Chapter 64
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
NORA
Airik had come. To save her. And whatever that meant would only end in punishment for him. Relief and terror swelled.
In one explosive move, Xallix was yanked from Nora and slammed against the metal bulkhead in the hall. He fell to the floor and collapsed to his side, groaning in a crumpled heap.
She stumbled, gasping for air. If it weren’t for Airik’s arm supporting her, she would have dropped to the floor herself.
Airik’s eyes were white hot as he scanned her from head to toe. With one hand, he wiped her tears, and with the other, he checked her body until he reached her palms.
“I’m fine,” she said. “They look worse than they are.” Not a lie—the cuts were superficial.
“Fine?” Airik said, calm and cool. He looked at her palms again before meeting her eyes with a wild look. “This is…fine?”
Dropping her hand, he stepped back. His expression shifted as if his focus on her shut off, and another instinct rose. Like the surge of a tsunami, brutal and unmerciful in its approach.
He turned to Xallix, who had rolled onto his back, still dazed from the impact. Nora made a noise to get Airik’s attention again, to stop him from whatever he was going to do.
“Close your eyes,” he told her, not turning back. “Cover your ears. I don’t want you to know what I will do to him.”
Xallix’s eyes shot wide open as Airik drew near. He lifted a leg to kick, but Airik caught it. With a loud crack, Airik stomped on it and broke his lower leg in half, bending it nearly at a ninety-degree angle at the shin.
Strangely, Xallix didn’t cry out, only gasped like a fish out of water for too long.
For someone who’d had so many words just moments before, Xallix now had none.
Trapped between Airik’s legs, he tried to rise before Airik finished whatever he had planned.
But Airik moved with dizzying speed, dropping to his knees and trapping one of Xallix’s arms between his thigh and Xallix’s body.
Xallix’s free hand darted to Airik’s boot, reaching for the knife. Airik caught his wrist, the same arm that had choked Nora and was covered in her blood. By size, the other man should have crushed Airik, but here he lay, hopelessly subdued and broken.
Pain flared through Nora’s chest as Airik drew his sword. She didn’t know why—Xallix deserved this. But Airik didn’t deserve any of the repercussions, and they would ruin him.
“Stop,” she heard herself say, crawling to him.
Unhearing, Airik sliced off Xallix’s bloody arm at the elbow, then tossed it aside without seeing where it landed, like meager entrails from a kill.
Nora’s gaze tracked the discarded arm, her mouth open but no air in her lungs. For a moment, she wondered if she’d seen wrong—that somehow, Xallix’s arm had fallen off on its own, like some species of lizards that lost limbs out of fear.
Xallix let out a shrill cry, hitting multiple notes at once. Inhuman in sound but universal in its dread. Blood dripped from Airik’s sword onto his chest.
When Airik pressed his blade to Xallix’s throat, reality struck. No defense mechanism in all of existence could stop him, and he was the one causing the damage to Xallix. He’d maimed him and now he would finish the job.
“Do it and die.” Xallix’s voice trembled, though the translator that let Nora understand did not. “Don’t forget—you cannot kill those who serve the Veynari.”
Airik froze, eyes locked on Xallix’s hip.
With Xallix having confirmed Nora’s fears, she placed a shaking hand on Airik’s arm. “Please,” she begged. “Stop.”
His arm flexed beneath her fingers, straining to keep the sword steady.
“Airik.” Torren’s voice boomed from behind them in the hall.
In response, Airik pushed his blade deeper into Xallix’s throat.
A thin line of blood trickled down the side of his neck.
“He touched her,” Airik said. “Hurt her. He cannot exist in her space.” He didn’t speak it in English, but the device dutifully translated, like a supermarket announcement narrating the Apocalypse in a pleasant, metallic voice.
Torren kicked the severed arm down the hall, out of Nora’s view. Scrambling away, she reluctantly let go of Airik to press against the wall.
Standing over Xallix, Torren tilted his head in mild interest. “Why are your trousers talking?” he asked, unconcerned that Airik was a breath away from beheading Xallix.
“In illicit human language, no less.” He crouched, grabbed the man’s chin, and forced his head to face him.
“And most importantly, why are the ship’s systems down? ”
Airik looked up, baring his fangs. “What?”
Torren ignored him and began patting down Xallix’s body. Remarkably still and quiet despite a broken leg and a severed arm, Xallix’s eyes drifted to the side until they caught Nora’s.
“Here we are,” Torren said, producing the black glass square she had seen earlier. “An interstellar communicator.” He fiddled with the device until it powered on. “How troublesome—it’s in an active transmission.”
Airik slid his sword across Xallix’s throat, shallowly cutting across the skin. “Talk. Now.”
Xallix exhaled sharply, then smiled. “What an incredible display for your human,” he said. “She’s shivering, witnessing your true nature.”
Airik’s head whipped back, as if suddenly recalling Nora was still there. He clenched his teeth, the shadows from his flexing jaw hardened by the scars on his face.
The urge rose to comfort him, to say anything. That she was okay. That she wanted him to stop.
But Xallix’s gaze seemed to sear the side of her face, a knowing smile that made it clear Airik would pay for his actions. Instead, she stayed, the bitter taste of nausea in her mouth, hoping Airik could hear her thoughts.
I’m not afraid of you. But I want you to stop. Torren—your friend—is here. Let him deal with everything.
“It must be hard,” Torren said with a lazy disdain, “to live with a ball of worms for brains. Because why else would you bring an interference module aboard?” He held up the device to Airik to show what it was.
And she didn’t have to know how it worked or what it did to know it was about the last thing any of them needed.
Airik growled, his focus on Nora snapping like a thread breaking.
Rising to his feet, Torren nodded to him.
After one long second, he dropped his sword.
Relieved that Airik now had a task, Nora watched as both men hoisted Xallix upright, ignoring his muffled grunts of pain. They shoved him against the wall.
Handing Airik the black rectangle, Torren restrained Xallix with one thick, muscular arm across his shoulders.
“You’ve brought forbidden technology onto my ship—and for now, I don’t care why.
But whatever you’ve done to the ship, tell him how to undo it.
” Xallix’s attention kept straying to Nora, so Torren tapped his cheek hard, forcing him to look away.
“I hear Veynari interrogation methods aren’t concerned with preserving bodily functions and limbs. And you’re already one arm down.”
The man swallowed a grunt as Torren released him, just enough for weight to fall on his broken leg.
“Think very carefully before you answer,” Torren warned. “Anything less than the entire truth is a lie. What did you do?”
Xallix’s gaze flicked back to Nora, brimming with fury and deadly intent. A sharp pain flared in her stomach, as if a needle had been driven through, pinning her to a corkboard.
“Nothing that can be undone,” he said.
Airik froze, a threatening calm settling over him as something flickered on the device in his hand. “He’s a reaper.”
Torren drew back, shaking his head slightly. “He’s of the interstellar fleet. It’s not possible—”
“He’s injected language into the engines, disordered the system. Look.”
Airik grabbed Xallix’s chin, forcing his gaze away from Nora again. With his other hand, he held up the device, open to the same map as before. “Ruined,” he told Torren. “We are trapped.”
Torren examined the words and the image, a violent grimace spreading across his face.
“As I said,” Xallix said, with no hint of concern for his shattered leg, arm, or the threat of the two men around him. “Irreversible.”
Torren’s fist slammed into his face.
Nora startled, her head hitting the wall as if she had been punched.
“Only death is irreversible,” Torren said, raising his arm to Xallix’s throat, pressing him higher against the wall until his feet dangled. “And even then, extraordinary circumstances might make that untrue. Shall we discover if you’re extraordinary?”
As Xallix’s eyes bulged from lack of breath, Torren paused his attack to shout something into the hall. A command, Nora realized, to the ship. All of them waited. Even Xallix tried to look at the ceiling, sputtering black blood onto the floor, along with what appeared to be a dozen teeth.
Nora’s eyes snapped shut. Helpless, like always. All she could do was pray that the ship responded.
Silence filled the hall, made oppressive by the humidity from the shower.
“You’ve destroyed communication,” Torren said. “Stranding yourself as well. Why?”
“Kudra. That is his true purpose,” Airik answered. He stared at the device in his hand. The smaller dot hovered outside the planet. “The rest are waiting for his command. I should have confirmed his work. But I couldn’t be too far—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he hurled the glass device down the hall, where it dented the metal wall and shattered on the floor. He turned without looking at her, then pressed his forehead against the wall, fists clenched.
Her head pounded from the harsh alien language as Torren barked orders that Xallix ignored—now impossible to understand. She broke out in cold sweat and panic as an attack gripped her.
Airik’s sword lay on the floor in the middle of the hall. Slowly, she crawled to it and then pulled its heavy weight into her lap.
This was how she could save him.
The moment she retreated, Airik pushed away from the wall. As if he’d sensed her feeble attempt to disarm him, to prevent him from committing something truly irreversible.