Chapter Ten: The Blade Between Them
847 Words
Echoes Through the Force
Chapter Ten: The Blade Between Them
The auction hall became a cage.
Guards sealed the doors. Patrons screamed. Nobles shouted accusations while smugglers reached for hidden weapons beneath jeweled coats.
Seris stood frozen near the shattered display case.
The Broker’s blood spread slowly across the white marble floor.
The blade in his chest gleamed beneath the emergency lights.
A six-pointed star.
The same symbol as her pendant.
The same symbol as Kade’s.
Across the room, Kade’s eyes found hers.
Neither spoke.
They didn’t need to.
Run.
The word came through the Force at the same time from both of them.
Seris moved first.
She ducked beneath a guard’s outstretched arm, swept his legs out from under him, and vanished into the panicked crowd. Kade descended from the balcony like a shadow, landing hard enough to crack the marble.
A guard fired.
Kade lifted one hand.
The bolt froze inches from his chest, trembling in the air, before he sent it slamming into the ceiling.
That was all the distraction Seris needed.
She reached the side corridor and turned—
Straight into Kade.
For one breath, they were chest to chest.
Too close.
Too real.
His hand closed around her wrist.
“Not that way.”
She pulled against him. “Let go.”
“There are six guards ahead.”
“And you know that how?”
His mouth tilted slightly. “Because I was going to use that exit.”
Despite the blood, the screaming, the dead man behind them, Seris almost laughed.
Almost.
Then the Force twisted.
A vision slammed into both of them.
A hooded figure running through a hidden passage.
The stolen cylinder clutched in one hand.
A mark burned into their wrist.
Not the Twin Stars.
Something older.
A black sun.
The vision vanished.
Seris and Kade stared at each other.
“You saw that,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Then we’re chasing the same person.”
His grip loosened on her wrist.
“For now.”
A strange thing passed between them.
Not trust.
Not yet.
But agreement.
They ran.
Together.
Through the underbelly of Vespera, past market tunnels and old drainage halls, following the fading pulse of the artifact through the Force.
The bond sharpened with every step.
Seris could sense Kade behind her before he moved.
Kade could feel when she was about to turn.
They did not speak, yet they moved as one.
At the end of a narrow bridge, the hooded thief waited.
The figure turned.
A woman.
Her face was hidden behind a pale mask carved with no mouth.
In her hand, the engraved cylinder glowed faintly blue.
“You should have stayed apart,” she said.
Her voice was distorted, layered, unnatural.
Seris raised her blaster.
Kade ignited his blade.
“Who are you?” Seris demanded.
The masked woman tilted her head.
“The one who remembers what your families tried to bury.”
Kade’s expression hardened.
“Speak plainly.”
The woman laughed softly.
“The Twin Stars were never meant to reunite. When they do, doors open. Old crimes wake. Dead empires breathe again.”
Seris stepped forward. “What doors?”
The cylinder pulsed brighter.
The woman’s masked face turned toward her.
“The kind that make monsters of saviors.”
Then she threw something to the ground.
Smoke exploded across the bridge.
Kade surged forward, but Seris felt it first.
A trap.
“Kade, stop!”
He stopped instantly.
A blade swept through the smoke exactly where his throat would have been.
The masked woman vanished into the darkness below.
For a moment, Kade didn’t move.
Then he looked back at Seris.
She had warned him.
He had listened.
Both seemed equally unsettled by it.
Sirens wailed overhead.
Vespera security forces were closing in.
Seris holstered her blaster. “We need to separate.”
“No.”
“Kade.”
“She knows about both of us.”
“And if we’re caught together, both sides will know too.”
His jaw flexed.
She was right.
He hated that.
Seris backed away first.
“We find her. We find the cylinder. Then we get answers.”
“And after that?”
The question hung between them.
After that, they would still be enemies.
After that, the war would still demand blood.
After that, one of them might still be ordered to destroy the other.
Seris swallowed.
“After that, we’ll see.”
Kade looked at her as though he wanted to say something reckless.
Something honest.
Instead, he stepped aside.
“Go.”
She ran.
But before the bond closed, his voice followed her through the Force.
Seris.
She stopped at the edge of the tunnel.
What?
A pause.
Don’t die before I find you again.
Her chest tightened.
She should have ignored him.
Instead, she answered.
Then keep up.
The connection snapped.
And for the first time since the war began, both of them fled the same battlefield with the same enemy ahead of them—
and the same secret burning between them.
- Writer
