Kiton Blackfall.
Loving son, brother, friend.
Rin sank to her knees. The damp chill of the snow bled through her pants.
"Kit, I don’t know what happened to you, what you were turned into, but I know that—at least, I’d like to think that it wasn’t what you wanted." She swallowed, feeling a tightness inher throat from barely held back emotion. "I’m not the same girl I was before you… died."
She hesitated. But he had died, hadn’t he? The man in the dark room, with those cold brown eyes and unnatural strength, wasn’t Kit. The Kit from her memories had died. And what memories she had…
It was more than justthis.
Her mind wrestled with the feverish dreams she’d had over the last few weeks. Their intensity had dulled, but the feelings lingered. Flashes of other lives, other versions of herself.
The memories were fragmented, but she would never forget the thrill of recalling her past lives. She would never take it for granted. Not anymore.
All she had ever wanted, right in front of her—so why did she still feel empty?
She hadn’t spoken a word of it to the others, but the way she caught them staring at her sometimes, she was sure they knew—at least somewhat—that something had shifted after she’d been tortured. Like a lock on her mind had been broken.
The true force of her memories pressed against a slowly fracturing dam, letting only a thin trickle bleed through. She wondered if her mind would finally break if all her memories came rushing back at once.
She tugged off her gloves, pressing her bare fingers to the words carved on the headstone. Beneath her was an empty casket—not because he was gone, scattered among the Stars, but because he washere. Alive.
"I remember now, did you know that? Not everything, but pieces are coming back. I know about the Nightfell roses. How you gave them to me to make me happy, even while you were killing yourself for a cause that didn’t care about you, not the way I did. I remember how you tried to keep me safe, tuck me away. I think, in that life, after everything I went through, thatwas something I wanted—to bekept. And I remember being in your arms while we watched a planet through a ship’s window. The rest is fuzzy, but you held me and—" Her brow furrowed as a sudden, sharp pain lanced behind her eyes. "I don’t know what happened after that."
In the snowy wind, a voice carried to her.
"I do."
Rin’s body trembled with the memory of electricity, her fingernails threatened to crack as they dug into the stone, and slowly, she turned to peer up at the one who’d spoken.
Stepping out from the trees at the edge of the graveyard, cloaked in a dark uniform, cold brown eyes that haunted her nightmares stared down at her.
"Hello, Vesperin," Kit said as he stood rigid and imposing in the distance. His form was like an ink blot, etched in shadows.
Rin pushed herself onto shaking legs, trying to imbue strength into her body. She steeled herself, yet her voice still trembled. "How did you find me?"
Auren. Her eyes went wide. He was nearby. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
The snow was a bright silhouette at Kit’s back as he stalked closer. He wore the same style of uniform he had in the underground lab in Nova Zone 21: a dark bodysuit, the chest fitted with armored pieces, gloves, boots, with the addition of a holster at his hip, the barrel of a gun gleaming.
He canted his head like a predator, his brown hair dusted with snow. "I have been hunting you."
Kit pusheddown the orders embedded over the vision of his prey, standing among the headstones:
Return to the base. Return to the base. Return to the base. Return to?—
It was a metronome loop, playing constantly ever since the day he’d returned from torturing her, only to find the chair empty, devoid of her strangely entrancing form.
He had spiraled, sharp, thick emotions choking him, before his focus had narrowed in on the memory of her, the feeling she invoked. He had known, then, what he must do—hunt her down.
As if every emotion bottled up inside him had suddenly rushed to the forefront, rage had consumed him until he saw nothing but red. When the red relented, he found he had been covered in it. Blood had dripped from his hair, coated his hands. Body parts had littered the blood-slicked tile floor of the lab. He had killed all the scientists and guards on that level.
He hadn’t felt horror; he still didn’t.
Kit had fled, ripping an eyeball out of the nearest dead scientist’s eye socket to use for the retinal scanners at every doorway. He’d thundered up stairwell after stairwell, ascending from the bowels of the lab as he’d finally emerged into the fresh forest air.
That was when the orders had started, and they hadn’t stopped. Not even after Kit had tried bashing his head against the wall tomake it stop.
