CHAPTER TWO

VESPER

I held my position. My fingers curled around the shopping bag straps still on my shoulder, and a sharp corner poked into my upper arm. I glanced down. The ice-blue box with the butterfly brooch was jutting up out of the bag.

I glared at the offending box. Why had I ever thought that anything to do with House Zimmer could be a good-luck charm? It was more like a blasted curse, and it had already sunk its claws into me.

Vesper? Kyrion's voice sliced through my mind, his tone rough with worry. Where are you? What's happening?

The bounty hunter and her friends caught up with me. We're in an alley about a mile from the spaceport.

On my way , he growled.

More of Kyrion's icy fury crashed over me, and I had to grit my teeth to keep them from chattering again.

"Are you sure this is her, Rina?" one of the men asked. "She doesn't look nearly as pretty and polished as she did on the gossipcast footage of the Regal ball."

"Oh, it's definitely her," Rina, the pink-haired woman, replied in a tart tone. "I didn't notice you at first, but one of my special friends spotted you right away."

Special friends? Who was she talking about?

Rina clucked her tongue in mock sympathy. "Given the enormous bounty, I thought you'd have a much better disguise than bleached hair, colored contacts, and a fake nose."

I shrugged off her taunt. "Everyone's a critic. How did you and your friends spot me?"

I needed to keep her talking to give Kyrion time to get here, but I was also genuinely curious. As a lab rat, someone who toiled away in the Quill Corp research-and-development lab, I specialized in designing appliances, weapons, and spaceships. Basically, I figured out how things worked and especially how to make them better, faster, and more efficient and powerful.

And this was far more important than tweaking the temperature settings on a new brewmaker or upping the voltage on a blaster. I wanted to know what had drawn the bounty hunter's attention so I wouldn't make the same mistake again. I couldn't make the same mistake again, not if Kyrion and I were going to stay free.

Rina shrugged back at me. "I spend my days finding people who don't want to be found. Desperation comes with a variety of signs—lowered heads, hunched shoulders, furtive movements, always looking around and jumping at every loud noise. You had all the classic tells, along with that ridiculously large shopping bag. People only slink around and carry bags like that when they need to stock up on supplies and return to their hiding spots as fast as possible."

She gestured at my discarded cloak lying on the ground. "Plus, you tried to hide your body with that cloak because you either didn't want someone to recognize your outfit or you didn't have anything else to wear."

She was right. All the garments on the Dream World matched my current Arrow uniform, and I had wanted to hide my clothes since the dark blue color might make someone think of House Caldaren.

"Either way, no normal vacationer would be dressed like that. Even the most expensive tempered silk is no match for this sweltering humidity."

Once again, she was right. Tempered silk might adjust to the wearer's body temperature, along with the surrounding environment, but I was still sweating, thanks to the sun beating down on my head. I was starting to despise Tropics planets almost as much as Magma ones.

I stabbed my left index finger at her hair, which was brighter than any tropical hibiscus. "You're one to talk. Neon-pink hair doesn't exactly make you incognito."

Rina ran a hand over her locks, but the spikes sprang right back into place. "I don't care about being incognito. I want my targets to know I'm coming." A cruel grin spread across her face. "I love the thrill of the chase."

She tilted her head to the side, studying me even more closely. "Even with all your tells, I still wasn't sure it was you, Lady Vesper. At least, not until you bolted like a snow rabbit being chased by a Frozon wolf." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "That's when I called in my men, and now here we are, about to score the biggest bounty ever offered in the Archipelago Galaxy."

The air beside her shimmered, and the image of another Rina appeared. The second Rina rubbed her hands together in glee, then plunged them into a bag brimming with old-fashioned gold coins. Rina lifted her hands, letting the coins trickle through her fingers and drop back down into the bag. Maybe it was a quirk of my seer magic, but I could hear every clink-clink-clink of the coins clattering together.

I blinked. The second Rina vanished, along with the bag of coins, like a hologram that had abruptly cut off, leaving only the real woman in front of me. I grimaced. My seer magic was useful in a variety of ways, but I could have done without the visions it often showed me of other people's goals.

"What is the going rate for my capture these days?" I asked, once again genuinely curious.

"For you? Ten million credits," Rina replied, her dark eyes gleaming with greed. "Twenty million for Kyrion Caldaren. Thirty million for the two of you together."

Annoyance shot through me that Kyrion's bounty was so much higher, although I should have expected it. Kyrion Caldaren was a powerful psion, someone with mental abilities like telekinesis, telepathy, and telempathy. He was also one of the most notorious assassins in the galaxy, an expert warrior who'd been the head of the Arrows for years. Of course Callus Holloway would offer more for Kyrion's capture, but the glaring disparity still irked my pride.

"Ten million credits? Is that all?" I said, as though the amount didn't make me want to clutch my chest in shock. "Holloway is low-balling you. Ten million credits isn't nearly enough to risk your lives trying to capture me."

Rina let out a merry laugh, and her men joined in with hearty chuckles.

Since they weren't intimidated by me, I tried a different tactic. "Like you said, I'm a Regal lady. The head of a powerful, wealthy corporation. I'm sure we can come to some arrangement. Something that's a lot more rewarding than ten million credits."

Rina laughed again. "Nice try. You've been a Regal lady for about three seconds. I seriously doubt you have ten million credits to toss out to every bounty hunter who crosses your path."

I opened my mouth to try again, but she cut me off.

"Where is your other, more lucrative half?" Rina scanned the alley. "An experienced warrior like Kyrion Caldaren would never let his truebonded partner get too far away, especially a seer like you."

More annoyance shot through me at her snide tone. As a seer, I was also considered to be a psion, a catchall term for spelltechs, siphons, and anyone else with extraordinary abilities. Some folks even referred to such abilities as magic, since no one had ever been able to figure out where psionic powers came from or how to consistently replicate them with science and technology.

Magic or not, most folks scoffed at my seer abilities, especially when I told them how silver flares of light often appeared around people or objects that were going to be important, useful, or even harmful to me in some future way. Or how I could often just look at a faulty brewmaker or a misfiring blaster and immediately see how to fix it. Or how I sometimes saw memories of things people had done in the past or things they might do in the future or even the objects they desired the most, like the vision I'd had of Rina and that bag of coins.

My seeing things simply wasn't as visually impressive—or, admittedly, as cool and deadly—as a psion like Kyrion using his telekinesis to send his stormsword spinning through a roomful of enemies and skewering them one after another. Even calling my seer abilities magic didn't make them any more respected.

"Caldaren letting you out of his sight is a good way for you both to get killed," Rina continued.

I grimaced at the reminder. A truebond might make two people much, much stronger, but in some ways, it also made them exceedingly vulnerable, especially when it came to experiencing each other's pain and injuries.

I had no desire to die and kill Kyrion in the process, and if Kyrion died, I selfishly didn't want to perish from a broken heart, as was the common notion when it came to couples who had a romantic truebond. But I had accepted our bond, and so had Kyrion, and it was one of the many risks that went along with all the power we were supposed to have—power I could have used to escape the bounty hunters, if only I could figure out how it worked and especially how to tap into it on a regular basis.

"So where is he?" Rina asked, an eager note creeping into her voice. "Where is Kyrion Caldaren?"

"We split up weeks ago. For all I know, Kyrion Caldaren is on a Frozon moon on the other side of the galaxy."

Rina rolled her eyes. "You're even worse at lying than you are at disguises."

She shoved her shock baton back onto her belt, then jerked her head. The four male bounty hunters surrounded me.

Another cruel grin spread across Rina's face. "Bring her."

T he bounty hunters forced me to leave the alley and step back out onto the street. Rina led the way, while the four men kept their blasters trained on me, and we quickly made it back to the main square where the marketplace was.

One of the bounty hunters shoved me toward a path that led into the rain forest, but Rina punched him in the shoulder.

"No!" she barked out. "Not that way."

The bounty hunter frowned. "But what about—"

"Forget them!" she barked out again. "Change of plans. Let's go. Double time."

The male bounty hunters eyed the rain forest, but once again, they forced me to follow their boss.

I glanced back over my shoulder, but I didn't see anyone or anything moving in the thick, dense greenery. Why had the bounty hunters changed direction?

Rina skirted around the marketplace, then moved through several streets. The tourist shops and restaurants quickly vanished, replaced by squat, grimy buildings, and the few people in this area either studied us with open suspicion or ducked back into their businesses, clearly wanting no part of whatever trouble I was in.

While we walked, I reached out with my magic and touched the sticky cobweb of Kyrion in my mind. Kyrion? Can you hear me? We're moving into the industrial part of the city.

No response. I could still feel Kyrion, but I couldn't hear his thoughts anymore. I also couldn't tell where he was or what he was doing, and I couldn't access any of his telempathy, telekinesis, or other abilities.

Kyrion? Kyrion!

Still no response. His icy fury was a nugget buried deep in my mind, and no matter how much I hammered at it with my own magic, I couldn't crack through the cold, hard shell. It was like having a stone in my boot that constantly scraped across my skin but that I could do nothing to remove.

I chewed on my lip, even as needles of worry and dread pricked my heart. Why couldn't I communicate with Kyrion? Was something wrong with the bond? Was something wrong with me ?

"Here we are," Rina drawled. "Home sweet home."

She'd stopped in front of a metal gate at the end of a deserted street. Rina punched in a code on a keypad, and the gate rattled back. She stepped through to the other side, and the other bounty hunters shepherded me forward.

Like the marketplace, this area was also a large square, but instead of booths and trinkets, rusty transports and broken engines filled the space, and buckets of nails, bolts, and screws glinted like metallic diamonds in the noon sun. Tumbleweeds of snarled wires listed back and forth in the breeze, and the scents of machine oil and smoky exhaust greased and clouded the humid air.

Despite the danger, I perked up. Most people would have called it a junkyard, but to me, it was a trove of treasures just waiting to be discovered—and potential weapons I could rig together to escape.

"This way," Rina called out, heading deeper into the junkyard.

We went down one aisle after another, moving past busted machines and castoff pieces that were jammed together like a jigsaw puzzle and piled higher than my head. The bright Tropics sun reflected off all the metal, making the junkyard as hot as a Quill Corp smelter.

Rina skirted around a low concrete building in the center of the junkyard and headed to the back side of the structure. Here the transports and engines had been pushed to the sides to make way for a crude landing pad, and a small blitzer was parked on the hard-packed dirt, close to a dilapidated Regal carriage that squatted on a tower of cracked blocks instead of wheels, like a ragged wooden queen perched on a crumbling cement throne.

Unlike everything else, the blitzer was in excellent condition, and the cargo-bay ramp was lowered, as if it was just waiting for passengers to board.

Rina spun around and held her arms out wide like a salesperson showing off a brand-new spaceship on a factory floor. "Welcome to your new home, Lady Vesper. This is my blitzer, the Tempest . I'm sure it's not nearly as big and fancy as whatever Regal ship you've been traveling on, but you won't have to suffer our cramped accommodations too long. My ship will have you back on Corios in a few days."

Dread punched into my heart. My seer magic surged up again, and the image of another blitzer shimmered in the air— Pretty Boy , Zane's ship. My brother had taken me back to Corios, the Imperium's home planet, so that Callus Holloway could tap into my truebond with Kyrion. Even now, all these weeks later, I could still feel the greedy siphon's power blasting over me like hundreds of robotic needles stabbing deep into my body, then abruptly, painfully retracting and sucking out my magic, along with my life.

I shuddered and shoved the memory away. The second ship vanished, leaving only the Tempest . Dread punched into my heart again, although it was quickly drowned out by my pounding anger.

"I'm not going back to Corios. And unless you release me right now, you and your men won't be going anywhere but into the great beyond."

Rina laughed at my threat. "It's been a long time since I've had the pleasure of getting Regal blood on my hands. Normally, I would give you a sporting chance to get the better of me, but I'm in a rush."

I suppose I wanted to give you and Kyrion a sporting chance. Zane's voice drifted through my mind.

Even more anger pounded through my body. My arrogant jackass of a brother had said that was the reason he'd slowed down Adria and Dargan Byrne when the three Arrows had been hunting me. Well, I didn't need anyone to give me a sporting chance. I was more than capable of making my own luck.

My fingers tightened around the straps of the shopping bag still hanging from my shoulder. The bounty hunters hadn't bothered to search me, and my stormsword was still hidden inside the cloth—

A silver light flared around Rina. The brief flash of my magic was the only warning I had before the bounty hunter swung her fist at my face.

She was probably trying to knock me out with one quick, decisive blow, but I whipped to the side, and her punch plowed into my right shoulder instead of my jaw. Pain erupted in my upper arm, radiating down past my elbow. I staggered back, and the shopping bag slipped off my shoulder and dropped to the ground.

Blast it. That had hurt . Rina must have strength and speed enhancements just like so many of the other bounty hunters Kyrion and I had dodged over the last few weeks.

I shook out my arm, waiting for the pain to die down. Rina grinned and raised her fist for another strike—

"I told you not to damage her," a cool, light, feminine voice cut in.

Rina whirled around, as did the four male bounty hunters. I also turned around.

Two more people now stood in the junkyard. Like Rina and her men, the two newcomers looked to be in their late thirties, the same as me.

The first was a tall man with dark blond hair, dark brown eyes, and ruddy skin. His biceps and thigh muscles bulged against his tight gray tactical shirt and cargo pants, and his broad shoulders and sculpted chest made him look like he was carved from solid stone. He was clutching a long, oversize hammer in each hand, with the heads pointing down at the ground, and he idly swung the hammers back and forth and back and forth, like they were the hands of an enormous clock counting down the seconds until he could use the weapons.

The hilts of the hammers were gold, but the actual weapons were crafted from lunarium, a precious mineral that could enhance psionic abilities and transform them into physical elements like fire, ice, lightning, and wind. Even more curious was the shape of the hammers. One side of each weapon was flat, like a regular hammer, and lined with jagged teeth like a saw, while the opposite side featured a large, sharp spike. All the edges glinted with a razor-sharp sheen. Not regular hammers—war hammers, instruments of death and destruction.

The second person was the woman with wavy, shoulder-length, dark red hair who had bumped into me in the marketplace. She was still wearing that long red cloak, and the garment ebbed and flowed around her like a scarlet wave. Given her confident stance, I got the sense the woman wore the cloak because she wanted to, not because she'd been trying to hide her clothes like I had been.

The woman's skin was pale, but her eyes were a deep, dark green studded with bright flecks of gold. Just like the man, she too was dressed in a gray tactical shirt and cargo pants, but her clothes were much finer and embellished with green ribbons and gold buttons. A dagger with a gold hilt and a long, curved lunarium blade hung from her belt.

The four male bounty hunters tensed, their hands tightening around the blasters still in their hands.

Rina wet her lips, then stepped forward, held her arms out wide, and plastered a bright smile on her face. "Esmina! I was just getting ready to signal you."

Esmina tilted her head to the side like a Tropics tiger lazily studying its prey right before ripping it to shreds. My seer magic erupted like a Magma volcano, and a blaze of silver light flared around the other woman, gilding her from head to toe. I winced against the harsh glare, quickly blinking it away, but a telltale chill slithered down my spine. Rina and her bounty hunters might be dangerous, but Esmina was the true threat here.

"Well, how serendipitous we found you instead," Esmina drawled.

Her sardonic tone made her faint accent a bit more pronounced. It was similar to Kyrion's crisp, proper Corios tone, but I couldn't quite place it.

"Pollux and I were at the rendezvous point, but you and your men never appeared," Esmina continued. "Then the tracker I planted on Lady Vesper went offline, as though it had been destroyed."

A sheen of sweat popped out on Rina's forehead that had nothing to do with the suffocating heat. "I don't know anything about your tracker being destroyed. Lady Vesper must have disabled it."

Esmina kept her icy gaze on the bounty hunter. "It doesn't matter who destroyed the tracker. You were supposed to bring Lady Vesper to me , not here to your own ship. Unless, of course, you were thinking about taking my credits and trying to cash in on Vesper's bounty."

So Esmina and Pollux had hired Rina and her men to capture me, but Rina had decided to double-cross her employers and keep me—and all the credits I was worth—to herself. Bold but risky.

"Your vision was right. This bounty hunter scum betrayed us the second she got the chance," Pollux rumbled in a deep voice. "You should have just let me bash her skull in like I wanted to."

He hefted one of his war hammers onto his left shoulder, even as he twirled the other weapon around in his right hand. My seer magic also painted him in a silver light, although the glow wasn't as bright and strong as it had been around Esmina.

I frowned at his words. What vision? What had Esmina seen about this moment?

Rina's arms plummeted to her sides, although she kept the smile on her face. "Esmina had a vision? How wonderful! She must have seen us all here together."

Pollux snorted in disbelief. We could all hear the lie in Rina's high, nervous tone. Whoever Esmina and Pollux really were, the bounty hunter was afraid of them. No wonder she'd wanted to hustle me onto her ship and get off-planet.

The man closest to me shifted on his feet, his finger curling around his blaster trigger. I eased away from him. Any second, he was going to lose his cool, raise the weapon, and fire.

"Now," Esmina said in a bored voice.

I tensed, expecting telekinesis or some other psionic power to surge off her, but instead, Pollux snapped his right hand forward, throwing his hammer. The weapon streaked through the air like a shooting star and slammed into the forehead of the bounty hunter who'd been about to fire his blaster.

Crack!

The bounty hunter's skull split open like a ripe melon. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the man dropped to the dirt without making a sound. Pollux jerked his arm back as though he was pulling on an invisible rope, and the hammer yanked free of the dead man's skull and zipped back over into his waiting hand.

Pollux was an extremely strong telekinetic, maybe even stronger than Kyrion. As soon as the war hammer settled into his palm, he started swinging the weapon back and forth in the same eerie motion as before. Bits of bone and brain matter dripped off the hammer's head, every soft, sickening plop as loud as a drum banging in the shocked silence.

Beside me, the dead bounty hunter's blood sluiced across the ground. I shuddered, then looked past the crimson stream. The man's blaster had slid out of his hand and landed a few feet away. The weapon was much closer than my stormsword, which was still tucked away in my shopping bag.

Rina and the three remaining bounty hunters were gaping at their friend's body, so I sidled toward the blaster.

Esmina let out a soft laugh and looked at me. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

I froze.

Esmina's eyes were even darker than before, more black than green, although the gold flecks in her irises were much brighter now and sparking with magic. Before meeting Kyrion, I had never paid much attention to other psions' abilities. They had power, and I didn't, and that was all I needed to know. But this woman . . . magic just rolled off her like the heat blazing off the Tropics sun above.

Esmina had more raw magic than any psion I had ever met, except maybe Callus Holloway. Somehow she had known that I was going to reach for the bounty hunter's blaster almost the second the thought entered my mind. Was she a siphon like Holloway? Or something else? Something even more dangerous?

"Don't bother, Vesper," Esmina purred. "I know exactly what you're going to do even before you do it."

She strode forward. Rina and the three remaining bounty hunters scuttled back, leaving me standing alone. Esmina stopped in front of me. Even more of her magic surged over me, scraping against my skin like a razor. Sweat prickled the back of my neck, and another cold chill slid down my spine.

"Oh, yes. I can feel it now. Your power—or, rather, lack thereof." She shook her head as though she had just revealed some sad, devastating fact. "You're the weak link, destined to be broken."

Weak link? Her words slapped me across the face, and I jerked back in shock. She was talking about my truebond with Kyrion. My hands balled into fists, and fury exploded in my chest, punching the air out of my lungs. She didn't know anything about me or Kyrion or our connection or how we felt about each other.

"Don't bother denying it," Esmina continued. "You've already sensed it. How much weaker you are than Kyrion. How fragile and vulnerable you make him. How you're going to be the death of him, one way or another."

She tilted her head to the side again. The gold flecks in her eyes brightened even more, and her gaze burned into mine like a cold laser, cutting straight to my core. A knowing smile curved her lips. "Ah, I see. You've already started having problems with your bond. How very sad Kyrion has all that magnificent power, and you don't know how to use it."

The fury in my chest died, choked to nothingness by sharp thorns of worry and doubt that burrowed deep into my heart. Kyrion was a much stronger psion and far more skilled with his stormsword, whereas I was still struggling to figure out how my seer magic worked and trying to play catch-up with him as a warrior.

Esmina's lips curled back into a disgusted sneer. "That's the trap of truebonds. The weak always drag down the strong."

Those thorns burrowed even deeper into my chest, crystallizing into jagged shards of icy dread. Somehow she was peering into the darkest recesses of my mind and heart and dragging out my deepest secrets and most terrifying fears—that I was going to get myself killed and doom Kyrion along with me.

Esmina shrugged, as if my lack of power was of no real concern. "Still, you are supposed to be useful in other ways, small though they may be."

I flinched, but I finally found my voice again. "Not that small. You can get a lot of use out of ten million credits."

She laughed. "Whoever said I was here for the bounty?"

Another chill zipped down my spine, stronger than the others, and morphed into an ocean of ice that surged out into my arms and legs. Having a bounty on my head was bad enough, but far worse fates were lurking in the cold depths of the galaxy.

Harkin Ocnus had shown me that.

The sadistic scientist was the son of General Orion Ocnus, one of the leaders of the Techwave, a terrorist group that wanted to topple the Imperium and become the main ruling force in the galaxy. Several weeks ago, on his father's orders, Harkin had kidnapped me and cuffed me to a table in his medical lab. The cruel bastard had cut me with a scalpel, then used skinbonds to heal my injuries. Harkin had tortured me over and over in hopes of forcing me to fix the Techwave's new hand cannon, a deadly weapon capable of cutting through psionic and other defensive energy shields.

My seer magic surged up. This time, instead of a double image or a blinding silver light, the ends of Esmina's scarlet cloak oozed down and started dripping, just as my blood had dripped off the table in Harkin's lab.

I shuddered at the unwanted vision. "If you're not here for the bounty, then what do you want with me? Are you working for the Techwave?"

"The Techwave?" A mocking laugh tumbled from Esmina's lips. "Please. Don't insult me. I have far bigger goals than ordering around a bunch of mechanized soldiers."

"I wouldn't mind crushing a few Black Scarabs," Pollux chimed in. "They make such odd noises when you smash them."

He kept swinging his hammer, and another shudder rippled through my body at his casual dismissal of the Techwave's dangerous automated troops.

"Forget it," Rina growled. "I stole Lady Vesper from you fair and square. We're collecting the bounty, not you."

Rina plucked her blaster out of its holster and aimed the weapon at Pollux. The three male bounty hunters did the same thing.

I eased to the side, getting out of the potential cross fire, and a small flare of light appeared. I tensed, thinking it was more of my seer magic, but the light was coming from the long dagger on Esmina's belt. She wasn't even touching the dagger, and the lunarium blade was still glimmering a faint gold in a reflection of her magic. I'd never seen a weapon light up like that without a psion's touch, which was just another confirmation of how powerful she was.

Rina waggled her blaster at Pollux, although her gaze flicked over to Esmina. "Tell your lapdog to stand down, and we won't kill you."

Pollux snorted at her lie. "Really? You and what army? All I see are buckets of bolts and piles of metal."

Rina puckered her lips and let out a high, sharp whistle. All around the junkyard, the buckets of bolts and piles of metal shifted to the sides, smoothly skating along hidden tracks embedded in the dirt. A series of secret doors opened, and more than a dozen bounty hunters poured out of the hiding spots. Clever.

The bounty hunters spread out and aimed their blasters at Pollux and Esmina.

Rina grinned. "What were you saying about an army?"