as the sea that swirls around us. “No. No option C.”
He lifts me up in his arms and brings me to the shore. My blood drains away from my face. He lays me on the sand and covers me with his body. I expect to be crushed, but I’m not. He holds his weight on his elbows. Still, I’m trapped, unable to move from beneath the cage he’s created with his enormous frame. Waves pour over our feet and thighs. The glow from the two moons above us is enough to see every line of his sharp jaw as he studies me.
“I want this.” His nose skims up my throat in an intimate caress.
“I don’t,” I growl between my teeth.
“You need someone you can’t control. Someone who will protect you and advise you.”
I point a finger at his face. “You’re wrong. I need to be in control. Without it, I’m desperate. Knob knockers like you have tried to control me my entire life!”
“You seem to be out of options,” he says, but he doesn’t make any move to kiss me again. He just studies me as if I’m a mermaid washed up on the shore.
My mind whispers, Don’t stay . . . I hope for the Sea of Stars to swallow me up. “There’s one option you haven’t thought of, Kyon,” I reply. I concentrate, wishing for sweet oblivion. Escape. A tear slips from my eye as I whisper, “Trey.”
CHAPTER 2
LISTEN TO YOU BREATHING
I’m violently ripped away from myself. My consciousness leaves my body. Hovering above me for a moment, I see Kyon holding my cold, lifeless form. He notices the change in me immediately. He knows I’m no longer there. Shaking me in anger, he growls when I don’t open my eyes. “Kricket,” he snarls, knowing somehow that I’m still here. He pulls my lifeless body up from the sand, gripping my shoulders; he shelters my wet body from the pull of the sea.
My attention wanes from Kyon because I’m everywhere and nowhere; woven in the air with only one thought: Trey. I become a compass needle searching for north. In no time, I’m miles high, scorched by heat even when I’m bathed in darkness that only the light of the Etharian moons relieves.
I travel over the water. It glows beneath me with an ancient, iridescent fire. A galaxy of stars burn beneath its surface, but the Sea of Stars doesn’t last. I flash forward, crossing over cities I’ve never been to before, past mountains and wilderness that harbor herds of creatures for which I have no names. In the moonlight, the abandoned husk of the City of Amster slouches. I recognize it from the time that I had traveled through the restricted area with Trey on my way to Rafe. It sits in a valley and grows haphazardly into the horizon. Waves of decrepit buildings crest the landscape in currents.
What I know of this city is that a plague called Black Math decimated it more than a thousand years ago. Ancient walls that were built up to the clouds are crumbling now. The wind whistles through their broken windows, echoing low, sorrowful moans.
I arrive at a dust-covered junction where buildings meet to form a triangle. Abandoned vehicles line the streets. Weathered by time, they resemble the skeletons of decaying beasts. No one stirs to disturb the quiet of the rusting boneyard.
I lurch sideways, being tugged to marble steps in front of a gothic, gray stone structure. I move like a ghost through the tangle of vine and vegetation that clings to the twisted stone railings. I don’t use the entryway ahead, but instead surge through the solid wall as lightning into a metal rod. Dust-covered marble floors inlaid with gold greet me on the other side. Above me, cathedral ceilings with fresco paintings of elaborate detail spreads out as if they were tattoos on an aging sailor. Their fading colors still portray the beauty of a bygone era.
Movement draws my attention. Around me, soldiers like matchstick men with fiery eyes and thin, well-honed bodies keep watch at strategic points. They’re ready to take fire and give it. Clad in feather-light high-polymer vests, they’re heavily armed with sophisticated weaponry. Their sharp eyes look right through me, invisible as I am, not being of their time but, rather, days behind them.
This building is a gateway, I think. They’re defending something.
I don’t remain with them, but lurch through grand cathedral-like chambers until I pass through the outer wall onto a raised