Page 15 of Only Cold Depths
My fingers curled a little tighter around the table. The metal edge dug into my palms like a dagger about to slice my skin, but I welcomed the discomfort. It gave me something else to focus on besides the dread and fear that had gripped me ever since Vesper had been cornered by the bounty hunters.
No, that was a lie. My dread and fear had started a few weeks ago, right after we’d escaped from Crownpoint Palace. I’d been lying on the medtable, just as Vesper was right now, when Adria Byrne had revealed her presence on theDream World. Adria and her brother, Dargan, were among the most skilled, powerful, and vicious of the Arrows, and they had helped Zane capture Vesper on Tropics 33 and take her back to Corios.
In the throne room, Vesper and I had fought Adria and Dargan, who also had a truebond. Vesper had killed Dargan to save me, and Adria had gone mad with grief at the loss of the connection with her brother.
Adria had snuck onto the ship determined to kill us both, but Vesper had killed Adria instead by purging all the oxygen out of the cargo bay. Despite her O2 enhancement, Vesper would have died too, if I hadn’t used our truebond to enter her mindscape. I still wasn’t sure how I had done that, only that it had brought Vesper back to me.
Once we’d recovered, Vesper and I had admitted our feelings for each other, and we’d spent the next few magnificent days lost in each other’s arms.
But all too soon, we’d had to set our happiness aside and deal with the rest of the galaxy, and we’d set a course for Sygnustern. So far, our long, circuitous route had kept us away from Zane and the other Arrows, and we’d been able to avoid trouble—until today.
As soon as Vesper had told me about the bounty hunters, as soon as I’d sensed her worry and felt the distance between us increasing through the bond, I’d left the ship and tracked her down as fast as I could. But it had been far more difficult than I’d expected, far more difficult than itshouldhave been.
When we had battled the Imperium soldiers and Bronze Hand guards to escape from Crownpoint Palace, using our truebond had been soeasy. Vesper’s thoughts, feelings, and psion power had flowed freely into me, just as my thoughts, feelings, and power had flowed freely into her. We had been like two Regals whirling around the dance floor, and we had moved, attacked, and defended ourselves and each other in perfect rhythm, tempo, and harmony.
That same easiness had flowed through the bond this morning, right up to when Vesper had been taken. After that, all I had been able to sense was my own cold fury and razor-sharp dread. The smooth, velvety ribbon of Vesper in my mind had thinned into a fragile, brittle strand that frayed and crumbled a little bit more every time I tried to grab it.
I’d used all my psion power and instincts to find Vesper, and even then, I’d almost been too late.
The image of the pink-haired bounty hunter clutching a blaster and towering over Vesper flickered through my mind, and fresh dread chewed through my gut like a plasma torch. If Vesper hadn’t used her stormsword to defend herself, the bounty hunter would have killed her.
After my parents had died when I was thirteen, I had been largely on my own. Oh, I had been surrounded by the other Regals, and Callus Holloway had me trained as an Arrow to further his own agenda.
After considering almost everyone an enemy for the last twenty-five years, I had finally found Vesper. I had finally found someone who looked past all my dark deeds, someone who accepted all the awful things I’d done to survive, someone who understood and embraced me, inner monster and all.
I had finally found someone to love, and my greatest fear was that the galaxy was going to take her away.
Oh, I would happily die to protect Vesper, but the galaxy wouldneverlet a monster like me off that easily. No, the worst would happen, the way it always did, and then I’d be forced to confront what life without Vesper would be like.
Truebond or not, it was going to destroy me.
Iknewit was, and yet, every single day, I cared about Vesper a little more. Her smile, her laugh, her kindness and intelligence and blazing determination. They all drew me in like a mammoth butterfly hovering over a laser, unable to veer away from the bright, tempting light that would inevitably burn its fragile wings to a crisp.
When Vesper had been shot . . . well, I hadn’t just wanted to kill the bounty hunters. I’d wanted to strew bloody bits and pieces of them all over the junkyard as a warning for anyone who even dared tothinkabout hurting her. Even now, my inner monster growled with the desire to rip and tear everything around me to shreds.
But even louder was the bitter, jaded voice in the back of my mind that kept muttering that I was destined to lose Vesper regardless. That eventually, she would come to her senses, realize I was no good for her, and get fed up with constantly being in danger just because she had the misfortune of having a truebond with me.
Oh, yes. Even if the galaxy didn’t take her away, Vesper still had plenty of reasons to leave me behind—and I wouldn’t blame her if she did. She was a blue moon shining her beautiful light on everyone, while I was a black hole, sucking people into my orbit until they were utterly destroyed.
But wallowing in my doom and gloom wasn’t helping anything, certainly not Vesper, so I forced myself to straighten up and release the medtable. I grabbed her ruined jacket from the counter, along with the shopping bag and the Techwave cannon, and turned to leave the cargo bay—
A bright silver light flared, and a woman shimmered in the air in front of me like a hologram. Strawberry-blond hair, gray eyes, rosy skin, a stormsword dangling from her hand.
I jerked back, and it took me a gut-clenching moment to realize that I was only seeing a memory of Adria Byrne, a psionic echo of when she’d snuck on board the ship.
I glanced over at Vesper on the medtable. Her eyes were still closed, but her easy, dreamy smile had vanished, and her brow was furrowed. Was she seeing the same disturbing image I was? Had her seer power conjured up this vision of Adria? Or was this related to my thoughts of the dead Arrow?
You killed Dargan, so I’m going to kill Kyrion. Maybe then you’ll know how it feels. Maybe then you’ll know how much ithurts.
Adria’s voice hissed through my mind. She’d said those words to Vesper, but right now, her gaze was focused on me, as though she was taunting me with my own secret worry and dread.
I squared my shoulders and strode forward. The memory melted like a shadow, but Adria’s hysterical howls of laughter echoed in my ears, and her words chased after me like a ghost I couldn’t escape.
I didn’t have Vesper’s seer power, but I couldn’t help but feel like this had been much more than a memory from our past—more like a vision of my future.
CHAPTER FIVE
KYRION
