Hollow Space by Belladonna Bordeaux Read Free Book Online Page A

do. He had to reckon his accounts. He needed to stare at the sins he’d committed versus the life he’d lived. For what he could, he’d atone. For the rest, he’d lay his soul bare upon his death and pray for the Great Fathers’ pity.
    Guilty! You are guilty, Michaelerus. You never cared for what I felt or how lonely I am.
    Shaunna’s words clanged like a gong in his already aching head. What would his grandfather, Fis Marran the Compassionate, have told him? Good question.
    Start at the beginning. Start at the point that ties you to the past. That chains your future.
    “Computer, show me the death of Navora,” Michaelerus ordered. Standing at the floor-to-ceiling iridium windows, the normally translucent panels flickered and then brought up the vidi he’d watched so many times he’d lost count.
    The familiar stab of pain knifed his heart. His gaze remained trained on the computer record taken from a border sensor. His pulse elevated as the specially designed torpedo raced across the inky blackness of space.
    Grimacing when the T-9 Planet Killer smashed into Navora, he gritted his teeth. Slowly, as if death was a patient observer to the suffering his people were experiencing, the rifts where the planet’s tectonic plates met grew red. The surface turned black except for the crimson-red lines snaking here and there.
    The scientists had assured the survivors that by this time most of the victims were dead due to the gravitational shift as the tectonic plates heaved in their final death throe. Michaelerus prayed it was the truth.
    He prayed and prayed. Paid penance. Longed for absolution until he couldn’t breathe in a full lungful of air.
    The pain.
    The excruciating terror.
    The race to somewhere that wasn’t an exit but the final resting place.
    The facts were his companions.
    In his head, he heard the final conversation he’d had with his wife. They’d been arguing—again. In his heart, he was just as angry at her as she was at him, but he wasn’t allowed to vent the way she did.
    The rage in her voice kicked him with the same force it had fifteen years ago. He fisted his hands to keep from doubling over.
    She’d put it out there. The reality they’d both skirted. A truth that would destroy her reputation and bring him before the Council of Kings for breaking the Navorain War Code.
    Mistreatment. Mental abuse. Dissolution of sacred bonds.
    She wanted to dissolve their union.
    His emotions stirred higher and higher as he tried to recall how they’d been when they’d first been mated. He shook his head.
    What did it matter? It hadn’t.
    The sand had obviously agreed with her decision to divorce. Even he had become aware that the emotional tie they’d shared had grown water thin as he went off to space and she remained behind on the planet. His career, the one she’d fostered for the first few years of their marriage, the one she’d reveled in and taken great pride in the fact she was his wife, became the bone of contention between them.
    He blamed himself then.
    He still did.
    “Is everything all right?” Jada asked from the bed. She sat up. The sheet pooled around her waist. “I felt your distress.”
    Rejecting the urge to explain all his mistakes to Jada, Michaelerus finished watching the vidi. The planet expanded one final time before pulling in. The explosion was soundless, the soft flaring flames of the debris shooting out from the place where Navora had once stood gutted quickly in the nothingness of space.
    He looked at her over his shoulder. “Leanderus destroyed the crystal.”
    “I know.”
    “It told you.”
    “It showed me who had beaten it.” She didn’t appear the least bit fazed, but she did bow her head. “It wasn’t my place to name the murderer. My duty is to console the crystal in its final moments.” She peeked at him. “To bear witness to its pain.”
    “And, you just bore witness to my pain.”
    She slipped from the bed and padded to where he stood. He immediately