CHAPTER TWO
Ashfall stood at the edge of the observation ridge with his boots planted on black stone and his arms crossed like he had all the time in the stars. The wind peeled across the ledge, hot and metallic, sharp with the scent of scorched minerals. It tugged at the ends of his long black hair. He liked the way it felt.
Below him the drop went so far there was no telling where it ended. No guardrails. No shields. Just jagged death wrapped in mist. Something about it made him feel calm. Peaceful in the way only a quick death could be.
The cracked curve of the Crater Moon was sharp on the horizon. Ashfall wondered, could you even call it a moon anymore if it no longer circled a planet, if no sun was near enough to reflect its skin? Still, the name remained. The Crater Moon. Half myth, half scar, orbiting nowhere. It stayed habitable through a fusion of ancient magic and salvaged technology, kept in place by forces Ashfall did not pretend to understand.
The valleys below shimmered with coral and lavender steam rising slow and thick in lazy spirals from fractures that split the land. The Moon looked like a wound forever cauterizing.
Beneath all of that, hidden under layers of stone and secrets, lay the colony. A makeshift sanctuary carved into the Moon’s husk. Survivors clung there. Defectors too. Anyone who had not fit the Sovereign Prime’s definition of worth. Together they had built something that most people called a city. Or a palace. Ashfall thought the truth was somewhere in between.
Only a few structures broke the surface. Slim spires, defense rigs that would be useless against a full Sovereign strike, and the landing platform where he now stood. Most of the Crater Moon buried its secrets deep.
It was beautiful, yes. Beautiful in the strange, accidental way broken things sometimes were. And the broken had gathered here, from a dozen shattered worlds, holding onto one last fragile hope given shape in one man: him.
No pressure.
A flicker passed beneath his boots. Not an earthquake. Too subtle for that. More like a shiver, as if the Moon had gasped. The sensation lingered in his chest before fading into silence.
Ashfall turned his gaze upward. The Sovereign fleet had arrived.
The ships did not come cloaked in shadow. They descended like a parade. Their gleaming hulls cut through the thin atmosphere, polished to a mirror shine so that even in death you would see yourself reflected.
Maybe Ashfall should be worried … but he wasn’t.
This was a performance, not an attack. It was psychological warfare in its most extravagant costume.
Commander Ione had flagged them long before they arrived, each vessel burning red across every scan. Now, the fleet ripped through the sky in perfect formation. They wanted the rebels to watch. To tremble. To remember that resistance was fragile.
The first strike cracked open a ridge to the west. An abandoned site, already evacuated months ago.
A second blast followed.
Ashfall clicked his tongue. “Subtle as ever.” He had seen war. This was theatre.
Then Her voice came.
Not sound. Pressure.
It was a weight that bored through bone and blood, vibrating deep inside his skull. The Sovereign Prime. The Queen herself.
“I come to you, Rebel Crater Moon, out of my own generosity, to give you the opportunity to surrender. If you do not, we will return. And you will kneel to my will.”
The words echoed through him as another barrage of empty fire fell.
He didn’t flinch.
Something shifted in the corner of his vision. A flicker of motion against the clouds. Small. Not a fleet ship. Sleeker. A skimmer? The kind meant for executives who needed to cross systems in haste. Functional, expensive, but never meant for warzones.
Ashfall narrowed his eyes. Its trajectory was wrong. The ship was spinning, smoke bleeding from a broken thruster. It wasn’t flying. It was falling.
Some poor bastard caught in the crossfire, he thought.
The vessel spiraled toward the Moon’s surface like a wounded bird dropping from too high a perch.
The crash tore a scar across the obsidian plain when it hit, a shock of blue fire lighting the horizon. Metal screamed. Shards of hull rained like knives. Smoke boiled into the sky, thick and black, refusing to dissipate.
The Sovereign fleet vanished in a blink of psionic light.
Show complete. Curtain down.
Ashfall straightened, cloak tugging in the wind.
“Showoffs,” he muttered.
His wrist comm crackled. Quell’s voice. “Should we send a team?”
“No,” he said, already turning toward the crash, “I’ll go.”
Golden fire coiled around him, lifting him into the air and sending his cloak flaring behind him. Body wreathed in power, he drifted toward the wreckage.
Whatever had fallen from the sky, it was not finished yet.
✦✧✦
The skimmer was dying … by design. Red alarms flared across the console. Cael could barely see anything through the fractured forward display, distorting the image of the world ahead.
The Crater Moon filled the viewport. Not a clean sphere, but a shattered ghost. Its cracked husk caught starlight in veins of lilac and molten peach. It felt ancient, wounded and … beautiful.
Cael gripped the armrests. His mother had given him the perfect vessel for this particular performance: a high-grade skimmer, preloaded with falsified damage and corrupted controls, engineered so that he could not steer even if he wanted to. The crash would look convincing because the crash was real.
The first step of his mission was simple: fall … hard. Crawl from the wreckage as a survivor, not the son of the Prime. Make them believe Valen was real.
He repeated the name silently, steadying his breath. Valen. Valen.
Almost there. They had to see him fall.
The skimmer spun sideways, caught in gravity’s grip. The harness snapped him hard against the seat, ribs flaring with pain.
He braced for the end.
The Moon struck.
The hull folded in on itself, metal shrieking. His shoulder tore from its socket. He felt himself dragged across the ground, and slammed against debris. Wind tore through the cracks, dragging fire and smoke inside. The cockpit was a hurricane of glittering shards howling past his face. His body rattled with every impact, nerves lit with raw pain. Until the world shuddered to a halt.
Then came the explosion.
Blue fire burst upward, swallowing the wreck, flooding his view with smoke shimmered with mineral light.
Every. Cell. Burned.
Valen, he reminded himself even through the pain. Not Cael. Valen.
His fingers clawed at the harness until the buckle broke loose. He dragged himself toward a half-melted opening big enough to get through. Every breath was fire in his chest. Outside, the world was smoke and ash.
Through the haze, a figure emerged … Cloaked. Human-shaped. Wreathed in golden flame. Or maybe it wasn’t flame? Cael thought. Its resonance felt ancient, older than any word. It moved like molten gold poured into the air pretending to be fire, spilling in arcs that clung to the broad planes of the man’s shoulders, catching on the sharp edges of muscle carved deep across his chest and arms.
For a moment … Valen thought he saw god.
His face — Gods, his face — though Cael did not have many to compare it to, he struggled to imagine any other face looking better. His jaw was strong and sharp as sin. In direct contradiction to the inviting softness of his full lips. And his eyes, despite burning with a living inferno of gold, did not provoke any fear. There was safety in those eyes. Perhaps because they were so riddled with … concern? Long black hair spilled heavily down his back, catching glints of gold in the strange self-made light. When the wind tugged at his tunic, cut low at the neck, it revealed the column of his throat, the flare of muscle across tan pectorals, the faint curl of black chest hair. His body was a balance of force and grace, strong where strength was needed, lean where speed mattered, every line of him was perfectly honed.
A sash tied at his waist snapped in the wind, bright red against the careful black of his robes, as if it were the one reckless thing about him.
As he hovered closer, cloak whispering around him, Valen felt this was a man who bent to no will but his own. He carried sincerity that declared itself. Unapologetic, deliberate, devastating in its precision.
Valen tried to speak. His throat produced only a ragged scrape of air.
Ashfall lifted a hand. “Do not speak,” he said quietly. His voice was command layered with care. “Rest your lungs.”
The golden light flared at his gesture. It poured over Valen’s body, soaking into his skin and bone. His pain … dulled, and his breathing eased.
Ashfall slid his arms beneath him with impossible ease, lifting him from the wreckage as if he weighed nothing. Valen’s head fell against his shoulder. He felt the strength in that body, the hum of restrained power, the metallic golden flame that tickled but did not burn.
Gods, he thought, dazed and reeling. He’s so hot.
Golden fire surged beneath them. The ground fell away. Ashfall carried him upward, away from shattered stone and twisted hull, into the crater’s heart.
From above, Valen glimpsed the opening to the rebel sanctuary carved into the crater. It was a buried cathedral of stone and light with moonstone arches jutted at strange angles, etched with glowing symbols older than any language he had studied.
Here it was. The doorway into the place he was meant to infiltrate.
Ashfall said nothing — only held him tight, flying as if gravity bent to him, straight toward the gate.
Valen closed his eyes. Just for a moment … he thought.
The world slipped away.
✦✧✦
Light broke through the haze, low and golden, like morning filtered through thick glass.
Valen’s eyes cracked open to a chamber he did not recognize. The walls were half-carved from raw moonrock and half-lined with smooth alloy panels. Threads of light pulsed faintly across the stone, flowing in gentle patterns that seemed to echo the beat of something deep beneath. He lay on a thin bed draped in pale fabric. His jacket was gone, his shirt too, but so was the pain. His ribs and shoulder no longer screamed. They ached, but in a distant, softened way.
A young healer stood beside the bed with soft brown hair and a smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
“You’ll live,” the healer said, adjusting a console at the bedside, “just try not to crash into anything else for a while.”
Ashfall caught his attention, standing in the doorway, a shadow framed in light. The glow around him was muted now, reduced to a faint smolder, but his presence pressed against the room. Behind him lingered a handful of attendants, watching with unreadable faces. His gaze swept over Valen.
“Are you able to stand?” Ashfall asked with a voice that was rough, but not unkind.
Valen shifted slowly, testing his weight.
“I think so,” Valen said, and swung his legs over the bed, ignoring the spin in his vision.
Ashfall did not wait for more. He turned, cloak swirling around him, and walked into the corridor beyond as he said, “come with me.”
So Valen followed.
The passage curved downward into the Moon’s body. Veins of amber mineral light glowed through the walls. The air was going warmer, scented faintly of herbs and steam. They passed beneath an arched doorway, and the space opened wide.
Pools glimmered in the heat. They resembled natural basins found in the mountains of Astraedane. Steam curled upward, catching the glow of bioluminescent veins overhead. The air carried mineral salt, floral sweetness, and some sort of spice Valen did not recognize.
“You’ll be cleansed before you enter your quarters,” Ashfall said. His eyes flicked toward Valen briefly, quick but weighted. A look that measured and warned all at once. “Your trial begins at first light.”
The word hit like a psipunch to Valen’s chest. Trial. Judgment?
His stomach tightened. If they saw through him in whatever this rebel trial was, if the wrong question unraveled Valen Tareth, everything would collapse before it began. He forced his face blank, the mask of the survivor.
Ashfall left without another word. Several attendants followed, silent as shadows.
He certainly wasn’t one for the ceremonial politeness found in most leaders in the Sovereign Span, Valen thought. Though Sovereign kindness held no truth, and Ashfall, despite being a bit cold, had actually saved his life.
Valen was so distracted he almost missed the older attendant waiting at his side.
“Remove your garments,” the man said gently. His robe was tan, tied in loose overlapping folds. “We will fetch fresh ones. Your bathers are waiting.”
“Bathers?” Valen asked, cautious.
“Two, as is custom. You may choose either two men, two women, or one of each.”
Valen’s throat tightened. Heat rushed unbidden to his cheeks. “I … two men.”
The attendant inclined his head, as if unsurprised, and guided him into a smaller chamber tucked away in a private corner.
A deep pool waited, its surface rippling with heat. Two young men stood waist-deep in the water. They were slim and toned, probably near his own age, and their sheer silk garments clung to their damp skin, leaving little to the imagination. One, a bit taller than the other, had bronze skin and black hair braided with faint strands of light. The other was pale and soft-featured, with eyes dark as onyx under long lashes. Both extended their hands.
Fingers trembling, Valen undressed. The Dazari-tailored garments slipped away, leaving him bare in the warm, mineral-scented air. The stone was hot beneath his feet as steam embraced his body. The taller one took his hand and led him into the pool. The water closed around him, perfect in its heat. Too perfect. He was led to a hot stone seat, and let his head fall back as their hands moved.
They cleansed him without hesitation, sliding soap and oil over his chest, his arms, and the hollows of his back. Their fingers pressed deep, kneading the muscle of his thighs until his breath stuttered. Warm liquid spilled from a silver flask, smoothed across his skin in slow, circling strokes. Then, too deliberate to be a mistake, the bather with braids brushed their lips on his neck. He gasped.
“Do you greet every crash survivor like this?” he asked, voice breaking toward humor.
A duo of soft harmonic laughs answered him.
Their hands moved lower, over his belly, down between his thighs, not rushed and very much not shy. His cock stirred in the warm water, swelling half-hard out of his control. Neither of them seemed bothered. They touched him everywhere, cleansing like it was their purpose. Their passion. From the feel of their expert hands, Valen thought it probably was.
When they finished, the pale one leaned close to brush lips against his ear and whispered, “You are clean now. May your breath be lighter.”
They bowed and stepped out into the steam.
A few minutes of luxurious nothingness on his mind lingered … before footsteps echoed.
Valen turned. And froze.
Ashfall emerged from the haze, utterly, and gloriously … naked.
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Oh I like this... I wish it was customary to be bathed like that here! 😅🥹