Blood of a Thousand Stars (Empress of a Thousand Skies #2)(14)

He glanced behind him. The guard had moved on. And this portion of the fence was protected from the robotic view of the daisies by the Vestibules.

He shimmied through the opening she’d cut, and together they ran in silence across the desert swells. A hundred meters from the camp, he stopped her. He couldn’t wait any longer, though they were still close enough to be visible to the guards, if someone on the tower happened to point a scope their way.

He took her in his arms without a word. He could feel her body heat, feel the curve of her hip through the fatigues she wore. Their mouths were so close. This was all he’d thought about for days.

His body took over. His hands moved up to cup her face, and his mouth found hers. It didn’t matter that his lips were chapped, or that hers were.

It wasn’t like any kiss they’d had before. It was urgent, desperate, tinged by the war and the violence and every terrible thing that had come to pass in the weeks they’d known each other—all mixing with the hope in his chest that grew and grew until everything else was cast aside. He kissed her so she’d know how grateful he was. She’d come back for him.

Aly tilted his head and Kara pressed her hands against his cheeks, pulling him closer. He held her tight, his hands moving up her back. His lips moved away from her mouth and to her cheeks, then brushed her ear before he dragged them down her neck and felt her shudder. His lips would go everywhere. He’d go anywhere if it meant this.

Was this love? Choirtoi. Yes. Yes, it was love. He’d tell her now. He grabbed her face and kissed her again. But Kara pulled herself away, and he felt himself sucked down into the wake of her absence. Her face caught the moonlight. Their fingers were intertwined, palm to palm, and he realized he still had the prayer beads. He slipped the bracelet from his wrist to hers.

“Aly,” she whispered, her eyes tracking up and down his face. “Were you praying?”

“I prayed for you,” he said.

She squeezed his hand. “We have to hurry.”

Suddenly he felt disoriented. Confused too. He turned to look back at the camp, nestled between the giant dunes, casting lightsmear toward the stars. “What about the rest of the prisoners?”

Kara hesitated. “We can come back . . .”

“How?” Aly took a step away from her. “When?”

Then, behind them, a shout. Aly saw figures silhouetted against the floodlights, gesturing in his direction. More shouting. An alarm began to sound. Kara knew to move before he did; she pulled him back and he stumbled before he could get his feet working and break out into a run.

There was a screaming in his ears. No—a screaming in the air.

In the sky.

It wasn’t until way too late that he saw it: a third planetary body. A moon? he thought stupidly. It was bigger than even Kalu from where he stood, and it was getting bigger—closer. Falling from the sky. Then, it got so loud he couldn’t hear himself think; the noise crowded out everything, the shape growing even larger as it hurtled toward the camp.

Aly grabbed Kara’s hand and double-timed it past the crest of the next dune. He dragged her over and brought her head to his chest, both of them squatting, bracing for an explosion. But though the asteroid—or whatever it was—must have hit, Aly felt nothing but a slight change in the air. A ripple. A vibration.

Kara pushed away from him. “What—?”

Her words were swallowed by a massive halo of light exploding across the world. He brought his hand to his face to shield his eyes. He could almost call it pretty. The sky lit up with what looked like lightning, and there was a crash like a million thunderbolts, a sound that seemed to ricochet toward them in slow motion.

Aly felt his cube connection flicker, then cut out.

The world went dark.

Dark, and loud—everyone, all at once, began to shout.

“An em-bomb?” he said to himself. It was an enormous electromagnetic pulse that would fry everything operated by electricity. They’d been banned by a decades-old treaty, but for years there had been whispers of planets hoarding em-bombs, building them, trading them. Scare tactics, Aly had always thought. Hoped.

But when he scrabbled to the top of the dune, he saw that it was true. From where he stood, it looked like a targeted attack: portions of Nau Fruma still appeared to be unaffected, and lights twinkled from distant buildings. UniForce wouldn’t have disabled their own internment camp. Could someone be staging a coup?

Kara staggered to her feet, reached out her hand and found his. There was sand between their palms, in their fingernails. “We need to get on a craft while we still can.”

Aly shook his head, looking out over the dune. A prisoner ran out of the hole Kara had cut in the fence, then another and another. More streamed out behind him. If the em-bomb had succeeded, he could only imagine the chaos inside.

“We can’t just leave them,” he said.

An explosion went off, this time louder. There was an orange light coming from above the camp, and he knew it was fire before he saw it. He could smell the smoke. Aly peeked over and saw people streaming out of the camp now, some of them clashing with guards as they fled.

“Aly.” She tugged on his hand before he could move. “All of this—everything that’s happening now—it’s all Nero’s fault. I can’t help if UniForce gets me.”

“Is that what you want to do? Help?” His voice was unexpectedly loud. He couldn’t help but think of Houl, and all the people they’d left there. But he and Kara had had to escape because of Lydia. Because she’d been dying. They’d had no time. What was his excuse now?