Page 84 of The Edge of Dawn

The fine sand trickled between Jade’s toes. It felt like she was standing on ground-up silk. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the slender, crescent-shaped beach melded into an ocean made of darkness and stars.

The infinite Universe stretched out all around them, incomprehensible in its vastness. At the edge of the beach, the glittering tapestry buffeted the sandy shore, forming gentle ripples as if the fabric of space had turned into water.

The pale shore rose toward a dark forest where slender trunks of strange trees were illuminated by starlight, forming a ghostly alien grove. Moss-like plants hung from their spindly branches, swaying gently in the soft breeze.

For all its alienness, the forest wasn’t uninviting. She didn’t sense anything sinister from it. The branches burst into little tufts of featherlike foliage at the ends, unexpected softness against a backdrop of stark lines and shadows.

But something was strange. Ha. As if the entire scenario—a beach floating in space, with the stars and infinity as the water—wasn’t surreal enough.

It occurred to her that this world was painted in shades of monochrome. There was no color. Not a single blossom or vibrant leaf. Just the light of the stars and a thousand hues of grey.

Was this how the Universe looked to Dragek?

Was this his world?

“You…” She reached out, not really knowing what she was doing, but suddenly compelled to touch him. “Haven’t you ever seen color before?”

Her hand stopped before her fingers reached his cheek. Time slowed. Did time even exist here? It felt like she was in a trance.

“I know there are different shades of color, depending on how the light is reflected or absorbed from a surface. I can perceive it, but I don’t see it in the way your human eyes would. The first time I ever understood what color looked like was when I saw it through your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“In the mine where I found you. When I took control over your body.”

“Oh.”

“It was… unsettling.”

A soft sigh escaped Jade’s lips. Why did his admission make her feel so sad? “A pit in the earth isn’t the best place to experience color for the very first time. I almost wish you could enter my head again.”

“I would never. It’s dangerous for you.”

“Why?” Jade pressed him, suddenly insistent. She remembered the terrible weight of memories that had hit her back there in the mines when she was certain her situation had become hopeless.

So much darkness.

And she was certain it was all his.

She’d seen it through his eyes. She’d felt what it was like to have his deadly hands. To be the cause of…

So. Much. Death.

But she knew he wasn’t evil. He’d been forced to do those terrible things.

How was he not more bitter and twisted? At least when he was with her, he wasn’t.

There were times when she’d caught him being almost… sweet.

He could be an absolute demon in battle, but now, he hesitated.

“I’m not afraid of you, Dragek,” she said before he had a chance to respond. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t see what you’ve done—what you were—but I don’t despise you for it. So, if the answer to my question is that you want to shield me from all the horrors in your head, I’m telling you that you don’t need to do that. Obviously, at that time… something happened that I don’t completely understand. That was extreme. But after you took me out of there and went to all that trouble to heal me… I didn’t forget anything. It’s inside me now, too. Yet, I know you’re not dangerous—to me, at least.”

Things had moved so quickly since they’d departed Earth for the Fleet Station, but Jade realized she’d internalized everything she’d seen. Somewhere, somehow—during the aftermath and the healing and the silences in between—she’d processed his turmoil and tied it to her own.

She’d seen inside his soul in a way that no other living being ever could.

Suddenly, she realized that she knew him.

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