Page 1 of The Edge of Dawn

ONE

He sat on the cold stone floor, legs crossed, hands laid on his knees, palms facing upwards.

Toward the silent stone ceiling.

Toward the immense weight of layer upon layer of earth and rock—the ancient outer crust of this chaotic, vegetation-infested planet.

They—his captors—had tunneled deep beneath the sun-scorched surface, building a labyrinthine network of tunnels and chambers that would rival any of the networks on Kythia.

They were still going.

He could feel the faint vibrations of the machines as they ate through the inert, lifeless rock. The sensation was strangely comforting; he imagined arteries and veins growing inside a body, warm blood rushing to fill them.

They were conquering the underground, where the vicious rays of the sun couldn’t touch their silver skin or blind their darkness-piercing eyes.

His kind.

He still hadn’t decided if they were to be his enemies.

For now, he had decided to accept Tarak al Akkadian’s bargain. Once again, he would become someone else’s weapon.

In exchange for his life.

His lips curved into a bitter smile.

Some choice.

He emptied his mind of all thought. He slowed his breathing and focused on the sensation of the cold air dancing across his bare skin.

Across his bare chest. Down his arms, where a faint halo of ka’qui rippled and flowed across the palms of his hands, into his fingertips…

He allowed his essence to flow out into the Universe. He allowed the void to seep into his mind. Pure, blissful nothingness slipped into his cracks and fissures, momentarily erasing the scars left after a lifetime of pain; thousands of tiny wounds, insignificant little deaths inflicted by his own wretched, callused hands.

Beneath the grandeur of the Universe, everything was insignificant.

Him, most of all.

He closed his sightless eyes and drifted outside his body, allowing the void to take him.

Until he felt it… the faint tendril of a familiar thread.

Wondering.

If he would come to her again.

So he followed it.

Seized it.

And eventually, he did.

He resurfaced in a subterranean room, but unlike the place where he’d left his mortal body, this one was filled with light, thanks to a transparent panel in the ceiling.

Of course, he couldn’t see the light with his blacked-out eyes. But he could sense it with his Second Sight, the powerful sixth sense that encompassed all others. He could feel the billions of microscopic particles of energy colliding with his ephemeral body.

If this were his real body, he would be wincing in pain as the sunlight burned through his pale Kordolian skin. But here, he was only a projection, an extension of his own intangible will.

In the void, he drifted… until the lines of reality became blurred, and he came as close to freedom as he’d ever been.

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