“We could always run away together. Take on the Tritans ourselves,” Nox offered, knowing damned well Rayne would say no. Still, he kept himself silhouetted to blind her from the hope on his face.

She stared at him with suspicion. “You’re so… different. Nox, if you’re seeking forgiveness—”

“I don’t deserve it—”

“—I’d die before I give it. There’s nothing good in you.”

He looked away to the sky. “You only know half the story.”

“Yea, the half you took from me. And you’re right. You’ve done nothing to deserve it.” She stood then. “My story needs an ending, Nox.”

“Take from me what you need, Rayne.”

Their battle reconvened. Every blow broke a bone. Every scratch nicked a major vessel. They never tired. Her rage. His lust. Their destruction.

In close combat, Rayne coiled a leg around his and bent it. After she dislocated his knee, he sank hard to the floor in agony. She made to finish him with one good stomp in his chest from a dainty foot. This was how she ended him.

“In the name of the Thirtieth Galaxy, why?!”

That voice.

Rayne stopped mid-kill and turned in tangent with Nox to the dais. Petulant foot stamping accompanied the cussing in a tantrum from the third person in the chamber. His jaw dropped to the floor. He blinked once. Twice. Maybe Rayne killed him, and this was hell. He peered over at Rayne, who slowly lowered her leg and backed away as if concerned her movement might alert their guest. She locked eyes with him for a fleeting moment. He understood. Just as slowly, he stood and put his back to Elden’s sphere opposite Rayne.

Celindria growled in frustration. “Now I must accommodate for the adjustment. I despise this one so much. It’s diverted the most so far.” Her dark beauty marred by the ugly way she referred to her brothers and sister. “So fucking inconvenient.”

The day Celindria died, Nox believed the universe mocked him. Two thousand years passed, and he smelled the scent of jasmine everywhere. Heard her melodic voice singing in his halls. Caressed by the whispers of her robes in his sleep. Haunted by her lies. Infected by her disease. Every single day until… He glanced over at Rayne. Celindria surely came to take her from him, too.

Nox growled in cold fury at the First Progeny, “I knew eternity would refuse a cursed soul like yours, siren!”

Celindria kept her back to him and continued complaining about the state of her lab.

Rayne took one stilted step up the risers. She looked over at him with something earnest in her eyes. In those blue depths, she offered a truce. “I’ll take the brain…”

Understanding, he nodded to her with one step up the next riser on his side. “I’ll take the heart. The shock might kill me if I find one, but I’ll enjoy searching.”

Celindria’s bright laughter shattered his insides. Across from him, Rayne flinched, too.

The First Progeny finally faced them. Her voice scraped his heart like a grater, “You took longer this time. Hurry and kill him already, as you were always meant to.”

Rayne bravely stared the devil in the eye as she delivered her cold threat, “I will as soon as we finish with you.”

Strong, smart, but ill-informed. Nox took no offense to the casual reference to his execution. No. He was too afraid as he realized for the first time Rayne knew nothing of her ancestor’s abilities. Hell, even he didn’t know what upgrades she made since their last encounter.

Nox tried to signal a warning to her, “Rayne—”

Celindria interrupted with a smile. Oh, Elden, no. “These men impressed their dominion over you. Assured you of their power and form. The Icari. The Tritans. I am the First Progeny.”

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Li dimmed beyond Elden’s Sphere. Its vibrant flame reduced to a dull brick red that pulsed a nightshade purple. The reflection in Rayne’s eyes pulsed with it. A perfect reflection, as if the view in her eyes mirrored the view from the chamber’s center. Elden’s view.

Nox prayed the deity watched over them and that their combined strength was enough to defeat Celindria. They needed a strategy. Some way to communicate—

“Show me, Grandma.”

He gaped at Rayne. For fuck’s sake—

Then the younger woman lunged for her ancestor, only to freeze mid-charge. Unable to move, those Atramentous eyes stretched wide.

The smile on Celindria’s face vanished. Her blue eyes shone like steel in her icy stare. “I tire of your weakness.” She raised her hand, and everything slowed down.

Rayne gaped with every muscle poised on the verge of running with no way to escape. No way to scream. If she died here, the object of his most fucked up obsessions would never destroy Enki. Eight thousand years of careful design and dicey negotiations with the Tritans. Four years of private interaction and education. The last four weeks of preparing his affairs. All this architecture. All he sacrificed. He refused to watch it fall apart at the very hands that started it all.

Nox ran faster than his battered body allowed. Celindria fired in time for him to take the shot. He punched a hole in her chest before his nacre malfunctioned.

The bitch smiled into his face. She whispered, “Gold, lover.”

Celindria’s smile contorted into an ugly grimace as Nox twisted and grasped her nacre sac. With a deft kick square in his chest, she sent him soaring to the center pedestal. The banshee shrieked and choked as she Seamswalked to another plane.

Released, Rayne took a step in his direction. Her eyes conflicted. “You saved me.”

Bleeding from the tiny hole in his chest, Nox gasped an entire breath to say, “As if I’d give someone else the honor of killing you.” He applied pressure, sitting up so his back rest on the pedestal. Blood dripped on his arm. He licked his lips and tasted the cerulean stream in his teeth. The sweet smelling liquid threatened to drown him. “Now, I expect you to return that honor.”

Rayne knelt as her eyes swept over him. “Five of your systems are failing. You’re dying.”

Clarity, ugly and sweet, reached into Nox’s soul as he glimpsed concern in hers. He assured her, “There are worse things.” He coughed, choking on the blood. “This isn’t exactly the end I wanted for us.”

“Me neither.” She shook her head, and he admired the shimmer of the gold in her hair. With more emotion than he deserved, she said, “What you did was almost worthy of forgiveness.”

“I’m still not a man worth saving.”

Was that a tear? Did her breath hitch?

“Nox… how long until you destabilize?”

Nox’s heart stopped functioning, momentarily. His equal. His match. She pieced it together. And now, she must learn to live with the loneliness as he contended all this very long time.

Post-Injury Analysis: Heart and lung perforated. Nacre malfunction.

Recommendation: Attain minimum safe distance.

Warning: Three minutes and twenty seconds until maximum destabilization.

He let his heavy arms fall to his sides. “Minutes, Rayne. Scant minutes.”

“I have to know… are you the only one like me? Are there others?”

“No. We are the only to exist.”

Rayne smudged the tears from her face and breathed, “I have so many questions about us.”

Nox brought his hands back to his lap and nodded with a cough. “You’ll find the answers you need. But I’ll impart this one wisdom and then you save the worlds by killing me because I swear to you, Rayne. I am a selfish, angry Icarus. I will take out both planets if I am to die by any hand but yours.”

She nodded with a face full of tears and a light sniffle.

“The people you love will never understand you, Rayne. The isolation and loneliness will slowly kill you until there’s nothing left but a murdering machine incapable of happiness and never afforded a moment’s peace. Let them go.”

“You can’t touch either. It’s not just me.” She stared at him with wide, bright eyes filled to the brim with her lonely tears. “Your obsession with pain. Your rejection of love—”

“That is who I am.” And who she would become. With great effort, he stood against the pedestal, still towering over her. “I am a warrior, first, Rayne. Give me an honorable death.”

Rayne stood and looked into his eyes. “I want to see.”

As did he. Living with the Weapon for so long, he often considered finding an abandoned planet like Thailea and letting the clock run out. He almost succeeded once when a particular Icarus interfered. As Nox stared into Rayne’s determined eyes, he was glad for Korac’s intervention that day. Without which, Nox would never know a kindness like hers. A kindness he didn’t deserve. “Thirty-two seconds.” He trusted her to kill him before he endangered his planet.

Atramentous. The carbon gray light emitted from him. His mirror eyes reflected in hers. The spicy aroma of a warm bakery filled the room. The shadowy light consumed the space around them and blinded the chamber from his view. Nox’s heart pounded, losing more blood from his internal injuries. The cells in his body unraveled. He feared the end this way. He wanted to keep Cinder safe.

A light brighter and purer than Nox’s own seared his steaming eyes. Rayne hovered at his height with her eyes burning brighter than phosphorous. Brighter than the sun beyond her. So pretty it hurt to look at her. “There’s a sight… worth dying for.”

Nox pulled Rayne into a kiss. Overtaken by her power, she let him. He barely grunted when she thrust her hand into his chest. Hardly reacted when she gripped his nacre. He cared only for the taste of her.

The brine of the ocean and warmth of the sand overpowered his senses. A parting gift he didn’t deserve. When Rayne’s lips yielded sweetly to his, Nox thought, he was fortunate to know even this much of peace. And that the King of Cinder wished himself a man worthy of knowing more.