Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(112)

You are not impressing me, Tyler Jones.

Stop. You’re breaking my heart.

I could pluck it from between your ribs and put it back together, if you like?

Shut up and let me think, will you?

Saedii sighs and rises from her cot. Raising her arms above her head, long black hair cascading down her back in waves, she stretches like a cat and begins pacing the cell despite her injuries.

That isn’t helping, I tell her.

It helps me to think.

I close my eyes and sigh. Look, I understand the seriousness of our situation, but you do realize that stalking up and down in front of me in your underwear might not be entirely conducive to clarity of thought?

Saedii throws me a withering glance and kicks a large chunk of the wrecked bio-cot in my direction. I stop it with my boot heel before it can crash into my legs.

Grow up, she tells me.

I kick the wreckage away from me.

“Up” is exactly the situation I’m trying to avoid.

Saedii rolls her eyes, does one more lap of the cell, then twists on the spot and sinks back down onto her cot. I pout, looking at the wreckage she kicked at me, picking the glass splinters out of the treads of my boot. Scowling at the new scuffs on the leather. Maker’s breath, these things really need a coat of polish and a— Click.

I blink. Glance up at the camera lens and away again just as quickly. I shift to sit cross-legged, hunching so the arc of my shoulder hides my feet from the camera. I look down at my boots again. These boots that were waiting for me in that Emerald City deposit box for eight years. These boots Admiral Adams and Battle Leader de Stoy wanted me to have. Slow as I can move, I reach down and press the small crack that’s appeared in the heel.

I see a metallic glint in the hidden compartment inside.

Saedii catches the shift in my mood. Studiously looks away from me as her voice slips back into my head.

What is it? she asks.

For the first time in a long time, I almost smile.

Something impressive, I tell her.





34

ZILA

The Starslayer’s fleet is bigger than any of us dreamed. The black-and-white landscape of the Fold is teeming with Syldrathi ships. They swarm around the mouth of the FoldGate that leads to Terra, crossing each other’s paths with only meters to spare. Somewhere between a flawless display of intricate choreography and a battle-fleet-sized game of chicken.

We have arrived at the very edge of the pack as the fleet continues to muster, hiding among the flood of late arrivals and taking stock. I am piloting, and Scarlett and Finian are strapped into their seats at the auxiliary stations behind me. Aurora stands by my side like a hound ready for the hunt, almost quivering as she points in the direction of her prey.

She is nothing like herself, her gaze locked in the direction of the Weapon, obscured despite its size behind the mass of vessels the Archon commands. It’s as though the Aurora we know has departed, leaving behind her shell to be inhabited by this new predator, all purpose.

As I begin to weave my way through the fleet, I wonder if it even registers in her mind that the man we are approaching is Kal’s father.

Kal, whom she loved.

For my part, I learned my lesson long ago. Open your heart to anyone, and it will end badly. They will betray you, as Miriam did, willing to trade the whereabouts of a six-year-old for her own safety. Or they will leave you, as my parents did, unable to keep our family safe. Cold and dead and left behind, with me thrown into the governmental care system, alone as I had never been.

Open your heart to anyone, and they will betray you, or abandon you.

Now Cat, Tyler, and Kaliis have taught me that lesson all over again.

Soon Aurora will join them.

I know it would be better to withdraw to my former state, but … despite my wishes, I do not feel nothing.

It seems I have lost the knack of it.

I ease around the stern of a battle cruiser, and behind me Scarlett murmurs a translation of its name. “Belzhora. ‘Drinker of Blood.’ ”

There is something surreal, ghostly, about the fleet we are now a part of. The silence is perfect, broken only by the soft hum of our ship’s drives. I have never encountered so much violent potential in one place. Like a coiled spring waiting to unload. Like a warrior watching for the first blink from their opponent.

“What are they all waiting for?” Fin asks.

“Perhaps the Terrans still seek to negotiate,” I suggest quietly.

“They’re about to run out of time on Caersan’s clock,” Scarlett replies.

And then the Unbroken ships part, and we see it. A gleaming wonder amid the muted black and white, a rainbow of refracted crystal and endless color. Impossible color. It shouldn’t be visible in the Fold.

“It looks like a chandelier and a telescope had a baby,” Fin says, trying to find some way to cut the tension singing through our small ship. He is whistling in the dark, trying to defy its might. But we are all staring at the vessel, all intimidated by it, except for Aurora. It breaks every rule, it radiates power, and we know it.

The Weapon.

I force myself to make a practical observation. “There is a clear perimeter around it. Approaching it will be difficult. We will be seen.”

Aurora shifts her weight beside me. “That won’t be a problem for long.”

So far she has been quiet, utterly focused, but now I begin to see that silence for what it was—a fuse slowly burning toward the explosives that wait at its end. She crackles with power, with intent, with absolute determination.