“Do you know how planets are destroyed, leeldra?” he asked.

Eve blinked a few times, swallowing past the sudden lump in her throat.

“I…I’d always imagined that it was…a substance. Something that consumed the planet. Like a black hole at the very core.”

“Pax.” Khiva nodded. “It takes time to consume a planet. We called it bnuva. Death. On Kerivu, we always heard stories of planets being destroyed in war and battle. Never did we think it would happen to our planet. But it did. Death came. It was more horrifying than any Keriv’i could ever imagine.”

Eve tried to keep her breaths even, tried to keep her reappeared nausea at bay.

“It is fired deep into a planet’s core, with one of the most powerful weapons in all the Quadrants. The core begins rotting away, like a dead thing. It takes time, but it is never long enough. Not for everyone.”

“How…how many Keriv’i do you think were left behind?”

Khiva exhaled a long breath. “I would estimate only fifteen percent of Keriv’i escaped in time.”

Eve’s breath hitched.

“Only?”

“Pax,” he said, grim. “Though no one knows for certain. There were no bodies left to count. Only those that lived in the capitol would’ve had access to escape. There were no other ports for those that lived farther away.”

Saliva filled her mouth, acid climbing up her throat.

“Death was fired into our planet’s core that morning. It was one of the clearest mornings I had ever remembered seeing. Beautiful, even, like the planet knew it would be the last morning. No one wanted to believe it, but many saw it shoot down from the sky. The whole ground shook. Mountain ranges began to collapse from the force, buildings crumbled. A large number of Keriv’i in our capitol were killed from that alone.

“I was in the labs at the time. It was under ground because of our forge for the firestones. When bnuva hit, sections of the lab began to collapse. I was there early, so thankfully, not many Keriv’i were there at the time. But the lights went out and it sounded like loud explosions were going off all around me. It the earth cracking around the labs, I realized later. When I tried to escape, a piece of the ceiling fell on top of me, trapping my legs, one of which was broken. I felt that acute pain, but I knew I had to get out, so I used whatever strength I had to pull myself from underneath it.”

It took Eve a moment to realize that she was digging her fingernails into his arm and she immediately released her grip. But Khiva didn’t even seem to notice.

“I escaped from memory, since I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. When I finally made it to the stairs, I heard the forge breaking inside. I will always remember that sound. A forge that my ancestor had built and it was gone in the briefest of moments.

“Nothing, however, prepared me for what met me on the surface of Kerivu. Our capitol had been demolished from the aftershocks. Buildings and homes that had been taller than any on Everton were simply gone. I heard screams and cries the closer I got to the center, where my home was and I was desperate to reach my family, though I could not run. But along the way, there were so many injured. So many already dead. I had to help those that I could and I always wondered, if I had gone straight to our home, would I have found my family? Would we have been able to escape together?”

“You’re not that male,” she whispered, not trusting her voice, as tears poured down her face. “You wouldn’t have turned your back on those that needed your help.”

“It does not stop me from wondering,” he said. “Eventually, I understood what was happening. Keriv’i were screaming about bnuva, about the bright object that fell into our planet. I knew then that it was only a matter of time. We had to get to the ports as soon as possible.

“It was strange, because in a way, I felt calm. My only thought was reaching my family, was making sure they were safe, and even though I saw death and destruction all around me, even though I knew my planet was slowly being consumed from the inside, even though my leg was broken, I was calm. That always struck me as wrong, whenever I thought about it.”

“Our bodies do strange things when confronted with something…impossible,” she murmured. “Something unimaginable.”

“It was unimaginable,” he said, his voice gruff. “But I only realized how much so afterwards.”

Khiva exhaled a sharp breath, his muscles tense next to her, and then continued.

“Eventually, I managed to reach our home, though I truthfully cannot tell you how. I don’t remember. But it was empty, my family was gone, so I began to head towards the ports, thinking I would see them there. The ports were…” he shook his. “It was chaos. Pure chaos. The population in our capitol was over 500,000 beings. The port was…well, it was smaller than Everton’s port. And there were only so many vessels, only so much room.”

He cleared his throat. “I realized…that I would die that day.”

“Khiva,” she whispered.

“I saw the port,” he said, shaking his head, “and knew that I could not allow myself to take a place on a vessel, knowing that if I did, I was taking it from a child or a female.”

Eve’s vision went blurry, realizing again how good Khiva was, even when faced with the certainty of his own death.

The expression on his face told Eve that he was only telling her a portion of what he saw that day, probably because he couldn’t put everything into words.

Some things just couldn’t be described.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“I looked for my family. Any hint of them. Because I needed to make sure that they got on a vessel, though I knew I would not go with them.

“The vessels were filling quickly. There were only so many left and that was the first moment where I felt panic. I searched all throughout the port, but I did not see my family. The only thing I could hope was that they were already on a vessel that had left. And once I searched the port multiple times over, I had to believe that. I reasoned that we lived close to the port, that my family might’ve taken the first vessel out. I just did not know for certain. I did not even know for certain they had escaped Kerivu until Kavik and I contacted Dhrika.”

Eve’s chest squeezed. Again, she felt guilty, for the hurt she’d felt when Khiva had left for the southern tip. He’d needed to go, to get that confirmation and she should’ve supported him.

“It was a miracle when the Uranian Federation came,” he said. “They’d sent war vessels to help evacuate the planet, which could easily fit ten times as many Keriv’i as our vessels could.”

“Still, you stayed behind,” Eve guessed.

“Pax,” he said. “There were others that stayed behind as well, other males, older females who gave their places for their families. The port slowly cleared out as more war vessels came, but it took a long time. In the distance, the sounds of Kerivu being destroyed seemed to echo throughout the entire capitol. We all heard it. We all knew it was only a mattered of time before everything was…gone.”

“How did you get off the planet?” she asked.

Khiva’s lips thinned. “The last of the war vessels had come and gone, but there were still Keriv’i vessels to be filled. But it was then that the ground began to shake, violently. The port, the building, began to collapse. Many Keriv’i were crushed from the falling pieces, killed instantly. That was the last thing I remember.”

“You were struck too?”

He jerked his head in a sharp nod. “Pax. I remember a jolting pain and then everything was dark. When I woke, I was on a Keriv’i vessel, being tended to by a healer who had set my bone, jammed inside with hundreds and hundreds of Keriv’i, all on top of one another.”

“Someone pulled you onto the vessel?” Eve asked, her voice cracking.

“Pax,” Khiva said softly. “A couple males pulled me on. They recognized me. They knew who I was, who my family was.” He shook his head, closing his eyes. “All I wondered was whose place I took on that vessel.”

“Don’t, Khiva,” Eve whispered. “Don’t do that to yourself. It was out of your control.”

Khiva’s wiped at the tears running down her cheeks before brushing his thumb over her lips. “I made my peace with it long ago, leeldra.”

She swallowed before asking, “And then what happened?”

“The vessel landed on a nearby colony. We were low on fuel. That colony wasn’t very welcoming though. They were neutral in the war but did not want to invoke the wrath of the Guunratia Federation.” His lips twisted as he said the words. “I found passage on my own, because I knew the vessel was already overloaded with weight. The vessel would burn through more fuel than it could afford at that rate. A few of us paid a merchant to take us to Heywov, where I knew a small outpost of Keriv’i had taken residence. We arrived and I searched for information about my family. I heard rumors that many vessels were dropped at Jkiba and I used the last of my credits to journey there.”

Eve shook her head sadly. “But they weren’t there.”

“Veki. I lived there for almost two years, but it was…difficult. I had never struggled in that way before. I had never been hungry, or cold, or afraid. But on Jkiba, I was all three. I feared I would never find them.

“And on Jkiba…that was where I met Madame Allegria.”

Eve felt a flash of anger, a flash of despair, because she knew what came next in Khiva’s story.

“She was actively seeking Keriv’i because she knew what we were capable of. Jkiba is closest to the Earth colonies so it was easy for her to find us there. She promised us food, a place to sleep, safety. She promised us credits. She even promised that she would aid in our efforts to find lost family. Her only price was our bodies. Sex.”

Eve swallowed, her gut clenching.

“It was a surprisingly easy decision,” he admitted softly. “There was nothing for me on Jkiba and Madame Allegria claimed she had connections at the United Worlds, that it would be easy to find our families. And I believed her, so I agreed to her terms and we left for Everton shortly after.”

Everton. So that was how he’d come to be on Everton.

“Then,” he murmured, his body shifting, “ten years later, I found you. Or, perhaps, you found me. This beautiful, shy, courageous female, come to a jaded Krave to experience sex and intimacy for the first time. You made me feel…reborn, like I had a second chance.”

“Khiva,” she whispered.

“Now, we are here,” he said, his hands sliding down between them to cover her belly. “You are carrying our child. We are safe, happy. And I will remake firestones again.”

She loved him.

God, how she loved him.

She would never find a better male, a stronger one, in all the universe.

“Thank you,” she whispered, wiping her hands across her cheeks. “I know it was hard, but thank you for telling me.”

“You needed to know,” he replied. “And now, I am relieved you do. I have locked it away for too long. I do not want to anymore.”

Eve wrapped her arms around his bare abdomen, her heart thumping in her chest. She felt too many things at once: despair, loss, relief, joy, anger, hope.

Too many emotions, drastically different from one another, creating something entirely new.

“If the baby is a girl,” Eve said softly, “we can name her Cwera.”

Khiva felt that new emotion too. She could see it in his face.

“I would like that, leeldra,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Very much.”