Page 41 of Ashes & Aether

I want to believe they would share the cure with my people. They have been nothing if not selfless since they dropped out of the sky. They bleed for us. They fight the swarm. Even if their altruism is fueled by a desperate, galaxy-spanning hunt for their precious matches, they still fight.

The faint vibration beneath my boots ceases.

I blink, looking at the metal deck. The Veil is stationary. The Avaren technology is so absurdly smooth I didn’t even feel our descent through the atmosphere. We are already parked in the courtyard outside my bunker.

Time to move.

I stand up, smoothing the wrinkles from my skirt. I pull the silver compact from my pocket, wiping a faint, treacherous smudge of pearlescent alien release from the corner of my mouth, refusing to think of how good it tasted. I swipe a fresh layer of deep-red lipstick over my mouth.

The door to the cockpit hisses open.

Orien sits in the pilot’s chair. His clothing is back in its place, and the glowing orange filaments along his neck pulse with a subdued rhythm. He turns his head, his amber eyes latching onto mine. The arrogant predator is gone. He looks vulnerable.

He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

“Ready the ship.”

Orien’s dark brows pull together. He glances at the bunker entrance outside the reinforced glass. “We are in London, Maggie.”

“I am aware of our geographic location.” I cross my arms over my chest, locking my spine into steel. “Enter new coordinates. Zadar. The Croatian coast.”

He goes completely still. He knows exactly what is in Zadar. I gave him the dock and my parents’ names myself, in a weak moment I have refused to examine since.

I hold his burning gaze, refusing to let him see the panic clawing at my throat. If he truly believes his own words—if I am the genetic equal he claims me to be—he will prove it right now.

“Take me to Zadar, Orien. Help me find my parents.”

The Adriatic Sea stretches out beneath the viewport, a brilliant, piercing blue that hurts my eyes after years of staring at the gray of London.

The coastline of Zadar appears on the horizon. The ancient stone city bears the scars of the invasion, its terracotta roofs collapsed in places and its streets filled with rubble. Yet it lacks the complete, necrotic devastation of the industrial north we just left behind. The Ghorvek swarm where the prey is dense. The Croatian coast must not have warranted the same scale of annihilation.

The Veil descends without a sound, hovering over a cracked concrete pier before settling its weight onto the stone.

Orien hasn’t spoken a single unnecessary word since we left the airspace over the British Isles. He hasn’t smirked. He hasn’t crowded my space. He simply sat in the pilot’s chair, his profile an unreadable line of concentration, and executed my coordinates.

The hatch hisses open, and the smell of salt and sun-baked pine floods the cabin. Orien steps down the ramp first, his armor deployed and covering every inch of his skin below the throat. He sweeps his gaze across the ruined harbor, his posture coiled and ready. Only when he has satisfied himself that no threat is present does he glance back over his shoulder, giving me a curt nod.

I follow him down to the pier, my heels clicking against the cracked stone.

We walk through the harbor side by side. Abandoned fishing vessels rot in the shallows. The silence is profound, broken only by the rhythmic crash of the waves against the seawall. My chest tightens with every step. I’ve carried the folded piece of paper with this location in my pocket for two and a half years. I secured the boat, I arranged the fuel, and I gave it all away to win a tactical advantage.

Orien stops outside a collapsed stone building bearing a faded harbormaster’s sign. He steps over the rubble, approaching a rusted metal terminal half-buried under fallen plaster. He presses his bare palm against the corroded metal casing.

“Digital architecture is primitive,” Orien murmurs, his gaze unfocused as his nanites interface with the decayed hard drive. “Data corruption is extensive, but the primary ledgers remain intact.”

I stand in the doorway, my arms crossed over my chest, watching him work. He doesn’t preen for an audience. He doesn’t demand my gratitude. He is simply the Sovereign’s chief intelligence officer, dismantling a puzzle with lethal efficiency. The sheer, overwhelming competence of the male in front of me chips away at the thick block of ice in my chest.

“I have a requisition manifest,” Orien announces, dropping his hand from the terminal. The glow fades from the metal. He turns to face me. “Three cycles ago. A vessel departed this pier carrying civilian refugees. The names match the records you provided. James and Sarah Elmsleigh.”

My breath catches. “Where did they go?”

“Across the channel.” Orien points a gauntleted finger toward the horizon, where a long, green strip of land rises from the azure water. “The island of Ugljan. A settlement called Lukoran.”

“Take me there,” I demand.

We board the ship. The flight takes less than a minute.

Ugljan is a stark contrast to the ruined mainland. Thick pine forests cover the rolling hills, and silver-green olive groves terrace the slopes down to the water. Orien brings the fighter down in a secluded cove entirely hidden from the open sea.