7. Annie

seven

The rhythmic crunch of Crux's boots against Venturis' loamy soil is the only sound except for my own ragged breaths as we make our approach. We stashed the gunship in a sheltered rocky outcrop and proceeded on foot to skirt the manor's outer defenses.

Thick, cloying fog clings to the hills in ghostly tendrils, blurring shapes until they loom from the gloom with startling abruptness. I instinctively drop into a crouch as one such shadow resolves into the unmistakable outline of a guard tower several hundred meters ahead.

Crux's massive hand engulfs my shoulder, halting me from advancing further. His piercing amber eyes blaze from a face slashed with harsh planes and angles, lips peeled back ever so slightly from clenched teeth. Without a word, he draws one lethally curved khari'ak dagger and presses it into my trembling grasp.

I open my mouth to protest the need for an offensive weapon, but he shakes his head fractionally. Steeling myself with a steady breath, I curl my fingers around the knife's worn leather grip until my knuckles whiten. Its edge seems to glint with an inner light, eager to taste blood.

Crux nods once in silent approval before signaling an advance. We stick to the denser underbrush as closely as possible, the manor's sturdy outer walls steadily forming from the shadows ahead.

Just as my legs burn from the crouched exertion, Crux throws out an arm to halt me once more. "Two scouts," he hisses under his breath.

Sure enough, two lumbering Huxarian shapes are silhouetted against the parapets scarcely twenty meters distant. I open my mouth—to issue a warning, perhaps, I'm not even sure—but Crux is already moving with the coiled lethality of a venomous predator, each motion carrying an undercurrent of controlled deadliness.

One heartbeat, he's a statue at my side. The next, he's simply... not there. Just a flicker of shadow and displaced air as he explodes into blurred motion.

The first Huxarian scout doesn't even sense the threat before Crux's arm lances out, palm striking with the entire weight of his momentum behind it. There's a crunch of shattered bone and cartilage, then the guard slumps bonelessly to the ground. His companion snaps his head around at the noise just as Crux's vambraced forearm crashes across his throat. I barely glimpse Crux's taloned gloves before he slashes through the Huxarian's throat in a blossom of viscera.

In the ringing silence that follows, Crux rises from a crouch, his breast heaving with controlled violence while emerald blood drips from his taloned gloves. His stare bores into me from across the short distance, almost as though drinking in the shock and sick validation warring across my features. This is not the first time he has had to unleash such lethal brutality up close. That much is abundantly clear.

My stomach churns at the sight of all the death, but I force the queasiness down as Crux returns to my side. He shoots me a measured look before jerking his chin ahead, toward the yawning blackness of an entry passage beneath the curtain wall.

"We go now, while the path is clear," he rumbles, voice low so as not to carry over the stonework. "Stay on my heel and be ready to kill when I say. No hesitation."

Yet all I can do is stand in shock. The brutal scene, so strange, so unsettling, it steals my breath. I'm an ambassador used to cutthroat negations, but this brings that concept to a terrifying reality! "Crux... This is... a lot to take in," I mutter.

His gaze bores into me with scorching intensity. "Understand, Annie. I do what must be done to save your children. Now is not the time for timid hearts and misplaced doubts but for bold justice and divine retribution."

My chest is heaving with equal parts terror and adrenaline as I hold his searing stare. There's no room for niceties or platitudes any longer. If Alice and Max are to be rescued, I may indeed have to cross lines I can never un-tread. All I can do is nod mutely, the weight of his words cementing in my bones.

Crux holds my stare for one more eternal heartbeat, then pivots to take point. With a dagger clutched in a white-knuckled grip, I force my rubbery knees to follow where his shadow falls, steeling myself for whatever new horrors lie waiting over this darkened threshold.

For my children's lives, there is no brutality I won't endure, no oath too sacred to shatter. The screams and chaos to come almost feel like the universe setting the balance back to rights.

We find the old service passage that leads directly inside my home. The passage winds deeper than I recall, and it's as though the shadows are pressing in from all sides with each tortuous twist. Every rattling breath feels deafeningly loud in the claustrophobic confines as we advance with excruciating slowness, my dagger clutched in a sweat-slicked grip.

Up ahead, the darkness finally gives way to a sickly reddish-purple glow spilling around a corner. Crux raises a clenched fist, signaling me to freeze as he peers around the edge with camouflage-mottled lenses forming a thin copper visor across his eyes.

His jaw clenches once, twice, sensing potential threats. Then he draws back and mouths two words that slosh like ice water through my veins: the kitchens.

Of course. The old servants' preparation area in the manor's belly, a relic from less egalitarian times. But the Radicals must have taken it over as a makeshift staging ground, the heavy stone walls and isolated location perfect for keeping Alice and Max contained.

I shudder, recalling Crux's insistence during his brief security assessment tour before I departed for Orion that he meticulously study every nook and cranny of my ancestral home, no matter how seemingly benign or disused. At the time, I'd rolled my eyes at such paranoid fastidiousness. But thank the Maker I allowed Crux to indulge his protective instincts.

He motions me forward, placing one large hand on my lower back to guide me to the corner. Through the burning opening, I can just see the reinforced glass barrier of the old cold storage room, where a horrifying scene is unfolding.

Five armed Huxarian Radicals prowl the outer ring of the sprawling kitchen and dining area, their plasma rifles swinging in languid arcs as they scan the shadows with beady, reptilian eyes. Two more guards stand at rigid attention just inside the storage pen itself, bringing their tally up to the half-dozen or so Crux alluded to.

But they're not alone. My breath catches in my throat at the scene taking place in the kitchen.

There, bound side by side on the cracked tile floor, are Alice and Max. Ropes bite cruelly into their wrists and ankles, their arms wrenched behind them at agonizing angles that must be causing excruciating pain. Yet through their ashen, sweat-streaked faces, they still radiate stubborn defiance, terrified gazes locked on the monstrous figure looming over them.

I recognize this as the Huxarian leader from the com call; presumably he is the bloodthirsty ringleader of these radical rogues. He towers above my children like a malevolent, scaly specter, his hulking frame at odds with the sleek and lethal plasma rifle clenched in one massive fist. He leans down, so close to their faces, as he sneers something too low for me to make out.

Then, with a lazy, contemptuous flick of his claws, he backhands Alice's cheek with a sickening crack, an angry welt instantly blooming across her delicate features. She cries out, eyelids fluttering, but Max just grits his teeth and holds his twin sister's stricken gaze with an intensity that would melt neutron stars.

White-hot anger blazes through me with such lancing intensity that I nearly give away our concealed position right then with an anguished cry. It's only Crux's restraining hand pressing into the material of my jacket that keeps me in check, even as that loathsome monster casually abuses my beloved children for petty amusement.

Crux leans in, his lips brushing the curve of my ear as his arm coils around my waist. "This is it, my starlight. Our final battle, together."

His smoldering gaze bores into mine with scorching intensity. "If I don't make it... know that you have been the light of my battered soul."

Then his mouth is on mine in a searing, desperate kiss that steals the breath from my lungs. I clutch at him wildly, trying to imprint every caress, every swell of muscle and bone, into my memory. Because he's right—this very well could be the end for us.

When he finally pulls back, I can't speak past the tightness in my throat. So I simply nod, allowing the shining defiance in his tangerine eyes to bolster my own resolve.

With one last lingering caress of his calloused thumb over my cheekbone, Crux fades back into the shadows, sliding lithely into the kitchen's inky recesses. In the gloom, I'm afforded one final glimpse of his powerful form igniting in azure plasma before the bluish lines of his plasma blade shroud him in eldritch light.

Everything seems to slow to a nightmarish crawl as the plan unfolds. Through the hyper-clarity of my adrenaline-flooded state, I watch Crux initiate a flurry of blinding holodrones, their feinting flashes pulling the Radicals' attention in every direction at once.

When the first guard spins toward an illusory movement, Crux simply... materializes behind him like a vengeful spirit. His plasma blade shears through the Huxarian's rifle in a blinding sweep, then reverses in a savage arc that cleaves through his scaly throat in a blossom of steaming emerald viscera.

The alien's agonized scream barely has time to escape his lipless jaws before Crux whirls again, one booted heel crushing his ruined windpipe into splintered ruin. By the time the first body has finished crumpling, my knight is already shifting his plasma blade to sear a path of devastation across two more Radicals' chests, emerald ichor vaporizing from the gruesome exit wounds.

A guard directly in my line of sight simply implodes in a fist-sized spray of pulped organs as Crux's blade punches through his back like a meteoric spearpoint.

I have to force myself to tear my gaze away from the widening vortex of Crux's brutally efficient onslaught, focusing instead on reaching Alice and Max undetected before the remaining Radicals can regroup.

The Huxarian Leader has his back turned toward the entry corridor where I'm concealed. All his focus is narrowed on bellowing orders toward his disintegrating perimeter guards. Alice and Max are bound tightly on the cracked tiled floor, eyes wide with fright yet locked on the exits, searching desperately for any chance of escape.

They haven't spotted me yet, but that window is rapidly closing as Crux's formidable distraction continues drawing the leader's furious attention. I can't hesitate a second longer.

Keeping low in a catlike crouch, I launch myself forward in a burst of speed, dagger extending as I close the gap before the Huxarian monster can turn fully in my direction. By the time his massive head swings around, I'm already sliding across the last meters toward my children.

Alice's eyes blow wide, her lips parting on a soundless cry of relief and renewed horror as the beast's plasma rifle whips up to sear a path directly through me to get her in his sights.

With a feral snarl of outraged denial, I hurl myself over Max and Alice at the last possible second, our bodies tumbling and rolling away from the discharged bolt's searing ion path as it bores a fist-sized crater in the cracked tile where their skulls were a breath before.

Even as we slam to a halt in a groaning heap of tangled limbs, I've already reversed my grip on the khari'ak dagger and started sawing with desperate intensity at the bindings holding my children's wrists behind their backs.

"We've got one chance!" I growl, sweat stinging my eyes. "Max, as soon as you're free, get your sister out of here any way you can!"

As if in demented slow motion, I see the Huxarian leader pivot with lumbering finality, his plasma rifle leveling once more as his slavering maw stretches wide in a roar of pure, bestial fury...

"So the cowardly human worm dares show her face!" His reptilian growl shakes the tiles beneath our tangled forms. "And just in time to watch me execute your nestlings!"

He tenses to squeeze the trigger, but I hurl myself forward with a primal scream. My shoulder slams into his rifle arm, knocking the weapon aside just as it discharges. The searing plasma bolt scorches past, narrowly missing Max's prone form.

The Huxarian leader snarls in rage, his free hand whipping a curved dagger from a sheath on his belt in a blurred crescent of reflected light. For a moment, it seems as though the wicked point will simply shear through my son's exposed back.

But I manage to interpose myself, taking the brunt of the leader's mass as we crash to the floor in a tangle of flailing limbs and snapping jaws. The dagger clatters aside, though I feel a fiery line of agony slice across my bicep from its glancing blow.

But just then, Crux erupts from the shadows like an avenging angel given corporeal form. With a resounding clash of plasma and tempered gundrian alloy, his plasma blade locks in furious stalemate against the Huxarian's in a shower of searing sparks.

"You'll not butcher another innocent while I still draw breath," Crux's amplified snarl booms with a resonance that shakes my bones. "I shall rend your flesh to pieces, an offering of redemption for your damned soul."

The behemoth Huxarian roars back, shoving Crux away only for my knight to flow straight back into a whirlwind of blinding strikes from seemingly every angle simultaneously.

Seizing the opportunity, I redouble my efforts, slicing through Max and Alice's bonds until the last fibers part with a final, relieving snap. Shoving the dagger into Max's hands, I shove them both toward the exit corridor even as the klaxons begin blaring, signaling the arrival of reinforcements.

"Get to the panic room; lock it, don't open it; no matter what!" I scream over the din of searing plasma and shearing metal.

But Max remains rooted, refusing to abandon me even as the sound of armored boots begins echoing up the passage. Squinting past the roiling plasma clouds, I recognize the iconic war-masks of Ven'ari's Avenian Knights forming a bristling perimeter.

And in their lead, the towering figure of Ven'ari himself, resplendent in his ancient Avenian armor—the glare of his pitiless yellow stare finding and locking onto Crux's embattled form.

Seizing Max by the shoulder, I try to reason with him one last time.

"Max, please... get your sister to the panic room. It's safe and defensible. Crux and I will hold them here as long as we—"

The words catch in my throat as a deafening subsonic detonation shakes the entire room, dropping us all to our knees. Even the Huxarian leader staggers and nearly falls as I instinctively shield Alice and Max's bodies with my own.

When the ringing in my ears finally clears enough to make out coherent sounds, my blood turns to ice water in my veins. Because coming from the Huxarian leader's snarling maw, dripping with arrogant contempt, are the very words my darkest nightmares have long feared:

"... surrender and your offspring go unharmed, worm. Refuse, and I'll butcher them here and now before your useless eyes."

I meet Crux's stare across the maelstrom. Try as I might, I cannot parse the myriad calculations flickering across his eyes in that instant. I silently beg him with every fiber of my being. Our bond, this ineffable connection between us, has to be enough to make him understand what's at stake here. That Alice and Max's lives dangle by a horrifyingly tenuous thread.

Tears streak my bloodied face as I drink in every sacred detail of my children's battered forms. If Crux doesn't intercede, doesn't make the right call in this split second... then their fragile sparks of life will be forever extinguished before my eyes. And that's a void of torment from which I could never, ever escape.

All I can do is hold my breath, hoping against hope that the bond between us is enough to spare my children from this latest horror. Because his next move will decide whether Alice and Max draw their next breaths... or join the rapidly growing tally of dead littering my kitchen.

Crux's blade arm tenses almost imperceptibly, as though containing a descent into howling madness by sheer force of will alone. For an eternal moment, his gaze bores straight through me, seeing everything yet absolutely nothing in one searing glance.

Then, with a sound halfway between a primal roar and the laser-whine of rending ordnance, he pivots into a blinding flurry of motion. The Huxarian's rifle shoots through empty space as Crux flows beneath it like smoke on the wind. One moment he is across the chamber, the next he has materialized over the Huxarian's shoulder like a phantasmic horror sprung from a nightmare.

White-hot plasma shrieks through the air, vaporizing scales and viscera in a blinding maelstrom that separates flesh from bone before my disbelieving eyes. The Huxarian leader's shrill cries of agony are cut mercifully short as Crux's blade takes his head in one sweeping flurry.

Even before the Huxarian leader's corpse finishes crumpling, Crux whirls with blinding speed. His wrist-blaster snaps up, jaw clenched as disruptor staves and blaster barrels level at him from the encroaching Avenian Knights.

"Hold!" Crux's amplified roar shakes the chamber. "I'll not cut down those who were once my brothers!"

Ven'ari's towering silhouette emerges from the Avenian ranks, one clawed fist raised in silent challenge as tendrils of dark energy writhe around him. "The forsaken Cruxian has fallen from his sworn duty..."

"I have strayed no further than you from the paths we once swore, Ven'ari," Crux growls, slowly panning his blaster across the knights. "These Radicals pursued an atrocity I could not abide."

For a tense moment, it seems the clash will be inevitable. But then Crux's eyes find me shielding Alice and Max, and some fight seems to go out of him. When he speaks again, his voice is laced with weariness.

"Enough blood has been spilled this night. I'm putting up my blade and leaving with the innocents you so grievously misjudged."

Ven'ari stares him down, energy crackling around his fist. The knights hold their aim, waiting for his signal. The standoff could shatter into violence with a single twitch. For a long moment, the tension thickens until it seems to reverberate from the chamber walls themselves. Then, finally, Ven'ari's burning glare flits past Crux to linger on me, shielding Alice and Max with my body.

The ancient warrior's posture seems to... shift, almost imperceptibly. As though some immovable calculus has finally been upended in that endless instant.

"I..." Ven'ari's voice rumbles across the stillness, suddenly stripped of its bravado and conviction. "I did not comprehend the full extent of the situation. The severity of the threat to the... to the family."

He holds Crux's stare for a breath, then gives a solemn nod.

"Take them and go. Remove them from this bloodshed that I... that we... have allowed to go too far in the name of noble causes perverted by ambition."

The words seem to hang in the scorched air, more unraveling with each passing second. Slowly, Ven'ari's raised fist unclenches as realization—or something much more damning—washes over his ancient features.

"I will not pursue you further this time. Not while there are... innocents to be preserved at all costs. We were sworn to protect such inno—to uphold the light, after all. No matter how faint its glimmer."

The knights part ranks in silent acknowledgment, allowing Crux to gently guide Alice and Max toward the exit. Though young adults in their twenties, my children seem diminished; their faces pale and streaked with grime, bodies battered and sluggishly compliant after their ordeal.

Max leans heavily on Crux's steadying grip, one arm draped over the warrior's broad shoulders for support. Alice doesn't protest when Crux loops his free arm around her waist to keep her upright, her head lolling against his chest plate in a haze of pain and fatigue.

I fall into step beside them, meeting each of their glassy stares with a watery attempt at a reassuring smile before sharing one final look with Ven'ari's looming sentinel.

There's no mistaking the regret burning behind the ancient warrior's eyes now. A soul-scouring reappraisal which might mark the start of a path back toward the light his order has so drastically strayed from.

Crux ushers us onward without breaking stride, his jaw flexing tightly as we put the ravaged chamber behind us. Though battered themselves, Alice and Max seem to draw reserves of strength from his unwavering presence at their side.

"It's over, little wanderers," he murmurs, more to himself than us. "At long last, the bloodshed ends here."

But that relief is swiftly crowded by a multitude of other tumultuous emotions. Fear for what new storms may yet await on this path of upheaval. Guilt over the staggering violence unleashed to deliver us to this point. And an achingly tender longing as I chance furtive glances at Crux's austere profile.

He's risked everything—defied his sacred vows and rebelled against his own brotherhood—to safeguard my children and me. A staggering debt I can scarcely comprehend, let alone fathom how to repay.

I find myself watching him with unveiled hunger now. Cataloging the austere angles of his jawline, the penetrating amber that scorches from his eyes, the unconscious prowess in every sinuous movement as he clears our path back to his gunship so we can make our way to the capital of Venturis and get medical help for the kids. The thought of how close I came to losing them, to losing him, almost overwhelms me.

Does Crux realize how much he's done for me?Not just saving my family, but awakening parts of my soul I'd locked away. Vulnerable, passionate parts I thought were too dangerous. With every sacrifice, he reveals depths of honor, loyalty, and light I'd only theorized. In his scorching intensity, I find what I've starved for—conviction and sacred purpose.

This yearning consumes me, body and soul. It's more than lust for his striking form. I realize with profound clarity that I love this legendary warrior, every fiber of his being that defies the darkness. I love him and I need to tell him.