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My plasma blade ignites and I spin, severing the torso of the nearest creature, the superheated energy cauterizing the wound instantly. To my left, three streaks of blue and silver light crash into the barricades. Zane, Jorik, and Sorin drop into the fray, brandishing their own weapons.

The battle degrades into an hours-long, grueling massacre.

We fight block by block, factory by factory. The Ghorvek do not retreat, consuming everything in their path. I watch human soldiers fall, their bodies torn open. I witness transformations as the Ghorvek pathogen hits their bloodstreams. Maggie’s men and women thrash in the mud, their eyes rolling back, their veins turning black as the virus rewrites their biology in minutes, transforming them into aggressive husks.

The surviving humans are forced to turn their guns on their own friends as screams echo across the battlefield.

I carve a path through the swarm, fighting for the planet. Fighting for Kairen. But mostly, I fight because Maggie is watching from the sky, relaying commands and keeping the fractured human army from completely disintegrating.

By lastlight, the Ghorvek lines break. The remaining creatures scatter into the ruined outskirts, abandoning the factory district. Zane and the others remain to help the human medics secure the perimeter, but I retract my armor, wipe a thick smear of black gore from my cheek, and summon my ship.

The Veil descends, landing softly in a cleared courtyard. The ramp lowers, and I walk up into the quiet hum of the cockpit.

Maggie sits perfectly still in the copilot seat. The tactical holograms paint her pale face in shades of blue. She doesn’t look up when I drop into the pilot chair and engage the autopilot, setting our course back to London.

The silence in the cabin is suffocating.

I watch her out of the corner of my eye. Her right hand rests over her left forearm, her fingers massaging the crisp white cotton of her pristine sleeve. She rubs the spot right where the Ghorvek claw tore through her clothes two weeks ago.

I narrow my eyes as pieces of information start fitting together. The chained, infected captive in Gareth Pike’s cellar. She let it off the chain. She was in the room with a starving husk.

I think about the obsessive way she guards her left arm. I remember her visceral panic when I offered to run a medical scan on a mere scratch. I recall the sound of her voice as she ordered soldiers to kill their own infected comrades. I observe the weight of guilt pressing against her normally poised shoulders.

She isn’t afraid of the Ghorvek pathogen.

She is immune to it.

My twin hearts skip a beat, shock radiating through my chest. The plague that transforms sentient creatures into rabid husks in minutes—her blood neutralizes it.

SUBJECT: ELMSLEIGH, MARGARET.

STATUS: IMMUNE.

THREAT TO HER FREEDOM: INCALCULABLE.

If this becomes common knowledge… If the wrong Avaren—or anyone who understands what the only cure would buy on a planet full of the infected—learns of her existence, Maggie will become a specimen on a table in an orbital lab. No wonder she builds ice walls. No wonder she refuses the match test. To surrender her blood is to surrender her life.

I grip the flight yoke, my knuckles turning white. I should file a report. I should hail Kairen right now.

I do absolutely nothing.

I look at the woman beside me, carrying the weight of a dying world and the cure to the Ghorvek plague in her veins, completely alone. I refuse to push her. I refuse to play the spymaster today. She is drowning in the guilt of watching her people rot while she sits untouched.

“You held the line,” I say softly, the deep rumble of my voice breaking the silence. “Your tactics saved thousands today, Maggie.”

She doesn’t answer. She keeps rubbing her left arm, her gaze fixed on the endless gray clouds outside the viewport.

Then, the buckle of her harness clicks.

She stands up and takes the two steps across the narrow cockpit.

Before I can ask what she needs, she swings her leg over my lap and straddles my thighs.

My breath leaves my lungs in a rush as she drops her weight onto my lap, her knees bracketing my hips. She fists the fabric of my combat shirt and crashes her mouth against mine.

The icy barrier is gone, leaving behind what I recognize as a desperate, clawing need for oblivion. I wrap my arms around her waist, anchoring her small frame against my chest, and kiss her back with every ounce of the protective possessiveness raging in my blood.

I sweep my tongue into her mouth, tasting the slick heat of her. She moans, a broken sound, and grinds her hips down directly over my groin.