Page 210 of The Space Between Stars

Calver threw him from his hips and clambered to his feet. Cul’Mon was still on the ground. Calver pulled back his weapon. Prepared to level it into his old master’s neck. He put all his strength behind the blow. His aim was true, and Cul’Mon’s defense lagged.

Calver’s blade was a finger’s width from its mark when an unseen force threw it backward, jerking his arm with it. Calver stumbled. Then his feet were wrenched from the ground. Invisible hands slammed him into the wall of the rooftop shed, a body’s length above solid ground. His head rattled. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

On the roof’s ledge stood a boy. A pale child with shocking silver curls.

Right. Reinforcements.

A part of Calver had recognized this moment would come when he discovered the Tera’thians had created a new stratum. The rest of him had caught up when Mastico pieced together the truth of his bloodline.

There was another Ruxian now. One he had created.

FORTY-SEVEN

CALVEROUS

Year: 748 Post Cataclysm: Present Day

Location: Steila

Acrushing pain struck Calver’s throat. His limbs seized. He closed his eyes for the end.

The hold released.

Calver crashed to the rooftop, shins splitting. He gasped for breath, eyes darting toward the Ruxian child. Raimee stood across from him on the southwestern ledge, hands outstretched, brow contorted with focus. Behind her, Niklaus collapsed in a wet heap with a yelp.

Calver scrambled for his dowaga.

She was alive! She was—

Kretch. He’d told her to come, thinking it the only guaranteed way to keep Cul’Mon’s attention. He’d thought they would be isolated. He thought it might give her—them—a chance.

He’d thought wrong.

Cul'Mon growled in Tera’thian, “Collect her.”

The boy’s eyes widened, but his disciplined feet set into a combat stance. He turned his gaze to Raimee, then the southern cliff face behind her. A crack ripped through the air, and the basalt began to crumble and toppled in her direction. Raimee gasped but held steady. The chunks of stone parted over her and Niklaus, striking the ground around them in a perfect circle.

Calver’s chest inflated, but had no opportunity to marvel further. Cul’Mon surged toward him, dowaga raised.

He had no fight against a Ruxian. But he was ready to settle a very long score. Calver gritted his teeth and leapt to meet him.

NIKLAUS

Stone crumbled over Niklaus’s head, pelting the rooftop in a ring around him and the Ruxian like a summer rain. At the opposite end of the warehouse, Calver had already scrambled to his feet, found his weapon, and gone back about his battle.

Just meters away, his body a silhouette against the blood-red sun, another Ruxian—a boy—glared at them.

“Ah… Niklaus?” the woman he’d just pulled half-dead from the sea panted. “On second thought, let’s put you somewhere else.”

Without warning, the ground beneath Niklaus disappeared. He yelped as a colorless mess of tangled aether swallowed him.

It spat him out a heartbeat later. His knees hit wooden planking, and he fought to retain the contents of his stomach. The world around him was dark but steady, and he gasped as he made sense of his orientation.

A thin sliver of crimson shone against the blackness—the crack beneath a door. Niklaus crawled towards it, hands and knees thunking against the wood. He was in a Red Wing wagon. He felt for the handle of the door and swung it open, letting the fiery evening light flood the space. Not just any wagon—the mess supply wagon. He let out a low whistle. She definitely hadn’t missed this time.

A shivering sigh of relief overtook him. Safe. For the first time in far, far too long, he was safe.

“Get down!” a voice bellowed to his left.