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T he artificial night of Cryon II felt different tonight. Thicker. Heavier. Dorane walked the winding paths of the lower levels, fingering the tracking device. He had carried a thousand different currencies in his lifetime—credits, stolen gems, information worth more than gold—but this?

This felt like a gamble.

Would his shadow come out into the light?

His gut twisted in a way he didn’t like to analyze. If she didn’t, what then? He had no name, no face—only the memory of how she moved through chaos, a figure who had pulled him back from the edge of death more than once.

It wasn’t just curiosity that burned inside him. It was something deeper. Something that coiled in his chest, a slow, smoldering tension that felt too much like waiting for something to break.

Jammer walked beside him, moving with that deceptively casual ease he always had. Dorane wasn’t fooled, though. Jammer was always watching, always ready.

“So,” Jammer murmured as they rounded the last corner before the stretch leading to Deek’s. “Are we really doing this?”

Dorane exhaled, fingers tightening around the Gallant Staff at his side. “There comes a time when even a sewer rat has to take a stand.”

Jammer let out a low grunt, rubbing the back of his head. “I was hoping you’d say no. I don’t know about sewer rats, but I have a great affection for being alive.”

Dorane huffed out a quiet laugh, but it faded quickly. His stomach was tight. His footsteps felt heavier the closer they got. It was ridiculous, really—the amount of weight he was placing on something as uncertain as a hope.

Would she be there? What would she look like? For a second, dread filled him at the thought that she could be a Mnezzar or other insectoid type species.

That would be very disappointing, he mused .

He shook off his misgivings and crossed the threshold into Deek’s. The scent of alcohol, sweat, and dim-lit regret greeted him like an old friend. The air vibrated with the hum of low conversation, the clatter of server bots, the occasional bark of laughter. He scanned the room instinctively, his gaze flicking toward the booth at the far end where he had sat less than a week ago.

Empty.

His stomach dipped.

He didn’t pause, didn’t let the disappointment settle too deep. Instead, he rolled his shoulders back, forcing himself to move along the bar. Deek, ever the unbothered bastard, barely looked up as Dorane motioned for a drink. The server bot hummed over, setting a glass down with precise efficiency before Dorane even reached the table.

Jammer settled a few stools down, easily chatting with Deek about the repairs he had made since their last visit. Other patrons moved about the bar, drinking, laughing, playing out their usual routines.

Dorane slid into the seat with his back to the wall this time. He picked up the crystal glass. A fine thread of spiraling steam rose from the amber liquor, but he didn’t drink. His mind was elsewhere, scanning, waiting, bracing.

The world moved on, and for the first time in a long time, Dorane felt a flicker of something unsteady inside him. What if she didn’t come? What if she was already gone? He didn’t even know who she was—what she wanted, what she fought for. Only that she had killed for him. Twice that he knew of, maybe more.

That was enough to make him wonder—would he ever get the chance to ask why? He was so lost in his thoughts that he almost missed the shiver of awareness that ran down his spine. His fingers froze around his glass.

The world contracted, narrowing to a single point of awareness. She was here. He didn’t turn. He didn’t want to alert her, or worse, frighten her away.

He felt her the way a predator senses another in the dark—the whisper of fabric, the softest shift of footsteps, the presence of something just out of reach but watching. She moved with the grace of the moth-like creatures from Plateau, gliding out from the dim corridor behind him.

His fingers tightened around his glass as she slid into the seat across from him. Smooth. Effortless. As if they had done this a thousand times before.

He waited, allowing himself a moment to study her as if she were a piece of fine artwork.

A cloak. Goggles. A scarf covering the lower half of her face. All of it designed to conceal, to obscure, to blend in. But none of it could hide the stillness about her. The way she held herself—coiled, controlled, the same way he would in a room full of threats.

She didn’t fidget. She didn’t shift. She simply watched.

Dorane’s chest tightened. He wanted to rip the mask away. He had a feeling that if he tried, he’d be dead before his hand made it across the table.

The tension between them settled, low and charged. Not hostile. Not challenging. But dangerous all the same. A mutual awareness that was razor thin and balanced on the edge of knowing.

His lips curled into a relaxed smile as he leaned back, his voice low and lazy in Urvanian.

“Zarath vi liera vesh’ta, ka’len tor vash.” The last time a woman sat there, she tried to kill me, he commented, placing the tracking device on the table.

For the first time, she moved, a slow, deliberate shift of her weight. He had to remind himself to breathe as she tilted her head, the faintest shift—like the whisper of a blade sliding from its sheath, a sound almost too subtle to register but sharp enough to make his senses prickle. Then she spoke, and it felt as if Jammer had punched him in the stomach. Her voice was low, a husky whisper that felt warm and inviting. The sweet cadence flowed through him like the smooth, amber liquor in his glass, a slight burn warming his belly, a delicious feeling that left him wanting more.

“I’m sure it was an explosive encounter.”

The words took a half-second to register. The pun in her statement spoke volumes about her wit, but it was the second realization that caused him to sit forward.

His mind snapped the pieces together instantly—too fast, too sharp, certainty slicing him while a slow, sinking weight paralyzed his chest. She had spoken in the language of the Ancients.

Dorane’s expression was something dangerously close to wonder laced with wariness. His little shadow was no ordinary assassin.

She was one of them.

His pulse thumped heavily as she lifted her hands.

Slow. Unhurried. Deliberate.

The goggles slid up.

The scarf unraveled.

His breath caught.

And for the first time, he saw her.

She was young, but not fragile. Sharp, but not cold. Her face was a study in contrasts—delicate features carved from tempered steel, a softness in her mouth that warred with the cool intensity in her dark eyes.

Ancient eyes. An assassin’s eyes.

Dorane realized then—he had never been in the kind of danger he was in now.

Not from death.

From something far worse.

From losing heart.

Almost as if she could read his mind, her lips twitched with amusement. With a slow, subtle bow of her head, a gesture of acknowledgment, she confirmed his suspicions.

“My name is Mei. I think some of your people believe I’m an Ancient Knight of the Gallant.”

A Half Hour Earlier:

The creature was gone.

Mei hissed under her breath, tightening her grip on the tracking device she had placed in Dorane’s pocket almost a week before. Her steps were swift and soundless across the latticework of metal beams. She had been watching it—him—for days now, observing the way the creature followed Dorane from the upper levels, a predator trailing its prey.

She should have anticipated this.

The moment Dorane had left his headquarters, the creature had vanished into the rooftops, slipping into the shadows as if the darkness itself had swallowed him.

It had taken Yi a couple of days to find out who the creature was after she described him. Since then, Yi had been a basket case of nerves. He had barely been able to click out the creature’s name.

Zoak.

The Turbinta assassin’s name rolled through her mind as she paused to scan the upper-level beams. Tiv had explained that Turbinta assassins were notoriously hard to track, but this one? He was a ghost in a city of ghosts.

Mei clenched her jaw, scanning the crisscrossing scaffolding above. She was fast—faster than most—but even she had limits. Losing him in the web of Cryon II’s upper beams was frustrating, and frustration led to mistakes.

A flick of her wrist, and the tracker screen pulsed. Dorane’s signal was still moving. Heading downward.

Her heart kicked harder when she recognized the path. She had a suspicion she knew where he was going—and why. Mei’s mouth pressed into a thin line. It would be a serendipitous move on his part to see if he could lure her back to the place where they first met.

She stood frozen for a moment, staring down at the display as uncertainty twisted through her stomach.

She had a choice to make.

She could stay on the hunt for Zoak, attempt to retrace the assassin’s steps through the maze of steel and neon, or she could finally do what she should have done days ago.

Confront Dorane LeGaugh.

Mei exhaled through her nose, her fingers tightening around the device. It was reasonable to think that Zoak wouldn’t be far from Dorane. She could kill an assassin and save an idiot with a death wish with one stone, literally, if Zoak decided to make his move. The fact that the Turbinta hadn’t made his move yet still puzzled her.

Over the last few days, Mei had learned enough about Dorane to make a few educated guesses. Tiv and Yi had spoken of him with a quiet reverence that made Mei wonder if the guy was some supernatural being. Dorane had crawled from the gutters of the galaxy to claim a kingdom built from smoke, shadows, and sheer audacity.

The merchants spoke of him with the same awe. Unfortunately, the man also appeared to have a healthy dose of enemies waiting in the shadows to kill him. Mei had watched him fight, leaving those she felt confident he would have no issues defeating to him. There had been three she had intervened with, not counting Zoak. She would have taken the Turbinta if she could get close enough. At the moment, they were at a stand-off, aware of each other’s presence, but still analyzing.

Zoak’s darkness was familiar, and yet it was all the more jarring for that, because somehow her new life had been lightened by good people.

Josh, Ash, Julia, Sergi, Tiv, and Yi.

And perhaps Dorane.

The time on the Gliese had shown her what the sunlight felt like on her face. Where she didn’t have to pretend. Losing them had been like losing a piece of herself. She could still feel their presence, but without their support, she was once again being pulled into the darkness. She didn’t know if she could go back to that now that she knew how it felt to have a real life.

She had to find them. They were alive.

And if anyone knew where they were, it would be Dorane.

Her heart beat a slow, deliberate rhythm. She already knew what her choice would be.

It was time she confronted Dorane. If he was truly the man Yi, Tiv, and the merchants whispered about, then he would help her.

If not, I’ll leave his sorry ass for the assassins, she thought with a peevish shrug.

Descending into the depths of the spaceport, Mei pulled open the ventilation hatch, which gave way with a soft hiss, revealing the dimly lit maintenance shafts that ran like hidden veins through Cryon II. She slipped inside, the metal cool against her fingertips as she navigated the cramped space.

She had mapped out these tunnels days ago—routes meant for engineers, smugglers, and ghosts like herself. The passage narrowed, forcing her to slide onto her stomach as she pulled herself through an opening barely large enough to accommodate her body.

A drop-off loomed ahead.

Mei adjusted her balance, bracing her feet against the sides of the shaft before twisting her body into a controlled descent. The shaft opened into a vertical tunnel, where a series of worn metal rungs were embedded along the walls.

She climbed down fast and silent, the hum of the station’s inner workings vibrating through her bones.

Level 12 was below.

When she reached the last stretch, she released her hold and dropped soundlessly onto the top of a lift, rolling into a crouch as she landed. She braced her hand against the cold metal as the lift descended.

When it slid to a stop, she rose and stepped to the edge. She scanned the shadowed corridors below, listening for movement before slipping into a low hatch door that opened into the back corridors.

She was here.

Now came the part she wasn’t sure she was ready for.

The back entrance of Deek’s was a heavy metal door that was slightly ajar. Through the gap, a dim glow streamed out into the alley, warm against the cold steel walls.

Mei paused in the shadows, invisible to the crowd within, her eyes locked onto the man she had come for.

Dorane LeGaugh had just entered.

He paused, scanning the room, but he couldn’t see her from where she was standing. Mei recognized the tension in his shoulders, the subtle flicker of disappointment when his gaze skimmed over the empty booth where he had last sat.

He thought she hadn’t come.

Seeing his dejection, she felt a sudden, constricting ache in her chest, a physical manifestation of empathy. She should leave, escape the suffocating fear closing in, but a strange paralysis held her in place.

She couldn’t. There was something about him that called to her, much like a moth to a flame. She had seen so many men who thought they were untouchable: her father, his guards, the people who whispered in corridors. They all thought themselves above the inevitable. Even the Turbinta assassin, Zoak, felt he was beyond reach, but none of them were, not really.

Dorane wasn’t like them.

He was sharp edges wrapped in careless ease, a man who played the game not just to survive, but to win.

He should have been like the others. But he wasn’t.

And that was what scared her.

Mei had known fear before. The cold, calculating kind that came from battle, from missions, from facing the inevitable.

But this?

This was something else.

This was the unknown. Even her interactions with Josh, Ash, and Sergi hadn’t prepared her for the tsunami of conflicting emotions threatening to crush her.

She clenched her jaw, pushing past her hesitation, pushing past her instinct screaming at her to run. She would not take the coward’s way out. It was not her way.

She drew in a deep breath and silently stepped forward. The whisper of her cloak barely stirred the air as she slid through the back entrance, moving through the dimly lit corridor like a shadow returning home.

Dorane sat at the same booth as before, his back to her. His fingers loosely curled around a drink he wasn’t drinking. His thumb absently rubbed along the condensation on the outside of the glass while he fingered something with his other hand. Jammer was at the bar casually talking to Deek, though Mei could tell he was watching everything.

She crossed the space between them with quiet steps, slipping into the seat across from Dorane as if she had always belonged there.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Mei gave herself time to calm her wildly beating heart. Through the tinted goggles, she studied the intense myriad of expressions flickering through his hazel eyes. The intensity was so piercing, she was astonished she didn’t go up in flames.

She returned his gaze without hesitation.

Then—his lips curved in a reluctant smile.

“Zarath vi liera vesh’ta, ka’len tor vash.” The last time a woman sat there, she tried to kill me.

His Urvanian was smooth, casual—but the tension beneath it was not lost on her. Mei tilted her head slightly, a flicker of amusement curving her lips.

“I’m sure it was an explosive encounter,” she replied in English, her voice slightly muffled by her scarf.

Surprise flickered across his face. His breath left him, sharp and startled—recognition.

Mei knew they had a common language—the language of the ancients was, surprisingly, English. The translator Tiv gave her allowed her to understand what others were saying, but it would take time for her to learn how to speak any others. Fortunately, this was a language they spoke as a universal one. That alone made her wonder if aliens from this world had once passed through the gateway and settled on Earth.

That answer will have to wait for another time, she thought as she slowly lifted her hands.

She slid her goggles up first, revealing her dark brown, almond-shaped eyes.

Next, she pulled her scarf loose, allowing it to fall to one side. She was hyperaware of every movement he made. She recognized the moment everything changed.

She waited, caught in the snare of his scrutiny. She noted the way his body stilled, the way his lips parted, and the movement of his fingers as they tensed around his glass. Her breath caught when his carefully constructed nonchalance slipped—just for a second.

Mei knew the moment she saw it in his eyes. This wasn’t a chance encounter. This wasn’t a mistake. This was a collision course that began the moment she was chosen for the Project Gliese’s mission. Whatever they were now, whatever they would become—it was already set in motion, and neither of them would escape unscathed.