“My sister Camille gave me flowers on my birthday. She’s named after a flower too. Every year she picked a different color, but these were my favorite.”
When Khar still did not speak, when he kept walking without lifting his gaze from the VoidBrace, Lily nudged him with her elbow. That finally pulled the Divani out of his trance.
“That flower,” he said at last, “looks exactly like the crest of the Divani queens.”
Lily felt an irrational sting of disappointment that his attention was on the parallel between their worlds and not on her.
“The what?” she blurted. “I did not even know you had queens.”
“We do not anymore. Our society is absolute meritocracy now.” His tone shifted, more distant, as if he had stepped into a corridor of memory. “But once, everything revolved around the queens. They began as usurping tyrants, and in the end their rule led to the Divani Golden Age. The era when we became a species capable of spaceflight.”
He fell silent for a heartbeat, then his mouth curved, the edge of something dangerous and amused.
“There is still a saying from that time. A truly cunning Divani male warrior knows exactly when to lower his horns beneath a female’s rule.”
An early conversation between Khar and Lily during Vegrun and Iroxella’s journey
Black, glossy boots that looked military. Two thick, powerful thighs, one of them nearly as wide as Lily’s waist. A chest broad enough to catch someone comfortably, assuming you were not slamming into it at full speed. Obsidian skin. Luminous, demonic eyes. Above them, two long horns rose high, their tips capped in gold that made them look even sharper.
Lily’s heart kicked so hard she thought it might tear free.
Khar.
He was here.
Her Khar, in commando gear, his horns fitted with guards that looked like jewelry and armor at once.
She sprang up and launched herself at him, crushing her mouth to his in a fierce kiss. The world vanished. His scent flooded her, familiar and impossible, and for one breath she could not remember how to be afraid. She had thought she would never see him again.
Her impact shoved him back against the wall. He seemed startled, his response a fraction slow, but then he caught her rhythm and met her with equal hunger.
When they broke apart, Lily stared up at him, dazed, as if the danger around them had been a story she had once heard about someone else.
Khar was here. The universe had snapped back into place. Together, they could face anything.
He set her down and scanned her from head to toe, his gaze sharp, assessing. When he spoke, his voice resonated with a slightly different timbre than the one she knew, but it still steadied her.
“Lily. Are you all right?”
She nodded, then clasped his massive hand, as if she could anchor herself with it.
“How did you get here? I’m so happy.”
He did not answer. He gave her a glance that said he had heard every word, then he was already speaking into his console.
“Lily is with me. No visible injuries. We are moving to you now.”
He cut the transmission and, gentle but unyielding, pulled her with him.
“Come. I’ll explain everything, but we have to move.”
Lily did not need more than that. She would have followed him to the end of space itself.
He led her to the hangar door where Horos and the smugglers were. Lily asked nothing. She would have handed Khar her life without hesitation. He hit the door control. The gate opened smoothly, silently.
What waited on the other side was pure pandemonium.
With Vitro’s shields down, no one dared fire plasma rounds. One stray shot could breach the cruiser’s hull and turn the hangar into a tomb. So they fought with whatever they had.
