Page 63 of Ashes & Aether

“The Ghorvek orchestrated a massive, coordinated assault on London.” Caden steps closer, projecting the intelligence report over the diagnostic table. “It wasn’t a roaming swarm. It was a targeted siege of the Hampton Court perimeter.”

The air leaves my lungs. I step up to the hologram, my eyes scanning the casualty figures and the breached defense lines.

“The bunker,” I demand, my voice sharpening into a blade.

“Holding,” Caden confirms instantly. “The three soldiers Orien left behind integrated flawlessly with your human heavy gunners. Your automated drone turrets funneled the hostiles into a choke point. The combined forces repelled the attack and eliminated the vanguard.”

I stare at the blue light of the projection. My soldiers fought. They held the line against a nightmare, standing shoulder to shoulder with alien warriors. They didn’t fracture. They didn’t fall.

Orien steps up behind me, his chest brushing my shoulder. He doesn’t offer empty platitudes. He looks at the tactical readout, analyzing the swarm patterns.

“They are getting desperate,” Orien notes. “They know they are losing ground in Britain. They tried to decapitate the human leadership and sow chaos.”

I turn away from the map, my mind racing through deployment schedules, concrete repairs, and the sheer logistical nightmare of rebuilding a breached perimeter.

I look at Orien, then at Caden.

“I need to go back.”

Orien doesn’t argue. He simply nods, the Avaren spymaster understanding the absolute necessity of a commander returning to her post.

“Earth requires more than a few soldiers to hold the line,” I state. “If we press the advantage now, we can break their hold on the planet.”

Kairen walks into the lab, Tara tucked against his side. He stops at the edge of the holographic table, his purple eyes bright with lethal determination.

“You will not return with only a spymaster, Maggie,” Kairen promises. “The Veyraths do not leave their allies to rebuild in the ashes alone.”

The prince raises his hand, interacting with the floating data cube.

“I’m deploying a full battalion of Avaren troops to London. Furthermore, I am assigning a reconstruction contingent of our finest engineers and architects to your command. They will rebuild your fallen structures, reinforce your bunkers with Avaren shields, and upgrade your offensive measures.”

Tara beams at me, her hand resting over her stomach. “We’re going to fix it, Maggie. All of it.”

I look at the small human woman, the towering alien prince, and the brilliant scientists working tirelessly to cure the plague destroying my world.

Then I turn my head and look up at Orien.

He watches me, his amber eyes burning with unwavering devotion. He isn’t a threat to my independence. He is the foundation I didn’t know I needed.

For four years, I have breathed ash. I have tallied the dead, poisoned warlords, and fought a grinding, miserable war of attrition, fully expecting to die in the dark. I survived on paranoia and control.

But standing in the brilliant light of the Avaren mothership, with the heavy, warm weight of Orien’s hand resting against the small of my back, the ice around my heart melts completely.

A genuine, unfamiliar spark ignites in my chest.

Optimism.

“Prep the ship, Orien,” I tell my match, a real smile finally breaking across my face. “It’s time to go rebuild our world.”

21

VESSA

The centrifuge in the primary laboratory aboard the Sovereign hums a steady tune, spinning the inferior human’s blood into its base components. I watch the dark red liquid separate, calculating the endless string of variables required to isolate the source of her immunity.

Margaret Elmsleigh represents the absolute pinnacle of my life’s work. She possesses a biological anomaly capable of neutralizing one of the most devastating pathogens in the known universe. Both Ghorvek viruses—the necrotic strain and the fertility-inhibiting pathogen—share the same engineered viral scaffold. If I determine how her body defeats one, I can force it to destroy the other.

Yet Lirael and Cyrel treat the human like fragile spun glass.