The hour it had taken to fly from the landing strip to the Fortress only took half an hour to travel back. They abandoned the tarp. Rayne raced into the jet and found a couch in the passenger lounge. Before Xelan could climb into the pilot’s chair, he checked in on her.

Soaked from head to toe in Icarean blood, Rayne sat straight, staring out the window.

Lost.

Damn Nox.

She needed Xelan, but they both needed him to taxi the plane without a warm-up. He turned his back on her for now to communicate with Six on the headset. The normally professional woman didn’t contain the relief in her voice at confirmation of their safety. He felt the same.

The first hour of the flight required all of Xelan’s attention because of a radical storm which dropped their altitude by several hundred feet before he could recover control. The moment autopilot could handle the air without his oversight, he abandoned the cockpit. He found Rayne in the same position, staring out the same window. Only now the blood had dried navy on her skin and clothes.

“Rayne?”

“I’m fine. I just—I’m bone-tired, and I need to lie down, but I’m afraid of contaminating the DNA sample,” she confessed without once looking at him. She’d referred to the blood covering her so clinically.

Xelan said, “It won’t. You can rest.”

Rayne gave him the briefest of glances, and the wild glean in her eyes startled him. “No. I can’t take that chance. I’ll be fine.” On an afterthought, her lips twitched in what he guessed she meant as a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine.”

After bright white flash through the window, Xelan cursed. He hated cursing, but he hated these interruptions more. Returning to the cockpit, he fought the weather for the last two hours of their trip. Even the final approach proved treacherous. Was the entire planet caught in a storm?

Xelan tossed his headset away in a hurry to reach Rayne in the lounge, but she flung the door open the moment the stairs locked in. He called after her. Without a backward glance, she dashed off into the hangar.

“Colton, can you—”

“I got it, Wingmaster.” The young man glanced from his boss to his General with a mixture of relief and concern.

Xelan chased after Rayne, listening as others greeted her ahead with no response from her. What had Nox done to her? He rounded the corner into a rumpus room where Tumu waited stoically, which terrified Xelan. The Tritan only resorted to grim under the most dire of circumstances. As in ‘his homeworld under threat’ kind of dire.

Tameka and Andrew jumped up from the couch. Both blanched at the sight of Rayne.

She approached Tumu, stiff and on edge, and held out her blue-blood soaked palm. “This is Nox’s blood.”

Tameka clasped a hand over her mouth. Xelan opened his arms to her, and she crossed the room to snuggle in. On a deep breath, he took comfort in her scent.

Rayne looked like Carrie at the prom. She pressed, “Do you accept this as his DNA?”

Tumu bowed his head to her. “General, I do formally accept this sample. Earth has fulfilled its obligations to the agreement. The mission to Enki starts tomorrow.” He gave her a once over, head to toe, as he scraped a good deal of dried blood flakes into a small specimen dish. “I assure you things will move quickly—”

Once Tumu finished collecting the sample, Rayne turned on her stilettos and quit the room without another word.

Should Xelan give her space? Or run after her?

Things had been so much simpler when Rayne was younger. Considering how much she’d stormed off from Xelan this evening, he settled to give her some space. Recalling the bruises on her face with all the smeared lipstick, he needed some comfort of his own.

Xelan squeezed Tameka for a hug. Into his shoulder, she murmured, “I’m so glad you’re both safe.” He kissed the top of her buns.

Thinking back to the desert, Xelan confessed, “Tameka, one day I need to show you something important. It can’t happen right now, and I’m sorry for that. But… Soon. Okay?” Hell, he wanted to ask her to live in the place with him, not just visit.

Tameka rose on tiptoe to kiss him with those soft lips that reminded him of his promise from thirteen hours ago. “It’s a date.”

Andrew stepped over to Tumu. “Is that enough?”

“More than enough, Goldilocks.”

Xelan set Tameka down with a gentle squeeze to address the Tritan. If the Shadow departed for Enki tomorrow, they’d need a plan.

Tameka excused herself while mouthing, “Waking. Sagan.”

Xelan patted her buns and grinned at the irritation smoldering the emeralds in her eyes.

After a few minutes of discussion between the remaining three, Tameka returned as Tumu confirmed, “Take the plane to Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. Expect resistance. Transmissions through the conduit have mentioned Icarean scouts at the location.”

“I think we can handle a few.” Tameka beamed up at Xelan, and he winked at her.

“Peaches, you would bring any army to its knees.” Tumu took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, while quirking a brow to challenge Xelan.

Old hat.

Andrew rolled his eyes beside them. That summed up Xelan’s reaction.

Tameka awarded Tumu a full, throaty laugh and a kiss on the cheek. Not a second later, the same hand of Tameka’s that the Tritan had pecked ended up in Xelan’s back pocket with a demanding squeeze. The promise yet unfulfilled.

Xelan started to say, “I think we’re heading—”

Sagan flung through the doorway. She glanced frantically among the faces but rushed to Xelan’s side within a heartbeat. She pulled him down to lean in for a whisper. “Rayne’s having some kind of episode.” She stepped back with concern drawn in the lines of her face. She spared polite smiles to Tumu, Tameka, and Andrew but nothing wiped the distress from her eyes.

Xelan turned to Tameka, who said unbidden, “Go to her.” As if everyone in the room knew it could only be about Rayne. “I’ll wait for you here.”

He followed until Sagan pointed to the private officer showers. With the stall lights off, only the locker room provided a dim illumination. Steam clouded the space. Not far came the sound of ongoing spray. He smelled the tap water and, beneath that, salt.

Stolen story; please report.

Rayne’s tears.

Before Xelan rounded the corner, a choking sob punched him in the chest. From inside the stall came the shuddering kind of crying built on hysteria. The desperate yearning of a broken heart.

Xelan took a moment to curse his brother. Closing his eyes, he prayed to Elden for the strength to carry this conversation. Then he entered the dark stall.

Still in her dress, Rayne sat in the stall with her hair caked in dried blood. Her entire body convulsed with the violence of her emotional onslaught. Devastated. Xelan’s little girl broken was battered in every way imaginable. Unequipped to cope with her particular dilemma, she’d uncorked the proverbial bottle of her feelings and suffered for it.

Xelan wanted to call her name, but decided against it. Even with his presence, Rayne continued to squeeze her knees to her chest with her bare back against the tile wall. Just outside the spray.

Don’t turn the shower off.

Rayne needed the distracting sound of rushing water. Xelan grabbed a washrag, soaked it, and lathered a little soap in it. Approaching her, she didn’t flinch. She didn’t react.

Almost catatonic, Rayne continued in the fit of her unmaking. She allowed Xelan to pull her good arm away. Gently, he set to work at scrubbing away the blood. A stream of blue coursed down the drain.

Xelan started with Rayne’s fingers, getting between them. Then her wrist and forearm. Her sobs quieted to hiccups. Tears poured hot from her eyes, leaving tracks in the blue all down her cheeks. So covered was she, that the pale skin peeking from beneath looked painted onto the blue surface.

Rayne had been angry when she’d stabbed Nox, passionate, crazed. Not just afraid. There was another hiccup as Xelan cleaned beyond her elbow up to her exposed shoulder.

He folded the rag to make a corner and gingerly scrub at her collarbone and around the straps of her dress, ruined. Like her. Xelan still dared not ask what happened. He hoped she’d tell him soon. Not knowing was killing him. This lost, hopeless girl had gutted him.

“What’s wrong with me?” Rayne asked, her voice so quiet the spray almost drowned it out.

He shook his head, patting more blood away. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing is wrong with—”

“I told him I love him,” she confessed on the end of a hiccup. She stared vacantly at the tiles, reliving the moment.

Xelan fought the reflex to recoil and schooled his face not to show the shock and despair. How had he miss this? Rayne was young and confused, surely.

But Xelan didn’t get far into that line of thinking before he imagined Tameka admonishing him for insulting the valid feelings of an eighteen-year-old woman. The more he gave the idea room in his head, the more it made sense Rayne would feel for Nox. Xelan didn’t like it. Abhorred the very notion. As if his brother could ever deserve—

“And he tried to choke me on someone’s nacre,” Rayne added. The hiccups hitched in her throat, and broken sobs carried on the exhale as her breathing picked up the rapid pace again. The horror of it all traumatized her over and over. Tears spilled from her eyes, opened too wide. “The entire time I kept wondering who did he murder and then try to make me eat?” She turned to Xelan then and introduced him to a new nightmare.

How was he expected to comfort Rayne for loving a monster he himself had suffered a lifetime with?

To start, Xelan said, “Which bothered you more?”

Rayne’s body flushed, and her scent expressed shame.

“No, Rayne,” Xelan said as he scrubbed at her hairline. “There’s no place for shame here.” He pulled the rag away and forced himself into her field of vision. Starting this conversation was hard for him. “I loved my brother, once.” Okay. Good start.

Rayne peered up at him, finally seeing him and not the scene in her memory. Her expression was earnest. She needed to know this.

Xelan smudged away the blood on her branded cheek while he carried on. “A long life span meant plenty of familial trials. We were siblings. We fought. We made up. It’s the way of things.”

Rayne’s undivided attention allowed Xelan to scrub almost all the blood from her face without her emotional fit interfering.

Xelan said, “Father—I mean, Umbra—groomed Nox to take the throne. He was the oldest. That was his right. Eventually, this led to Korac being introduced to the family.”

Rayne arched an eyebrow at Xelan, and he scrubbed under it, saying, “I don’t know if it was his influence or Umbra’s doing, but things got a little rough after that. Nox suddenly had plans and goals. Big ones. My brother had always devised things differently than most people. He calculated ahead of them, predicted their behaviors for pranks or sparring. He was just wired that way. But once he started setting sights on Cinder’s future, he stopped being a youngling. He’d grown up. Meanwhile, I stayed interested in botany and agriculture. Hematology. I was interested in reproducing the effects of the Vittle.”

Xelan glanced up to make sure Rayne was still following him. Her eyes had returned to their normal size. Although red and puffy, they no longer shone with tears. The hiccups came less frequently.

With Rayne’s body less stiff, Xelan reached up to her hair and started working on the pins, continuing, “It’s a crop Icari ate to survive before the sun burned. After the fact, the production of it dwindled and eventually ceased. There was no longer a viable food source with billions of hungry Icari. I dedicated the first half of my life to reproducing its effects without harm to our delicate ecosystem.

“Nox, Umbra, and Korac dedicated their time to discovering planets with a compatible species of plant to inhabit using mechanisms Umbra had pulled from nowhere. I later learned he received most of his devices from illegal Tritan sources. Well, they found a planet. But it wasn’t compatible plant life on the surface. It was a budding civilization of mammalian creatures with biology similar to our own.

“Shortly after the discovery, Umbra died, and Nox assumed the throne with Korac, Colita, and I at his side. Together we brainstormed ways to get the food source we needed without invading or harming Earth. I’m not sure which one of them originated the idea. I’ll never know, I think. But despite all the strategies I established and advised, they chose domination. To my horror. To my hatred. I couldn’t stop it.

“But I tell you what I did stop that day. I stopped loving my brother. I couldn’t reconcile his decision to ruin an entire race for the sake of ours. Until that point, despite his cruel prodding and his mean jokes, I believed he had good in him. I thought I saw it in the way he brought Korac up from nothing. But even then, I witnessed him take pleasure in meting out cruelty on his new best friend. I can’t fathom the cause. Nox isn’t capable of love. He can’t even imagine the purpose or good of its existence. What good is it to him, but another means to manipulate and inflict pain—”

Unable to bear more, Rayne burst into another fit of tears as Xelan rinsed her hair.

“Rayne, I’m so sorry.” He pulled her to him under the spray and hugged her tightly.

Between sobs against his wet shirt, Rayne said, “I think I almost got through to him. I think…” She swallowed a sob to say, “I think I scared him away. I—”

Xelan kissed the top of her head. “No, Rayne. I’m sorry, but even if you want to believe that, you know it isn’t true. You know it isn’t true because he chose to do what he wanted to, anyway. And he always will.” He pulled away to gaze at her through the water. “Even if you do get close enough—close enough to change a mind like his—he will reject it and punish you for making him doubt himself. If you got as close as you think you did, then we can’t let him near you until you get a nacre or you won’t survive it.”

The next sob hit Rayne so hard, Xelan had to catch her from collapsing.

Nox had broken her.

Xelan gritted his teeth and opened his mouth to say so when Rayne said something muffled against his shirt. “What?”

“Can you—” A hiccup, “—Please help with this dress? It’s heavy now—I… I’m wearing clothes underneath.”

Xelan stepped back without hesitating and peeled the layer off of Rayne. An electrical singe made him cry out and cradle his hand. His breath left on a hiss as his nacre healed the burn.

“I’m so sorry!”

Rayne tried to check him, but he brushed her away, gently. “Show it to me.”

She lifted the dress the rest of the way over her head. It fell to the tiles with a heavy thwack. Black denim shorts. Smart for fighting. The buckle shone in the dim light from the locker room beyond. Gold. A buckle made of pure gold. Rayne said, “I forgot about it. I’m sorry.”

“Whose idea was this?” Xelan didn’t ask what it was for. He knew and hated the reason, but he gave credit to the genius of it.

Blood rushed to Rayne’s face. “Kyle’s.”

With a heart heavy from the trials Rayne had already endured and the ones to come, Xelan turned her around to scrub her back with the soapy rag. In all honesty, he needed Elden’s Verse to get him through this. To think, she’d put in anti-rape measures. Or anti-seduction measures, which was far worse. Or was it worse? Which scenario bothered him more?

“Xelan?”

“Yes.”

In a tiny, shy voice, Rayne asked a question he never wanted to hear, “Is there… Is there something significant to kissing a person where their nacre should be?”

Xelan choked back a groan as the blood drained from his body. The spray took the suds away as he counted the burn scars on her back.

No.

Nothing about this situation required Xelan to share this with Rayne. But he was withholding so much from her lately, and it killed him. He—

Damn.

Xelan’s eyelids slammed shut. He let his head fall back in the spray. Be honest with Rayne. She deserved some honesty after all this. He said, “It’s a commitment Icari make to live and die together as one.”

When Xelan opened his eyes again, Rayne turned and faced him with wide sapphire disks.

There was more.

Emotion made his voice so thick, Xelan had to swallow and try to speak twice to ask, “Who did the kissing?”

Rayne looked away, but answered, “Nox.”

No.

Just. No.