Chapter 5 Diamonds #2
Auren leaned over the simple sink in the hospital bathroom, hands braced on the edges as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Rogue blood still stained his clothes. Shadows were under his eyes. He felt like he had aged a thousand years—if he could age.
Vesperin was finally stable. She had been moved to a normal hospital room. He had spent two hours sitting by her side, watching the rise and fall of her chest, so scared that each one was her last. He just… needed a minute alone.
It was a lot to find her after so many centuries of waiting, and she was not the girl he remembered. Far from it.
He turned the tap on, cupping his palm under the cold water and splashing it on his face.
Just as he started for the door that led to her room, he heard footsteps and an urgent voice:
"My god, Vesperin. Please. You’re okay, you’re okay—"
A man. His tone was hushed, as if scared to wake her up.
Auren paused, a hand hovering over the knob.
"My love, I am so sorry. If… if only I knew sooner.
I came as soon as Katri called." A moment of silence.
"I got so upset with her when she didn’t call immediately.
She did not want to worry me, told me I had been in surgery for hours and had just clocked out, said I needed the rest." A sardonic laugh.
"As if I even rest. All I’ve done since you entered the Academy is worry and lose sleep over you. You vexing girl."
It grew so quiet, Auren wondered if the mystery man was still there—but the soft ringing of a phone and a quiet curse let him know he was.
The ringing cut off. "Hello." A long stretch of silence. "Yes. I’m here with her now. She’s… sleeping. I don’t know what happened. She arrived here after the mission at Nova Zone 21. They said a Soul Searcher brought her here." His tone was colored with disbelief.
Auren was glad he had not left his scythe by her bedside, but kept it near him at all times.
"No, I understand, Talor. I will figure out if she experienced a Pulse. The Nova inside her is not interacting with her Stella like the other subjects. She’s surpassed their life expectancy by years now. Something is different with her."
Who was this man, and what was he speaking of?
Concern rippled through Auren.
"It could be attributed to the phenomenon of the Nova being infused into her heart after the accident. But that raises the question of artificially implanting the Nova into Aetherborns, and if what Blackfall Industries is doing is even worth it…"
Auren felt the blood drain from his face. Artificially implanting Nova. It sounded like what he had overheard in the darker spaces of his network.
People and facilities experimenting with Nova.
Experimenting with people, crafting weapons with it. Some places in Lunar City even made drugs from it. Straining parts of Nova through a very detailed process, until Nightshade was created. The street drug ran rampant on the streets in the bad parts of the city.
"I will get back in touch as soon as I know more. Yes, sir."
Then, the air was quiet once more.
Auren heard the softest of sounds, like a stifled cry. "I will keep you safe, Vesperin. I swear it."
Then, the creaking of a chair, footsteps retreating, and the quiet snick of a door as it closed.
Auren opened the bathroom door, finding Vesperin still and peaceful. The oxygen tube had been removed, and the machines beeped steadily. She was safe, and he had someone to track down.
Lucien Quenlan hated himself.
He held his head in his hands, leaning over the desk in his office.
The phone call with Talor had gone as well as he had expected. Lucien didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the lies. He was playing both sides, and sooner or later, it would be his demise.
He was trying to keep Vesperin safe, trying to get as much information as he could from Talor.
It was no accident that Vesperin had been adopted by the founders of Blackfall Industries as soon as her parents had died—just as it was no accident she didn’t remember him.
She was his Soulbond, and from the moment they had been kids, she never felt anything for him.
He still remembered the day everything had changed.
Watching her from his window as she would play in the yard, she had seemed nothing more than some frivolous little girl.
The day it had all changed was when he had actually touched her; when she had knocked on his door to give fresh-baked cookies to his parents one Christmas, and their hands had brushed.
He had been twenty-three, home for the holidays from med school; she had still been wide-eyed and too sweet for her own good at fifteen.
All those years of knowing her, living beside her, and they had never touched.
But the moment their hands brushed, memories struck—fragments of a life long gone, buried in ash and washed away by waves.
A vicious end to a life barely begun—one he would never forget. He’d been bewitched by her from the moment his eyes had fallen upon her on Tarz, his home in another life. A planet that still existed to this day, but much more advanced, of course. And he was to blame for that…
The white halls of the research compound did not echo as Lucien Quenlan walked down them in his soft slippers.
The ends of his robe trailed on the ground.
His black hair was long, falling to his waist. The open courtyard was awash in the purple of the two moons, always shining.
The distant hum of ships as they brought in new specimens for research only made him walk quicker, desperate to begin his research.
Tarz had just expanded its acquisition of galactic assets, and as lead researcher, Lucien was tasked with experimenting on other planet species.
Easy, when the assets he received were barely the size of his palm—globes of shifting organisms, plates with unique bacteria, and even a few smaller animals. Lucien studied them all.
He loved his work, loved furthering his home.
But when he opened the thick door of his research facility, with a quiet hiss as grey smoke filled the room as it destabilized, he was not prepared for what was being unloaded from the back door.
A large crate made of white, faintly glowing bars was being brought in. The workers waved their hands as they used their Stella to direct the floating crate to the far side of his lab.
He braced a hand on the cool wall. The room was made of Daria rock, mined from another planet—a type that regulated temperature naturally, incredibly cool, and perfect for keeping his specimens in a controlled environment, compared to the heat waves raging outside.
"What is the meaning of this?" Lucien said coolly.
The workers finished placing the crate, stepping back and giving short bows. Their robes were a dark tan shade, denoting them as servants.
"A species from Luxia," said the man on the left. "The royal house requested it to be examined for its tears."
"They cry diamonds," the man’s companion revealed, hands folded before her as she cast a glance at the crate—and what lay within. "The environment on the subject’s home planet offered a unique evolutionary process, supposedly."
A small girl huddled near the back of the crate.
She appeared human. Her light brown hair hung over her shoulders in tousled waves, and her brown eyes were filled with sorrow, but dry.
No tears fell from her eyes, but strain lined her soft face, as if it hurt to hold them back.
She wore a plain shift, made of white silk. Dirt streaked her bare feet and arms.
A girl. Barely an adult, by the looks of her.
He was going to be sick.
"Get out," Lucien demanded.
The man’s brows crinkled. "An order from the royal house cannot be denied, Quenlan. The reward far outweighs the risks—"
"The risks? You mean keeping an innocent captive?"
"The reward"—the robed woman stepped forward—"would be a natural supply of diamonds."
The implications made the girl flinch back against the crate, her back hitting the bars and rattling them.
"Get out!" Lucien roared.
The servants scurried out, the back door slamming behind them in a soft cloud of air as the room readjusted the temperature.
Leaving him alone with this girl.
Lucien crouched by the crate, hand hovering over the bars. "I will not hurt you, and I will not keep you here to be studied as though you are an object."
The girl did not seem to believe him, so Lucien tried a different approach:
"I am Lucien Quenlan, and I swear to you, I will never do anything to hurt you, nor will I ever use you or your body for evil purposes."
He crouched there for some time, trying to get her to understand. His legs tingled, so he sat and studied the bubbling vials and cool streams of gas that emitted from the compressed chambers lining the walls.
Eventually, a broken, soft voice made his head perk up.
"Vesperin Vox."
Lucien turned to watch the girl. She slowly crept from her hiding spot, knees digging into the cold floor of the crate.
"Lucien." She spoke slowly, the words slightly accented, as if his language was hard to articulate. It was heavily advanced. How did she know it?
"Out—free."
Her hands curled around the lower bars, and he wasn’t fast enough. Before he could move his hand away from where it rested on the ground, jammed against the bars, her pinky brushed his wrist.
And everything fell into place.
No memories—this was their first life, and Celestials, Lucien would make it count.
"Soulbond," she breathed, wide eyes filled with awe.
Lucien met her gaze, feeling like everything in his life had led him to this moment. He would never let her come to harm.
Vesperin’s eyes grew glassy, and from her lashline, a singular tear spilled, falling over in watery elegance, and just as it hit her cheek, the tear hardened, turning to a shimmering droplet. Barely the size of a fingernail.
It plinked against the ground and rolled by her thigh.
A diamond.