Kol-Eresh had received his diadon at the age of nine.

He'd been one of the youngest warriors to ever have that honor. Even Nayanors weren't mad enough to do complicated surgery on children, but Kol-Eresh had been headstrong even as a small boy.

Never in his life had the diamond in his chest worked as hard as it did right now.

The fight with the Eternals had been brutal. Kol-Eresh had faced some mighty fighters in his days. There were men he reluctantly considered equals on Luminos. There had been enemies who had earned the honor of having their trophies stored in the gallery of his ship.

The Eternals were above all of them. Every second the harbinger had done battle with the ancient warriors had been one long last moment, pregnant with the possibility that it would be him lying dead on the ground next. It had been the longest he'd ever had to fight for real, using every trick he knew, every ounce of strength in his mighty body.

Kol-Eresh was beginning to understand how the Eternals left such casualties behind.

He'd imagined them as old and insane, but the Eternals were nothing like that. They were sharp and the long years of their life had just made them deadlier. Kol-Eresh finally believed the thing most of the galaxy knew about Nayanors – that they had the potential to be immortal.

With all that, the cruelest blow the gods had dealt to him was sitting on the ground before his feet.

The look in Jackie's eyes, which had been full of life that very morning, was cold and empty. She was staring at the horizon without appearing to see a thing. The sadness around her was indescribable, like someone had knocked the spirit out of her but hadn't killed her yet.

"Jackie," the harbinger said quietly. "Jackie, can you hear me?"

"I hear you," his fated said.

Her voice matched the hopeless look in her eyes as Jackie turned his way. The devastation broke Kol-Eresh's heart.

"It's over, right?" Jackie asked. "This is it. The diadon can't combat the serum?"

"I don't know," Kol-Eresh admitted. "There are only a handful of women who have ever worn a diadon on Luminos and you are the first to be subjected to the serum. I have no idea whether it makes you resistant to it or not."

"But the odds are not good, are they?" Jackie asked.

He'd failed. He'd failed to keep his fated safe. The thought, the realization beat in Kol-Eresh's head as he looked at Jackie. Every little thing that had happened to them since the moment they'd met made him think he should never have brought his female to Luminos. All of Forack’s hard work to cure her was gone.

He should have left Jackie on his ship until they'd dealt with the Eternals. The shame of missing the long night would have been unbearable, but he would have avoided this.

Kol-Eresh didn't want to think about the odds. The harbinger didn't believe they were in their favor and if they had to stand in his way, he preferred not to let them poison his mind.

He knelt down on one knee before Jackie.

"I promised you," he told her firmly. "I know you feel hopeless right now, but this is not the end. As long as we can still fight, it's not over."

Jackie laughed mirthlessly.

"I am so tired," she said. "Not just the physical toll it takes on me, but the mental one as well. I can't keep gaining and losing hope. Anything is better than to be disappointed on such a deep level over and over again."

"No," Kol-Eresh said.

"No?" Jackie asked, ready to tell him all about pain and sadness, but he knew plenty.

"Nothing is worse than losing you," Kol-Eresh said. "Disappointments are a part of life. There are many on Luminos. I've lived through more than one and this is by far the worst, but I would take this moment of weakness over a defeat any day. And we are not there yet."

The harbinger pulled Jackie into his arms and held her there as the female clung to him.

"I will find a cure for you if I have to carve it out of the hearts of those bastards," Kol-Eresh snarled. "Then I will make them pay for all the pain they've caused, to you and to all the other females."

Jackie nodded, her broken sobs growing rarer and rarer until she finally raised her head from his chest, looking Kol-Eresh in the eye. Her gaze was still dark and sad, but the light hadn’t entirely gone out yet. She took a deep breath and flashed him a brave smile. It didn't look like she felt it, but the fact that she was prepared to try was all he needed.

They waited there for Forack, who had chosen to come with another ship behind them and therefore escaped the slaughter. The healer's face was dark as he exited the ship, though.

"To attack a harbinger's ship," he told Kol-Eresh. "The Eternals aren't afraid of anyone anymore."

"They're not," Kol-Eresh agreed. "Don't worry about them. I'll make sure you don't fall victim to their blades. Luminos needs you too much."

Forack glared at him.

"I won't be hidden away like a female," the healer said. "Just because I don't carry a sword around doesn't mean I can't defend myself. And don't you even consider arguing on that, Harbinger. Now, where is my patient?"

Jackie came closer, moving slowly like she was in a dream. Kol-Eresh didn't like Forack's first reaction one bit. The healer's features tensed like he was turning to stone under his very eyes. That was how the healer usually looked when he had to deliver Kol-Eresh bad news.

"Come here, Jackie," the healer said instead, gesturing for her to sit on the ramp of the ship. "Look at me."

"What are you searching for?" the harbinger asked, observing Forack moving around Jackie, regarding the female from every angle.

"The first signs," the healer replied. "The purple eyes and everything else."

"The symptoms don't usually appear until after a few days," Kol-Eresh argued.

"Just to be sure," Forack said. "I have a theory."

"Tell me," Kol-Eresh ordered, his deep voice rough and threatening.

He didn't usually descend to such blatant posturing, but Forack enjoyed talking in riddles way too much for the harbinger's liking.

"I really don't think I should," Forack said. "How are you feeling, Jackie?"

The female smiled tiredly.

"Like a balloon that's been poked and is bleeding air," she said. "I guess it's not good."

"Keep your spirits up," Forack suggested. "We don't know anything yet."

"I want to hear that theory too," Jackie stated firmly, not taking her beautiful eyes from the healer. "The way you said it, it didn't sound good."

"All the more reason why I shouldn't bother you with baseless conjecture," Forack argued.

"Kol?" Jackie asked, looking his way.

The harbinger hesitated. Everyone had warned him not to coddle Jackie. And whatever Forack had to say, it couldn't be worse than what had already happened. The unthinkable had come to find them. Disaster had struck at the moment when he'd been about to take Jackie to safety from all the dangers of his world.

Deep down, Kol-Eresh wanted to know. He hadn't considered it until that moment, but all the problems with the bond between them hadn't just affected his fated. The harbinger was tired as well, tired of the exact same thing that was bothering Jackie – the unknown.

"Speak, Forack," he said. "That's an order."

The healer pulled a face, but Kol-Eresh hadn't gotten to his position by letting lesser men bully him into inaction.

"My theory is that the diadon might be helping spread the serum faster and increasing its potency," Forack admitted. "The device is created to protect and boost the body, but we don't know what the serum does. If it has qualities that are meant to enhance something, they might be messing with her system very soon."

"I know what it does."

Jackie's voice cut through the air like a knife. Both Kol-Eresh and Forack stared.

"How?" the healer asked suspiciously.

"The Eternal told me," Jackie explained. "He said they weren't trying to kill women. They are trying to come up with a way to make us have daughters. I told him it's insane to try and cure us, when Nayanors are clearly the faulty part, but I guess that didn't occur to those geniuses before."

Kol-Eresh was too stunned to comprehend her words at first, until Forack's stony silence brought him back to the conversation.

"Forack?" he asked. "Thoughts?"

"If this is true," the healer said slowly. "It confirms some of my other ideas, but that's not important. This is partly the reason why I thought the serum could have some enhancing qualities. The Eternals really aren't trying to kill the females. They're trying to mess with human biology in ways the females simply can't handle.

"That is why they're dying. That is why the serum no longer causes pain, but gives them a merciful death. The females are test subjects and the Eternals haven't gotten it right yet."

There were so many uncertainties in his world. Kol-Eresh wasn't used to living without a purpose, without a concrete purpose in sight.

The crystalline clarity washed over him. Whether Forack was right or not, whatever was happening to Jackie, it made no difference in the end. It was obvious to him that his fated had taken one too many blows to be able to survive.

Kol-Eresh didn't want Jackie to live one day at a time, wondering each night if she was going to wake up in the morning.

There was no other way. He had to do the impossible – locate the Eternals and have them cure Jackie, no matter the cost.

"Bring me a ship," he ordered Forack. "I'm going to find the Eternals before the long night."

The healer's expression told Kol-Eresh exactly how little the man had faith in him, but the harbinger couldn't blame him for that. The odds stacking up against them were growing by the minute, but he wasn't about to give up and let Jackie wither away.

He pulled her into his arms and made her look into his eyes.

"You will be fine," he promised her. "I swear this, on my life."

She didn't believe him either, Kol-Eresh could see that.

Luckily for him, he was at his best when he was facing a battle no one believed he could win. The harbinger made a promise to himself as well.

He would find the Eternals, and then he would wipe them out of existence.