Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(121)

“We cannot hope to destroy it,” Zila says. “It is too large. But an impact of that magnitude should hopefully be enough to damage or at least misalign those lenses. Perhaps buy Aurora more time.”

Finian looks at me. Back at Zila.

“That’s some Plan B, Legionnaire Madran.”

“If you have a better one, I am willing to entertain it, Legionnaire de Seel.”

And then it hits me.

There in that firestorm, with TDF fighters and Syldrathi cruisers and Betraskan dreadnoughts blowing each other to pieces around us, with the fate of my world, my entire civilization, and maybe the whole galaxy besides hanging in the balance … I remember.

I remember!

I fumble inside my uniform, Finian watching as I fish around my cleavage.

“Um … ,” he says.

“Dammit, you could lose the Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV in here,” I growl.

“… Scar?” Fin asks.

“Aha!” I cry, my fingers closing around a length of silver chain. I drag my prize out from my tunic, hold it between thumb and forefinger in triumph.

A silver medallion. A medallion that waited eight years for us in that Dominion Repository vault. A vault that was coded by the commanders of Aurora Academy to open with my DNA, years before I ever joined the Legion or they had a chance to meet me.

On one side, it’s inset with a rough chunk of diamond. On the other, engraved in a curling script …

“Zila?” I say.

“Yes, Scarlett?”

“Go with Plan B.”





38

KAL

“You have given me your best, little Terran. Now I will give you mine.”

The chamber shakes.

The Waywalkers above me scream.

My father raises his hand.

A sledgehammer of psychic force slams into Aurora, sending her skidding back across the Weapon’s heart. Shards of crystal fall like rain, glittering in her wake. Her face is twisted, mouth open in a silent cry, skeins of midnight blue and burning red crackling in the air around her.

The wall I am pressed against reverberates, the power of their exchange coalescing in the crystal around us. Every time Aurora and my father strike at each other, the Weapon pulses brighter, the air grows thicker. It feels like a coiled spring, like clockwork wound too tight, strained to breaking. I can tell it is almost ready to fire, overflowing with the barrages of energy they throw at each other.

Spirits of the Void help anything in its path when it is unleashed.

Aurora strikes out again, a ribbon of force cutting the air, knife-sharp and silver-quick. My father raises his hand, almost lazily, as he would when I was a child striking at him beneath the trees on Syldra. He never failed to press the advantage back then, despite his size, his strength. Punishing every flaw, every misstep, every error, sending me to bed bruised and beaten.

He does the same with Aurora now, and I watch, helpless, as he pierces her defenses and sends her flying. She collides with the wall again, the crystal cracking beneath the force of the blow.

Aurora falls to her knees. But she stands again a moment later, power flowing off her in waves as she drags her knuckles across her bleeding nose.

“Nice shot,” she murmurs.

I did not wish it to be this way.

Aurora surges across the room, seeming almost to flicker inside the rising storm. Her eye burns like a sun, matched in intensity only by his own. I can see how hard she struggles, pure and formless. But though my father is less than she is alone, he is not alone. He draws on the power of these poor souls imprisoned around us.

He strikes again, again, a crimson blur, moving so swift he leaves an afterimage in the air behind him. Aurora sails upward, shattering the ceiling. She falls among a rain of glittering crystal, and with a flicker of crimson power, he is there beneath her, lashing out again. She is flung across the room, limp and boneless, tumbling across the crystalline floor, rainbow colors crashing like waves on a sunset shore. The Waywalkers scream once more. And though Aurora rises again, fists clenched, she moves a touch slower than she did a moment ago.

They collide like powder and flame. He towers over her, drawing the power of the multitude around us into himself. Her face is a mask of pain and blood, her eye gleaming in the dark. She seems small then. And looking at her, she who was my all and my everything and is now perhaps my nothing, I know the truth.

I told her before she came here, after all.

I cannot fault her for hating me. I never should have lied to her, or to the rest of them. But I warned her not to come here. I wished to deal with this by myself. My shame. My blood. In my veins and on my hands. I thought perhaps to topple the giant. Slay the monster I remembered from my childhood, the man who laid those bruises on me and my sister and my mother alike.

But as soon as I saw my father, I knew he had become so much more, and so much less, than he ever was before. I thought to wait. Perhaps as he prepared to use the Weapon, he would be distracted enough for me to strike at him. Or perhaps after he had fired it, he might become weakened enough for me to cut him down once and for all. I had no real plan, save to spare Aurora this struggle.

My deception and my devotion. Only one of them for her.

But now …

Now.

I look around me at the Waywalkers, pinned in place against the curving crystal walls like insects upon a board. Their eyes are open, but they do not see. Syldrathi men and women, even children, the Waywalker glyf—an eye, crying five tears—marked upon their brows.