{Enki}

“Does it feel like I’m being watched?”

Rayne’s skin itched ever since leaving Silence’s throne room. Her bones tingled with prickling nerves. She stopped dead center in an intersection connecting miles of identical white shelves, reaching for the silver sky above.

Beside her in mind only, Nox said, “Something feels wrong.”

Yes. It did.

Rayne ran thousands of miles over the last two hours under this irritating sense of scrutiny. Someone followed her without impeding her mission. They—and she could only guess it was Imminent—either wanted her to succeed or wanted to learn from her performance.

“Rayne.”

In all ways possible, she closed her eyes to the weight of her name from Nox’s voice. Every time he said it, the leagues of history between them crashed into her like a tidal wave, and she struggled to keep her head above the confusion. Instead of acknowledging it, Rayne licked her lips and said, “What do you think? Continue following the map or take another route—”

Calibrated.

Optimized.

Stabilizing…

Unable to stabilize.

Warning: Sixty-eight hours and thirty-two minutes until maximum destabilization.

Frustration nearly clawed a growl from Rayne’s throat—a scream, even. A war cry to deflect would-be contenders that watched from the shadows. There wasn’t time to get lost in this chalky library. She needed Xelan. Would give anything to hear him say—

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Open your eyes.”

Without question, Rayne did and took in her surroundings. Nox searched through the screen that acted as her vision within the mindscape. His keener eyes, more avian than her own, often glimpsed things before her. The mercury waterfall across the way, for instance. He pointed at it before she realized why. Reflected in the sheer falls was one of those clunky metal security boxes that hovered over the Pantheon, lingering miles behind her.

That’s how.

Nox narrowed his gaze, and Rayne saw the calculation in his black eyes. “You can take it down with the nacre rifle, but I advise against it.”

“Because it’s Silence, and we may still need her? And keeping it around would eventually reveal her motivations for helping me?”

Respect flashed on his handsome face and pulled the corners of his mouth. Nox didn’t bother asking her how she’d guessed. No. While Rayne surprised him with her intuition, he trusted it in a way she came to appreciate. After another second, Nox said, “She’s not your only pursuer, but she’s your only perceived ally. Lean into that as we have no other direction to speak of and face a labyrinth of epic proportions.”

With a countdown, no less.

But neither of them mentioned it. The fuse updated Rayne frequently of her diminishing lifespan. “Right.” She stepped up to the waterfall and took in her reflection. Running at this speed was hell on her ponytail. After adjusting it and her armor, she turned inside her mind to smile at Nox.

He shook his head at her incredulous behavior with a slight… was that a smirk? Nox wasn’t simply different in the last twelve hours. He was transformed—

“Is there something on my face, your majesty?”

They both knew that wasn’t possible in her mindscape, but Rayne took the hint and looked straight ahead. “Sorry. It’s just… I can’t tell if you’re liberated by Korac’s Verse or relieved that Enki’s end is nigh.”

This time Nox did smile, and Rayne admitted a small thrill went through her at the sight of this six-foot, five-inch behemoth grinning with an abandon he’d never known in his lifetime. It even silkened the baritone of his already rich voice as he said, “Why not both?”

Rayne saved a small smile for herself, a happiness she embraced instead of buried, despite the hopelessness inspired by the fuse. Even that couldn’t take away from the win which was this man’s unfettered humor. So she ran, pressing onward, following a map of conduits to lead her from this place and to… wherever. Here and there, glimpsing the reflection of the Overseer across the Pantheon’s many shiny things perched precariously on shelves.

“I hope no one ever lets a cat in here.” Inside her head, Rayne snickered at her own joke.

With his heavy arms folded in a tough-guy pose, Nox quirked a brow at her.

Rayne snickered even more.