The Last Girl From Earth

The ship was breathing.

That was Lyra Vale's first thought, and it should have been impossible.

Dead ships don't breathe on Obsidian Moon. They rust. They get picked clean by scavengers who are faster, meaner, and usually deader than you. They are cold iron husks left over from the Cataclysm War, gutted for copper wire and oxygen filters and left to die in the grey dust.

This one was different. It was humming.

Lyra cut the engines on her salvage skiff, the Mira, and let the patched-together heap drift. The Mira was a joke - a cockpit from a Valkari fighter welded to cargo thrusters from an Imperial freighter, held together with sealant and prayers. It was the only thing she owned.

"Energy signature is wrong," Mira-7 said in her ear. Mira was Lyra's AI, seven generations obsolete, with the anxious personality of a mother who'd seen too many funerals.

Mira-7 had been with Lyra since she was nine. Lyra had found her in a junk pile, a cracked core that everyone else said was scrap. Lyra had touched her and Mira had woken up.

"I know it's wrong," Lyra muttered, locking her magnetic boots to the wing. "That's why it's worth money."

"The material is not in my database. It's absorbing your scanner ping. It's absorbing light. Lyra, Imperial law says any unidentified Aureli artifact must be reported -"

"Yeah, and Imperial law also says humans are extinct, so I'm pretty sure they don't have their facts straight."

Obsidian Moon stretched in every direction below her. From orbit it looked like a smooth black pearl. Down here, it was a graveyard. The entire moon was a bone-yard of warships. Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, crashed and abandoned when the Cataclysm War ended 183 years ago. The Empire never cleaned it up. They just declared it a Forbidden Salvage Zone and left the orphans and the desperate to fight over the scraps.

Lyra had grown up here. She knew every skeleton.

She had never seen this one.

It wasn't on any map. It was too big, too perfect. Most wrecks were torn open, their spines showing. This one was intact. Its hull wasn't metal. It was a matte, light-eating black, so dark her helmet's spotlight disappeared into it instead of reflecting. When she got closer, she saw faint veins of gold and pale blue light running under the surface, like blood under skin.

And it was warm. In the dead cold of space, where everything should be minus two hundred degrees, the hull was radiating heat.

She jumped.

In zero-G, Lyra wasn't clumsy. On the Moon, she was too tall, too sharp-tongued, always bumping into things. In space, she was a blade. She sailed over the ridge of the dead ship and landed light, her boots clicking.

Where she touched, the hull rippled.

A ring of blue light pulsed out from her glove, spreading across the black surface and then fading.

Lyra froze.

That had never happened before.

Well - that wasn't true. It had happened before, when she was little. When she was angry, old consoles would flicker on. When she was scared, doors would open. The other scavenger kids called her a witch. The depot masters called her a glitch. Lyra called it the static - that faint, high-pitched whine she'd heard in her head since she was six, on no frequency, like someone whispering her name from another room.

The static was screaming now.

The ship had no airlock. It had a seam. As she stared, the seam irised open on its own, peeling back like a living eyelid, exhaling a gust of warm, clean, sweet-smelling air. Air that smelled like rain and soil. Things that didn't exist on Obsidian Moon.

"Atmosphere," Mira-7 whispered, her voice actually shaking. "Nitrogen-oxygen. 21% oxygen. It's... it's Earth-standard. Lyra, that atmosphere has been sealed for almost two centuries. That's impossible."

Lyra's heart was hammering so hard she could hear it over the static.

"Log a claim beacon," she said automatically. Finders law. If she logged it, the ship was hers.

"I... I can't. The system won't let me. It says this vessel is already claimed. Sovereign-class. Royal registry."

Royal. There were no royals left. Humanity had no royals.

Lyra stepped inside.

The inside was not a wreck. It was a cathedral.

No dust. No bodies. No scavenger tags. The walls soared a hundred feet high, all the same black material, but inside, the gold and blue veins were bright, pulsing slowly, like a heartbeat. The air was warm. The light had no source - it just existed.

And in the center of the room, floating a meter off the floor with no wires, no grav-plates, was a perfect black sphere the size of her heart.

It was not a machine. It didn't look built. It looked grown. Its surface swirled with galaxies, nebulae being born and dying, slow and silent. And it was humming the exact frequency of the static in her head.

Lyra's breath caught.

She'd dreamed of this. Not this exact sphere, but this feeling. Since she was a child, she'd dreamed of a blue planet, of an ocean so big it made her chest hurt, of a woman with her face but older, wearing a crown made of living light, who held a baby and said, Forgive me. I have to hide you where the shadows can't look.

She never told anyone about the dreams. Orphans who claimed they remembered Earth were locked up. Earth-sickness, they called it. A mental illness.

Lyra took a step forward. Then another. Her boots didn't clang. The floor softened under her steps.

"Mira, what is that?" she whispered.

Mira-7 was silent for three full seconds. When she spoke again, her voice was different. Deeper. Older. Not her voice at all.

"Heart of Earth. Aureli Heart. Key of the Veil. Welcome home, Sovereign."

Lyra flinched. "Mira?"

"I... I don't know what that was," Mira said, back to normal, panicked. "My core just accessed a partitioned file I've never seen before! Lyra, we have to leave!"

The sphere pulsed, like it heard its name.

Lyra didn't realize she'd pulled off her glove until cold air bit her skin. Her hand was bare. On her forearm were three pale, strange scars she'd had since birth - not burn marks, but perfect geometric lines, like circuitry under skin.

As her bare hand got close, the scars began to glow. Bright blue-white. Gold.

The static in her head became a song.

"I know you," she whispered.

She touched it.

For half a second, nothing.

Then the sphere grabbed her.

It wasn't hot. It was absolute. Light - not bright, but pure information - shot up her arm, into her veins, into her head. Lyra didn't scream. She couldn't. Her mind was ripped open.

She saw - Earth, not dead, but wrapped in a shimmering Veil like a soap bubble, hiding it. She saw a woman who looked exactly like her placing a baby in a tiny escape pod. Her. She saw a man in Imperial white - Emperor Lucien, younger - shaking hands with the Queen and then stabbing her in the back. She saw seven alien dynasties dividing up human colonies like meat.

She saw something else. Something under Earth. A vast, silent darkness that wasn't dark, that ate light and memory. The Silence.

And she understood, in a flash that was too big for words: Humanity hadn't been destroyed. Humanity had hidden. They had made themselves go extinct to starve it.

And now she had just rung the dinner bell.

Across the galaxy, everything stopped.

Lyra was slammed back against the wall, the sphere now fused to her palm, warm and pulsing like a second heart. Through the open iris of the ship, she could see the sky above Obsidian Moon.

Obsidian Moon has no atmosphere. Its sky is always black, filled with dead satellites and drifting hulks.

Every single one had just gone dark. Her skiff. The depot lights on the horizon. The stars themselves seemed to dim.

For thirteen seconds, absolute, terrifying silence. No engines. No comms. No static.

Then -

Every system came back on at once, screaming.

And every communication system in the known galaxy - from a child's toy communicator on Caelum Prime to the Emperor's own throne display - received the same message, in the same dead language, in the same voice that Lyra had heard in her head since she was six:

EARTH HAS AWAKENED.

On her helmet display, warning lights exploded.

"IMPERIAL CRUISER! IMPERIAL CRUISER INBOUND!" Mira-7 shrieked. "Lyra, the Revenant! It's the Revenant! The Prince's warship just entered orbit! They tracked the Aureli spike! They tracked YOU!"

High above, the clouds of dust parted.

A shadow fell over the entire bone-yard. A ship so massive it blocked out half the sky. Twelve kilometers long, shaped like a black dagger, covered in weapons that could crack a moon. The most feared ship in the Empire.

Crown Prince Kael Veyron's personal dreadnought.

Lyra had spent her whole life hearing stories about him. The Ruthless Prince. The Emperor's Blade. The man who burned three rebellious moons because they refused to kneel.

He had come for her.

The sphere in her hand, which had been warm and welcoming, suddenly flared hot. A projection shot out of it - not light, but text, burned directly into the air in front of her in Old Earth Standard:

GENE-MATCH: 99.8%

LINEAGE: VALE - EARTH ROYAL PRIME

STATUS: SOVEREIGN CONFIRMED

The iris of the human ship, which had welcomed her, suddenly slammed shut.

It wasn't protecting itself anymore.

It was protecting her.

And outside, Lyra heard the unmistakable whine of Imperial drop-ships - coming down fast, right for her.

She clutched the Heart of Earth to her chest, turned, and ran deeper into the ship that knew her name, while the galaxy hunted the last girl from Earth.

The ship was closing around her.

Not collapsing - rearranging. The cathedral-like room where Lyra had found the sphere narrowed, the black walls flowing like liquid, forming a corridor where there had been no corridor. The gold veins in the walls pulsed faster, urgent.

It was trying to hide her.

"Lyra, you have to get out!" Mira-7 was shouting in her helmet. "The Revenant has locked tractor beams! Imperial breach pods are already on the hull!"

Lyra ran. The Heart of Earth was no longer a floating sphere. It had shrunk, condensed, until it was a smooth, warm stone fused to her palm, humming against her skin. Her scars - those three perfect lines on her forearm - were still glowing blue-white, and the light was spreading, tracing new lines up her arm like a map being drawn in real time.

Her boots hit what had been a wall and was now a floor. Gravity shifted. The human ship was playing games with physics.

Behind her, she heard it. The shriek of Imperial plasma cutters.

They were cutting through the outer hull.

"Who are you?" Lyra gasped at the ship, at the walls. "What are you?"

The ship answered. Not in words. In feeling. A wave of calm, of protectiveness, of you are home, you are safe, I have waited so long that almost buckled her knees. And underneath it, one word in that older, deeper voice that had spoken through Mira:

Sovereign.

"I am not a Sovereign!" Lyra snapped. "I'm a scavenger! I'm nobody!"

The corridor ended in a dead end. A wall of solid black.

"No no no - open, open, you stupid -"

The wall didn't open. It melted into a cockpit. A small, perfect cockpit, clearly made for one person. A human cockpit. The seat was shaped for a human spine. The controls were not buttons or levers - they were two hand-shaped depressions that glowed faintly.

A escape pod.

"Mira, can you fly this thing?"

"I don't know! This technology is 183 years more advanced than anything I -"

The entire ship shuddered. The lights flared red. From behind her, down the corridor that was no longer a corridor, came voices. Deep, modulated through Imperial helmets.

"Contact! Aureli energy source is moving! Converge on sector seven!"

Imperial Royal Guard. Kael's elite.

Lyra threw herself into the seat and slammed her hands into the depressions.

The pod screamed awake.

Blue light shot up her arms, up her neck, into her temples. For a second she was not in a pod. She was the ship. She could feel the Imperial soldiers in her belly, cutting. She could feel the Revenant above her like a huge, cold knife pressed to her throat. She could feel something else, too - a vast, cold intelligence watching from orbit, on that dreadnought, furious and focused.

Then the pod ejected.

It didn't launch like an Imperial pod with thrusters and fire. It fell out of reality. One second Lyra was inside the human ship, the next she was outside on the dusty surface of Obsidian Moon, the human ship already vanishing behind her - cloaking, folding light around itself until it was invisible.

She landed hard, tumbled, the pod dissolving into black sand around her the second her feet touched ground. The Heart was still in her hand, now disguised as a plain black stone.

She ran for her skiff, the Mira.

She didn't make it ten meters.

A beam of pure white light slammed down from the sky and pinned her in place. Tractor beam. Not the shaky, industrial kind the depot used. This was military grade. Silent. Absolute. It lifted her off her feet.

Lyra kicked, struggled, tried to pry the light off her. Useless.

Above her, the Revenant had opened. A single drop-ship, shaped like a raven's beak, detached and descended, impossibly fast, landing without kicking up a single speck of dust. The ramp opened before it even touched ground.

Six figures in black armor came out. Not standard Imperial white. Black, with a silver crest on the chest - a star being crushed in a fist. The Royal Guard.

And behind them, not in armor.

A man.

He didn't need armor to look dangerous.

Lyra had seen holo-posters of Crown Prince Kael Veyron her whole life. The Empire put them everywhere on the outer moons: LOYALTY IS ORDER. ORDER IS PEACE. In the posters, he looked like a statue. Cold, handsome in a cruel way, his silver-white hair cut short, his uniform perfect.

In person, he was worse. Because he was not a statue. He was alive, and looking right at her.

He was 29, but he looked like he'd been carved out of war. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a long black Imperial coat that moved like smoke despite no wind. His hair was longer than in the posters, silver, almost white. His skin was pale grey-blue, faintly luminous - Astral blood. His eyes were the worst part. They were violet, but so pale they were almost white, and they missed nothing.

He walked straight through the tractor beam like it wasn't there. The light didn't touch him.

His eyes went to her hand. To the black stone. To the glowing lines on her forearm.

For a fraction of a second, something flickered across his face. Shock.

Then it was gone, replaced by that terrible cold.

"Human," he said. His voice was low, accented with the pure tone of Caelum Prime. Not shouting. He didn't need to shout. "You are holding stolen Imperial property."

Lyra's terror flipped into anger. That was her superpower. When she was terrified, she got sarcastic.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't see your name on it," she spat, dangling from the light. "Finders keepers, asshole."

One of the Royal Guard made a choked noise. No one talked to Kael Veyron like that.

Kael didn't blink. He stepped closer. He was close enough now that she could see the faint scars on his knuckles. Close enough that she could smell ozone and cold.

"You triggered a galaxy-wide event. You blacked out my warship. My father's entire communications network. Do you have any idea what you have done?"

"Yeah, I made your lights flicker. Sorry your nightlight went out, Princess."

Mira-7 in her ear: "Lyra, stop antagonizing the man who can vaporize moons!"

Kael stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, he reached out. Not for the stone. For her face.

Lyra flinched, expecting a slap, a grip.

He just brushed a strand of hair behind her ear with two fingers. His gloves were black leather, cold. The touch was almost gentle.

"Twenty-two," he murmured, almost to himself. "Female. Aureli resonance. You match the description."

He turned to his second-in-command, a man with a scarred face who hadn't taken his eyes off Lyra.

"Rylan. Scan her."

Commander Rylan Cross stepped forward, holding a scanner. The scanner was Imperial tech - it should have beeped, given a readout.

When he passed it over Lyra's chest, the scanner screamed, then shattered in his hand.

Rylan swore and dropped the smoking pieces.

Kael's pale eyes narrowed. He looked back at Lyra, and this time, really looked. At her dark wavy hair, at her stubborn jaw, at the way she hung in his tractor beam and still glared at him like she could kill him.

"Who are you?" he asked quietly, and for the first time, there was something other than cold in his voice. There was curiosity. And something like dread.

"Lyra Vale," she said. "Scavenger. Pain in your ass."

"Lyra Vale," he repeated, tasting the name. "The last human lie."

He reached for the stone in her hand.

The second his gloved fingers touched it, all hell broke loose.

The stone - the Heart - rejected him.

A pulse of pure force, gold and blue, exploded outward. It threw the six Royal Guards ten feet back, slammed them into the dust. It threw Rylan. It shattered the tractor beam. Lyra dropped to the ground, gasping.

Kael was the only one still standing. He had been thrown back a step, but he hadn't fallen. His coat was smoking where he'd touched it. He looked down at his glove, which was now blackened and cracked.

He looked up at Lyra, and his expression had completely changed. The cold was gone. He looked... stunned.

The stone in Lyra's hand was blazing now, projecting light into the sky, projecting text in a language Rylan couldn't read, but Kael could. Every Astral royal was taught Old Earth as a dead language.

Kael read it out loud, his voice hollow.

SOVEREIGN OF HUMANITY CONFIRMED. PROTECT THE QUEEN.

The dust around Lyra's feet began to rise. The black sand of Obsidian Moon was vibrating, forming patterns - circles, constellations.

Rylan scrambled to his feet, weapon drawn, pointing it at Lyra. "Your Highness! It's a weapon! Terminate her, as ordered!"

Kael's father, the Emperor, had given a secret order an hour ago: Find the last human royal descendant. Kill her on sight. No witnesses.

Kael's hand went to his sidearm.

Lyra saw it. She saw her death in his pale eyes. She clutched the Heart tighter.

Kael drew the weapon.

And pointed it at Rylan.

"Lower your weapon, Commander," Kael said, his voice ice again, but different ice. Sharper. Directed at his own man.

Rylan stared, disbelieving. "My Prince? The Emperor's order -"

"Was based on a lie," Kael said. He didn't look at Rylan. He was looking at Lyra, at the light in her arm, at the floating text that called her Queen. "My father told me humans destroyed themselves. He told me they were monsters."

The ground shook. The human ship, still cloaked, was powering up underneath them, responding to Lyra's fear.

Kael holstered his gun and walked to Lyra. He knelt in the dust in front of her, his expensive coat getting dirty. He didn't touch her this time.

"Can you understand what this says?" he asked her, gesturing to the projection.

Lyra, shaking, shook her head.

"It says you are not the last human scavenger," Kael said softly, so only she could hear. "It says you are the last human queen. And if that's true..."

He looked up at the sky, at his own dreadnought, where his father was undoubtedly watching.

"...then my father has been lying to the entire galaxy for 183 years. And he just ordered me to kill the only person who can prove it."

He stood, and in one smooth motion, took off his long black coat and draped it around Lyra's shoulders. It was heavy, warm, and smelled like him - cold and stars.

He turned to his guards, who were staring, weapons half-raised, utterly confused.

"Change of plans," Crown Prince Kael Veyron announced, his voice carrying across the bone-yard, making the dust tremble. "We are not taking a prisoner to Caelum Prime for execution."

He looked down at Lyra, wrapped in his coat, glowing like a small sun.

"We are taking a Queen into protective custody. Anyone who touches her dies."

He scooped her up - one arm under her knees, one behind her back - as if she weighed nothing, as the Heart of Earth pulsed against his chest and didn't burn him this time.

And as he carried her toward his drop-ship, Lyra's eyes fluttered shut from exhaustion, and Kael felt something he hadn't felt in twenty years.

A second heartbeat, syncing with his own.

The bio-bond had just activated.

Lyra woke up to the sound of a warship breathing.

It wasn't like the human ship on Obsidian Moon. That ship had breathed like a sleeping animal, warm and welcoming. This was different. This was the slow, deep inhale-exhale of something massive and mechanical and cold, air cycling through kilometres of vents. The low thrum of an anti-matter core.

She was in a bed. That was the first surprise. She had expected a brig. A cell with bars.

This was not a cell.

The room was huge, dark, made of black glass and brushed steel. One entire wall was a viewport, showing open space and the swirling grey-brown surface of Obsidian Moon far below. The bed she was in was too big, the sheets black, absurdly soft. Someone had taken off her scavenger suit. She was wearing a plain black Imperial under-tunic that was far too large - it smelled like cold and ozone. Like him.

Kael's coat was draped over a chair.

Lyra sat bolt upright, clutching the sheet to her chest. Her hand went to her palm.

The Heart was still there. It was no longer a stone. It had sunk into her skin. In the centre of her palm was a perfect black circle, the size of a coin, with faint gold veins moving inside it like living ink. It was warm. When she focused, she could feel it pulse in time with her own heart.

"Don't touch that."

The voice came from the shadows by the viewport. Lyra nearly fell out of the bed.

Kael Veyron was standing there. He wasn't wearing his coat or his uniform jacket. Just a black shirt, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, showing forearms corded with muscle and covered in faint, silver Astral markings that glowed. He had a data-slate in one hand, but he wasn't looking at it. He was looking at her.

How long had he been standing there watching her sleep?

"You -" Lyra's voice was hoarse. "Where am I? Where's my -"

"Your scavenger suit is being decontaminated. Your AI core is on the table. You are aboard the Imperial Dreadnought Revenant, in my personal quarters. You are in no danger."

"Your personal quarters?" Lyra's eyes darted to the door. "Is this the part where the evil prince -"

"If I wanted to harm you, Lyra Vale, you would not have woken up," he said flatly. He walked over and set a tray down on the bedside table. Water. Actual fresh fruit - something that didn't exist on Obsidian Moon - and protein broth.

Lyra stared at it, then at him. "You drugged me."

"I sedated you. You were in acute bio-resonant shock. Your nervous system was overloading. If I hadn't, you would have had a seizure."

He said it like he was reporting engine diagnostics. No emotion.

Lyra picked up the water and drank it in one go because her throat was raw, but she never took her eyes off him. Building rule number one on Obsidian Moon: never trust someone who feeds you.

"Why am I in your room and not a cell?"

"Because my brig cannot contain you," Kael said. He tapped his data-slate, and the viewport changed. It now showed an internal camera feed of the brig. The brig's door - solid Imperial steel, meant to hold war criminals - was melted. In the shape of a handprint. Hers.

Lyra choked on water. "I did that?"

"You did that in your sleep," Kael said. "You were dreaming about being caged. The ship responded."

"The ship -"

"The Revenant," he corrected. "My warship. It is sentient. Semi-sentient. And it appears to like you more than it likes me."

As if to prove it, the lights in the room dimmed slightly, then brightened, focusing warmly on Lyra.

Kael's jaw tightened. He glared at the ceiling. "Stop that."

The lights dimmed again, petulantly.

Lyra almost laughed, despite herself. Then she remembered.

"You were supposed to kill me."

The room went cold. Kael's pale violet eyes locked onto hers.

"Yes."

"Your friend - Rylan - said it was an order from your father."

"Yes."

"So why didn't you?"

Kael was silent for a long time. He set the data-slate down. When he spoke, his voice was lower.

"Because my father also told me humanity was extinct because they were violent, greedy, and they built a weapon that destroyed Earth. He showed me archives. Bodies. Burning cities. He told me you were the last remnant of a plague."

He stepped closer to the bed. Lyra instinctively pulled back, but there was nowhere to go.

"Then I touched that thing in your hand," he continued, "and my own warship, which has been in my family for four generations and has never disobeyed a direct order, refused my command to fire on you. It called you Sovereign. Explain that, scavenger."

Lyra looked down at the black circle in her palm. "I don't know! I found it an hour ago! I thought it was a power core I could sell! I didn't know it was going to - to turn off the galaxy!"

"It's called the Heart of Earth," Kael said. "It's not a power core. It's a key. And you are the lock."

Before Lyra could answer, a sharp pain lanced through her chest. Not her chest - his. Or both.

Kael winced at the exact same second, his hand going to his own chest.

"What was that?" Lyra gasped.

Kael's eyes widened. He stared at her, then at his own hand, which was now showing faint blue lines under the skin - identical to hers.

"Bio-bond," he whispered, and for the first time, he looked genuinely shaken. "It can't be."

"What is a bio-bond?"

"Aureli failsafe. Ancient. My mother told me stories. When a Sovereign is in danger, the Protector genome activates. It links them. Pain. Distance. Death. If you die -"

"If I die, what?"

"If you die, I die," Kael said flatly. "If we are more than one hundred meters apart for more than a few minutes, we both start to suffer organ failure. It's a leash."

Lyra stared at him, horrified. "You are telling me I am biologically handcuffed to the guy who was supposed to murder me?"

"You are telling me I am biologically handcuffed to a sarcastic human who will get us both killed?" he shot back.

The door hissed open before she could retort.

A woman walked in.

She was breathtaking in the way a drawn sword is breathtaking. Tall, silver-white hair like Kael's but long and braided with black wires, wearing the white and silver armor of the Royal Guard Commander. Her face was Kael's face, but sharper, more elegant. Princess Seraphine Veyron.

Her pale eyes went from Kael to Lyra in the bed, wearing Kael's under-tunic, wrapped in his sheets.

Her expression froze.

"Brother," Seraphine said, her voice like ice water. "Explain why there is a human in your bed, wearing your clothes, and why Father's entire war council is demanding to know why you have committed treason."

Kael stood straighter. "Seraphine."

Seraphine walked into the room, ignoring Lyra completely at first, and picked up Kael's data-slate from the table. She glanced at it. Her eyebrows shot up.

"Aureli match 99.8%? Sovereign confirmation? Kael, what is this?"

"It's the truth," Kael said.

"The truth is that you were ordered to execute the last human descendant and instead you brought her into your private quarters and gave her fruit," Seraphine snapped. She finally looked at Lyra, and her lip curled. "So this is it? This is the monster that wiped out half the galaxy? She looks... malnourished."

Lyra, who had been silent, threw a piece of fruit at her.

It bounced off Seraphine's pristine armor.

Seraphine stared at the fruit on the floor, then at Lyra, in utter disbelief. No one had ever thrown anything at her.

"Oh, I like her," Seraphine said after a beat, but her hand was on her energy blade.

Kael stepped between them. "Enough."

"Father is calling," Seraphine said, suddenly serious. "He's been calling for twenty minutes. He's on holo. He wants to see the body."

The blood drained from Kael's face.

Lyra felt it - that sharp pain in her chest again, but this time it was fear, and it wasn't hers. It was Kael's.

"If he sees her alive, he will order this ship destroyed," Kael said quietly.

"Then what do we do?" Seraphine asked.

Kael looked at Lyra. Lyra looked at Kael. The black circle in her palm pulsed.

Mira-7, who had been silent on the table, suddenly crackled to life, but not in her own voice. In that older, deeper voice.

"Warning. Imperial signature: Emperor's Wrath. Titan-class warship. Exiting hyperspace in 3 minutes. It carries planet-crackers. It is targeting this vessel."

Seraphine went pale.

"Father sent the Wrath?" she whispered. "He sent his personal execution fleet... for us?"

Kael grabbed his coat, threw it at Lyra. "Put it on. Now."

"Why?"

"Because if my father sees you, he will kill you. And if you die, I die. And I am not ready to die for a girl I met an hour ago who throws fruit at princesses."

He grabbed Lyra's wrist - and the moment his skin touched hers, the glowing lines on both their arms flared blindingly bright, connecting. A circuit completing.

Seraphine saw it. Her eyes went wide.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, gods. You're bonded."

The entire warship shuddered. Red alarms blared.

From the viewport, Lyra saw it. A second shadow, even bigger than the Revenant, tearing out of hyperspace. A warship shaped like a crown of thorns. The Emperor's personal flagship.

A voice boomed through every speaker on the Revenant, a voice Lyra recognized from every Imperial broadcast on Obsidian Moon.

Emperor Lucien Veyron.

"KAEL VEYRON. YOU HAVE DISOBEYED A DIRECT ORDER. POWER DOWN YOUR ENGINES AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED. PRESENT THE HUMAN CORPSE. OR I WILL BOARD YOU MYSELF AND TAKE IT FROM YOUR COLD HANDS."

Kael looked at Lyra. Lyra looked at Kael.

"Can this ship run?" Lyra whispered.

Kael smiled for the first time. It was not a nice smile. It was sharp and ruthless and terrifying.

"The Revenant can do more than run," he said. He pressed his palm to the wall.

The wall responded, veins of light shooting through it, all the way down the kilometers-long ship.

"Revenant," Kael commanded. "Forbidden Space. Jump. Now."

The ship, which had always obeyed Kael, hesitated for half a second - and then looked at Lyra, as if asking her permission too.

Lyra, without thinking, placed her own palm with the black circle on the wall.

"Go," she whispered.

The Revenant roared.

And in front of the Emperor's execution fleet, the most advanced warship in the galaxy tore a hole in reality where no hole should exist - a jump into Forbidden Space, where no ship had ever returned from - and vanished.

Leaving Emperor Lucien screaming in empty space.