Page 119 of Star Bringer
She pours a few into my hand, and we both chew in silence for a beat. The candy is sticky and gets caught in my teeth, and honestly, I’m not sure what the big deal about sugar even is. But I’ll remember the taste for as long as I’m alive.
“Hey,” Kali says suddenly, looking at me with a small smile. “At least I got to kick a man in the groin once before I died.”
I chuckle. “You sure as shit did, Princess.”
“It felt pretty great. Thank you for teaching me.”
Before I can respond, the shooting begins anew, and it’s closer than ever before. I kneel forward and send a continuous laser blast over at the oncoming men. Kali finishes with a few shots of her own.Attagirl.
All of a sudden, there’s a new lull in the barrage of shots, which I wasn’t expecting. They were prepared for the blasts, shouldn’t have been affected by them at all.
I peer through the smoke and realize they’re all staring at the sky. Then, out of nowhere, they break ranks and flee for cover.
I look upward, too. I have one second to realize what’s happening, and then I’m yelling, “Get down!”
But I don’t wait for Kali to act. Instead, I just shove her to the ground and hurl myself on top of her, covering as much of her as I can with my body.
A piercing ray of bright white light shines down from above. It looks a lot like a concentrated solar flare, and seconds later, high-pitched screams fill the air—followed by the smell of burning flesh.
It seems to go on forever, and I don’t chance looking up in case I get caught in the blast. Kali is still beneath me, and in the middle of all hell breaking loose, I realize she’s not moving. At all.
What if she took another bullet? What if she’s dead? I lift myself slightly off her, trying to see what’s going on. What if—
She takes a huge breath and lets it out slowly. So, not dead, then. Just being suffocated by me.
I get my knees under myself so that I can still cover her but not crush her. It seems to take forever for the last of the screams to die away. Once they do, I roll off Kali but can’t seem to get the strength up to move any farther.
“Is this it?” Kali murmurs. “Am I dead?”
“Not a chance, Princess.”
“So, what just happened?”
“IAN?!”It’s Max yelling in my head. And he sounds more than a little panicked. Also more than a little pissed, but that’s something for us to deal with later.
“I’m alive,” I tell him as I sit up. “We aren’t dying today after all, Princess. Our lift is here,” I say to Kali. “Time to move your ass.”
“Are we back to Princess again?” she asks.
“I think so, yeah.” It’s for the best.
I can’t believe how close we both just came to dying. And just how much I didn’t want her to die, just how much I hated that I couldn’t save her.
Now that the threat is over, none of those feelings make sense. That’s not who I am. And it’s sure as shit not who I want to be. I have responsibilities—a lot of responsibilities—and Princess Kalinda isn’t one of them.
I need to remember that. And I will. Just maybe not right now.
I push myself to my feet, and the first thing I see is theStarlightcoming in to land just behind us. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone or anything in my life.
As I wait for the ramp to lower, I look around. There’s a circle of burned ground all around us and the charred remains of what had been our attackers on the other side of the wall.
The devastation is complete.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Not only did theStarlight’s beam of light take out all the attackers, but it did so with a precision I’ve never encountered anywhere before. So Kali was right about the solar flare. I feel fucking ridiculous. If I’d have known theStarlighthad attack capabilities, I would’ve called for backup a long time ago. The charred ground comes to within a meter of where I was lying with her. One slight miscalculation, and we would have been toast, too.
We should have been toast, and yet, somehow, here we are.
“What is this?” she asks, and now she’s looking around as well.
