The End of Dying: An Urban Fantasy Adventure

By C.M. Martens

Hope is not a plan. That’s what Phecda tried to explain. It's what Dee has finally learned.

She’s lost so much.
Everything.
They say that when the crucible is laid, true character is revealed. Will Dee's trials show her as the hero or the villain of her story?

With both enemies and friends after her—and new villains to face, Dee finally understands that to be free does not mean to be without conflict. To be free can not mean laying low, does not mean avoiding the things that make her special.
So, she’ll learn more. She’ll face forward; fight to be better. Whether she’ll become a villain or a savior, not even she can know.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stealing Shade Productions
• Release date: Jan 30, 2024
• ISBN: 1955738130

Book preview

PART XII

Picese constellation

1

The wind set on her like a gale of violence, falling from the peaks in a swirl of rain and sleet and noise. Thunderclaps echoed in the valley, startling enough to pause her steps. Startling her enough to look up. It was hours since she stopped. Miles since—how far had she come since she last slept? One hundred? More? All on foot over rough terrain not meant for a girl born to upper-class suburbia.

Except, that girl was long gone, buried beneath the hybrid anomaly of the life she now walked.

Thunder shook the world, pulling Dee further from the reverie of her steps, heart lodged in her throat. Shaking off the adrenaline rush, ignoring the cold blanket of rain pressing her clothes to her skin, she continued onward.

Weeks she’d plodded North, leaving Amaltheum and her crimes behind. Weeks, her thoughts wandered, jumping from one mistake to the next, never lingering lest her horrific deeds come to focus. The pain was too great. The guilt of action she could never take back heavy enough to keep her shoulders bowed and her movement plodding. She couldn’t face what was done—what she’d done—even after promising she would, after vowing she wouldn’t let it beat her but use it to fuel a better version of herself. That was what this pilgrimage was about: facing her mistakes, her destructive nature, squaring off against the thing inside her that would rip her friend’s heart from his chest.

Forgetting the storm’s rage soaking her to her core, Dee balled her fists, clenched her eyes, recalled Sabik Han’s words that spurned her on this pilgrimage of solace: You do not get to hide from any of this. Because of them, because of your hand in it, you will not!

Sabik’s words in her head overlayed with Daniel’s dying eyes. Daniel, whose death kept her from despair. For his blood on her hands, she would fight. She would be more than her mistakes. More than a murderous monster without control. More than death and destruction. More than a harbinger of a dying time. More than a reckless anomaly who couldn’t control her baser instincts.

Even as the weather continued its unusual swing, she kept her feet moving. Despite the hunger in her belly and the fatigue in her limbs, she would not stop. She even welcomed the discomfort as part of her penance.

Another blast of light and sound pulled her head up. She stared through the leaf-laden trees into a sky bursting with electric light. It was Hamal’s voice that filled her head now. His reprimand that she did not rest; did not take care of herself. Advice she ignored even as longing lanced her chest in a burn so vicious it warmed her chilled veins. What might she and Hamal have been without LeSath’s interference?

The thought broke the damn of her grief she thought held behind the steady repetition of steps over rough terrain. Grief she promised she would hold until she reached her destination. Wracking sobs shook her shoulders. Sobs so violent she had to stop, to lean against the rough trunks of thick trees unused to guests such as her.

But it wasn’t time for this. Not now. Not yet.

Forcing a deep inhale, she composed her face to grim determination and continued on.

Night fell. Pinpricks of light in the dark stopped her fast. The world paused. Her thoughts blanked. She slid through the loam to put more trunks and brush between her and them.

Searching Soldiers sent by—it could be anyone. Friend or foe, she would remain unseen. It was inevitable they come after her. It was why she traveled off the roads, even off the paths of the National Parks she used to bypass civilization. When she stopped to sleep, in was in the daytime after climbing high into the trees to ensure they wouldn’t stumble across her. The Rishis meant well, but this was a trip she had to make on her own. And if LeSath found her—she would not go with that one again, no matter the cost.

A weaponized escort would be safer.

Hamal’s voice in her mind, though in a cadence more like—she couldn’t put her finger on it. She wouldn’t. This wasn’t a time to think of the living. This was a time for the dead. She wanted Hamal to be alive. She wanted all of them to be alive. Daniel and Mike, Sargas and Struve, Fera and Subra, and all the others.

Holding her breath against another round of sobs threatening to break free, Dee waited, quiet, still. She would not let them find her. Not enemy Soldiers. Not friendly Soldiers. Even when the tingling in her skull that told of their presence faded to nothing, she delayed. This time alone, this time in silent suffering and quiet contemplation was why she’d left without telling anyone. She didn’t believe they would understand. She didn’t think they would let her go alone, even if they did understand.

Desiree!

She blinked, head snapping up, body sliding into hiding. How much time had passed? It was light now, dawn moving to late morning. More searchers on her trail. The voice that boomed came from behind this time, echoing from the Rishi who made her. That her suffering caused misery for others brought fresh tears to her eyes. Treacherous weather, odd for this time of year, made the journey dangerous for even superhuman beings. Beings who out here because of her.

To highlight the point, a slab of mud dislodged from its place, avalanching with enough force to take Dee’s legs out from under her. Only her grip on the trees kept her from washing down the sharp decline into the narrow valley she’d spent the day moving around. A tenuous grip, what with the rain still falling.

Panicked the deluge would call attention to her, Dee ignored her precarious position to stare wide-eyed through the dark. It was a great boon that they couldn’t sense her like she could sense them. It would make hiding impossible. Even so, they would see her if they looked her way with infrared or night-vision goggles.

Terrified of this very thing, she remained huddled in her cone of cold, feet suctioned in the mud, arms braced around a trio of thin birches. Trees not unlike those that surrounded the house where she grew up. Trees, whose branches she’d passed under to meet Hamal’s last smile with one of her own. An expression that hung in her mind, even here, even now. She forced the memory to pause that she might not see, again, the moment after when they were all incinerated to ash.

Holding tight to these trees hundreds of miles from those, she clenched her eyes shut. Hamal’s fate was worse than Daniel’s. Hamal had chosen to help her. Hamal had changed his life for her. She could never repay that, would never have the chance to acknowledge it now that he was gone, atomized over the space that was her father’s house.

Blinking away the haunted memories, Dee continued on. How long ago Zosma and his Soldiers moved away, she couldn’t tell. She only knew it was time to detach herself from where she clung to the trees, half-freezing, covered in mud.

The rain stopped. The sun rose. She walked on, moving ever North towards the place where she would let herself grieve. Despair would not claim her. This was not her succumbing to the numbing dark of her thoughts. She knew that Void’s clever manipulation would not help her. Her time on Arlo’s island had taught her that. Sabik Han was right that she couldn’t hide from what she’d done. Just like she couldn’t hide from that piece of herself that threatened everyone and everything. She needed to face this; learn to live with it. She couldn’t wallow in desolation; shouldn’t hide in the depths of her self-pity. That would make her life nothing. More than that, it would make every death sacrificed for her meaningless. She’d clung to this idea while imprisoned in Lesath’s cage, this idea that she had to live to make their sacrifices worth something, and she still believed it.

She had to believe it or else⁠—

Daniel’s face flashed in her mind’s eyes. Her hands buried in his chest. That almost-grin of his fading to silence. His murder at her hands.

Her breath hitched. The memory of her fingers crushing Daniel’s life, that single moment when violence ruled her actions, erased the forested path around her. Her voice, hysterical, as she yelled at Sabik Han to fix it. To erase what she’d done.

You know I can not.

She hadn’t wanted to believe it. She’d wanted to blame the Rishi who’d taught her to control the demon within. Who hadn’t taught her enough.

Han? How do I live with this?

She’d tried to answer the question for herself. Tried to find a way through the dark to the road that would lead her out of mind-numbing, chest-crushing misery.

Her answer led her to this road, to this journey, taking this untrodden path so that she might avoid those who would interrupt her pilgrimage and face her actions once and for all.

The rain came again. Slowed. Stopped. The sun shown bright and warm before swirling clouds covered it to bring more storms. Days turned to weeks, and still, she expected to find Hamal waiting just ahead in the trees as he’d found her when they first met. She imagined him leaning with an arrogant cross of arms, scarred face showing a mixture of mirth and contempt.

A sound in the dark turned her fast. She held her breath against the idea she would find him there. Their almost-kiss flashed through her mind. A moment that strained their friendship even before he chose to turn Soldier. A decision she knew he made so he might continue to serve her. An adaptation neither managed well that ended in a sacrifice she could never repay.

She hated that. Hated that when they might come together, there was too much baggage between them. He’d backed off, throwing himself into the role he’d carved out for himself. Without time, there was no way to guess how that relationship would have evolved. They might have become like Amalthea and Metis or Zosma and Regina. Maybe Hamal would have faded into a life away from hers. Now, they could never know. She would never know.

Tears blurred her surroundings, but it was no different walking through a world blurred by tears than slipping through the shadows of a night-blind forest. Just like walking through a world she didn’t know how to live in now that everything was taken from her. And wasn’t that the irony? All this time, she’d handled her precarious position with the Rishis without fighting because she thought it was the only way to get answers. She hadn’t considered the growing cost of her neutrality, of her unwillingness to advocate for herself.

There were those who’d stepped up to help her. Soldiers who’d come to her aid without first meeting her. Duke and Acacia and Aleia and Yed and Benning and so many others. Niyat, who’d stayed behind as LeSath’s Soldier to work for her on the inside. Bear, who’d pledged his life to her, was still alive under Porrima and Zibanitu’s command.

Tears turned sobs. Her promise to wait to grieve impossible in the wake of the memories flooding her. Memories of those who’d helped her make things better for all of them. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t realized these greater stakes. The Soldiers knew. They saw in her a catalyst for a greater change where she’d seen nothing more than meddling in her life.

Looking back, it was easy to see that not all of the interference was bad. Her relationship with Sargas and Struve had started awkward and inappropriate but morphed into a solid friendship. LeSath might be crazy, but there was an argument about how expression of the flesh built confidence. It happened to Dee. Tucked away in those rooms under a desert of ice and snow, she’d found a tenacity she might never have found without them, without Antares.

Breath shuddering, she indulged the pain of Antares’s loss as she never had. Her heart still hurt for him. For the Soldier who would not have adapted to the changes in her life. To Hamal. Especially not to Arlo showing up and feigning friendship. Antares, who’d put her first, even above the wishes of his master.

More tears streamed down Dee’s face. This time, there was no rain to wash them away. This time, she didn’t try to stop them.

Maybe she was wrong about Antares. Maybe he wouldn’t have struggled with the changes that came upon her after she left LeSath’s the first time. He and Hamal might have been friends, the greatest security team in the history of Soldiers. Maybe there was more to all of them she would now never learn.

Her heartache intensified.

She swiped at her face, clearing her vision to search the sky. Dawn’s light reached over the mountains. Morning stars glowed bright. She was dry. That was something. There hadn’t been rain in—days? Time meant nothing and it did not matter. Just like it didn’t matter that she never cultivated a romantic relationship with any of the fantastic personalities that came into her life. Her life hadn’t been conducive to romance since Steve and Ray pulled her and Kim into Zosma’s experiment. She’d scoffed at the pettiness of considering a relationship in the turmoil of figuring out her place among the Rishis. Now, with so many futures snuffed to nothing, she wondered if the connections were the important parts. Maybe the bigger picture was irrelevant with no one to share it.

Bigger picture.

She wrinkled her face as her thoughts moved from heart-wrenching topics to maddening ones. Whatever Zibanitu’s plan for her, recent events with LeSath certainly skewed them. Finding out LeSath had sided with the enemy—a being different and possibly more powerful than the Rishis—changed everyone’s perspective. A perspective that had Sade call her Harbinger.

The Rishis were a race who’d walked the Earth long before humans were ever a flicker on evolution’s path. Not even Dee knew whether the Rishis’ powers were genetic or simply cultivated through some connection they shared with the Earth after living so long. Only the Twins’ story that told of Sabik Han practicing some rite that immortalized those few who remained suggested their power was more than inherent.

For as much as Dee still didn’t know about them, she knew less about the being LeSath teamed up with. The being like Jeremy. Like those five pale-skinned, silver-haired creatures who’d flown with all the subtlety of Superman to witness Desiree for themselves when she’d used their brand of power to save Zosma, Regina, Arlo, and herself from being crushed under the weight of LeSath’s tantrum. Magic, she called it, for lack of a better descriptor.

Whatever involvement any of them had—Jeremy and his kin or LeSath’s new ally. Even the Rishis—in some bigger picture, at least the Rishis were in it together. Five Houses, including the black sheep Ophiuchus, Sabik Han, had come together under the same roof. Many who hadn’t spoken to one another since before the first human city was founded.

Dee was sure that was something to celebrate.

See, not all for nothing.

Not nothing, but not enough. Not enough to erase Dee’s guilt and definitely not enough to consider all the deaths worth it.

The sun came up. The sun went down. Green leaves lightened, turned yellow and orange, a few traced with the bright flare of the red vines that choked the tree’s limbs. Temperatures dropped from chilly to cold, interspersed with the flash storms that wreaked havoc on her and her surroundings. She followed the line of trees as steadily North as she could, leaving their cover only when a town cropped up in her path. Here, she would eat, head down, never meeting anyone’s eye, not caring how her disheveled and scented appearance came across. Then, it was a race into obscurity to ensure those searching for her could not follow. With Phecda’s network of who-knew-how-many hacked cameras, along with the computing power of artificial intelligence, Dee did not underestimate how easily they would find her if she kept to populated areas.

Occasionally, when her steps continued without faltering for mile after mile, unimpeded by weather or terrain, she remembered the hope for a life worth living. Only when she was drawn outside herself, stretched through the cosmos in this meditative trance brought on by the monotony of her steps, could she remember it was okay to believe there was something worth finding on the other side of this.

Then, the mountains were behind her. Ahead was the valley of the land where she grew up…

Her pace hiccuped. Her heart stuttered. So close to her destination, she wasn’t sure if she could bring herself those last few miles.

Feet rooted to the Earth, she closed her eyes to listen. Tree frogs and sparrows’ songs mingled with crickets in a natural symphony. The occasional note of an owl and the mostly silent passing of early-risen bats added more layers to the night she remembered well as a child. The leaves whispered in the breeze, some cascading around her in a dry drizzle. In a few more weeks, a shower of colored leaves would precede a world of white.

With renewed vigor, Dee stepped onto her property, slipping into the woods that surrounded the place she once called home. More steps would reveal what remained of the house her father built. The place where she’d grown up and formed a forever friendship with Mike, where she’d learned to live with a broken past before losing everything again.

Taking the last step through the trees, she emerged to that exact spot where she’d watched everything change. She saw Hamal before her, turning from his position on the porch to look out at her. Nirah and Sargas stood close to him, Sargas’s face lighting in a grin. Hamal met her eye just as the screaming hum that heralded complete decimation shadowed them all. He’d understood the sound where she hadn’t, but even he hadn’t had time to look up.

Forty meters of empty lawn separated them, and still, the fiery heat of the blast had singed Dee’s skin and rocketed her backward. Subra, ever at Dee’s side, was tossed with her. Dee never saw where her shadow landed. Never saw if it was the blast that killed her bodyguard or what came after.

In the present, Dee looked around and behind her as if the female had waited all this time for Dee to find her. Burnt grass and singed tree trunks remained. If there were survivors, there was no sign of them now. Not after so much time.

But Arlo had lived. And Atkins. Were there more? Why hadn’t she asked about them?

She clenched her fists in an act of self-recrimination. She didn’t deserve any of their lives traded for hers. Not when she couldn’t be bothered to even ask after them.

She blinked tears away, refusing to indulge her self-pity. She was here to put an end to that and more.

Stepping closer to where a house once stood, she forced herself to remember. She had no clear memory of the destruction, only a jumbled sense of shouting, of ears ringing, of shots fired, of hands picking her up. It wasn’t until she’d woken in her cage in the bowels of LeSath’s compound that she realized this destruction was only the beginning.

Now, eyes wide, Dee took in the scorched Earth, and the crater settled with the debris of what was once a house. The wall that was the backside of the kitchen remained, holding up a portion of the second floor that teetered on stubborn posts. It teetered forward and down towards the hole in the ground that was the basement, now filled with ash and debris. Her feet brought her to where the porch once stood, where Hamal had given her his last smile, toes hanging over the edge of the blackened cement foundation.

What are we doing back here?

The voice spun her around. Crouched, she dropped into the hole, boots sinking to her ankles in the sodden dregs of her old life. Her head barely cleared the lip, but she wasn’t trying to see. She was hoping to remain unnoticed even as she listened to the voices she hadn’t heard approach. Human, both, she should have noted their steps come up the long drive.

There’s just too many things, a second man replied. Look here. Doesn’t it look like someone, probably multiple someones, laid here? And this. Is this blood?

I don’t know, man. If it was, the rain would have washed it away by now, the first replied. We’ve had this same conversation a dozen times. Why does it matter?

Why does it matter some kind of battle happened right here in the center of rural America?

There was no answer. Dee wondered if—whoever they were—could handle the answer. The things that existed, the kinds of weapons and technology they had access to—the answer was terrifying. The only reason the Rishis didn’t take over the world was because they had no interest in it. The only reason they were left alone is because so few knew they existed. No human government would trust them to themselves. Wars were started for much less threat.

And what happened to those bullet casings they found? The same thing that happened to the bodies, I bet. Disappeared. All of it. Not in any report. It’s like they didn’t exist. Like someone smoothed everything out so their ‘gas explosion’ story looked plausible, the second voice said.

You want to stir up the kind of trouble poking around this will cause? If someone went to that kind of trouble to hide this, who are we to— the first voice trailed off, leaving the question unasked.

Yeah. Well. If they can hide this, what else are they hiding?

Again, no response, but the first must have convinced the second there was no reason to stick around. Dee heard their steps fade, staying out of sight until the quiet hum of their car’s engine was lost to the native sounds of the evening.

2

With twilight moving to night, confident she was well and truly alone, Dee pulled herself out of the ruins to take in the scene, this time with a more clinical eye.

It was like she’d wandered onto the set of some apocalyptic movie production.

Except, it wasn’t a set. It was real. Regardless of who covered up what happened here, Dee knew. She was here to remember. To mourn. To feel all the pain and hurt and loss of the events that turned this place from a home into—this.

She looked from the house toward the front yard, where her car held an overturned SUV on its roof and hood. Like the rest, she had to remind herself it was real, not some sculpture that signified the collapse of modern culture—or maybe a commentary on an over-abundant generation—rather than proof that what happened here wasn’t just some nightmare.

Splinters of glass littered the yard. What was once lush, green lawn had turned a scarred piece of land. The land where she and Hamal once trained in those first days before she had any real clue about who he was and neither of them considered what her future held.

Pivoting in a slow circle, Dee stared at her feet pressing prints into the black soot and coal. It was this spot on the wrap-around porch where Hamal had stood near Nirah, Alba, and Sargas. The spot where those pledged to help her were incinerated while Dee was blown clear. The very spot where Hamal had seen Dee come through the trees, relief she was safe pouring from his expression right before he was vaporized.

Breath stuck in her lungs, choked in her throat. She collapsed to her knees to press a palm to the rubble, pretending she could sense them there. Willing herself to commune with their last thoughts or just feel some lingering presence to allow them to live again, even if for just a moment.

Clenching her fingers, she fisted a handful of ash. With a strangled cry, she threw it. The debris caught on the wind, dissipating to specks of light reflecting the last of the sun’s rays. Her fists found the ground. Over and over, they pummeled, beating at the spot once her refuge. Her home was gone. The place she could always return was no more.

Screams pressed from her throat, finally set free.

Fingers and knuckles bleeding, she fell forward, pressing her face to the ground that sloped into the crater of what was left of the house. Her anguish bubbled out of her until it felt like her throat bled from the strain. Even then, she continued to turn her breath into ragged cries.

Depleted and empty, the quiet of the night fell around her, marred only by her heaving breaths.

She stayed crouched, hands tight around the soot surrounding her. She’d expected something to happen, some thought, or vision, or—something to transform her. Finally feeling, letting out what she’d held on to for so long, was supposed to release her pain;. It was supposed to set her free from it.

But there was nothing. Just the pounding in her head that followed the sobbing she’d indulged.

Standing from that spot was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. To take a full breath. Another. To not rush off to find something to tear apart with her bare hands. So, so hard. Daniel’s phantom blood fresh on her fingers kept her strong against the inclination. Daniel’s fading life reminded her why the monster within could never take control. Not again. His death reminded her that coming to this place was an exercise in moving on.

Pushing aside the lure of the simplistic calm of that baser side of herself, she pressed her hand to the Earth one last time. This time, not to connect with her grief but to ground herself in the here and now. To follow the teaching of Asellus and Pollux, whose mentorships, each different from the other, had taught her something about controlling the mind. Something she needed now more than ever.

Ready to face the rest of this destructed place, Dee blinked into the misty air. Rain that was natural and fitting for this time of year. Nothing like the freak storms that shook the world as she traveled the mountain paths.

That anything of the house remained was a fluke of physics she could not explain. The back wall of the house, where she’d once stared out the sliders as Hamal and Atkins spoke around her, sloped towards her, held by the remnants of the living room and kitchen walls buckling under the few square meters of the second story still holding on. The roof had collapsed, filling in much of the basement with charred debris. The angular heap blocked any path onto what remained of that second floor. A surface that was too far away for her to leap to from the lip of the pit where she stood.

So, she slid back into the crater, stopping to crouch into a pocket of roof and wall. This protected her from the rain turning from drizzle to cascade.

Her toes kicked something hard and unscorched. A firefighter’s helmet. A fire on this scale would have called in stations from one hundred kilometers away. She wished she had seen the scurry of responders, heard their theories about so many military-dressed corpses in and around the property.

Crouching to lay the helmet back in its place, she found the corner of a picture frame poking through. Dropping from the balls of her feet to her knees, she peeled the object free, eager to see what small scrap remained of her past.

Whatever captured moment the frame once held was forever erased. Frustrated, she turned the frame over and over, willing the image to come to mind. When it came to her, something in her relaxed. The picture was of her father and her after a soccer game, his arm around her thirteen-year-old shoulder, hers around his waist, their outside arms raised in victory.

She stared long and hard at the rectangle, lost in that memory of a time when her current life was impossible. She felt so removed from the girl in that picture that a rush of vertigo took her. It surged in a rush of hot rage. Her hand fisted, shattering the frame whose pieces dropped to mingle with the rest of a ruined world. Rising fast, she turned in search of more to destroy. Hating the pressing weight of the tight space she’d come into, she leaped, bashing her neck and shoulders through her covering into the rain.

The bones of the house still standing groaned when her shoulder slammed against them. Dust rained over her, a warning she did not heed. Her fingers bled where they gouged their way through the splintered wood, logic gone to make way for this monster who knew nothing of control. It fed on her helpless frustration, and she gave it enough to gorge on.

Another groan was followed by an extended creak and a sudden shift in the floor above her. She did not care she was about to bury herself. She did not move nor think of how she would feel when she sent the rest of the house tumbling to nothing.

Desiree?

Her name stopped her fast, pushed back the beast who rode her.

She turned, peering up the path of the beam of light spearing her face.

She barely believed it.

She could not believe it.

Desiree Galen? The voice asked again.

Dee’s fists loosened. She stood straight, still staring. She might have answered if she had the power to speak.

He spoke again, lowering the light so she could see his eyebrows draw together. They thought you might come. I’m here to give you a ride.

It was his exact voice. His exact face. His exact stance. The same almost curl to the edge of his mouth.

Except, it was impossible.

She blinked fast, lost to memory, searching for a place in her thoughts that could make this real.

Run, some part of her prompted.

Yet, she couldn’t. Not if there was even the slimmest chance he was him.

Ms. Galen? He began again. I’m not here to harm you. I think we both know I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

She pressed outward with that sense that felt when the Rishis or those created by them were near, tapping with everything she had.

Nothing.

She wasn’t sure when she stopped breathing, but she took a sip of air now as if she might taste the truth in the wind. While it did not explain anything, that breath gave her a moment to think. To analyze the way he spoke to her. An unmistakable inflection that told her he did not know her. Like they’d never met. Like this was his first time seeing her.

It was that point which allowed her to keep her head. To keep excitement from clouding her judgment.

She looked at her feet and shook her head. Held her eyes tight before opening them again, sure it was her grief imposing a likeness where there was none. Hamal was dead. This was not him. Like Graffias had resembled her friend, this figure was simply a close likeness. Hamal had died on this very spot. She had no doubt of that.

With nothing else to do, sensing no threat she couldn’t maneuver out of, she pulled herself out of the hole. The male backed away, turning off his flashlight as she did, giving her room to come to more stable ground.

Closer proximity did not make him seem less like her friend.

All this Hamal lacked was the ragged scar that marred the side of his face. The man before her, standing with his back to the lights of his car, face unblemished, even had the same arrogant glean in his eye. If he’d pretended to know her, she wouldn’t be strong enough not to reciprocate the lie.

Facing him as a stranger, Dee didn’t know what to say.

Ms. Galen, I was told to wait for you. To offer a ride back to—well, wherever you might head next.

Dee frowned, important questions about his presence filtering through her shock. Not a single Rishi interested in assisting her would have sent this Hamal look-alike to her.

The restless beast inside her stretched its destructive desire, this time with good reason. There was danger here; she just couldn’t get around her want for the lie to be real enough to acknowledge it.

Who sent you? Her voice rasped.

The slightest shift in his posture, subtle but not subtle enough for one trained as she, had her rolling before the shot fired. Whatever he was, he was faster than any human she’d ever met. Much faster than the pre-Soldier-Hamal who’d begun her training.

She didn’t think you’d come without question, but she hoped.

She.

Dee didn’t have to ask to know. LeSath, still after her.

And she sent you? Dee spoke even as she continued to move, zig-zagging to keep recurrent shots from landing until she had the pile of vehicles between them. She might have attacked rather than run, but she couldn’t stomach the idea of killing him. Not the imposter with Hamal’s face. Not even if he was one of LeSath’s.

She thought my face might lure you in. She thought your sentimentality might make this easy.

Dee almost laughed. If not for the fact that it almost worked, she would have. Instead, she let her rage crescendo, so her vision tunneled, and her feelings vanished.

There was no conscious choice. There was a moment when she was sprinting in a wide arc around the man whose face she knew and another when her fists were buried in his chest.

That was how Arlo found her.

3

She felt him come, sifting through the trees like one with the night. She sensed when he saw her, some heightened response that thickened the air before another change when he realized she’d taken care of the problem herself.

It never occurred to her to hide what she’d done. She continued to straddle not-Hamal’s corpse leaking blood and fluids around her wrists long after her destruction was sated and the beast pulled back. When the sting from his ribs piercing her skin filtered through layers of sensation, she reveled it, focusing on that rather than the tingle in her skull that was Arlo watching her. The pain was all that mattered. This pain that was insufficient penance for her destruction.

Movement turned her eyes up. She met Daniel’s green gaze, his judgment for this mistake she swore she would never make again.

Desiree.

She blinked, slow, then fast. Daniel’s contempt turned to Arlo’s worry. Green eyes morphed to Arlo’s amber-speckled gaze.

Desiree, he said again, expression carefully blank.

Letting out a slow breath, Dee pulled her eyes from this once-enemy to turn her attention to the gore she’d caused. She pulled her hands free, curling her nose at the pricks of pain that healed too fast to be worthy of note.

Through it, Arlo stood quiet and still.

Dee let her head drop back to stare into the star-filled sky. The rain turned downpour had shifted back to a drizzle. She focused on the sensation of moisture on her cheeks and forehead. Dawn pressed close.

The slightest shift from the treeline brought her attention back to the guest still waiting, still watching.

I figured you’d go back to your island. To your life. Her voice sounded far away. She didn’t look at him, instead returning her attention to the carnage she’d made, not expecting a response. Not expecting anything, even as she continued to relax under the weight of Arlo’s presence.

It was another thing to hate about herself.

She’d last seen Arlo at the remains of LeSath’s compound. When the five hovering beings had come to inspect the one who’d used their power. They’d insisted Arlo stay behind. It was them—those like Jeremy—who’d saved them all from further fighting. Dee assumed she’d never see Arlo again. He’d done more than he’d promised by assisting in rescuing her from LeSath’s imprisonment.

Her words hung in the air. Not a question, not quite an accusation.

He didn’t answer, nor did he stir, yet she sensed his frustration right before his words sounded in her head. I will not leave you again.

Dee stood fast, tripping past the body at her feet. Don’t do that! Don’t you do that!

He stood still and unblinking as she rushed him, shoulders back so his t-shirt pressed against his muscular chest. His jeans were loose and faded, stance ready so he could move with the agile grace Dee knew he possessed.

Except, he didn’t move. He barely blinked as she barreled towards him.

I’m sorry about Daniel.

His words stopped her fast.

Breaths heaving, she stared at him from two body lengths away. Don’t do that, either, she whispered. If he was anything but superhuman, he would not have heard her.

And maybe he hadn’t. He gave no acknowledgment to the words, just continued to watch her, making no other comment, giving no expression, standing still but ready. Once, she might have attacked just to see who was faster.

May I? He asked after a time.

Dee looked over her shoulder at the steam rising from the body bleeding into the already wet ground. The rain fell hard again, blurring the