Epilogue
The wrath of the eyes bore down on me as I floated beneath their ever-present glares. But I could barely feel it, consumed as I was by the full force of Jorgen’s pain, his anger, even his resentment of me for tearing him away from there. I choked on it, feeling every ounce of it down to my bones.
We fell out of the negative realm and the feeling faded, but the echoes of it lingered, as if I’d just watched my own parents die.
The members of Skyward Flight were climbing out of their ships, moving toward the windows near the entrance of the hangar to watch the Superiority ship as it tore itself to shreds, its hull ripped apart, its engine systems exploding in silent clouds of dust and smoke. Cuna stood off to the side, staring out at the remains of the Superiority ship as they scattered across the backdrop of stars.
Jorgen made a strangled sound and most of the flight turned around and saw us there, shock and relief reflecting across their faces. Arturo closed his eyes, like he’d been sure we were both gone and had to steady himself for a moment. Rig hurried down the tunnel from the control room behind us. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do with it, I—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. And that was true.
This was the Superiority’s fault. Every bit of it.
Jorgen stared out at the pieces of the ship as they spiraled outward, shrapnel spreading in every direction. His face was like a statue, though I’d felt the grief he was holding in.
“Did Gran-Gran—” Rig asked.
“She got out,” I said. “So did Cobb. I saw them.” I scanned over the planet, searching in the negative realm for another cytonic mind, but I couldn’t feel one. I reached out farther, searching for Gran-Gran—or even for Cobb, who Gran-Gran said she could feel in the negative realm though I’d been sure he wasn’t cytonic.
I couldn’t find them. They weren’t here. And there were no dead spaces left that would hide them.
“They made it out,” I said. “But…I don’t know where they are.”
“At least they weren’t here,” FM said. She put a hand on Jorgen’s shoulder, but he shook her off.
“We’re going down to Platform Prime,” Jorgen said.
“Okay,” FM said, “but I think you need to stop for a minute—”
“Now,” Jorgen said. “I’m sorry, Alanik. We’ll be a little late returning to ReDawn.” He turned and looked at the floating pieces of ship, the place where both his parents had died. “There are some things we need to take care of first.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you as always to my team at Dragonsteel Entertainment—Peter Ahlstrom, Kara Stewart, Adam Horne, and COO Emily Sanderson—for all their hard work on ReDawn, our second Skyward Flight novella.
Again a special thank you to Isaac Stewart, our art director, and Charlie Bowater, our cover artist, for this amazing ReDawn artwork. And of course Karen Ahlstrom for the continuity edit and Kristina Kugler for her work on the line and copy edits.
Thanks again to Max and the Mainframe team for all they’ve done in creating the audiobooks. For this Delacorte edition, my thanks go to Krista Marino, Beverly Horowitz, Lydia Gregovic, Tom Marquet, and the ebook production folks, Jeff Griggs and Andrew Wheatley. And my agents at JABberwocky, Eddie Schneider and Joshua Bilmes, facilitated it.
Finally, as always, thank you, the fans of the Skyward series. I hope you’ve enjoyed ReDawn.
Brandon
I am so grateful to the fantastic teams at Dragonsteel and Mainframe for helping make this book a reality, and to the team at JABberwocky for being such consistent supporters of me and my work. Thanks especially to Max for putting up with my neuroses, and even occasionally finding them amusing.
Thanks also to Cortana Olds （callsign: Halo） for reading my terrible first draft as I wrote it and telling me it wasn’t so terrible after all.
Thanks to Megan Walker, who listened to a lot of whining about the state of various drafts and still brought me motivation cookies, and also read an early draft. Thanks to my writing group Accidental Erotica of Whatever We’re Called Now for jumping into the early chapters of this with absolutely no context and still managing to make some helpful comments. And of course, huge thanks to the Dragonsteel beta team: Darci Cole （callsign: Blue）， Liliana Klein （callsign: Slip）， Alice Arneson （callsign: Wetlander）， Paige Phillips （callsign: Artisan）， Jennifer Neal （callsign: Vibes）， Spencer White （callsign: Elder）， Jayden King （callsign: Tripod）， and Linnea Lindstrom （callsign: Pixie）。 Special thanks to Jayden for his flying expertise and for being generally awesome and to Linnea for her fan art and enthusiasm.