Chapter 7
Vessa
Vessa slept, devoured another stasis box full of mysterious meat, then slept some more.
But now that she was awake with a clearer head, she was burning with fury and restlessness. She paced the length of the cavern, kicking broken icicles and black stones out of her way.
Kedar had backed her into a corner, forced her to comply with his demands.
She had to fight him or never be free of him again.
Vessa didn’t do well with threats. And she didn’t do well in confined spaces.
She was meant for the open skies, flying through infinite stars, roaming ancient forests.
Being trapped with him in this gods damn cave was pure torture.
He’d blessedly gone out into the storm soon after she awakened, but the space still felt like it was closing in on her. Constricting her.
Out of all the missions he had to interrupt, why did it have to be this one?
The weakness she’d shown in that Orcru camp was an anomaly, and he had been there to witness it.
To save her from it. It was damn embarrassing.
But something else nagged at her, too. Something that was too closely twined with the past.
Then there was her job.
Though she always padded her estimated timeline for a mission, she’d been delayed long enough.
When she didn’t report to her client, they would either assume she’d taken the goods and run, or that something had happened to her.
Either way, they would hire someone else to come looking, and she was not about to miss out on this pay.
The Jax was in need of some costly maintenance, and she’d been eyeing a new navigation system that would really help Liv.
She could get back to the downed ship within days if she really pushed herself, she calculated. Or, she would be able to if there wasn’t a fucking violent blizzard raging outside with no end in sight.
Vessa turned on her heel. Kedar chose that exact moment to step through the curtain of icy snow. Her fingers itched for her raze sword at her hip, but damn him if he didn’t look otherworldly right then, with the snow delicately kissing his black fight suit.
Beautiful.
Terrible.
Especially since he was palming an Orcru head in one hand. With the spine still attached. Taking a good look at its face, which was frozen in fear, she was almost certain this was one of the Orcru that had taken her. Durgo? Dargo? She couldn’t be sure.
“A scout,” he said, lifting the head.
She wrinkled her nose at its stench.
Kedar sat down on one of the cold obsidian boulders.
He promptly pulled out a familiar pack of smaller knives from somewhere on his person.
They were used to skin and carve whatever part he wanted to keep for a trophy from a great kill.
She doubted he cared to keep anything of the Orcru—they weren’t much of an opponent.
It was merely proof of his boredom. Neither of them were good at sitting still for long.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vessa said. “You challenged me, and I accepted. I don’t see why we have to wait any longer.”
“You’re still weakened, that’s why.”
“Who are you to dictate if I am well enough? I don’t need you or anyone else to tell me what fucking condition I’m in.
” Her fingers closed around her raze sword’s hilt.
“I have a job I need to get back to. A life. And, understand this, I intend to be the one walking away.” The threat lingered between them.
Kedar didn’t look up from his bloody task. Didn’t seem to care about what she said at all. “This job you do, it does not sound like Seken work,” he said.
Was he joking? Vessa pried her fingers from around the hilt and crossed her arms, trying to contain herself.
“So? I do mercenary work. I get hired for jobs ranging from killing someone because they decided to betray their business partner to bringing back lost things. It’s a living, and I’m damn good at it.
” And it meant she never had to stay anywhere too long.
Never had to deal with people if she didn’t want to.
She could live, train, and work from her ship.
The bulk of the money she’d made thus far had gone into upgrades and maintenance.
It didn’t matter that over the years, the endlessness of space had started to feel too empty.
“Killing people for credits,” he murmured, more to himself than her. A large chunk of the Orcru’s flesh fell to the ground, perfectly carved away. “I guess I did not imagine you doing such things.”
Her rage boiled, burned behind her eyes. She refused to cry in front of him, even tears of anger. The raze sword’s blade extended before she even realized it was free of its sheath and in her hand. “You really don’t care about what you did that night? What it cost?”
Did you care for me at all? she wanted to scream.
After all this time, she still didn’t know why.
Why come to her faction that night? Why spill Seken blood?
She assumed his qon had ordered him to, but it still couldn’t be reasoned.
He could have always come to her first, and he’d chosen not to. That was answer enough.
Kedar tilted his head, and she knew he was looking into her eyes. His visor flashed red. Crimson. Like blood. Like it had that very same night.
He made a growly noise of dismissal at her. “Have you also forsaken your creed, then?”
Vessa’s blade was pointed at his throat. She had closed the distance between them. Every muscle was tensed, ready to make that fatal blow. But she blinked, took a step back—and then another, until the fire was between them. Her breath was shaky as the electric heat of adrenaline left her.
What the fuck was that?
With a skill she had perfected over all this time, she wrestled the wild beast within her, caged it, pushed it down. Down. Into the darkest depths of herself. Until she was empty. Numb.
She hated that he could get beneath her skin so easily. That he could make her forget herself. That all those old wounds she thought couldn’t hurt her anymore still bled. If she let him goad her so easily, he was already the victor.
Placing the raze sword back in its sheath, she shrugged her actions off.
“Your faction, then?” Kedar asked. She couldn’t read his tone. He was careful not to let any emotion bleed through.
Did he really not know? Seven years of hurt, seven years of shoving the pain and loss down, and here it was again. Rising up, threatening to drown her. “I was banished, Kedar. Are you telling me you thought they would let me stay after what you did?”
“After what I did,” he emphasized. His forearms dropped, causing the vertebrae of the Orcru to scrape against the stone of his seat. “I knew you weren’t staying in your faction or on Soan at all anymore, but I didn’t know…” He cleared his throat. “Why?”
“Why.” She huffed. “Elder Nerra knew. I don’t know how, but she was a Seer.
She knew everything. How we remained comrades long after the Zaram invasion ended.
After our leaders disagreed over the argott mines and declared us enemies again.
That night, she said you attacked us because of me.
I didn’t deny it. Couldn’t. I felt responsible even without her condemnation.
” Vessa’s fingers squeezed into a fist so tight her nails bit into her palm.
“A traitor’s punishment is death, Kedar.
The only reason they banished me instead was because of the respect they had for my parents. ”
A Seken without a faction, just like a Xaal without a clan, was considered an outcast. Vessa became linnra.
A disgrace, shame-bearer, faction traitor.
She was dead to the community and to her family.
It was forbidden to look upon the face of a linnra.
She could never see her parents again, never smell her home’s rich soil, or run through the Minad forest again.
It couldn’t be lost on him that she would still have all of that if he’d made a different decision that night.
“Vessa,” he started, that sharp indifference leaving his voice, “I did not enter your faction’s territory to betray you. My intentions—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted. “I don’t want to hear about your fucking intentions.” If she were forced to listen to a lie or excuse, she may very well carve him up in the same way he did that Orcru. She’d witnessed it. That was why his reasoning didn’t actually matter. The end result was the same.
When the silence became just as uncomfortable to deal with, she gestured to him. “Tell me, what is it that you do, then? What have you done that has made you so honorable these last seven years?”
Kedar had already returned to his bloody task. An eyeball hung from its socket on the Orcru’s face as he scooped the rest of the ligaments out. “Trained and hunted.”
She snorted. “So, the usual.”
The eyeball hit the ground with a wet plop. Kedar looked at her, and she could almost imagine the expression he was making. “Hunted for you. And trained so that when I found you, I could kill you.”
He’d said the same just last night—that he’d spent the last seven years looking for her. But there was something in the way he said it now that felt more personal. Intimate. Like he’d made her some promise long ago and was just now fulfilling it.
For the briefest of moments, she forced herself to see him as the Xaal she was once comrades with.
The one who’d told her a forbidden secret under the cloak of mist and night.
The Kedar who’d taught her how to use her strength to her advantage no matter the size of the enemy.
The one who had celebrated her first hunting trophy, a great achievement to the Xaal but meaningless to her people. The Kedar that she had once—
A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold went through her. No, some things were too dangerous even to think.