Cynara tapped her suit’s comlink, her face barely visible through the visor. “I’m picking up the signal from the Pontos, south-southeast. Lizbet reports that the terrain between here and the approximate landing site is broken and treacherous, and the storm is getting worse.”
She glanced behind in the direction of the Thalassa, already lost in the blizzard. Lizbet Montague and Healer Zheng were secure inside; Zheng would ordinarily have accompanied them, but she had declared that she was nearly immobile under such conditions and would be far more hindrance than assistance. It was up to Ronan and Cynara to find Kord and return him to the shuttle.
An Montague had set the Thalassa down at the only suitable location near Kord’s landing site, a half-buried apron built by the long-departed colonists. Crumbled walls of buildings framed two sides, blocking the worst of the wind.
Ronan had observed the desolation with a strange discomfort, remembering what Adumbe had said about the fate befalling colonies cut off from vital supplies. Ronan had no part in the shaauri blockade; he had been as much at shaauri mercy as the humans who required trade to survive.
But shaauri would not have been so mad as to settle a world with such an extreme elliptical orbit. Bifrost had long, scorching summers and equally endless winters, and it was in the second season they now found themselves.
Human madness. But Cynara was not mad. Janek must have thought her so when she permitted Ronan to accompany her in search of Kord. She had put her life into his hands because she had sifted his thoughts and memories.
He did not know what she had seen. Only at the end had he felt her and recognized what it must be like to share minds as Kinsmen did, whole and complete. He had caught a glimpse of the woman Cynara permitted few to see.
Loneliness. The weight of responsibility for something beyond her crew, the unspoken fear of failure, the doubt of her very self.
And desire. Craving touch and rejecting it. Turning him away for reasons he could not begin to grasp.
She had hurt him with her abrupt withdrawal, raked open invisible scars he had forgotten. And then she had offered the return of the abilities he had lost, abilities like those of the Kinsmen who despised him. Kinsmen who joined, mind to mind, with their mates.
To be bound so to Cynara, one with her, belonging…
Cynara shivered, though her environmental suit held the cold at bay. Ronan pressed against her. “What concerns you?” he asked through the intercom.
“Imagining what it must have been like to live here,” she said, and dismissed the thought with a shrug. “Let’s move out.”
She took the lead, following the Pontos’s transponder signal as she picked her way over obstacles meters deep in snow. She was strong, sure and efficient in her movements, but even the helmet’s visual enhancers could not make the going easy. Ronan knew she would be shamed if he preceded her. Her pride was that of a First even when she made light of her rank, and among humans a First always led, even into danger.
Ronan stayed at her heels, straining to separate distinct elements out of the chaos of sound. It was all lost in the whining of the wind. Yet his senses remained alert, warning him that something was wrong.
“You are certain that no humans have remained here?” he asked.
“In this?” Her voice came back to him over the intercom leached of its natural music, but not of its irony.
Ronan searched the barren landscape. “Cynara—”
A hulking shape stepped in front of her, grotesquely furred in a motley pattern of gray and white. Ronan plunged through the snow to knock Cynara aside. He crouched above her and snatched at his hip for the sidearm she had given him.
Not soon enough. The shape raised one upper limb, and Ronan made out a hand with several thick fingers, aiming a rifle at the center of his faceplate.
The fur was not part of this being, but merely a covering. The face was so shrouded as to be invisible.
“What is it?” Cynara whispered.
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