Chapter 2
Kedar
The sensor lit with a green hue, blinking in and out of existence like virid lightning. It reflected off the dark paneling of his ship, fracturing into a dozen stars.
Something hot burned through him.
Could it be?
Kedar leaned forward in the pilot seat to tap a sequence on the ship’s display.
He tried to tame the fever burning in his veins, calm the fervent beating of his hearts.
It could be a glitch. A mistake. Someone else could have it.
There was no reason for him to believe she had kept it all these years.
Or perhaps it was an illusion, and he’d finally gone truly mad. He expected the indicator to disappear as fast as it had appeared. That flashing promise.
But it was a deep and knowing ache, a hunter’s lethal instinct, that told him this was it.
It was her.
The sensor showed him the location of the female he’d been hunting for these last seven cycles.
Vessa.
Silver hair with a hint of blue, braided in her favored style, wisps of it coming undone from hidden pins.
Full lips set into a position that seemed both unimpressed and disapproving at the best of times.
A body designed better than any weapon and just as deadly.
But it was her eyes he remembered best. Rich brown chambers so full of fire, he often commented that she could set a Xaal aflame with only a glance.
The last time he’d seen them, that fire had been gone.
Only ice remained.
There were stories passed down through generations of Xaal about the death gods.
How they destroyed universes and culled the weak.
How they had collapsed systems and from their dust created the Three planets where only the strongest could survive.
But his death god was a Seken warrior—all soft crescent curves and lethality.
There were times he could still smell her, damn him. That sweet, earthy scent. He’d catch a trace of it in the halls of his ship like she had just passed through. It invaded his helmet, lingered on his skin.
Tormented him.
He’d lost hours before searching for its source, for her. And always he needed to rid himself of it, tear it from memory, while hoping it wasn’t the last time.
But sometimes—and these were the worst times—he thought he’d made her up. The five years with her had been nothing but a dream. A fever weakness. Like he had never marked her as worthy, never slept beneath the stars beside her. Had never laughed with her or presented his kills to her.
Like Vessa had never drawn his blood in combat.
Beat him.
And then forced him to live.
But she had, and he’d been hunting for her ever since.
A deep, rolling growl vibrated through his whole body.
It’d been seven cycles. Seven cycles of his life searching the stars for her, being haunted by her. She’d plagued his every moment since, a haunting in the form of a warrior with cold death in her eyes.
Kedar had hacked the security networks of countless cities on countless planets.
Sensors, ship activity logs at ports, cameras, Federation databases.
He’d programmed his systems to look for any sign of her and alert him of anything slightly resembling her.
He’d trained hard, forced himself to consume sustenance, and watched the feeds.
Waited. Sleepless setting after setting, cycle after cycle.
In all that time, he had received less than two hundred hits.
Every time he arrived at the source, she was already gone.
But this was different. This signal originated from the ixom-nano technology in the hilt of a plasma dirk. A plasma dirk he’d made and shaped with his own hands over the course of a cycle and gifted her.
As he finally accepted the alert, the system she was in bloomed to life on his screen. It zoomed in and enhanced the exact planet she was on. That burning intensity prickled at his skin.
Vessa was on planet 815-208, located in the Outer Drift system. Information about it populated on his screen, and he skimmed through it. Nearly uninhabitable for many lifeforms. Blizzards and hail, lightning and shifting ice masses.
Vessa hated the cold. Sekens, by nature, didn’t do well in wintery climates.
“So why are you there?” he murmured to himself.
The last time he saw her, she had the very same blade he’d gifted her pressed to his throat. “Do it,” he’d told her. She was the victor. It was her right. Her duty. Instead, she had pulled the plasma dirk from his neck and cursed him with a single word.
Live.
Kedar punched in the commands to redirect his course and enter hyperwarp. The deep expanse beyond the viewport blurred, distant stars vanished. All that was left before him was the impenetrable darkness that would usher him to his fate.
Vessa of the Minad had given him mercy, but she’d taken everything from him.
She owed him a death.