Page 25 of Only Cold Depths
Tivona nodded. “What about the Techwave cannon? Have you figured out the right amount of sapphsidian and lunarium to make it work properly?”
My gaze darted over to the cannon, which was lying on the table beside my ruined jacket and some plastipaper schematics of the temperature-shielding technology. The silver barrel was sleek, shiny, and intact, but the once-clear solar magazine was now black and brittle. Despite my latest tweaks, the magazine had still overheated and fried itself after Kyrion fired the weapon a few times.
“No. I’ve run several simulations, but I need some actual sapphsidian to test my theories. More lunarium and solar wiring too.”
Frustration surged through me. If I’d had access to all the materials and equipment in the Quill Corp R&D lab, I might already have the answer, but I couldn’t return to my lab until Callus Holloway was dead and Kyrion and I had eliminated the bounty on us. Losing my work, my happy place, was something else the Imperium ruler had taken from me and yet another reason I wanted to destroy him.
My frustration vanished, replaced by more wistful longing. I didn’t just miss the R&D lab—I missed how Ifeltin the lab. Strong, smart, confident, capable. Like all I had to do was work long and hard enough, and I could puzzle out the answer to any problem.
“Don’t worry, Vesper. You’ll figure it out,” Tivona said. “I have faith in you.”
“Me too,” Daichi chimed in.
“Me three,” Kyrion murmured, placing his hand on mine and squeezing my fingers.
Warm pride surged off him, along with steady, unwavering belief, but for once, the sensations didn’t comfort me, and I had to force myself to smile at him.
Kyrion squeezed my fingers again, then he, Daichi, and Tivona started talking about other things. My gaze strayed back to the Techwave cannon, and the charred solar magazine stared at me like a black hole slowly soaking up all my confidence.
Kyrion excelled at being a warrior, and he knew exactly what he was capable of—good, bad, and deadly. Well, figuring things out was my area of expertise, and sometimes it felt like theonlyway I could contribute to Team Truebond. But right now, I was hitting one dead end after another.
But the worst thing was this snide little voice in the back of my mind that chided me for not figuring things out long ago. And try as I might to ignore it, this nagging feeling and odd stirring of my magic kept whispering that if I didn’t start coming up with answers soon, then Kyrion and my friends would pay a terrible price for my failures.
CHAPTER SEVEN
VESPER
KyrionandImadea few more plans with Daichi and Tivona, then signed off. I was lost in my thoughts, as was Kyrion, and neither one of us said much as we left the library and prepared dinner in the ship’s kitchen.
Kyrion was quite the chef, and he transformed the fresh vegetables and freeze-dried beef jerky I’d bought in the marketplace into a hearty stew with a side of crispy, cheesy hash browns and a loaf of sourdough oat bread slathered with honey-lime butter. He even made a mango-lemon sorbet topped with a tropical salsa and crystalized ginger that was light, refreshing, and utterly delicious.
After dinner, the two of us went to bed. Kyrion wrapped his arms around me and held me tight like he never wanted to let me go. I hooked my leg over his, drawing him even closer, then buried my face in his neck, drinking in his sharp spearmint scent. His breath was a warm, feathery caress against my skin, and his heart thumped a steady, comforting rhythm under my fingers. We still didn’t talk, but his worry rippled through the bond, the emotion as loud, clear, and sharp as my own.
Even if we hadn’t been on the run, I still would have been concerned. Kyrion and I had both accepted the truebond, but we hadn’t talked about what might happen if we managed to defeat Holloway. We hadn’t discussed what the future might hold—or how we really felt about each other.
Ever since the bond had formed, I’d wondered—and worried—how much it was influencing our decisions, especially when it came to our feelings for each other. A few weeks ago, when Kyrion and I had first gotten together on theDream World, I’d claimed I didn’t care about the bond anymore since it had given me a chance to find him.
I’d meant what I’d said, but I also couldn’t stop myself from analyzing everything that had happened—and was still happening—between us. In some ways, the truebond was like a brewmaker in the R&D lab, and no matter how bright, shiny, new, and wonderful it was, I couldn’t stop poking at it and trying to figure out how it worked—and especially how to make it better.
That poking often took part during our sparring sessions. In addition to training with our stormswords, Kyrion and I had also been testing out each other’s psionic abilities. He tried to access my seer magic, while I attempted to do the same with his telekinesis, but neither one of us had any consistent success. Our lack of progress frustrated us both, but on the bright side, our sparring sessions usually ended with us working out that mutual frustration by rolling around on the mat, kissing, and yanking each other’s clothes off as fast as possible.
I cared about Kyrion, and he cared about me. I couldfeelit through the bond. Our physical chemistry was amazing, as was the sex. But did he love me? Did I love him? In the weeks we’d been on board theDream World, neither one of us had mentioned the wordlove. If wedidlove each other, had it all only happened because of the bond? And would all our feelings and potential love vanish if the bond was broken?
Despite my emotional spiraling down an ever-deepening hole of doubt, I was exhausted from the fight with the bounty hunters, and I fell asleep quickly and didn’t hear anything until late the next morning. Kyrion had already gotten up, as was his custom, leaving me to sleep in, since I despised getting out of bed before it was absolutely necessary. Another bit of thoughtfulness on his part, which made me care about him even more.
I took a hot shower to soothe away the last of yesterday’s aches and pains. Then I donned some fresh clothes, went to the flight deck, and slid into the copilot’s seat next to Kyrion.
“You’re just in time,” he said, sweeping his hand out at the planet in the distance. “Welcome to Sygnustern.”
Relief coursed through me. We should be, well, not completely safe, butsaferon the Erzton-controlled planet. Holloway couldn’t officially send any Arrows and Imperium soldiers here, and I doubted many bounty hunters were looking for us this far from Imperium-controlled space.
“Why does it look so . . . gray?” I asked.
“Apparently, there are lots of mountains, lots of clouds, and lots of fog,” Kyrion replied, swiping through a few holograms.
Unlike Tropics planets, which often sparkled like jewels with their aquamarine seas and verdant green rain forests, Sygnustern resembled a dull gray stone suspended in the black ocean of space. The lack of colors was disappointing, but something about the planet made me uneasy, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.
“What do you think will happen once we get down there?”
