Chapter 4
DAVEN
“Line tight. Weapons up.” The Luminary moved through one of Zephyr’s abandoned towers with practiced silence. Kylix gestured and they followed him through the halls toward the stairs. The place was silent. Too fucking silent.
“All right, listen up,” Daven’s cousin called once they’d all gathered. “Attica has been leaving a trace of death and destruction for months now. And after tonight, that will stop. We are going to take those motherfuckers down.”
Some of the guys snarled. Others gave a silent hell yeah. Daven lifted a fist, which earned him an eye roll from Kylix, who continued, “No one goes anywhere alone. They might still be in the building. If you see anyone in a white mask and white coat, shoot them.”
“What about the prisoners?” someone asked.
“We believe they’re still in cages.” Helianth stepped up beside Kylix, already moving like second-in-command.
Kylix nodded. “That’s right. So the mission is easy. You see any white masks, you shoot. You find any prisoners, rescue them. Now, no questions? One team goes with me. Helianth takes the second team. Let’s go.”
Daven scanned the floor, pulse ticking faster than he liked. He flexed his fingers. This was his first Luminary sweep, and he would not fail in front of his cousins.
They headed forward in a tight formation. Boots struck concrete in even intervals.
Suddenly, Helianth lifted a hand. They all hesitated. “This doesn’t feel right. It’s too quiet. If they were still here, we’d have heard them by now.”
Kylix tapped his multi-slate. “Yure. Status.”
Yure’s voice crackled through the multi-slate. “Helianth’s right. I can’t detect any major presence anymore. It’s like they vanished into thin air.”
“Vanished?” Kylix growled. “When the fuck did that happen?”
“I don’t know. I…wait—”
Daven looked around, as if Yure could see something inside the building change. The thought made his insides jitter. Sector 7 was the poorest quarter of Zephyr, and its abandoned skyscrapers always made his skin prickle.
“There’s still faint movement higher up. It’s not entirely empty. Head up the stairs,” Yure said over the comms.
A cruel smile curved on Kylix’s lips. “Those motherfuckers ran fast, but not fast enough. How the fuck did they get outside in the first place? Mirel, with me. Helianth, take Daven.”
Helianth grinned his way, mouth twitching. “Don’t get sloppy on day one.”
“I can handle my own fights,” he snapped.
They started climbing the stairs.
“There’s movement on the forty-second floor.”
Daven ignored them, his legs already driving him toward the first step. There was something up there pulling at him. He couldn’t explain it, could only feel it, deep enough to make his pulse turn violent.
Whatever it was, it made him break past the second row of guards, surging after Kylix and Helianth.
He wanted everyone to hurry the fuck up.
The buzz under his skin deepened, spreading through his chest and down his spine. It made his incisors throb, made him want to pick a fight with any senior guard who believed they could stare him down just because it was his first time on a mission.
But this was something else. There was something here, inside this building, that drove Daven to the edge.
Kylix’s brows pulled together as he glanced at him.
“What?” Daven held his cousin’s gaze, heat rising under his skin.
“Nothing.”
Kylix opened his mouth to say something else, but at that moment the floor trembled under their boots.
“Good Light, look up,” a guard muttered as they reached the fourth floor. Far above them, impossibly high, a light flickered in the otherwise dark building. “What’s that?”
A slow smile spread on Helianth’s lips. “Someone’s still up there. Come on.”
Kylix took point. “Move. Vandor, stay close to my cousin.”
“Sir.”
Daven lifted his chin. “This might be my first ride, but it won’t be my last. This is the only time, though, I’ll let you talk to me like that.”
Kylix looked back over his shoulder, smug as hell. “I know. Which is why I’m having the time of my life.”
“Motherfucker,” Daven mouthed as his cousin turned his back on him, but he couldn’t avoid his grin.
After a climb that felt like forever, they finally reached the top. The hall was deserted and dark aside from one row of flickering bulbs. The ones they’d seen from below.
There was only one door, light bleeding out beneath it.
“Open!” Kylix barked.
Vandor’s boots kicked open the door. Inside, the place looked torn apart. Blood streaked the ground and walls. Open cages were stacked three high.
They hadn’t just run. They’d stripped the place.
“Good Light.” The stench hit Daven hard enough to make his eyes water. Kylix barked orders about regrouping. Daven gagged and lifted a hand to his face. “This place smells like the dead.”
Around him, other Luminary guards retched and turned away.
Whatever the fuck had kept these prisoners here should die a slow death. Daven looked around him. The place was empty. Still, the buzzing under his skin intensified. Why wouldn’t his heart slow the fuck down?
Kylix’s multi-slate crackled. “I’m still reading faint movement. Do you see anyone?”
There was a choked sound, then movement in the corner of his eye.
Daven lifted his gun at the white-coated man before he could blink again. His finger twitched against the trigger. The man’s hands were bound behind his back.
Kylix froze for half a beat. “That’s Doctor Serrin.” His expression darkened. “He was reported missing.” Yanking the gag free, he demanded, “How did you get here?”
The doctor choked on the first breath. “They brought me in after. I wasn’t on the ship.”
Vandor’s voice came from the side hall. “Over here, sir.”
Kylix grabbed the man by the shoulder and shoved him forward. “Then show me.”
The doctor tried to pull back, stammering about a mistake, but Vandor caught his arm at once. “He’s in the inner lab. It wasn’t my fault.”
Daven’s pulse hammered against his eardrums. He shoved past them and rushed into the lab, only to freeze once his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
There, in a metal cage like the others, lay a man.
For a moment, Daven couldn’t move.
He was young, with bones too sharp from hunger.
Silver-blue veins pulsed beneath thin skin, light moving through them in sharp bursts.
White-blond hair stuck to his forehead. Red abrasions scored his collarbones where restraints had failed.
His breathing hitched and stuttered, shallow and uneven, like his body couldn’t decide whether to keep going.
“Is he dead?” a guard asked.
“Shut the fuck up,” Daven snapped. He crossed the distance in two strides and kneeled beside the cage, closing his fingers around one of the wrists shackled to the metal bars. The pulse there was weak, but present.
Helianth’s breath caught behind him. “Look at the lights. Good Light… no ordinary prisoner does that.”
Daven couldn’t look at anything but the man who lay in front of him. Couldn’t hear anything but faint breathing.
He was barely alive. How long had he been here? Where had he come from? Reaching into the cage, he traced a finger over a sharp cheekbone. The skin was cold to the touch.
“Can you hear me?” Daven heard himself ask. He wanted to curse himself when the other man’s eyes fluttered. Then they opened.
Silver eyes stared up, seeking, visibly fogged before they collided with his. Daven’s chest tightened. His finger lingered on the man’s temple and brushed a silver hair away.
Helianth pushed himself forward, kneeling beside Daven. “You are safe now. We are from the Luminary, the Imperial Guard on Helion. We’re going to take care of you. Who are you?”
The man cleared his throat. “R-Ryneth,” he whispered, like saying it cost him something. Like he expected the name to be used against him.
From just behind Helianth, Mirel echoed softly, “Ryneth. Is that your name?”
“Water,” Kylix rumbled.
Someone passed Helianth a bottle, and he cupped a hand behind Ryneth’s nape to lift his head. “Drink. It will make you stronger.”
He hesitated, as if he meant to pull away, but thirst won. The drink sloshed over his cracked lips as it dribbled down inside his mouth. Then he drank hard, each swallow rough and audible, his grip tightening as he drank.
“The s-storm…the s—”
“You’re safe for now,” Helianth murmured.
“What storm?” Kylix asked, voice sharpening.
Ryneth’s gaze went past them, to the ceiling, and traced the cable veins. The lights trembled. “You h-have to—”
His voice faded when a sharp whine tore through the walls.
“What the hell is that?” Kylix rumbled, straightening.
Yure cut in over comms. “Those assholes put a bomb in the building. You need to leave now. The building will collapse!”
Kylix pointed toward Ryneth. “Take him. We go now!”
Daven didn’t waste any time. He yanked on the cage door, but it was locked. A focused burst of air into the latch blew it open. He did the same to the manacles binding the man’s wrists to the bars.
Behind him, guards ran around, the earlier practiced formation shattering as everyone searched for their own survival.
“Vandor,” Kylix ordered. “Get the doctor.”
Daven gathered Ryneth, pulling the man out of the cage and against his chest. Good Light, he weighed nothing.
“Go, go, go!”
Daven started running.
Chaos exploded around them as the ground shuddered, and suddenly Helianth was there. “This way, Daven.”
“The window?”
“There’s a helicopter. Go now.”
Daven held Ryneth like his life depended on it. Ash swirled through the corridor while the floors beneath them continued to fail. Vandor moved ahead to clear the debris.
Daven ignored the burning in his lungs and the rain of concrete from the ceiling. He pulled Ryneth closer, shielding him with his body.
“Thirty seconds!” Vandor shouted. “Extraction inbound!”
They burst through the shattered window, cold air slamming into them as rotors thundered past the opening. The downwash from the helicopter whipped the smoke into spirals, dragging debris out into the open air. The wind tore at Daven’s hair, but he only tightened his hold.
The air answered him. Instinct rose sharp in his lungs, and the wind thickened beneath his boots for a single breath as he launched forward with Ryneth locked against his chest.
“Now!” Helianth shouted.
Daven staggered as he hit the metal floor inside the transport. The cabin was already crowded, guards pressed shoulder to shoulder, gear scraping against walls.
Hands reached for Ryneth. Sparks snapped between skin and steel as they tried to pry him free.
“Careful,” someone barked. “His charge is spiking.”
Vandor clamped a hand on Daven’s shoulder. “Let them take him.”
Daven forced himself to release his hold, muscles spasming. Ryneth was rushed onto a stretcher while the medics scrambled to stabilize the charge. The helicopter lifted as the skyscraper below began to give way.
Daven finally dropped onto the bench, his chest heaving. He licked his incisors as his heart hammered.
“Are you good, cousin?” Helianth slapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah. Yes, I guess so.” Daven forced a smile but couldn’t concentrate. He could only watch the medics work, his eyes never leaving the stretcher.
He memorized the slope of Ryneth’s nose and the sharp cut of his jaw. His white hair. Those silver, arched eyebrows. Every detail, as if his body had already decided it could not afford to lose the shape of him.
What the fuck was happening to him?
His skin hummed when he touched Ryneth’s hand. The other man’s skin felt clammy against his palm. “How long have they kept him like this, you think?”
“Possibly two to three days.” The paramedic opened one of Ryneth’s eyes and zoomed in with a light. “He’s been badly malnourished. He needs water and food. Warmth and a lot of sleep.”
“Yeah,” Daven mumbled, and stared out at the heavy Zephyr traffic. Hover cars passed them through all layers.
They’d been so close. So fucking close.
Yet the enemy had known how to escape.
Daven couldn’t keep his eyes off the medical team as they rushed around Ryneth and brought on the IV.
He clenched his fists to stop the shaking, then used his free hand to slide through that pale hair. He didn’t recognize himself. He only knew one thing as he watched the light flicker around Ryneth’s closed eyes.
Ryneth.
He wouldn’t let anyone take this man from him. Not now. Not ever.