Chapter 26
Xandros didn't hesitate. Ashley didn't have to explain, didn't have to justify the panic in her voice or why my hands were shaking as I clutched my palmtop like it was the last solid thing in the universe. She said his name once—Xandros—and he was already moving.
No questions. No politics. He trusted her.
The shuttle was prepped in minutes. Soldiers poured in around us, armored and silent, faces set in the grim calm of people who knew they were walking into something bad.
Xandros stood at the ramp as we boarded, his presence steady, controlled; he was command incarnate.
"Stay close," he ordered.
I nodded, though my attention was already elsewhere.
The bond hurt. Not like a cut or a bruise, this was deeper.
A tearing ache in my chest, as if something vital was being pulled away, strand by strand.
Every second we descended toward Cronack's surface, it worsened.
Something was slipping. Something was wrong.
I pressed a hand to my sternum; my breath was stuttering. Dravok, I whispered into the bond, not expecting an answer. None came.
The shuttle touched down hard. We disembarked into silence broken only by the crunch of scorched ground beneath our boots.
The shuttle Dravok had taken stood right next to ours.
It sat like ours on top of ash and vitrified stone, abandoned like an afterthought.
It wasn't hard to find his tracks either.
They cut straight through the devastation, unhesitating, purposeful.
Xandros motioned his soldiers forward, spreading out with practiced precision. We followed the path Dravok had taken into the ruins, deeper into the wound Cronack had become. With every step, the pain in my chest intensified.
It hurt to breathe.
What's happening to you? I thought, panic blooming. Are you dying? The question cracked something open inside me. The idea of a world without him—without that steady presence in my mind, that impossible calm he brought me—was suddenly unbearable. I staggered. Ashley caught my arm.
"Nadine," she said softly.
"I can't—" My voice broke. "I can't feel him the way I did."
Fear bled into grief so quickly I didn't know where one ended and the other began. How could this hurt so much? We'd only just met. The thought made no sense until it did.
I'd never loved anyone like this. Not like this. I loved my parents, of course, but that love had always come with an understanding. An intellectual certainty that one day, inevitably, I would lose them. I'd prepared for that my entire life.
But Dravok—There had been no preparation. No warning. No space between before and after. The idea of existing in a universe where he was gone felt like suffocation. Oh God, I thought, with dawning horror. I love him.
The realization didn't bring comfort. It shattered me.
Ashley squeezed my arm. "We're close. I can feel it."
We descended a steep path down into the heart of Cronack, a cave-like tunnel system.
Ahead of us in the growing darkness, murky areas took shape.
One had been some kind of laboratory. A humongous laboratory.
The deeper we got, the less identifiable the structures became.
This was no longer Cryon-created, but natural stone reshaped by pressure, walls that seemed to drink in light.
The air felt heavier, charged with something that made my skin prickle.
We found the first bodies soon after. Ohrurs lay scattered across the ground, unconscious but alive, their expressions frozen, twisted with fear. Xandros gestured sharply.
"Secure them," he ordered. "Alive."
Beyond them… Ashley hissed, "Space Guardians."
"Nocc," Xandros shook his head. "These are products of the Ohrurs' experiments."
I had only met one Space Guardian, but even I could see that the bodies on the ground were all wrong. Twisted. Their bodies bore the shape of Space Guardians, but none of the balance. Power without cohesion. Identity without soul. I barely registered them. I didn't care.
Xandros did. His jaw tightened. "Arrest them," he told his soldiers.
We moved on. And as we did, the carnage grew worse. This wasn't combat. This was slaughter. The remains of the Space Guardians and a few Ohrurs were torn apart, not surgically dismantled but ripped. Walls were scored deep, stone fractured by force no weapon I knew could produce. My stomach twisted.
If something did this, I thought wildly, and it's after Dravok—
The bond screamed. I doubled over, and a sob tore out of me before I could stop it.
"He's here," I gasped. "He's—oh God, he's not right."
Xandros's voice cut in, sharp. "Nadine. Stay behind me."
I barely heard him. I began to run. Blindly, unseeing, driven only by a magnetic pull that was telling me I was too late. Tears blurred my vision. They didn't stop running until I stopped at the entrance of a final chamber.
Dravok stood in the middle, amid devastation, surrounded by broken bodies and scorched stone.
He looked… different. The gold was gone.
His aura was entirely black now, edged with something sharp and wrong.
His eyes, when they lifted to meet mine, were empty of the warmth I'd come to know.
No sparks of amber shot through them. They were not Dravok's eyes.
"No," I whispered.
Xandros's hand closed around my arm. "Do not move."
I fought him. And miraculously, I don't know how, I wrenched free as an unknown strength surged through me that shouldn't have been there. Desperation ripped me free, and I was running before anyone could stop me.
"Dravok!" I screamed.
He turned fully toward me. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then I was in front of him, hands shaking as I reached for his face. "It's me," I cried, tears blurred everything. "I'm here. Please."
For one impossible second, I thought I saw something flicker in his eyes. Hope surged. Then his hands closed around my throat. The shock stole my breath.
"No—" I choked, hands scrabbling uselessly against his wrists. His grip tightened, inexorable.
This was it. He was going to kill me. The realization came with strange clarity, and with it, a grief deeper than fear. Oh, Dravok, I thought desperately. When you come back to yourself—my vision dimmed at the edges—this is going to destroy you.
That was my only fear. Not dying. Not the pain. But what it would do to him to wake up and realize he'd killed the one person who mattered to him.
"Oh, Dravok," I whispered, voice breaking. "No."
Somewhere far away, Xandros's voice thundered. "Shoot! Don't kill him!"
The words barely reached me. Everything was narrowing now, darkness closing in; not the abyss's, but my own. As my hands fell from his wrists, one final thought burned bright and clear: I love you.