KIERA'S POV
The vent grate comes off silent. Kiera holds her breath and listens. Nothing but the hum of the museum's security systems and the distant chatter of guards two floors below. She pulls herself through the opening, her gloved fingers finding purchase on the metal edges. The laser grid protecting the main floor is still active. She can see its red lines crisscrossing the air like a web designed just to catch someone like her.
Forty-seven seconds. That's how long the energy shields cycle offline. Forty-seven seconds to drop down, grab the Heartstone, and get back up before everything locks down and the alarms eat her alive.
She runs through the timing in her head one more time. Midnight. The guards rotate positions. The security AI checks its outer perimeter. The shield flickers. That's her window.
Kiera's heart pounds but her hands stay steady. Five years doing this. Five years as the Phantom, the thief nobody can catch. Nobody knows her face. Nobody knows her real name. And in forty-seven seconds, none of that matters because she'll finally own her freedom.
The Heartstone is down there. Blue and glowing like it's alive. Sitting in a case made of reinforced crystal and imperial arrogance. The crime boss who owns her, Zara Vex, wants it bad enough to give Kiera a chance at freedom. One last job. One final score that'll clear her debt.
Kiera's been paying that debt since she was fifteen. Since Zara found her starving in the Nethara Station slums and offered her three meals a day and a reason to live. The catch? Everything Kiera stole belonged to Zara. Every score went into an account that somehow never got smaller. Interest on top of interest. Fees for training. Fees for living. Fees for breathing Zara's air.
But this job would change everything.
The shield flickers.
Kiera moves.
She swings down from the vent with the grace of someone who's done this a hundred times. Her body knows the exact trajectory. She doesn't waste energy thinking about it. Her boots hit the ground and she's already running. The laser grid doesn't see her because she isn't there long enough to matter. She's a ghost. She's smoke.
The display case sits alone in the center of the exhibition hall. The Heartstone rests inside like a piece of someone's broken heart, pulsing with that strange blue light. The Emperor's treasure. The prize that cost archaeologists three years to excavate from the dead planet Xelthar.
Kiera reaches into her belt and pulls out the sensor disruptor. It's small and black and worth more credits than most people make in a year. She moves to the case and slots it into the pressure sensor slot. The red light blinks. Changes to green. The lock disengages with a soft click.
Twenty-three seconds left.
Her fingers close around the stone. It's warm. Hot even. But she doesn't hesitate. She's about to pull it out when the world explodes.
A hand grabs her wrist.
A man's hand. Strong. Angry. Wearing combat armor that's way too professional for the random criminal. His gold eyes blaze behind a mask, burning with fury that matches her own. He's pulling at the stone like it belongs to him. Like he has the right to stand between her and freedom.
"Let go," he growls into her face. "That crystal is mine."
Kiera's mind goes blank for exactly one second. Then rage floods through her. She's been planning this job for three months. Three months of studying the museum's rotation. Three months of mapping guard movements and learning every camera angle. Three months of believing freedom was finally within reach.
And this asshole is trying to steal it from her.
"You let go," she hisses back.
They're close enough that she can smell him. Sweat and something sharp like gunpowder. Up close, his armor is military grade. Expensive. The kind of outfit that costs more than a ship. This is no common thief. This is someone with resources. Someone who planned this the same way she did.
Someone who got here at the same time.
Kiera tries to wrench the stone away but he's strong. Stronger than he should be. The Heartstone sits between them, caught in a tug-of-war that's running out of time. She can feel the shields reactivating. Feel the hum of electricity building in the air like a storm about to break.
"Look," the man says, his voice tight. "I don't know who you are but I need this crystal more than you do."
"Try again," Kiera spits back. "You don't know what needing something actually means."
She's not going to lose this. She can't lose this. Five years of blood and theft and sleepless nights end tonight. She doesn't care how strong this guy is or how much his fancy armor costs. Freedom is sixty centimeters away and she'll burn the whole galaxy down before she lets anyone take it.
Kiera makes her move. She lets go with her right hand and drives her elbow up toward his face. He sees it coming and shifts but not fast enough. Her elbow glances off his shoulder. It doesn't hurt him much but it unbalances him for a fraction of a second.
That's all she needs.
She pivots and pulls the Heartstone with everything she has.
The stone comes free.
For exactly half a second, Kiera thinks she won. She thinks she's holding her freedom. She thinks her life is about to change and all the suffering was worth it.
Then the crystal flares.
The light is so bright that even through her eyelids she sees nothing but blue. The heat is unbearable. It's like touching the sun itself. The Heartstone pulses once, twice, three times.
And then everything explodes.
The blast throws them both backward. Kiera crashes into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. Her fingers stay locked around the crystal. Behind her, the masked man hits the ground equally hard. For a moment neither of them moves.
Then the alarms start.
Not the gentle warning alarms. The full emergency lockdown alarms. The kind that bring every guard in the museum running. The kind that activate the security drones and lock the exits. The kind that say someone just broke the most valuable artifact in the Emperor's collection.
Kiera scrambles to her feet. The masked man does the same. They face each other across the wreckage of the display case. The crystal is still in her hand and it's still glowing but now something's different. She can feel something strange in her chest. Like her heartbeat isn't her own anymore. Like she's connected to something she doesn't understand.
"What did you do?" the masked man demands, his voice raw.
"Me? You're the one who grabbed it first," she shoots back.
The museum doors explode open. Guards in imperial armor pour in with their weapons raised. At least fifteen. Maybe twenty. Their blasters are charged and ready and they're all pointing at her.
At them.
The masked man grabs her hand without thinking about it. The connection between them feels right. Wrong. Electric. They move together like they've trained as a unit for years. She fires left while he goes right. She rolls under cover while he provides suppressing fire. They move like one person split into two bodies.
The guards don't stand a chance but there are too many of them. Kiera and the masked man fight their way toward the main exit, moving through halls that should be locked down but aren't. The museum's security is chaos. Everything's glitching. Everything's failing. The Heartstone is doing something to the systems.
They burst through the glass ceiling of the exhibition hall. The night air of Aurion Prime hits her like a punch. The city sprawls below them, all neon lights and endless buildings and millions of people. They grab a security speeder parked nearby and Dante works the ignition. The engine roars to life and they peel out into the streets.
Kiera's about to celebrate their escape when the pain hits.
It starts in her chest and spreads through her entire body like fire. It's not a normal pain. It's worse. It's like something inside her is being ripped apart. She screams. Beside her, the masked man screams too.
"What's happening?" she manages to get out between waves of agony.
He's trying to turn the speeder left but the pain is getting worse. He's sweating. His hands are shaking on the controls. He looks at her with desperation in his gold eyes.
"I don't know. I don't—"
Every screen in the city lights up at once.
Not normal screens. All of them. Billboards. Storefronts. Police drones. News feeds. Every single display flickers and then shows the same image. Two faces. Two names.
Kiera Vane. Dante Corsair.
The text underneath is even worse.
Wanted for theft of imperial property and terrorism. Reward for capture. One trillion credits. Dead or alive.
Kiera's face is right there for the entire galaxy to see. Her real name. Her real face. Five years of being the phantom, of being invisible, of being nobody anyone could catch.
Gone.
Beside her, the masked man pulls off his mask with shaking hands. Underneath is sharp features and darker skin and eyes that are burning with the same panic she feels. He looks at her and his voice comes out rough.
"Your face is everywhere."
"So is yours," she whispers back.
They stare at each other in the stolen speeder while imperial cruisers begin to launch from the docking stations. While bounty hunters across the galaxy started locking their coordinates. While Zara Vex probably laughed somewhere dark.
"We need to run," he says.
Kiera looks down at the crystal still glowing in her hand. Looks at the stranger she's somehow bonded to by accident. Feels the connection between them burning hotter than the Heartstone itself.
"Together, apparently," she says.
And the night swallows them whole.