by Eva Delaney
I gagged loudly.
Castor eyed me. Something in his gaze felt like cold, creeping fingers on my neck. I glanced away, eyeing the siting room’s flowery wallpaper. I hated myself for giving him the upper hand.
“How are your quarters?” he said, amiably.
“Spacious,” I said, tilting my chair back. “I love the privacy and quiet.” That part was true, or it should have been. But after a week on a crowded ship, the silence seemed empty. I drove Orion and the men away for their own goods and mine, but I couldn’t seem to fill the quiet without them anymore.
Castor snorted. “Are things so bad in the barbarian lands that a cell is an upgrade? Then what are you fighting for?”
I clenched my teeth. By the spark in his eyes, he knew he had landed a hit. Fuck. I forced myself to relax, but it was too late.
“Have you spent much time among your subjects, my Prince?” I made the title into a slur like Rux did with Captain. At least he had proved useful in one way: Teaching me to be a passive-aggressive dick. “Beyond looking out the window on your way to shoot someone?”
Castor’s mouth became a hard, straight line. “Maybe when we’re done here, you can show me the wider galaxy, a sort of tour of misery.”
“These are people’s lives we’re talking about, not exhibits in a zoo for you to gawk at. Lives that have been ruined by you, by your people, by your family.” I slammed my hands on the table. “Like my sister who died at sixteen in your fucking mines to make you a little fucking richer.”
Castor blinked. I didn’t think anyone had talked to him like this before. “I’m sorry,” he said, finally.
I swung a foot onto the small table between us, kicking over the glasses of wine he had been sharing with the woman. He didn’t flinch as they spilled over his fine expensive clothing. Of course not. He could buy as many gold-lined jackets as he wanted.
The guards rushed over. Without taking his startled eyes from me, Castor waved them off. “It’s just wine. No harm done.”
I quirked an eyebrow, I couldn’t help it. Why was he being gentle with me?
“Did you receive notice that your sister had died?”
“What? No. She never came back.” I looked away.
“Perhaps your sister is still alive, Captain. Record keeping and communications in the frontier regions are…not good. We rarely know what happens there. When this is over, we can investigate her fate.”
Anger flared through me at his half-assed attempts to be anything other than the monster he was. The monster who shot down my fleet.
But something else caught my attention. Twice he had mentioned doing something when this was over. “When this is over, I won’t have a brain left to do anything, Your Majesty.” My words dripped with disdain and hatred.
“You allude to the mind reader.” Castor tipped his chair back. His torso and lap were stained red, but he pretended not to notice. It looked like blood, which was fitting. “There’s no need to employ such a crude device on you.”
I laughed at him. “I’m not going to tell you anything otherwise.”
“Indeed. I expect no less from you, Captain. I also assume you don’t know where your men are, anyway. It would be the prudent thing to do.”
“Why do you keep calling me Captain?”
He shrugged. He moved with the lazy confidence of someone who never had to struggle. “Why not? You earned the title.”
“I’ve earned a new one.”
“Indeed, but I’ll always remember you as a captain of a fighter ship.” His hands fiddled with the stained hem of his jacket—a pensive, nervous gesture at odds with his harsh stare.
“Why aren’t you questioning me?” My mouth was dry as I dreaded the answer. Maybe he already knew Agent Winters’s location. Maybe he had already found her. Maybe Antares flipped sides and was living it up with a woman or man on his lap.
“I made a promise,” Castor said. “Well, more accurately, it was extracted from me, but nonetheless I promised not to harm you.”
My heart pounded loud in my ears and ached from beating so hard. Antares’s words echoed through my mind: I can keep Prince Richie Rich Ass busy for a while. “To who?”
“Your fancy man, Captain.”
“Who?” I demand, not caring that my distress was obvious for him to delight in.
“Do you have more than one man, Captain?” Castor said, amused.
“Who did you capture?” I shouted.
“Captain Orion Sirius—”
The buzzing in my ears drowned out all other sound. My vision blurred. I slammed my fists onto the table. Orion didn’t trust me. He didn’t let me pay him back this one last time.
He didn’t leave before I had to watch him suffer and fade away. He didn’t let me leave him before my messy life destroyed his.
“That bastard!”
“That’s an odd way to react to a man saving your life,” Castor said dryly. “It would seem that your loyal boy couldn’t stand a world without you.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Indeed he did. Those were his exact words when he surrendered.”
I stared at my hands, clenching and unclenching on the table.
“He turned himself in on the condition that you not be harmed and that you be freed once we have the info we need. Of course, he could lie so we have to use the mind reader—”
“Fuck you,” I screamed and launched myself across the table at Castor. I almost had my chains wrapped around his throat before his guards yanked me to the floor.
Castor didn’t even flinch. Of course not. Why would he when he was safe?
“Orion has a habit of taking the fall for you.”
“What?” I said, cold dread creeping through my chest.
“At least we got the second-best pilot out of action, and you disappeared soon after.”
My mouth fell open. Orion and Antares were right. Castor had framed me. But why would the crown prince of a thousand worlds care about me? It made no sense.
“We’ll see how well you do without your protector,” he said.
“Let me see him.” The words spilled from me like air through a hull breach. “Let me see him. Please.” I hated the sound of my voice, hated that I was begging for mercy from the crown prince of the Supremacy.
“I think not,” Castor said. He stood, a smooth lazy movement like a cat. “But I shall keep my promise. You shall have proper treatment befitting a royal lady until his mind gives up its secrets. At that time, you’ll be set free. If you choose to keep searching for Winters, then we shall meet on the field of battle and see what happens.” He gave me a courtly bow.
“I’ll kill you,” I said.
“My dear Captain, you’ve been attempting to do that for years and I’ve never been shot down once.” He flashed me a half smile, like a twisted wicked version of Orion’s cocky one.
“And I’ve never been stuffed out an airlock.”
He flushed. I pinned him with an ice-cold smile, even though I didn’t feel threatening. I felt like crying and begging and strangling Castor and punching Orion for being heroic like an idiot. “I will make you beg for death.”
“Show Captain Bellatrix to the princess suite but lock her in, of course,” Castor said and turned on his heel to leave the room.
“You won’t get anything from Orion,” I shouted after him. “He knows nothing. You’re wasting your time and electricity.”
“A pity that his mind will be wasted then,” Castor said without looking back.
Thirty-Five
My whole body burned with rage. But with six armed guards around me, there was nowhere for that rage to go. I could scream and kick and force them to drag me through the halls, but that only made me into the fool. So I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached and walked voluntarily into my new cell.
Castor wasn’t being sarcastic when he said I would be housed in the princess suite. Two whole rooms with a private bathroom! What a monumental waste on a station where people slept
in stacked pods.
The furniture, the wall hangings, the silks draped from the ceiling were in gold and green—the colors of the Rigel royal family. And in every piece of green, I saw Orion’s jade eyes with that sad, longing look.
That alone made something falter in me. My rage sputtered like a failing engine. But it only lasted a moment before I realized that these rooms were perfect. Quarters this large must be hiding a vent or a ceiling panel that I could use to create a fresh exit. To escape and find Orion before they melted his brain. If they hadn’t already.
A guard in green and gold unlocked my cuffs, and I rubbed my sore wrists. The door hissed shut, but five of the guards remained on the inside. I glared as they took their positions: one in each corner and one before the door.
With five armed guards in the room, I wouldn’t be able to create another exit. They’d have me down and cuffed the moment I tried to rip the silks from the ceiling to search for loose panels.
My rage had nowhere to go, no way out. It burned through me like the fusion heart of a young, hot star, churning and blazing. I imagined finding Castor and strangling him as I watched the panic in his eyes. I imagined a thousand ways to track Orion, free him, and shred him for making me worry helplessly like this. For not letting me save him for once. For not trusting me to handle Castor.
For not letting me go to save himself, as my sister should have done when I was a burden that drove her into the mines. All those who left me survived. The ones who never did, died.
But most of all, I wanted to hurt Orion for tricking me. He made me care about him before making me lose him all over again.
I sagged onto one of the couches, fists clenched on my knees. Like a massive star, my rage burned itself out quickly, leaving only an empty ache. Fresh wounds on a heart that struggled to heal.
“You never lived in a world without him.”
I glanced up. My sister, Celene, lounged on the jade green couch across from me. My breath caught in my throat. I hadn’t seen her since this mission started. I couldn’t call her up on the crowded Firebrand, and she wouldn’t come to me in the tiny cell. But she was here where neither of us should be.
That twisted my stomach with panic. I only saw Celene to fend off space madness, or maybe as a symptom of it. To see her now suggested I was losing it.
“You never lived in a world without Orion or me,” she said.
I opened my mouth to respond but stopped. My gaze slipped to the woman guarding the exit. She noticed and gave me a small, forced smile.
“You’re lucky to have a man like your pilot,” Celene said. “And a man like your mechanic, your doctor, your bounty hunter, your…angry asshole.”
I laughed, sharp and bitter. Lucky was not what I would call this pulsing, infected wound growing inside me.
The guard frowned. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
I didn’t care. I turned back to Celene. She was still here, damn it, and I couldn’t say a thing to her.
“You don’t let the wounds heal,” Celene said. She had never spoken like this before. She was always sixteen years old, warm and kind in a way our mother never was. She always played games to cheer me up as she had done when we lived in a bombed-out city.
She had never called me out on anything.
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t in front of the guards. Again, I could do nothing. I couldn’t even manage anger anymore, just a stabbing ache like a knife wound turning septic.
Her words circled inside me. She was right, partly. I never let go of her, Orion, our parents, or even the pilots who left my company. They all left wounds that never healed like scurvy.
“You never stopped hating him when he came back because you never stopped loving him,” Celene said.
I clenched my teeth and glared at her. She shrugged. “It’s true.”
And look where that love got us. More pain for me and more suffering for Orion. Caring for me never did him any good. If only I had been able to abandon him sooner. I could have saved him.
Now Orion and the other men were more wounds that would never heal on my scurvy heart. Four small ones and a fresh gash that cut all the way to my core. I knew this would happen. A broken team and a broken heart.
Celene rolled her eyes as though she heard my thoughts. “You know why you hang onto those who already left you? You know why you appreciate us after we’re gone?”
I couldn’t answer so I stared. She was still sixteen, as she has always been, as she’ll be forever. She lost everything for my sake, and I never had anything to give her in return. I never had a chance to thank her.
“We’ve already left, so we’ve done the worst thing we can to you. We’re safe now. We can’t hurt you anymore.” She stretched an arm along the back of the couch. “So, you shun the people in front of you and never let us go.”
I gaped at her words.
“But you admitted it yourself. We’re not kind memories; we’re not comfort. We’re wounds. Infected, infested wounds.”
No, I wanted to tell her. You were not an ugly twisted thing inside me. Losing you was, but you weren’t. I glanced at the guards. They were watching; they would hear.
“The ghosts hurt you and so do the living. Want to know the difference?” Celene said.
I shook my head.
Celene smiled her warm, kind smile. “The living can help stitch those wounds.”
“What does this have to do with Orion?” I snapped.
The guard by the door started. “I know this must be difficult,” she said.
“Shut up,” I said.
Celene talked over both of us with her voice clear and loud.
“The heart is a muscle, Cali. How do you heal a muscle?”
“Go away,” I ground out. My words startled me. I’ve never asked Celene to leave. I’ve never wanted her to. I’ve longed for her presence, her actual presence not this hallucination, for fifteen years.
“We have orders to stay,” said the guard by the door.
“You rest an injured muscle, Cali,” Celene said. “Then you start using it again, to build up strength, to make it stronger.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Go away. Stop.
“Love heals a heart, Cali, and only love.”
A heart as damaged and stunted as mine would need all the love in the galaxy to fix it. And that was the one thing I didn’t deserve when I couldn’t protect anyone I cared about. “Love breaks it too,” I said. Getting close to Orion has left me broken and hurt again. More wounds on top of old wounds that never healed.
“I know,” Celene said, sadly.
“Are you okay?” the guard was saying. “Do you need a doctor?”
I remembered Hamal’s kind brown eyes and soothing voice. I could use that doctor right now. I could use his soft words and strong arms.
“You always had all the love in the galaxy,” Celene said. “You had me and Orion, always.”
I pressed my lips together to stop myself from crying.
“You had Polaris for the past three years. Now, you have Hamal and Antares, too.”
I didn’t know if I did or not. I didn’t get a chance to be with them.
“And it might not be too late for you and for Orion. There’s only five guards here, after all.”
I laughed softly at her familiar feistiness. That courage won meals and places to sleep during the Supremacy invasion. She was only sixteen with a ten-year-old sister in a world that wanted us both dead, and she never gave up. She never stopped fighting even when she had nothing to fight with.
“Fighting for you was the only thing that made the hurt bearable,” Celene said. “Loving you was the only thing that eased the pain of our parents leaving.”
I didn’t know if that was true, because Celene wasn’t really here. I hoped it was. When I got out of here, I was going to need something to make the pain go away. And the only thing I might have, if I could find any of them, were my men. The men I never even wanted.
Thirty-Six
Cele
ne and I had played twenty questions when we curled together under a cold sky or inside a wrecked building on Erow. She played the game to distract me, murmuring questions against my hair until her soft voice lured me to sleep.
Now, she turned our childhood game to planning an escape.
I couldn’t speak out loud in the princess suite without alerting the guards again. So Celene asked questions until she guessed my ideas—which she always did. Then she questioned them, forcing me to uncover the ways the plans wouldn’t work and the ways they would.
We decided I had to trick the guards into letting me out of the room. They already suspected I was sick, so I’d go the classic fake illness route. Ramble, act feverish, gag, faint, throw up a little on a guard. They’d need to take me to the infirmary. Once there, an unsuspecting guard would pin me down while I thrashed and panicked. When she came close, I’d go for her gun.
What was the worst that could happen?
Well, everything, as Celene and I figured out over the past couple of hours. But I had to do something, and this was the best plan we had.
I nodded to Celene. She smiled and between one blink and the next, vanished back to the shadows. The room felt empty without her in a way the Firebrand never did when she left. But she usually vanished from it when Polaris’s voice came over the comms.
I stumbled to my feet, clutching my stomach and groaning.
“I knew she wasn’t well,” said the chatty guard as she rushed forward. The door behind her hissed open. That was fast. She hadn’t even called for help.
Castor strolled in, his black and gray cape swirling behind him like a storm cloud. My breath caught in my throat.
It was over. Orion was gone. “You bastard. You killed him!”
He fixed his yellow gaze on me, impassive and cool. “Your boy is very much alive and intact, for the moment. You have my word.”
“What good is the word of a murderer?” I spat at him. Nonetheless, relief flooded my blood and I nearly sagged to the floor.
The nearest guard turned to Castor and saluted. “My prince!”
My gaze locked on the gun at her belt. My fingers twitched for the weapon, for the safety of its trigger against my fingertip.