CHAPTER FOUR

KYRION

V esper limped into view. Weariness vibrated along the velvety ribbon of her in my mind, but she kept trudging forward, a large bag hanging on her shoulder. Even after everything she'd been through, she'd still grabbed the supplies we needed. Pride warmed my heart, along with more than a little frustration at her stubbornness.

My gaze dropped to the horrific wound in her arm, and the pain of Vesper's injuries boiled up in my own body. My right arm pulsed with a vicious, staccato rhythm, the skin so raw and sensitive the mere touch of my tactical shirt made me grimace. As an Arrow, I'd been shot with a blaster more times than I cared to remember, but it was always a miserable experience, and Vesper's wound was worse than most.

"Now what?" she asked in a tired voice.

More of her pain boiled up in my mind, and I swallowed a snarl. I might have absorbed the worst of Vesper's agony, but I hated the fact she had been injured—and that I had been too slow and too far away to protect her.

I cleared my throat and gestured to the right. "This way."

Vesper followed me over to the fence that cordoned off the back of the junkyard from the rain forest. I used my stormsword to slice through the rusty metal links and then my telekinesis to peel them back and create an opening. I also held out my hand. Vesper sighed, but she passed me the shopping bag.

More sirens blared, the sound coming from the front of the junkyard. Vesper grimaced and ducked through the opening. More of her pain rippled through my mind, and I swallowed another snarl.

We plunged into the rain forest, moving from one tree to the next and heading back to the spaceport. It took us almost an hour, but we made it to the landing strip where our ship was parked without incident.

I drew my blaster and made Vesper stay behind me as we approached the blitzer, which was shaped like an old-fashioned arrow. The flight deck formed the sharp, triangular tip, then came a long shaftlike corridor that comprised the body of the ship. The corridor, in turn, flowed into the cargo bay, which spread out like a tuft of feathers at the back of the blitzer.

I reached out with my telepathy, but no thoughts twinged my power, and I didn't sense anyone lurking on board with my telempathy. "We're clear."

I exchanged my blaster for my tablet and entered the access code to lower the cargo-bay ramp.

"I hate that you had to paint over the name," Vesper murmured.

The gray hull used to boast large, dark blue letters that spelled out DREAM WORLD , but after we'd fled from Corios, I'd replaced them with VK4EV3R to match the ship's fake registration.

Vesper's eyes twinkled with merriment. "I rather enjoyed having a ship named after my mindscape."

I huffed, as though greatly annoyed, but I couldn't stop a teasing tone from creeping into my voice. "As I've told you countless times, I had to name the blitzer something . The fact that I once called your mindscape a dream world is entirely a coincidence."

"Keep telling yourself that, my lord," Vesper replied in a smug voice. "Maybe one day you'll actually believe it."

"I will believe anything you tell me to, my lady," I drawled back.

She opened her mouth but then grimaced, and more of her pain boiled up in my mind. Even with my psionic shield, Vesper was still feeling her injury. More fury hammered in my chest. If I could have, I would have killed the bounty hunters all over again for hurting her.

"Come on," I said in a gentle voice, taking hold of her uninjured arm.

Vesper didn't protest as I helped her up the ramp and into the cargo bay. I hit a button on the wall, and the ramp lifted and closed behind us. I put her shopping bag on a counter, then unhooked the cannon from my bandolier and set it aside.

"The modifications you made to the Techwave cannon worked," I said, trying to focus on something positive. "I got off five shots this time before it started to overheat."

"Mmm. Yes, the cannon will fire a few times with my new solar magazines before it overheats again, but I haven't figured out how to truly fix it," Vesper murmured in an absent voice, swiping through screens on her tablet. "The local gossipcast is already reporting about the bodies at the junkyard, but so far, there's no chatter about who killed them. Looks like we got away clean." A frown creased her face. "As did Esmina and Pollux."

"Who are you talking about? All the bounty hunters are dead."

Vesper shook her head. "They're not bounty hunters. The woman wearing a long red cloak and the guy clutching two war hammers. You threw that ball of explosives at them."

"Those two? I just got a glimpse of them, and I thought the explosives killed them. Besides, they weren't my main objective. I just wanted to cause a distraction so I could pick off more of the bounty hunters and get closer to you."

Vesper's frown deepened. "But if you weren't targeting them, then how did Esmina know to move out of the way?"

She chewed on her lower lip, and her fingers drummed on the corner of her tablet, making the screen flicker. I knew that look. Esmina and Pollux, whoever they were, had presented Vesper with a challenge, a puzzle, and she wouldn't give up until she solved the mystery.

Vesper's fingers stilled. "Ask Daichi to hack into the security footage from the marketplace. Esmina bumped into me there, and Pollux was probably lurking nearby."

Daichi Hirano was my chief of staff and extremely skilled at ferreting out information. If anyone could track the elusive Esmina and Pollux, it was Daichi.

Vesper tapped on the arrow streaking upward through a cluster of stars that was stitched onto her jacket right over her heart. "And we can download the footage from the spy camera in my jacket. That should also help Daichi identify them."

The arrow and stars were the sigil for House Caldaren, so the same symbol was stitched into my own jacket, and the same spy camera was also hidden in the fabric.

"I'll send the footage to Daichi. Which means you can take a break and get healed. Your arm still looks awful, despite the skinbond injector."

I'd given Vesper a strong dose of chemicals, but they hadn't helped her nearly as much as I would have liked. Neither had my psionic shield, and the pain of her injuries kept slipping from my mind and body back into hers.

Vesper glanced down at her arm, and her nose crinkled with disgust. "It looks like I've been run through a meat grinder, doesn't it?"

"Yes," I growled, stabbing my finger at a long rectangular table near the front of the cargo bay. "Which is why you need to get on the medtable. Right now. "

Vesper raised her uninjured arm and snapped off a salute. "Aye, aye, captain, sir!"

I rolled my eyes. "Your mockery is duly noted."

"As is your bossiness," she quipped back.

"I thought you liked it when I was bossy. I certainly didn't hear any complaints last night."

A blush exploded in Vesper's cheeks. Her eyes glittered with heat, and the velvety ribbon of her in my mind arched, hummed, and vibrated with pleasure. A memory erupted in my mind: Vesper writhing on the bed last night while I loomed over her, kissing, licking, and tasting every single inch of her soft, delectable skin. My dick hardened, and a different kind of throbbing coursed through me.

I blinked, and the image vanished. Had that been my memory—or Vesper's recollection? Now that we had both accepted the truebond, I could tap into her psionic powers just as she could mine. Over the past few weeks, more than one silver flare of light and lifelike vision had filled my eyes, but the odd surges of Vesper's power seemed completely random. As a Regal lord and especially as an Arrow, I had been trained to use my telekinesis, telepathy, and telempathy to their utmost ability, but I had no idea how to access seer magic, much less wield it like a weapon the way Vesper could.

Vesper set her tablet down on a counter. She sauntered over to me, then reached out and toyed with a button on my jacket. "Well, if that's the kind of bossy you have in mind, then I say boss away, my lord."

"I'd like nothing more, my lady," I murmured in a husky voice.

I bent my head as though I was going to kiss her. Vesper licked her lips and rose up on her tiptoes. I lowered my head a little more . . . and a little more . . . and then I leaned down and scooped her up into my arms, careful of her injury. I crossed the cargo bay in a few long strides and set her down on the medtable.

"You're no fun." Vesper pouted.

"I am exceedingly fun—when your arm doesn't look like raw sausage. Now, let the table heal you. Consider it an order from your bossy lord and ornery captain."

Vesper snapped her hand up in another mock salute. Still being careful of her injury, I helped her peel off her ruined jacket, then used a dagger from my bandolier to cut off her right shirtsleeve, leaving her injured arm bare from her shoulder down to her fingers. Vesper's grumbles faded away, replaced by one pain-filled grimace after another, and she laid down on the medtable.

I hit a button, and a clear piece of polyplastic slid out of its hiding spot, arced up over the table, and sealed itself shut on the other side. Oxygen hissed into the hyperbaric chamber, while robotic needles popped up out of the tabletop and danced around Vesper, administering skinbonds, antibiotics, and other medicines. She jerked and let out a muffled cry that pierced my heart, but her body relaxed as the sedatives took effect, and her eyes fluttered shut.

"Severe burns detected, along with a deep puncture wound and significant nerve damage. More skinbonds needed," a feminine voice chirped in a chiding tone, almost as if the medtable blamed me for Vesper's injuries.

Well, that made two of us, because I was certainly blaming myself.

I gripped the table and watched while the robotic needles quickly, expertly sloughed off Vesper's burned, blistered skin and repaired the blaster hole in her arm. The overhead lights brought out the russet strands in her dark brown hair, which framed her face in wavy wisps. Her skin was paler than usual, and a few tiny freckles stood out on her cheeks like a star map I could spend hours studying. Even covered with blood and grime, Vesper still took my breath away.

My fingers twitched with the urge to smooth back her silky hair and feel her warm skin against my own, to wake her up and see the silver flecks glimmering in her dark blue eyes like pinpoint moons reflected in the surface of a beautiful lake. But I didn't dare interrupt the medtable's work, so I contented myself with devouring her with my gaze.

Vesper remained unconscious, a dreamy smile on her heart-shaped lips. She was probably in her mindscape, which was filled with doors that showed everything she had ever seen, done, and experienced. I hoped Vesper was viewing a happy memory instead of this disaster of a day.

My fingers curled a little tighter around the table. The metal edge dug into my palms like a dagger about to slice my skin, but I welcomed the discomfort. It gave me something else to focus on besides the dread and fear that had gripped me ever since Vesper had been cornered by the bounty hunters.

No, that was a lie. My dread and fear had started a few weeks ago, right after we'd escaped from Crownpoint Palace. I'd been lying on the medtable, just as Vesper was right now, when Adria Byrne had revealed her presence on the Dream World . Adria and her brother, Dargan, were among the most skilled, powerful, and vicious of the Arrows, and they had helped Zane capture Vesper on Tropics 33 and take her back to Corios.

In the throne room, Vesper and I had fought Adria and Dargan, who also had a truebond. Vesper had killed Dargan to save me, and Adria had gone mad with grief at the loss of the connection with her brother.

Adria had snuck onto the ship determined to kill us both, but Vesper had killed Adria instead by purging all the oxygen out of the cargo bay. Despite her O2 enhancement, Vesper would have died too, if I hadn't used our truebond to enter her mindscape. I still wasn't sure how I had done that, only that it had brought Vesper back to me.

Once we'd recovered, Vesper and I had admitted our feelings for each other, and we'd spent the next few magnificent days lost in each other's arms.

But all too soon, we'd had to set our happiness aside and deal with the rest of the galaxy, and we'd set a course for Sygnustern. So far, our long, circuitous route had kept us away from Zane and the other Arrows, and we'd been able to avoid trouble—until today.

As soon as Vesper had told me about the bounty hunters, as soon as I'd sensed her worry and felt the distance between us increasing through the bond, I'd left the ship and tracked her down as fast as I could. But it had been far more difficult than I'd expected, far more difficult than it should have been.

When we had battled the Imperium soldiers and Bronze Hand guards to escape from Crownpoint Palace, using our truebond had been so easy . Vesper's thoughts, feelings, and psion power had flowed freely into me, just as my thoughts, feelings, and power had flowed freely into her. We had been like two Regals whirling around the dance floor, and we had moved, attacked, and defended ourselves and each other in perfect rhythm, tempo, and harmony.

That same easiness had flowed through the bond this morning, right up to when Vesper had been taken. After that, all I had been able to sense was my own cold fury and razor-sharp dread. The smooth, velvety ribbon of Vesper in my mind had thinned into a fragile, brittle strand that frayed and crumbled a little bit more every time I tried to grab it.

I'd used all my psion power and instincts to find Vesper, and even then, I'd almost been too late.

The image of the pink-haired bounty hunter clutching a blaster and towering over Vesper flickered through my mind, and fresh dread chewed through my gut like a plasma torch. If Vesper hadn't used her stormsword to defend herself, the bounty hunter would have killed her.

After my parents had died when I was thirteen, I had been largely on my own. Oh, I had been surrounded by the other Regals, and Callus Holloway had me trained as an Arrow to further his own agenda.

After considering almost everyone an enemy for the last twenty-five years, I had finally found Vesper. I had finally found someone who looked past all my dark deeds, someone who accepted all the awful things I'd done to survive, someone who understood and embraced me, inner monster and all.

I had finally found someone to love, and my greatest fear was that the galaxy was going to take her away.

Oh, I would happily die to protect Vesper, but the galaxy would never let a monster like me off that easily. No, the worst would happen, the way it always did, and then I'd be forced to confront what life without Vesper would be like.

Truebond or not, it was going to destroy me.

I knew it was, and yet, every single day, I cared about Vesper a little more. Her smile, her laugh, her kindness and intelligence and blazing determination. They all drew me in like a mammoth butterfly hovering over a laser, unable to veer away from the bright, tempting light that would inevitably burn its fragile wings to a crisp.

When Vesper had been shot . . . well, I hadn't just wanted to kill the bounty hunters. I'd wanted to strew bloody bits and pieces of them all over the junkyard as a warning for anyone who even dared to think about hurting her. Even now, my inner monster growled with the desire to rip and tear everything around me to shreds.

But even louder was the bitter, jaded voice in the back of my mind that kept muttering that I was destined to lose Vesper regardless. That eventually, she would come to her senses, realize I was no good for her, and get fed up with constantly being in danger just because she had the misfortune of having a truebond with me.

Oh, yes. Even if the galaxy didn't take her away, Vesper still had plenty of reasons to leave me behind—and I wouldn't blame her if she did. She was a blue moon shining her beautiful light on everyone, while I was a black hole, sucking people into my orbit until they were utterly destroyed.

But wallowing in my doom and gloom wasn't helping anything, certainly not Vesper, so I forced myself to straighten up and release the medtable. I grabbed her ruined jacket from the counter, along with the shopping bag and the Techwave cannon, and turned to leave the cargo bay—

A bright silver light flared, and a woman shimmered in the air in front of me like a hologram. Strawberry-blond hair, gray eyes, rosy skin, a stormsword dangling from her hand.

I jerked back, and it took me a gut-clenching moment to realize that I was only seeing a memory of Adria Byrne, a psionic echo of when she'd snuck on board the ship.

I glanced over at Vesper on the medtable. Her eyes were still closed, but her easy, dreamy smile had vanished, and her brow was furrowed. Was she seeing the same disturbing image I was? Had her seer power conjured up this vision of Adria? Or was this related to my thoughts of the dead Arrow?

You killed Dargan, so I'm going to kill Kyrion. Maybe then you'll know how it feels. Maybe then you'll know how much it hurts .

Adria's voice hissed through my mind. She'd said those words to Vesper, but right now, her gaze was focused on me, as though she was taunting me with my own secret worry and dread.

I squared my shoulders and strode forward. The memory melted like a shadow, but Adria's hysterical howls of laughter echoed in my ears, and her words chased after me like a ghost I couldn't escape.

I didn't have Vesper's seer power, but I couldn't help but feel like this had been much more than a memory from our past—more like a vision of my future.