, now shattered metal and glass with rain-soaked sparking wires. The discarded dagger lay on the ground, but maybe she could rip the arrow out and use it to protect herself.
He advanced cautiously toward her as she grabbed the wooden shaft.
“I don’t want to die. Not yet.”
Quick as lightning, he closed the gap between them and opened a hand in surrender, his blade dropping to the ground. He pushed the cowl off his head and held up a hand for her to stop.
“Ekki.” His voice was deep, guttural.
She glanced toward the Enforcers and uniformed men, unmoving on a mat of dirt and pine needles. “Are they…”
“Herana.” Eyes as dark as rich tree soil stared back at her from a tan, weathered face.
Blood leaked from Jàden’s shoulder as he wrapped his hand around hers. Warmth flooded from his gentle touch into her skin as he lifted her face to meet his.
He whispered a few words, his tone gentle despite the harsh dialect. “Herana, sanda le.”
Then pain sliced through her neck as he snapped the arrow shaft in half. She cried out, gripping the bearded man until the sharpness eased.
The stranger cupped her chin.
Jàden froze under his grip, a gentle warmth she hadn’t felt in nearly four thousand years. None of her captors had ever touched her, a thick barrier of glass always dividing them. And that didn’t include her long millennia in hypersleep.
Their shared heat triggered a longing in her heart, like coming home to a lost family after years in exile.
“Please, don’t let go.” She clutched his hand, pulling it against her forehead.
Flecks of blood splattered the bracer on his arm. He’d killed those men with barely a scratch on his cheek, and he hadn’t harmed her.
A man like him could kill Frank before the bastard had the chance to capture her again.
And Jàden didn’t want to be alone anymore.
She couldn’t bear another day with no one to talk to.
Desperation won out over fear of the stranger as she gripped him tighter, sobbing against his dirt-stained fingers. For the first time in years, she had someone to touch. A voice to hear that wasn’t on a computer screen or spouting useless data.
“I need your help.” She grabbed the stranger’s forearm, his muscles solid beneath the soiled garment. A small voice in her head warred against what she was about to do, but she needed protection. Just for a little while.
Don’t leave me.
The Flame’s energy crackled along her arm and illuminated her fingers before the light absorbed into him.
“Forgive me,” she said. The guilt was already there, taking the choice away from another, but she had no way to communicate with this stranger. Without his help, she had no doubt she’d die. “I promise I’ll reverse this and untie the threads of energy.”
“Melin oné. Herana, ekki.”
The rest of his words were a garbled mess to her ears, but his features hardened. Jàden sensed he was trying to stop her from using the Flame, but she’d been forced against her will for far too long.
She hated forcing another, but desperation squashed the tiny voice in her head. “I won’t hurt you.”
Guilt tugged at her chest as a current of energy threaded through her skin, carrying a wave of strength she’d never possessed. Luminescent trails lifted from her arms, digging into his neck and binding the core of her essence to the stranger.
His strength flowed back, shielding her like a suit of armor.
Jàden savored the feel of him, a connection nearly as strong as the fire surging through her veins.
Wincing at the pain in her shoulder, she wrapped her other hand tight around his wrist and leaned her forehead against his chest.
Warmth, the touch she craved, beat rhythmically underneath his thick clothes.
Jàden breathed him in and twisted her palm skyward. Flecks of light and shadow swirled together above the deep-cut lines in her palm.
“I tied your energy to mine,” she whispered.
A forbidden bond, but she was no longer under the jurisdiction of Hàlon’s laws, and she needed help.
Pushing aside her guilt, she lifted her gaze to the stranger. Just a few days, she promised herself. Long enough to find food and water, and get her wound bandaged. Then she’d release him. “Please, help me.”
CHAPTER 3
Meridan
Jàden’s shoulder screamed in agony each time his horse bounced too hard or leapt over a fallen log. She didn’t know where he was taking her or long they traveled, only that it was away from her hypersleep pod and all those dead people.
Away from Frank.
Go back to the beginning. I’m coming for you. She clung to Kale’s final words as she lost all awareness of her surroundings or any movement. She didn’t need to sleep anymore, but she couldn’t stay awake.
“Don’t leave me,” she muttered, a trace of incense in the air, but something wedged her mouth open.
She spit out the stick and screamed as sharp pain sliced into her shoulder. Bright light flickered in a dozen lanterns hanging from wooden beams.
Frank found me.
A red-haired woman with freckles on her nose stepped into the light, a bloody dagger clutched in her hand.
Panic clutched Jàden’s chest, and she knocked the blade out of the woman’s hand. “Stay away from me.”
She rolled off the table and fell to her knees, fingers brushing soft earth as she searched for a door. Wood shelves lined with herbs and small bowls circled a central table. Two years in a cage of steel and plexiglass, the earthy smells and woven hangings didn’t spark any recognition.
Until a new stranger crouched in front of her, a line symbol tattooed across his forehead and hair shaved on the sides. He gestured to her shoulder, but she dug into the d
irt.
He had a mohawk, just like Frank.
“I won’t go back!” Jàden threw dirt in his face and scrambled backward, sharp agony ripping through her shoulder when she put weight on her arm. Bruised skin lay sliced open with half the arrow still embedded, blood streaking down the black lines of her birthmark, a zankata in flight engulfed by flames.
Find your zankata. Kale’s voice was a mere whisper through the blinding pain.
She grabbed the bloodied arrow shaft. The reverse points lay exposed, something that might have torn her open if she’d tried to pull it out earlier. Jàden slid the last bit of the arrow free and tossed it at the tattooed man. Blood streaked down her arm as she bit back a cry of agony.
The new stranger uttered a few words and pointed to the injury.
No, she wouldn’t let him cut her again. Scrambling to her feet, Jàden yanked the thin blanket from the bed and pressed it against her shoulder to stop the bleeding.
Both the new stranger and the woman put their hands up as if to calm her down. The same gesture the lab doctors gave her each examination.
As if she were the wild animal.
Jàden leaned against a hanging cloth between the shelves to be as far from them as she could and stumbled through the makeshift door onto frost-bound earth.
Cold air bit into her bare skin as she gazed across a central plaza. Circular huts with sloping roofs clustered beneath giant oaks, their branches twisting in a dozen directions to form a sheltering barrier.
Men and women walked along the plaza carrying trays of food, blankets, or small pots.
White stone arcs jutted out behind the huts, many of them cracked and crumbling. The glistening telen stone, forged by Hàlon’s engineers and strong enough to withstand millennia, jutted to jagged points, cracked at their midspan as if something ripped them apart.
Telen was no simple stone, forged and compacted until it was tougher than steel. Something only a high-powered bomb could destroy. All she needed was a single firemark to power any remnants of this base that might still be intact.
This had to be a hallucination or maybe some kind of holodeck.
“Herana.” A deep male voice made her jump, and Jàden edged away from the hut. The bearded stranger whose energy flowed through her tossed aside a cigarette. A horse bridle over his shoulder, he held up his hands in surrender and cautiously stepped toward her. His strength wove through her veins alongside the Flame, breathing his essence through her very core.
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