{The Heart Of Enki}

Calibrated.

Optimized.

Stabilizing…

Unable to stabilize.

Warning: One hour and forty-three minutes until maximum destabilization.

Nox knew why Rayne wouldn’t tell Xelan and the others. He felt it in the light separating her atoms. He felt it in how that separation broadened.

Bright.

So bright.

With each of Tameka’s infusions, Rayne burned. Her screams would haunt Nox into the next life. And there was nothing he could do. In the telling of his life, he knew of only one moment like this.

The instant Nox died.

Every particle in him had blazed with the same phosphorous brilliance glowing in Rayne now. So much like the storm in her, Rayne’s reactions were tempestuous—Crying with joy at Sagan and Korac’s engagement, laughing at the Primary’s emblazoned feet, cursing the Gargantuan for hiding behind Pax, and demanding to join the fray. She cycled through these emotions, sometimes all within seconds.

Resuscitating Rayne terrified Nox, and he worried that with each surge from Tameka came the time to do it again. But what if this time he couldn’t draw breath from the oxygen in her blood to breathe into her lungs? Or if he lost his semi-corporeal form entirely and couldn’t perform the chest compressions? What were their options then?

Razor?!

Oh, and the Pain Curator enjoyed this. Nox saw the glint in his bizarre eyes every time Rayne’s spine bowed, and Nox despised himself because he’d been nearly the same in his lust for coaxing pain—

“You’ve gone away again.”

Rayne.

She sounded so lonely in her torment and fear.

Nox peered around the mindscape. Where they stood inside her mind was black and empty, focused on her external senses, including the view from her eyes. Behind them, the storm assaulted the ocean as waves crested to trade blows with the clouds. His lava fields pooled into the foam, steaming into solid rock below.

There was a metaphor in there somewhere.

Nox confessed, “I want to take you away from this, but I can’t imagine anywhere which wouldn’t revive some painful memory.”

Externally, Rayne wiped fresh blood—bright and crimson—from her lips and under her nose.

Razor said, “I’d offer you a handkerchief if I were corporeal, your highness, but alas…” There was a shift to his eyes as he watched her.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Nox didn’t like it.

Internally, Rayne muttered, “Where did you have in mind?” She managed a weak smile for Nox.

A place to dazzle her, distract her from the burden.

The salt capital of Lacceirus-Capra? No. It was underground and claustrophobia-inducing. Lukemore’s sky temple? No. It was a little drafty, and Nox found it dull once the novelty wore off—

“Nox?”

He glanced down at her. Rayne stood beside him, looking out of her external view. She was trembling. Nox swallowed, prepared to give her anything she asked. “Yes?”

“Take me home.”

Rayne stared down at her hands, the azure light strobing along her skin. Another promise of the end.

Nox constructed a replica of her house in Little Rock, Arkansas, a modest two-story, three-bedroom home which had served the Callahans well. Before he’d invaded Earth and wrought destruction on the planet. On Rayne.

Her smile was stronger now as she stared up at him with appreciation in her bright blue eyes. Nox swallowed and gestured for her to join him—

A surge of power went through Rayne, separating the bonds keeping her together. Light escaped in between and threatened to rip her apart. It was another significant dose, leaving her gasping for air when it receded. Her molecules were stitched back together through nacre repair systems.

Nox couldn’t help her from inside her mind. Instead, he waited until she got back on her feet. When Rayne glanced externally at Razor’s eyes, Nox could see that knowing shimmer, and he growled in his chest.

Rayne asked the Pain Curator, “Are you enjoying this?”

He shrugged, casually, and assured, “I’m here to help, but I might as well appreciate your performance. Agony becomes you. I can see why Nox tortured you so—”

“Shut your mouth.” Rayne cut the air with her hand. “You know nothing about Nox. Or me. So you can shut the hell up about a franchise you didn’t profit off of. Instead, reflect on how Sagan would feel about your line of thinking.”

That made Razor straighten off his cane and stare at Rayne with an eerie stillness.

Nox’s chest swelled at her defense of him. Again, maybe two other people in existence would ever vouch for him in that manner, and one of them had raised her to kill Nox.

After a few moments, Razor grinned and tipped his hat at her. “My apologies, your majesty. Sagan’s estimations of you were accurate.”

Rayne tilted her head to the side, waiting for him to elaborate.

“You really don’t tolerate bullshit.”

Her laughter was genuine and infectious. Both men in her company shared in it, irritating Nox despite the smile on his face. She said, “No, I don’t. I love Sagan. I know why she was willing to give you a chance, but Razor, if you were corporeal—”

“I know. I know. You’d decimate me.” At least Razor sounded as if he took this seriously. “But it isn’t necessary. She split me in half with a conduit, and I deserved it.”

Rayne pointed at the screen. “She brought Silence and Tameka back.”

Razor was still grinning. “Between the two of them, they could bring anyone back from the brink.”

The truth in the statement left them all in a companionable silence.

Rayne returned to her mindscape with a clap. “Let me introduce you to the place where I dreamt up all your deaths, Nox.”

He didn’t wince or flinch. Nox smirked. “Lead the way, your majesty.”

While Rayne toured her living room and kitchen, meant for video games with Jack and strawberry ice cream, Nox considered why he wanted to wait for the Shadow to know he was in Rayne’s mind. As she absorbed blast after blast of nacre radiation, it occurred to him…

Nox never thought they’d survive Enki.

Not really.

And why disturb Korac, Xelan, and the rest with the news of his second existence if it was an existence so short-lived—

“You’ve gone away again.”

Nox looked up at Rayne, where she stood at the top of the staircase to the second floor. He’d paused at the bottom, lost in his thoughts. “I’m sorry.”

Rayne’s smile was soft and a little sad. “It’s okay. I’ve been thinking a lot, too, but that’s why we’re on this little tour. So I don’t have to think. With you, I’m not alone.”

Nox climbed the stairs with his shoulders spanning the breadth of them, and thought to ask, “Are you afraid?”

Again, that sad smile. Rayne brushed her hair behind ear as she said, “Well, you know, after nearly dying from that one infusion, I was scared.”

Nox stood one step down from her. At this angle, this close, Rayne looked altogether more delicate, not less. Or maybe the situation made her more frail to him. He asked, “And now?”

“I know there’s nothing to fear. Everything will be all right.”

Rayne was right, and Nox would see to it.