She heard a coughing sound above the gnashing of the sea, and saw a bakkie coming up the drive. It was a smoked-glass bakkie, the sort used by security forces in Nasheen. She set down the bottle and pulled her scattergun from her back. Placed it in her lap.

The bakkie had been following her since Sameh. She half hoped it was some rogue bel dame come to end it all. But she supposed it could be some other person—Anneke come to take her back, Radeyah to forgive her, or maybe, just maybe, it was Rhys, giving it all up to… no, it probably wasn’t Rhys. Whoever it was would be somebody with nothing to lose. She thought of Mercia, and wondered if she’d come out for another round between the sheets. Wouldn’t that be something?

The driver cut the juice to the bugs. The coughing and hissing in the cistern stopped.

The driver’s door opened.

Nyx gazed out toward the horizon, and weighed her options. There was a lot of thinking a person could do, in the long pause between what was, and what could be. She remembered the starship, bursting apart in the sky. She had done her part to usher in twenty years of peace. What Nasheen did with it was up to Nasheen.

Now, she figured she’d either have a good tumble, or go down blazing. Either way, it was a fitting way to end things.

The rain stopped. A pity. She’d been hoping for a storm.

“I’m retired,” Nyx said—to the ocean, to the air, to Nasheen, to her visitor—and took her last drink.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing these books has been a bizarre rollercoaster ride.

It turned out that Rapture was a far more exhausting book to write than I anticipated. The realities of deadlines and day jobs kept me in front of the computer and research books for long stretches—sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours a day. It was not always fun, but it was necessary. Thanks to Jayson Utz for all the support during various deadline crunches.

My first readers this time around worked with a very tight deadline as well. Thanks to Miriam Hurst, Julian Brown, David Moles, Dave Zelasco, and Alec Austin for fast, detailed notes, suggestions, rants, and the occasional rave. After all those hours in front of the damn computer, I barely knew my own name, let alone what weapon anybody was carrying or the proper way to gut a corpse.

Many thanks to team Night Shade throughout the life of these books, as well—my editor, Ross Lockhart; Jeremy Lassen, my acquiring editor; Marty Halpern, my copyeditor; and Liz Upson for marketing support, as well as Tomra Palmer for fast turnaround on annoying new author questions.

Thanks as well go out to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, for making the tough phone calls.