Page 118 of Last of Her Name

I’m awakening to a part of myself I never knew I had, and I have years of catching up to do.

His hands squeeze my hips, urgent, hungry, and my body responds with a shudder. He is not the Pol I once knew, once picked on and teased and fought with. It feels as if I’m rediscovering him, finding someone else behind that familiar, handsome face. The fierceness with which I want him terrifies me. I give in to it utterly.

When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. His lips are still slightly parted, full and flushed, his pupils dilated. His gaze is steady, certain, hungry for more of me. In his hands I can feel his reluctance to let go.

“You have no idea,” he murmurs, “how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

I trace the ridges in his horns. I think of all the time we’ve lost, and all the time we may never have if we take up this fight. Because he’s right. Standing between Volkov and the Prismata is a suicide mission. Even with the Firebird, even with two tensors on our side, we’re facing the greatest power in the galaxy. Volkov won’t hold anything back, and he’ll gladly wipe us out alongside the Prismata.

But I made my choice even before I knew what Volkov intended to do, even before I knew that the Prismata holds Clio’s soul inside it.

I knew the moment Volkov put a gun to Pol that I wasn’t going to back down from this fight. Because that was the moment I realized that when I have this much to live for, I have something worth dying for.

“Pol,” I whisper, letting my forehead rest against his, “I have to do this. You understand that, don’t you?”

He says nothing, only lets me sit back. We knit our fingers together, palms down, his fingertips playing over my knuckles.

After a long silence, he murmurs, “I’m not sure I understand anything anymore. But I trust you.”

“I trust you too.” My fingers tighten in his. “You’ll come with me, then?”

His smile is slow and crooked and a little shy, but this time, it shines in his eyes as they rise to meet my gaze. “If it means another kiss like that, Stacia Androva, I’d follow you over the edge of the universe.”

“Holy skies,” breathes Mara. “Where are we?”

I stare through theValentina’s front screen at the space ahead, my stomach still rocking from the drop out of warp. The ship’s Prism lies at the bottom of its case, useless and dark, its energy spent. When I try to connect with the ship’s systems, there’s nothing to connecttoexcept a bit of auxiliary power. There’s not enough to do much besides run the ship’s minimum systems.

“This is the Vault,” I say. I don’t need to check the coordinates to be sure. I can feel this is right, that this was the end of Danica and Zorica’s long journey across the stars, following the trail of Prisms.

We crowd onto the bridge, and even Natalya has roused herself to join us. She stands close to her brother, arms folded. It took us sixteen hours to make the jump, pushing the Prism and theValentinato their limits. We’ve gambled everything. Unless we find a new source of power, there’s no going back.

“This place isn’t listed on any atlas.” Riyan scans theValentina’s database, shaking his head. “Its star isn’t even registered.”

The system is empty. It has no planets, no significant features.

Nothing, that is, except the massive, glowing crystal ahead of us.

I smile, raising my fingers to the beam of golden light that shines through the front window. “The Prismata. We’re here.”

It’s more impressive in person than it was in the code’s message. The nearer we get, the sharper it appears. The individual points take shape, spiking in every direction. The light that burns in its heart is white, but it reflects gold and pink and red in the many arms. From far away, it looks like I could reach out and grab it, but the computer measurements betray that it’s the size of a small moon.

“So this is you,” I whisper, drawing a look from Pol. I stare so hard my eyes begin to water, but I can’t blink. I can’t move, for the awe and terror that ripples through me.

For the first time in my life, I’m truly seeing Clio.

Or part of her, anyway. The part I didn’t create—her soul.

All this time, Clio was a mind suspended in crystal, a thousand light-years away. How can this thing, so inhuman, so strange, so beautiful, be my best friend? If I reach out to it, will I recognize anything of her?

We all flinch when something pings off the ship’s window and spins away. Then another object strikes, and I catch a glimpse of it as it deflects aside, a skitter of light.

We’re sailing into a cloud of Prisms. The little crystals spin all around us, thick as flies. There must be millions of them. The more I stare, the more I see. Farther away, they seem thick as dust. They’re most concentrated around the Prismata, in a vast ring encircling the much larger mother crystal.

“Aha.” Riyan taps the scanner. “There’s something that doesn’t belong.”

I peer at the scan, noting the blip that appears in the Prismata’s outer orbit, at the edge of the ring of crystals. “Take us there.”

Two hours later, we reach it: a station orbiting the Prismata. It’s completely dark, and when Riyan tries to hail it, we get no reply.