Chapter 78
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
AIRIK
Forced to wait, Airik sat in one of the command hall’s chairs, absently stroking Nora’s braid. Iver’s form, carrying the woman, disappeared from his view. Shrouded in the shadows of buildings, Torren’s sword glowed on his back.
A weapon that Torren had earned at the same time as Airik.
Even if those who’d placed it in his hand were wrong about everything, the Sword of Ulliel meant survival.
Airik had no right to relieve Torren of its weight and pass it to another, but he also couldn’t risk the Veynari tracking them through galaxies as they would’ve with the woman.
He’d made so many mistakes in his life, but he hoped that trusting his instincts about Iver wouldn’t be one of them.
That mildly deranged look in his eye that seemed wholly focused on the Veynari and his sister.
Torren’s sword grew smaller and smaller until it finally vanished from Airik’s view and their lives. Perhaps one day, Torren could forgive him and learn to accept its loss as a freedom.
Not willing to spare any more precious seconds, Airik keyed in the sequence to set the drozekar’s gravity engine to planetary-mass disruption.
The ship interrupted. “Veynari craft inbound. Initiate communications?”
Airik clenched Nora’s braid, a boiling sensation creeping up from the pit of his stomach. “How many?”
“Forty-seven spacecraft. Forty are part of the Veynari Interstellar Shield Forces. Six cargo carriers. One striker. I have an incoming order to terminate operations. Shall I go dormant, Wild Prince?”
Airik looked to the ceiling where the drozekar’s voice came from. “What did you call me?”
“I am to call you the Wild Prince when your tone is agreeable. If your disposition degrades, then I am instructed to refer to you as the Tragic Prince.”
“Who rewrote your programming?” What had the vruukar done? The drozekar operated under strict guidelines, carefully selecting its words from approved scripts. The use of illicit terminology meant it had been fundamentally altered, unbound.
“I’ve been told to inform you that my father is Iver—the Once Collared Beast, henceforth to be known as Vorn’s Final Vision. He sends his many thanks and hopes to never see you again, in this world or the next. Shall I switch to dormant, Wild Prince?”
Airik pressed Nora’s braid to his mouth, shutting his eyes as he breathed in what remained of her essence. “No, drozekar. Proceed.” Without Veynari shackles, maybe like him, the drozekar could one day have more use than just crushing planets.
An alarm sounded—craft passing through the plasma shield and entering Ed’un’s atmosphere. A second later, a small rescue craft darted above—Iver piercing the blue sky, making an escape.
Still holding Nora’s braid to his lips, Airik swiped the commands to begin ascent.
“Confirm decommissioning?”
Airik swallowed, but his mouth was dry. He hoped destroying Ed’un wouldn’t mark the end of his best days. “Confirm.”
The ship lifted off, and destruction was immediate. Soil pulsed, trembling as if the very ground had begun to breathe. Buildings crumpled into gravel, flowing into wide chasms that tore open on the planet’s surface.
Ascent was quick, and within seconds, they broke through the clouds, brilliant streaks of light as atmospheric processors rained down, drawn toward the center of Ed’un’s mass, which the drozekar manipulated with technologies far beyond his understanding.
Though the drozekar’s counter-gravity shield had activated, Airik felt tension in the center of his chest, pulling him down.
He had crushed dozens of worlds—not all of them depopulated of sapient life as Ed’un had been.
Not once had he spared more than a fleeting thought for what he destroyed.
Not the microscopic creatures that existed at the whims of physics and chance.
Not towering trees that had evolved over billions of years, building an atmosphere for life to thrive.
Not any of the creatures that slept, ate, and maybe even took some small pleasures—basking in the sun’s rays, falling asleep in a puddle of their kin’s warmth.
Airik’s fingers sank into Nora’s braid, his heart pounding painfully in his throat. The smell of iilas berries hit him with such intensity that he choked, tears dripping down his cheeks.
As if trying to calm him, Nora’s heart beat three times, strong and loud over the sound of the crushing planet beneath them. For her—with her—he would be better. He would build them a life. She only needed to stay with him to witness it.
The drozekar pressed on, entering space. Dozens of Veynari craft barreled past him, pulled into the maximum force of planetary destruction. Without a drozekar of their own, they’d never be able to counter Airik’s force.
For them, it was too late. Pieces of stone and matter swirled around the crafts—a minuscule fraction of the Veynari fleet but still a needle through its rotting heart.
Planetary death was instant and total—nothing alive would have ever known what Airik had done, spared from fear and dread. One moment, there was breath and thought, and the next, cells had been torn apart and existence eradicated.
Like a rock thrown into the sea of consciousness, vanishing beneath its surface.
A light flashed on the horizon.
Nora’s portal flickered bright white—mesmerizing with the promise of what might lie beyond.
“Crush the portal once we are through,” Airik whispered.
A wave of light pulsed through the plasma shield, registering the command that it, too, would go down. Every speck of Ed’un would escape into space, where it could someday find new life in a birthing star or be put to rest in the unknown depths of a black void.
As they approached the portal, Airik was held breathless and still, overwhelmed by images of Ed’un and a surge of emotions he had never expected to feel.
A mourning seta mother searching for her cub, one that would never be found.
A pack of margorok unwilling to move on to more bountiful hunting grounds, still waiting for one of their sick to return.
Every tree Airik and Nora had slept beneath.
The rori flowers he’d woven into her hair like a crown.
Atmospheric processors fell past him into the collapsing core below.
Airik wished, with brutal desperation, that every life he’d ever taken would one day come back, the way some human religions believed.
If he had to pay for their resurrection with his redemption, he’d gladly give it.
If they returned to haunt him, he would bear it.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
The tip of the drozekar breached the portal. It rippled outward, like a disturbed pool of water with an iridescent sheen.
“There is imminent danger ahead. A plasma storm is disrupting space-time stability, Wild Prince. Energy is volatile. The portal appears uncharted. I cannot locate a destination beacon or navigation signal beyond. The risk of entering an infinite space-time aperture is high. It would be unwise to proceed.”
Airik’s hand trembled, gripping Nora’s hair.
“Proceed.”
A faint hiss echoed as the stabilizing thrusters propelled them forward.
And then they fell into the light.