Metal screeched and the heat was intense as their craft continued to burn. She could feel the heat even through the padding of her suit. Romy pushed back, gripping her harness tightly as she turned her head away from the scorching fire outside. Her eyes met Thrym’s, and held. The only serenity in the urgent chaos assaulting them on all sides—his blue eyes.

As they said their silent goodbye, her heart broke into a million pieces.

The keening of buckling alloy was unbearable, overriding all except the peeling heat. Romy was going to melt alive. Eyes streaming, she squinted through the tiniest of gaps in the flames.

Earth.

Her breath caught as she saw it, truly saw it for the first time. How beautiful their world was. The swirl of blues and greens.

All of this could have been theirs, in time.

But life on the orbitos was a daily lottery, after all.

The battler let out a splintered scream and all the air was crushed from her as she was hurled to one side. A network of cracks splintered the visor of her helmet with the immense pressure. Her head throbbed, a sharpness stinging at her right temple.

Black edged her vision.

Where were the others? She hadn’t told them how much she loved them.

Romy was at the mercy of the descent with no idea of up or down. Her world was blistering pain; her orientation shredded, her calm obliterated. Tears streamed from her eyes until what remained of her sight was blurred beyond use.

Soon it would be over.

And then, as her awareness of the anarchy around her faded to the background, Romy smiled, remembering her knot. Who she had loved from the beginning.

CHAPTER FOUR

The first sound Romy remembered after cultivation was that of the watery gel from the tanks dripping from her body to the white floor of the spaceship. In her memories it was a soft trickling; a pattering as it hit the floor. Not at all like the hissing, sparking noise assaulting her senses now.

She must still have memories from the last life cycle.

Though . . . she couldn’t recall feeling pain the last time she woke. And right now, her entire being was in agony. Her right ankle in particular was an inferno.

Her sense of smell made her aware that not all was well. Not what she could smell; rather, that she could smell at all. It took several days of sneezing to remove the gel gunk from your sinuses after the tank.

But she could smell—smoke and fuel.

Blinking several times, the first thing Romy saw was red. Blood coated the inside of her very cracked helmet—her own blood. The cracks must not be allowing Earth’s air in, or Romy would already be dead.

There was only a small section clear enough to see through.

Head spinning, Romy peered through the clean patch.

And saw . . . green.