“Marina T’mal.” Doren nodded slowly. “She’s retired now, living on a small planet in the Outer Reaches. I haven’t spoken to her in several years.”
“Maybe it’s time to reconnect.” She adjusted her grip on Ari, who stirred but didn’t wake. “She might have insights about the Keys and the Grorn and what we’re really dealing with. And a quiet planet sounds like exactly what we need right now. Time to catch our breath and plan our next move, without worrying about Grorn warriors breaking down the door.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, a smile crept across his face—not his usual cocky grin, but something softer and more genuine.
“You’re remarkable, you know that?”
“I’m a schoolteacher from Ohio. There’s nothing remarkable about me.”
“You’re wrong.” He leaned down, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You’re the most remarkable person I’ve ever met.”
Before she could respond, he was moving back towards the pilot’s chair, his fingers already dancing across the controls.
“Tireth,” he said, pulling up a star chart. “That’s where Marina lives. It’s a three-day journey from here, through mostly empty space. No major trade routes, no strategic value. The Grorn won’t think to look for us there.”
“And this Marina—she’ll help us?”
“She’ll probably lecture me for taking so long to visit.” His smile widened, some of his usual humor returning. “But yes, she’ll help. If anyone can make sense of what we’ve found, it’s her.”
He entered the coordinates and engaged the autopilot. The ship hummed around them, adjusting course, then carried them towards an uncertain future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The cottage stood at the edge of a field of lavender flowers, its weathered stone walls draped in climbing vines that had long since claimed victory over the structure. Smoke curled from a crooked chimney, thin and pale against the violet sky.
Doren had forgotten how beautiful Tireth was. Or maybe he’d never really noticed.
“She lives here alone?” Emma shifted Ari in her arms, studying the cottage with obvious curiosity. The baby was awake, her silver eyes tracking a fat insect that buzzed lazily through the flowers.
“For the last ten years.”
He didn’t move towards the cottage. Something had lodged in his chest the moment they’d touched down—a tightness that had nothing to do with the Grorn or the narrow escape from the asteroid belt.
Marina T’mal had been ancient when he’d met her twenty years ago, a wizened creature with paper-thin skin and eyes that seemed to see through walls. She’d found him in a market onFerros, half-starved and desperate, trying to sell a trinket he’d stolen from a crashed shuttle. The trinket had turned out to be Precursor in origin—worthless to most people, but priceless to a scholar who’d devoted her life to studying the vanished civilization.
She could have reported him. She could have taken the artifact and left him to rot.
Instead, she’d bought him dinner and listened to his story. And then, over plates of food he’d eaten too fast to taste, she’d told him about the Vault.
“Doren?”
Emma’s voice pulled him back. She was watching him with that look she got sometimes—the one that made him feel seen in ways that were simultaneously comforting and terrifying.
“Sorry.” He forced his feet to move. “It’s been a long time.”
The door opened before they reached it.
Marina stood in the threshold, smaller than he remembered. The years had carved deeper lines into her face, bent her spine into a pronounced curve, turned her hair to spun silver. But her eyes—dark and sharp and knowing—hadn’t changed at all.
“You’re late,” she said.
He stopped. “Late?”
“I expected you three months ago.” She stepped aside, gesturing them in with a gnarled hand. “The Grorn started moving in this sector in the spring. I knew you’d follow eventually. Though I admit, I didn’t expect you to bring company.”
Her gaze moved to Emma, then to Ari, and something flickered in those ancient eyes.
“An Aurelian child.” Her voice softened. “Oh, my boy. What have you gotten yourself into?”
