Chapter 26 ELLA
Zaph had planned to go straight to Pandrax.
He’d said it more than once—insisted on it, even—but the universe seemed to find endless amusement in rearranging his carefully laid plans.
Four days later, instead of Pandrax’s orbit, we arrived at Astrionis, the detour forced on us by the rescued women, Sloane’s insistence, and the need to keep Zaph’s presence hidden.
We dropped through the atmosphere over a world that looked like a half-forest, half-stone dream.
Astrionis wasn’t built so much as grown—its buildings were colossal rootrocks, twisted arches of living stone that continued to grow, their hollow insides turned into homes and halls for both humans and Pandraxians.
The grass at the landing fields would have reached nearly to my shoulders, each blade thick as my arm, bending in an updraft as if the planet itself exhaled.
Garth’s stronghold rose ahead like an ancient cathedral shaped by geology and time.
A narrow bridge was the only entry over a defensive moat—a bubbling, viscous band of heat that licked the air.
I didn’t get to meet Silla, the Lord Protector’s human mate who’d survived Cryon cruelty, and who now helped Garth settle the rescued, though I saw both the leaders of this planet at the reception for Sloane, Vraax, and the women we had saved.
Unfortunately, Zapharos needed to keep himself hidden, so I stayed with him.
On the other side of the landing strip stood two more spaceships—one for Zaph and me, the other for Sloane and Vraax.
Vraax and Sloane were somewhere on the far side of the airfield, talking with Garth and Silla. The Pandraxian leader, an imposing figure, shimmered in a purple metallic hue.
I watched as they all moved away toward the palace, then Zaph grabbed my hand, squeezed my fingers, and led me on a dash toward our new ship.
I was only a little sorry I didn't get to say goodbye to Sloane and Vraax, but after Sloane shot Zapharos multiple times and he nearly lost his temper to the Dark Abyss, things had been…
a little tense between us. Despite Sloane and me being the only humans for God knew how many lightyears around until we landed here.
Once inside the new spaceship, Zaph hit the ramp control, and the hatch slid shut on the clamor of Astrionis, sealing us into a pocket of dim light and the faint, steady hum of drives cycling up. The ship lifted with feline grace, turned its nose toward the star-littered dark, and leapt.
For the first time since my abduction, I got to be entranced by the simple fact that I was in space.
It wasn't an aspiration I had ever entertained; my passion was Earth, history, and dirt, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that the sight wasn't breathtaking.
A floor-to-ceiling window stood in our bedroom, and it was fast becoming my favorite spot.
No matter how many times I stared out into the dark void, there was always something new to see.
Earlier, it had been a supernova in the far distance, still bright enough to nearly blind me; now it was a deep green planet, so huge, I was sure our spaceship was merely a speck of dust against it. We were alone.
"You're enjoying the view?" His deep voice reached me, even before his arm slung around my waist, pulling me against his side.
"It's amazing," I replied honestly, still staring at the green giant, which gave the impression that it was made completely out of jungle. But my eyes had already started to gravitate toward the golden hunk next to me. I didn't think I would ever get tired of staring at him.
He wasn't wearing a shirt, and the feel of his hard skin next to mine aroused many different emotions in me.
Desire was one, but it wasn't all. I felt pulled toward him like a moth to a flame.
When he wasn't in the same room with me, it felt empty.
I felt empty. He filled parts of me that I hadn't known were empty.
Was this love?
I had fancied myself in love several times over the years.
The typical puppy love/crush to the quarterback of our high school football team, the first stirrings of love with my first boyfriend in college, and an adult version of love to another boyfriend years later.
But none of those emotions came even close to what I was experiencing with Zapharos.
He exasperated me in one second and made me want to melt in his arms in the next.
He made me want to kill him, but I knew I would be unable to live without him.
I was drawn to him in ways I never had been to anyone before. I felt a deep, ingrained desire to see him happy and balanced. I could feel his lapses toward the darkness even before they became visible in his aura. I was attuned with him like nothing I had ever thought possible.
Frank, the man I had broken up with shortly before the Cryons abducted me, and I had been together for three years, and I thought I knew what love was then.
We both liked spaghetti and old movies. We both liked digging in the dirt and reading about ancient civilizations late at night.
We were crazy about each other. Well, we were until he cheated on me with a ballet dancer, but that wasn't the point, though; the point was that I thought he had been the love of my life.
That we had been destined for each other. That we perfected each other.
I had never been more wrong in my life. What I had been destined for was Zaph. He perfected me. He made me the person I was meant to be.
We had known each other a lot less time than I had known Frank when he became the love of my life, but during that time, I had gotten to know the real Zaph a lot more than I ever had Frank.
Time was only a relative term. So relative, it seemed insignificant and made me wonder why I had ever put so much meaning into it.
We had flown by a myriad of galaxies and planets, each one with its own time zone. One planet took three hours to rotate, another three years. I had no idea how long we had been gone from the Dark Void. And it didn't matter in the least.
Just like it didn't matter if I had known Zaph for hours or years, I knew, deep down, in my soul, my heart, and my blood that he was the one. He might call it Aelyth. Soulmates? I wasn't sold on that yet, but I was getting there.
"What are you thinking?" Zaph asked.
"About how strange and different everything is out here. And how strange and different you are." I looked up at him, saw the arrogant line around his lips. The urge to touch it was nearly overwhelming.
"Strange and different, eh?" He nodded, satisfied. "I like that."
"You would." I snuggled closer into his side.
"What's going to happen next?" I finally asked the question that had been burning inside me for a while.
"We return to Nox Eternum," he stated.
I slapped his chest, "I know that. Will you go fighting the Mmuhr’Rhong again? And what will I do? Sit at home and knit?"
"Knit?"
I waved my hands. “Never mind that. Just tell me.”
A deep growl moved through his chest, strangely comforting.
“I’ve accepted that fighting the Mmuhr’Rhong is like holding back a flood with a sieve.
Eventually, everything drowns.” His voice went low, thoughtful.
“We cannot keep striking waves. We need to break the tide. Destroy them from the inside out.”
“You need to find the source,” I whispered, a shiver trickling down my spine as the word source opened a thousand terrible doors.
He nodded once. “Vraax hunts the origin of his kind with the other Space Guardians. It made me see the obvious: my brothers and I must do the same.” His mouth quirked as if the admission cost him. “Alone, even I am only a wall. Together, we might be a blade.”
I squeezed his side; the muscle didn’t give much, but I felt the faint exhale he let out. For the Praetor of War, that was a confession.
“Tell me about the Mmuhr’Rhong,” I pressed. “Do they have a leader? Where do they come from? What do they live off of? Were they always there, when your ancestors went into the Abyss?”
His gaze slid to the dark outside the viewport, as if the answer might be written there.
“What we know is a ledger of deaths,” he said.
“They feed on unmaking: heat, light, thought. Anything that can be turned to absence, they harvest. They arrive like mold on a loaf of bread, first spores, then a bloom, then rot.” His jaw tightened.
“As for a leader… we have hunted generals, cut off swarms, burned nests. Each time, something else learns. They are patient. Adaptive. Older than our arrogance, if not as old as the Abyss itself.”
“So… not mindless.” My stomach dipped.
“Never mindless,” he said. “But they do not speak as we do. They echo. Chorus and counter-chorus. When one falls, the next remembers.” He glanced down at me. “We used to think they were native to the Dark. Now I am less certain. They move like exiles that found a home.”
My archaeologist brain did what it always did: built a map from rubble. “Then we stop hunting their armies and start hunting their story.” I swallowed. “Selkaris.”
The name warmed something like a sunrise across his face. “Arbiter of Memory,” he agreed. “If anyone can sift the centuries for a first footprint, he can.”
“I can help,” I said before fear could trip me.
“Excavations aren’t just shovels. They’re patterns, pollen layers, ash bands, midden heaps.
Selkaris has the memories, but memories are biased.
If we compare what he shows us to material traces, wreck fields, scorched systems, and old signal debris, we might figure out where the bloom began. Or at least where it changed.”
He studied me like I’d just handed him a new weapon. “You would do this with him?”
“Yes,” I said, surprising myself with how steady my voice sounded.
“Show me your ossuaries, your grave-stars, the places you don’t speak about.
If the Mmuhr’Rhong learned, then their learning left residue: energy signatures, salvage, even language shards in intercepted noise.
” My pulse thudded. “Let me dig. With Selkaris.”
His hand came up, warm and careful, cupping the side of my neck. “Little Aelyth,” he murmured, the words thick with pride. “We will go to him when we reach Nox Eternum. You will have the archives, the fallen charts, the old war songs. We will build your map.”
“And then?” I asked because asking was braver than pretending I didn’t want to know.
“Then,” he said, turning back to the window where the dark lay like waiting water, “we follow the first footprint to the end of it. And we step on the throat that made it.”