….. FOUR MONTHS LATER…..

'Izzy?' Harper says incredulously. He is dirty and dressed in rags, chained to the wall of the small metal cell in the *Eureka Maru* by a collar around his neck.

'Harper!' Isolde rushes across the cell to her one-time companion and hugs him. 'I knew you were her prisoner. You couldn't have left of your own free will-'

'Watch out, Izzy! If Valentine finds you-'

'She's dead.'

'What!?'

An alarm goes off, red lights flash, and a voice from the speakers starts to repeat, 'Warning. Self destruct initiated. Warning. Self destruct initiated…'

'She rigged the ship to blow if her vital signs stopped,' Harper says. 'You have to get out of here.'

'Not without you. Cover your eyes!'

Harper covers his eyes. Isolde presses her sonic screwdriver to the lock on his collar; it sparks and the collar falls from his neck.

In the passage, Harper stops over the body of Rebecca Valentine. The red-haired pirate queen is lying where she fell, after Isolde ran her through with her own sword. Harper spits on her face.

Isolde grabs his hand. 'Come on!'

They run out of the *Maru* and into the hangar of Valentine's volcano lair, past the spot where Robert Jensen was vaporized by Isolde's overloading monomolecular lash, through the tunnels and past all the drones and traps Isolde had disabled or destroyed. They make it out of the cave entrance just as the *Maru* explodes. Isolde pushes Harper to the ground and throws herself on top of him just as flames shoot from the cave mouth, barely missing them.

Isolde leads him down the hillside to where her horses are waiting. 'The local security net should still be tied up in knots,' she says with a smile, 'a credit to how well you taught me hacking. We should have no trouble getting-'

'Wait a minute, wait a minute,' Harper says. 'Let me look at you.'

They face each other less than a meter apart.

'You're all grown up,' Harper says.

Isolde giggles. 'Not "too young" anymore.'

'I thought you'd go home and forget all about me.'

'I could never forget you.'

'I'd lost hope. I thought no one would find me.'

'I would have spent a lifetime searching a hundred universes for you. I love you, Seamus Harper. I always have. I always will. No power in the universe can change that.'

'Izzy. I love you, too, you crazy kid.'

He takes her in his arms. Isolde closes her eyes, ready for the kiss she has spent seven years longing for-

-and woke with a start. "Ha…" she started to say, briefly struggling against whatever was holding her. Then she remembered what it was: Her sleeping bag. She had been camping with her personal servant, Margaret, in the hills northwest of Tyr's fortress on Armon Roi. Tyr had decided to send her now so she would not be in the way while he dealt with his rival, someone named Dylan Hunt. She didn't know much about him, other than that he had an old High Guard ship and Tyr had once been part of his crew. It sounded more like a pride split to her than anything else. She hadn't wanted to go, but Tyr had bought her off by having them go on horseback.

"How did you know that would buy me?" Isolde had asked.

"Hmm, let me think," Tyr had said, tapping the tattoos of horses visible on her right arm between her bone blade gauntlet and her sleeveless top. "Perhaps I am a good guesser?"

"Mmm, Mistress?" A head of long, blonde hair poked out of the sleeping bag next to hers. "Is everything all right?" the 25-year-old human asked.

"All is well, Margaret," Isolde said. "It was just a dream. Go back to sleep."

"Thank you, misss…." Margaret's head sank back into her sleeping bag; her breathing immediately became heavy and slow. Isolde rolled on her back and looked up at the stars through the trees.

No Harper. No *Maru.* No mountain lair. No life-or-death sword fight for the sake of a lost love. It was all so silly, like something out of an action-adventure holodrama. Her father and Commander Halleck had been right, of course. Harper had taken advantage of her and her naiveté and made good his escape from Earth. She hadn't wanted to believe it, but they had shown her the evidence: the security camera footage; the information on Rebecca Valentine, Robert Jensen, and the *Eureka Maru*; and what communications between Harper and the smugglers Halleck had uncovered …. Only because he had known Harper for years. Isolde had felt as if her life had ended that day, as if a completely different person had lived the first 15 years of her life and she had only existed for the last seven, only she now lived the cold hard truth, not the fantasies of a heartsick school girl.

But the stars still seemed to call her. She thought she could still feel Harper; it seemed like he was closer than ever, waiting for her. And the dreams - the battle with Captain Rebecca Valentine for the fate of Seamus Harper - still haunted her. If anything, they'd got worse over the past few weeks. As if that lovesick girl was still inside her, fighting to get out.

'Go back to sleep, silly girl,' she thought. 'He's long since forgot about you. Time for you to return the favor.'