Nox’s sword impaled Rayne from behind. Every hook and axe embellishment entered her midsection to the hilt. But the tears she shed had nothing to do with the pain. No, the light inside burned too brightly now.

Post-Injury Analysis: Stomach, liver, and intestinal track healed.

Recommendation: Dislodge foreign object.

Warning: Nineteen hours and thirty minutes until maximum destabilization.

Voice thick with blood and emotion, Rayne confessed, “I’m so glad they’re gone.” She dropped both ends of Night Killer. It wasn’t necessary anymore.

Behind her, Nox took a step back, leaving the sword inside.

Her confession hurt more for the truth in it. The love she carried for her friends only survived in the lie she lived. “I was afraid, Nox. So afraid I would scare them. But not you.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. He watched her with cautious eyes. “I can always be myself with you, can’t I?” Rolling her shoulders, she loosened her neck with a satisfying crack. “Now that they’re gone, I can stop holding back.”

Target engaged.

Combat initiated.

Calculated duration: Six minutes.

The tornado crescent kick connected with Nox’s chest. Across the chamber, a quarter mile away, Elden’s Sphere welcomed him. The sun beyond matched the rage inside her.

Restabilizing.

Warning: Forty-eight hours until maximum destabilization.

Rayne assessed the wicked blade jutting from her stomach and felt only desolation. “The strongest substance known to the twelve worlds shatters like glass.” She turned to face him. Let him watch as she retrieved the sword from her back. The hooks and axeheads grappled with her organs. The Weapon told her so. So much more damage than the Rites.

Warning: Fifty hours until maximum destabilization.

Her head tilted as she evaluated Nox’s injuries. “Confirmed Bones Broken: Twelve.”

With Elden’s Sphere aching to swallow him, Nox groaned upside down. Li begged to consume him. The sun would have to wait her turn.

Rayne opened her wings. Her eyes Atramentous. “I don’t need weapons or armor to kill you, Nox.” Boots to the ceiling, she languidly approached him upside-down. The armor receded into a white copy of the dress she wore for their dance. Blue ribbons replaced with white. Barefoot. Fresh faced; no makeup. No wounds. No blood. Her clean hair remained in place as if her gravity oriented to the ceiling. The scent of his fear, the pound of his heart, the uncertainty in his gaze—She never understood exhilaration until now.

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“Is this a sight worth dying for?”

Those obsidian eyes widened in surprise.

“I heard everything in that casket you locked me in.” Face to face, Rayne searched Nox’s injuries as she said, “I’m allowing your nacre time to heal you. I need… to know what I am. And I don’t care how much I hurt you.”

His pulse gave her what she expected from him. Clove and spice filled the air. She understood his body’s response to her. She understood him, at least on the surface. Like Rayne knew Nox almost killed Sagan to isolate them, but she didn’t understand the source of the desire. Beneath the arousal, the fear surprised her. Did he know something she didn’t?

“If you’ve realized this is the time to start begging, Nox, you should know… you’re too late.” She held his sword between them and broke the indestructible material in half. As she crushed the hilt in her hand, Rayne promised, “I will be your nightmare, and I will never let you wake.” The last she growled as she took two palmfuls of nacre glass and ground them into his hands.

He cried out and snarled at her, still too damaged to move.

“Do you remember how much you enjoyed assaulting my hands in the Invasion Day fight? You’ll never know the actual pain of it with a nacre, of course.” Glass pushed from palms as she healed.

Nox disappeared from the sphere. Throughout the day, Rayne was impressed that he could still move faster than her eyes could follow. She resented the Seamswalk pills.

From behind her with his spearmint breath so close it touched her hair, he said, “I’ve waited so long for this.”

“Come closer, Nox, and we’ll see if I’m everything you wanted.”

The man wanted the pain. He draped a heavy arm around her and pressed his shirtless front to her exposed back. Burnt skin combined with the clove aroma assailed her senses. He groaned and not from agony. “You never disappoint me.”

Rayne turned and punched him. His orbital bone cracked, and blue blood welled from his swollen eye. Another punch left his jaw unhinged. “Nikki was missing a tooth when you made sure I found her, wasn’t she?” He spat a bloody molar onto the floor. With each blow, the Weapon’s stabilization fuse increased.

The massive Icarus gripped either side of Rayne’s face and knocked his head into hers. Cinder below swam through Li in the sky. He swept her up in his arms and broke her back over his knee. Gently, he laid her flat on the floor and asked, “Do you remember our first dream?”

The nacre hard tissue repair system calculated another sixty seconds before full restoration. She croaked on a whisper, “You broke my back, and taught me to understand pain.”

“How much time did that buy you, Rayne?” He readjusted his jaw, and the swelling reduced in his eye.

Angry at his correct assumptions, she squeezed, “An hour.”

He shook his head.

The second the Weapon cleared her, she performed a kip-up to stand. She backed away, and he let her. “How—how do you know about me, Nox? Are there others like me?”

“In the entire Galaxy, I’ve only met one other. And you’ve rendered him obsolete.” He appeared in front of her and struck out with one knee. “You’re different.”

Desperate for answers no matter the source, she blocked and punched him in the gut. “How?”

He backflipped to avoid it and kicked her in the face on the way. “Am I correct in assuming the meter refills with damage received as well as damage dealt?”

She spat blood. “Fuse. And yes.”

“His… fuse diminished with damage received.” Her eyes widened at this revelation. “I also believe yours is shorter.” He Seamswalked to the other side of the chamber. “Like you, he’s a product of Tritan warfare. You’ll never be free.”

She ran to his side and appeared behind, leaving an afterburn image of her in his front. He attacked it as she slammed her combined fists on his head from above.

Nox kissed the floor with a growl.

“Tumu promised to help me once I bring you in.”

The chuckle, no less evil, muffled against the glass. “And you believed him?”

Rayne waited for Nox to turn around. Then she held up the glass vial with the purple liquid. She knew. What he did for her while she slept in the Complex. Even still, she would never forget the look on Korac’s face as he believed Nox murdered Sagan. The desperation in Xelan’s gaze as he sacrificed himself to keep the monster from her. No. Nox was too dangerous to live. She broke the vial in her fist. They watched it drain away together.

“Your life ends with me, Nox.”