Page 98 of Crown Prince's Mate

“Fire.” Doman’s voice is a low rumble. A single word. A single word, and my heart skips a beat, fixated on the planet ahead ofus, dwarfing his warship, an enormous hunk of metal and rock that would withstand barrages of even nuclear warheads.

I nearly miss it. It’s so subtle, a sliver of midnight lightning that leaps back from the planet target to the Planet-Killer, then flicks back onto the planet.

And then it is gone. There’s no dramatic explosion. No deafening roar, no fireworks show. There’s only an eerie, silent void where a world once was.

“Akarix, return.” Doman’s voice is steady. He’s seen horrors in his centuries beyond my imagination, and while I have a pressure in my head so tight it feels like my brain is about to burst through my eyes, he is unshakeable.

The Planet-Killer turns with cumbersome, slow movements, so unlike the way it veered into position. It is flanked by agile Reavers, darting in to protect it. The Orb has dimmed, its pulsations slowing like a dying star, but I know that it is merely dormant, merely waiting for another chance to be used again to wreak obliteration.

“I’m operating at minimal power,” Akarix reports. “The Orb is nearly depleted.”

“Maintain course. Marcus, status?” Doman’s presence commands the room. Every technician is intent on his words, and there’s an energy of pure focus, tension filling the atmosphere.

“Clear,” Marcus replies, his voice precise. He’s a battle-hardened warrior, just like every man under Doman’s command.

“Area’s secure,” echoes the technician, but his hands are white-knuckled on the console as he stares into lines of text and numbers floating holographically in front of him, searching for any minute change that will spell the ambush.

“Hold steady. Reavers, scout. Transmit feed.”

Two Reavers break off from the Planet-Killer, darting in towards the empty space where there was an entire planet moments before. The feed shows the view from their cockpits, overlaid on the glass before us as the Planet-Killer disappears into our ship, deep into the armored recesses where it lays in wait.

I never knew nothing could be so terrifying. I don’t know what I was expecting. A black hole, a burning ember, something, anything. My mind reels at it, where an entire planet was moments ago, there is simply empty space.

“Doman!” an Aurelian commanding from the bridge barks out, alarmed. “We’ve been displaced!”

“Displaced? Explain.” Doman doesn’t take his eyes off the Reavers in front of him. His eyes are never taken off them—but they shifted, ever so slightly, as if pushed back by an invisible force in an instant.

“Our coordinates. We’re… we’re not where we should be. We’re 3.28 kilometers back.”

Gallien whips around to face the man. “Check the logs. Tell me what time we were previously at this coordinate.”

“The time?”

“Do it. The logs will show we were at these exact coordinates. I need to know when.”

The Aurelian who is at the pilot’s seat while Doman surveys frowns in confusion, but he checks the data. “6.34 seconds prior to the Planet-Killer fire.”

“Cross-reference with the Reavers.”

There’s a quick exchange of words from the bridge. The Aurelian nods and looks back to Gallien. “Same time frame. Reavers displaced to 6.34 seconds prior to Planet-Killer activation.”

“Good,” says Gallien, and turns back to the viewport, as if it is nothing, as if the fact that we somehow moved through time and space was expected.

“Reavers, continue towards the scene.”

“What does it mean?” I whisper up at Doman. I know that leaders have to show confidence in battle, and I’ve worn a mask a thousand times before facing my constituents and voting blocks, but I catch my reflection in the glass and see how pale I’ve gotten. I’m shook, scared without quite knowing why, but this all feels so wrong.

Doman’s eyes are fixated on the point where the planet once existed. “It means we have changed reality itself.” His voice is low, intense, with an eagerness that terrifies me. He is wielding power that no man should have, and it excites him. “Continue scan on former planet’s location. Report anomalies.”

“A… I don’t know how to explain it,” comes one of the Aurelians from the scouting Reavers. “There’s a mark, a dot on our scanner that simply isn’t… it’s not picking up anything, but…”

“Get a visual. With your eyes.”

The Reavers drift in closer, and sweat beads on my forehead. “Report.” Doman’s voice is harder, crisp and intense. Nothing strange is transmitting through the feed. To us, it looks like empty space.

“I see it. There’s a dot. A point.”

“Relay its coordinates,” states Gallien.

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