Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(108)

Saedii tucks a long black lock behind her ear.

Your mother was a Waywalker.

I swallow hard. Look down at my forearm. My tanned skin. The veins beneath the muscle etched in long scrawls of pale blue.

Scar and me … we have Syldrathi blood in our veins?

Saedii’s fingertips drift over the string of severed thumbs at her throat. She is looking me up and down, the tip of her tongue pressed against one sharpened canine.

The question is, Are you worthy of it?

My head is spinning, trying to process all this. How did it happen? Why didn’t Dad tell us? Who was our mother?

… Is she alive?

Gird yourself, boy, Saedii says. Hold firm.

The biggest bombshell of my life just got dropped on my head, Saedii. I think I’m gonna need a minute here… .

We do not have a minute, Tyler Jones. If what you have told me about this … ancient enemy is true, every second we waste in this cell among these insects is another second closer to the galaxy’s doom.

I scowl, my temper flaring blood-red across our shared minds.

You think I don’t know that?

Saedii watches me for a long, silent moment. I can feel her, her emotions, her thoughts, all of her. It’s hard to keep straight in my head, to process which parts of all I’m feeling are me, and which are her. It’s like we’re touching … but not.

I think there is much you do not know, she replies.

Maker’s breath, what else?

Saedii folds her bare legs up beneath her, leans back against the wall, and crosses her arms over her chest.

You had best get comfortable, boy. This will be a great deal to swallow.





32

KAL

There is a gravity to everything.

I told Aurora that, not so long ago. Looking into her eyes as I finally confessed all I was feeling for her. Every atom in our bodies, every atom in the universe exerts a gravity on the atoms around it. Gravity is one of the forces holding all this together. It is inexorable. Nothing rises without falling. It is not a matter of if, but when.

We Syldrathi believe that everything is a cycle. An endless circle. That one day the expansion of the universe will cease, the force generated by the explosion that began it will be overcome by gravity. And on that day, the universe will begin to contract. No longer spiraling out, but falling inward, every atom in existence dragged backward toward its point of origin, collapsing once more into the singularity that began it all. Only to begin again.

We are all of us gravity’s slaves.

All of us pulled by it.

Back to the place it all began and to where we know it must end.

It did not take me long to find transport from Meridia. There is no shortage of folks in the galaxy who fear the Starslayer, who watch the unfolding calamity between Terra and the Unbroken with an absolute certainty of who will triumph. The Chellerian smuggler who agreed to ferry me to the Unbroken armada still took a great deal of convincing, considering the dangers of approaching the largest Unbroken fleet assembled since the fall of Syldra. But my share of the small fortune that Admiral Adams and Battle Leader de Stoy left for us in the Emerald City vault was enough to purchase his peace of mind.

I wonder if our commanders knew what that money would be used for when they left it for us.

If they knew where my path would lead.

I stand in the cockpit beside the smuggler and his copilot—a surly Rikerite with one of his horns snapped off at the root. The smuggler is fond of his rocksmoke, and the cockpit is full of the stink, metallic and thick, drifting from the burner on the console. The gabble of news feeds spills over the cockpit sound system.

The Fold around us is colorless as always, as gray as the storm clouds around my head. I am watching the incoming Unbroken vessels on our scopes—four Ghost-class scouts on intercept course. They cut through the Fold toward us, and beyond them I can see countless ships, sleek and dark and deadly, gathered on the threshold to the Terran system. A force to set fire to the heavens.

And at the heart of it, he waits for me.

The shadow I have never been able to step out from.

A transmission from the lead scout cuts across our news feeds, brought up onscreen with a tap of the smuggler’s fingers. I see a young Unbroken adept, the Warbreed glyf on his brow, black war paint across glittering gray eyes.

“Unidentified vessel,” he says coolly. “You are either insane or suicidal. Retreat or be destroyed. This is your first and final warning.”

The smuggler looks to me. I press one finger to the console and speak.

“I am here to see my father,” I reply.

The adept’s stare hardens as he takes in the glyf at my brow, the seven braids in my hair. “We are poised to reclaim the honor the Council of Syldra surrendered so long ago, boy. We are death on black wings, and we shall slay a star this day. This is no place for a family reunion.”

I press the Transmit button again, my voice soft with threat.

“Archon Caersan may disagree with you, adept.”

The adept’s eyes narrow, then slowly widen as realization sinks in. He draws one halting breath, his hiss spilling over bloodless lips.

“I’na Sai’nuit.”

I press the Transmit button, speak with a voice as gray as the Fold around us.

“Tell my father I wish to speak to him.”

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