Release (Hold #2)

by Claire Kent

  He huffed and bent over, and Iram used the hilt of his sword to knock him out.

  “Thank you,” Patrice gasped to Iram, who looked amazed at his own daring.

  “You better leave your post, or they’ll guess it was you who did this,” Kyla added, giving the young man a grateful touch on the arm. “Hurry.”

  Iram took off, around the back corner of the palace, as Kyla and Patrice ran toward the shelter of the woods.

  “They’ll be guarding the road,” Kyla panted, holding onto Patrice’s arm to make sure she kept up. “We’ll need to go over the wall. They won’t know there’s a way out there.”

  Patrice nodded, obviously too breathless from running to say anything. She wasn’t in very good shape—not nearly as good a shape as Kyla, who walked all the time.

  But fear and urgency could drive you hard, and she didn’t slow down until they’d almost reached the wall.

  “Not much farther,” Kyla said, putting a hand around her sister’s waist to keep her moving. Her own lungs were burning, and her leg muscles ached, but she wasn’t about to stop.

  Maybe they could make it. Maybe the Coalition soldiers wouldn’t know to look here. Maybe they could get into the village and make their way to the launch port.

  Maybe Hall and Lenna would still be waiting to fly them to safety.

  She was still clinging to these hopes when they reached the wall. She stopped Patrice before she cleared the trees and was caught by the security drones.

  As soon as they left the woods and were caught by the drones’ cameras, the soldiers would know where they were. They’d be here within a minute or two, assuming they were already scattered around, searching.

  “We’ll wait for the three drones to pass in a row,” Kyla whispered. “Then we’ll have almost four minutes to climb over the wall on the vines. You think you can do it?”

  “Yes. I can. I will.” Patrice’s face was dripping with sweat, but she looked more alive than she had for a long time.

  They waited, both of them panting, until Kyla had counted out the drones buzzing by. As soon as the third one was out of sight, she gave Patrice a shove forward. “Now.”

  They both scrambled up the vines. They were thick and strong, but you had to grab onto them the right away, or they tore. Kyla had done this before, so she knew how to do it, but Patrice’s vines kept snapping, sending her back to the ground.

  Kyla was halfway up when she lowered herself back down. She planted her legs on the ground and whispered, “Try to grab a few at a time.” She pushed her sister up as Patrice tried to climb. This time, she did better, and Kyla kept supporting her until she’d gotten the hang of it and was halfway up the wall.

  Then Kyla climbed up again herself.

  They were nearing the top when she heard shouts from behind them.

  Soldiers. They’d been spotted after all.

  “Hurry. They’re coming,” Kyla gasped.

  Patrice was above her now, almost reaching the top. But she grabbed a vine too quickly and it broke. She started to slip down, but Kyla grabbed for her, barely catching her before she fell. It took a moment for Patrice to get her grip again, and Kyla had wrenched her shoulder so badly her eyes burned with tears.

  The shouts were closer now, and she heard the whizzing of a laser gun.

  Aimed at her and Patrice. A few of the vines near them were singed, and then she felt a burning pain in her calf.

  Patrice was over the wall, but Kyla almost fell, torn between the pain in her shoulder and in her calf.

  She fumbled for purchase and was shocked when, instead of a vine, she felt a big, strong hand in her grip.

  “I’ve got you,” Hall said. “I’m not about to let you fall.”

  Kyla stared at him through blurry eyes, her heart exploding with feeling she couldn’t possibly express.

  Hall was leaning over the top of the wall. He had an old-fashioned gun in one hand, and he aimed it at the approaching soldiers.

  It made a very loud noise, but the whizzing of the lasers stopped after he’d fired at them.

  He pulled Kyla up to the top of the wall and then helped her down the other side, where her sister was waiting.

  “Hall,” Kyla gurgled, barely able to stand up. “You—”

  “Came back for you.” He was smiling at her, although he was obviously still in crisis mode. “I did. Although you two were doing so well, you might not have even needed my help.”

  “Well, we’re not going to turn it down. Are you okay, Kyla?” Patrice was wiping sweat off her face, and her expression was a strange combination of excitement and worry.

  “Yeah,” Kyla lied. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  Hall reached out to cup her cheek, opening a connection between them and then gasping when he evidently felt what she was feeling. “Liar,” he whispered, transforming her pain into a delicious relief.

  He didn’t keep the connection opened long, but it was enough for Kyla to move again, even with her injuries. “We’ll have to walk.” Without waiting for their response, he grabbed both their arms and started them moving. “Any transport we take will just call attention to us. They’ll know soon that we’re over the wall, as soon as the others catch up to the guys I shot, and they’ll be heading back toward the launch pad.”

  “They’ll see us walking, won’t they?”

  “We can take back alleys. I scouted them all out a few weeks ago, in case things went wrong with my job. We might be okay until we get to the launch port. Then we’ll have to improvise.”

  Kyla was barely able to process the walk to the port. She was so weak from her injuries, despite the way Hall had alleviated some of the pain. Her head was also filled with the presence of Hall and the knowledge that he’d actually returned for her, risked his life for her.

  Even though they were supposed to have no commitments, no ties, no shackles.

  She couldn’t begin to understand what it might mean.

  Patrice was surprisingly quiet, concentrating on keeping up and perhaps too scared to ask any questions.

  It didn’t seem like very long before the launch port was in sight, although it might have been longer than Kyla had processed in her daze. Hall’s arm had supported her the whole time.

  “There are two soldiers at the entrance,” Patrice whispered, peering out from the shadow of the building they stood behind. “And they’ll see us if we try to climb the fence. What do we do?”

  Hall took a breath, as if assessing the possibilities.

  “Can you…use your gift on them?” Kyla asked, seeing only one option left for them.

  He nodded. “I’ll have to try. There are other people around, so they’ll see something is happening, but hopefully they’re not loyal to the Coalition. Stay here until I gesture.”

  He stepped out into the street light, and Kyla almost whimpered as he walked right up to the Coalition soldiers guarding the entrance.

  She told herself they weren’t looking for him. They wouldn’t know he was a threat.

  Hopefully.

  They were too far away for her to hear what was being said, but she could see when Hall reached out his hands to touch both of them at the same time.

  As he did so, he jerked his head in a way she understood. “Come on,” she told Patrice, grabbing her sister’s hand and starting to run.

  Hall was still touching the soldiers, evidently holding them in place in some kind of stasis, as she and Patrice ran past them, into the launch port.

  “Last one on the left,” he called out, sounding strained, muffled. Evidently, whatever he was doing to the soldiers was hard work.

  Kyla and Patrice ran to the last ship on the left, and Kyla almost sobbed in relief when the passenger door swung open.

  There was no one there when they climbed in, and Kyla understood why when she heard the ship’s engines power up. Lenna must be at the controls, getting ready to take off.

  She glanced outside and saw Hall approaching at a dead run. The two stationed soldiers we
re still standing in place, rubbing their faces and evidently trying to figure out what had happened, but there were more soldiers running into the port now.

  They’d caught up to them after all.

  But Hall was jumping into the ship, with one laser singeing his hair but nothing else. And the door was slamming shut, and Lenna was lifting the ship off the ground, almost before the door was closed.

  There were no extra planet-wide protections on Evalon, since there wasn’t any military outpost. There were no force fields or gravitational devices that could keep a ship on the ground once it had taken off.

  So the soldiers were still firing on them as the ship cleared the bounds of the port, but the shots didn’t even dent the tough hull.

  They were in the air. They were—maybe, maybe—safe.

  “Come on,” Hall rasped. “We’ll get tossed around down here.” He guided them up a ladder and then down a short hall to the cock pit, where Lenna was whooping loudly in victory.

  “Did we do it?” Kyla asked, rubbing her eyes and wincing as the pain started to reemerge from her shoulder and her calf. “Are we okay?”

  “They’ll follow us, won’t they?” Patrice asked, taking one of the seats and buckling up.

  “Sure, but they’re just in a hop,” Lenna was grinning, as if she were having a great time. “We’ll lose them before we get out of this galaxy.”

  “But they can track us?” Kyla was trying very hard to keep up, but she felt like she might faint. She’d managed to sit down, but she couldn’t lean back. She couldn’t buckle up. She couldn’t do anything.

  “Do you have any idea how often Hall and I have done this sort of thing. We’re prepared. We’ve got safeguards against being tracked. And once we’re away, we can reprogram your genetic chips so they won’t be able to identify you. If they end up finding you again, it won’t be because of us.” Lenna rolled her eyes at Hall. “And can I just say that you were way more than an hour. You’re lucky I didn’t take off without you and keep all the profits for myself.”

  Hall chuckled. “Thanks for waiting.” He was watching Kyla in concern. “Here, baby,” he murmured, leaning over to press a button that reclined her seat. “We’ve got a medical kit on board. Let me fix you up.”

  Kyla whimpered at the change in position, but she made herself lean back and stretch out her legs. It felt like her whole body hurt. She couldn’t even remember what was wrong with it.

  She sighed in relief as Hall touched her face, opening a connection that relieved the worst of the pain again. She was vaguely aware of him opening a box and doing something to her burned calf.

  “Are you okay, Patrice?” Kyla mumbled, remembering that her sister was with her and had been in just as much danger.

  “I’m as good as girl who just lost her throne can be,” Patrice said, sounding like her normal sharp self, which was a huge relief.

  Lenna chuckled at this, and Kyla smiled, wondering if it was actually possible that they got off of Evalon alive, with body and spirit intact.

  All of them had done so much better than she’d ever known to expect. Maybe people didn’t always descend to your lowest expectations of them.

  Not even her.

  Hall had bandaged her calf and injected something into her shoulder. When the ship bounced slightly as Lenna moved into a faster speed, he reached over and buckled Kyla’s belt for her.

  “Are you okay, Kyla?” he murmured very softly, leaning over to brush a kiss against her cheekbone. “I feel like I’ve lost you somewhere.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, blinking her eyes open and smiling up at him groggily. “Thank you for coming back for us.”

  “For you.”

  “For me.”

  “I never should have walked away.”

  It felt like there were tears in her eyes, but that was just ridiculous. She lifted a hand to touch him, but all she managed to do was clutch at his shirt.

  “Hey, now,” Lenna said, glancing back at them with another eye roll. “I gave you firm instructions earlier about how I won’t allow any fucking or declarations of feelings on my ship.”

  “No feelings being declared,” Hall drawled. “Just checking on my patient.”

  “Liar,” Lenna muttered with a clearly repressed smile.

  “Wait,” Patrice said, a new note in her voice. She must have been watching Hall and trying to figure things out. “You’re one of my Potentials, aren’t you? The one I always changed my mind about. What are you doing with Kyla?”

  “We, uh, have a history,” Hall said easily.

  “How do have a history with Kyla? Aren’t you one of mine?”

  Her sister didn’t sound angry or even annoyed. She sounded confused. But Kyla heard the words and roused herself enough from her daze to speak very clearly.

  She said, “No, he’s not. He’s mine.”

  Ten

  Twelve hours later, Kyla was feeling a lot better.

  She’d slept most of the trip to the private planet owned by Hall and Lenna’s client, Charlon, who was purchasing the smuggled wool. The medication Hall had injected had almost completely healed her torn shoulder. She was still rather dazed and groggy while they were shown to their rooms by their host’s housekeeping drone, but after a shower and a change of clothes, she felt human again.

  She knocked on Patrice’s door, feeling safe and hopeful and excited for the first time in a really long time.

  She really hoped Patrice was feeling the same way, but that would likely be too much to expect.

  When a faint voice told her to come in, she opened the door and looked around at the expensive, elegant room. Charlon was obviously rolling in the money. He must have even more wealth and property than the royal family of Evalon had had—far more than allowed by Coalition policies. He obviously had a method of keeping his wealth off the radar, and he obviously believed that Coalition laws were nothing more than suggestions.

  Kyla found her sister on the balcony.

  As she stepped outside, the sound of the waterfall filled the air with a pleasant white noise. It was gorgeous, falling down a cliff right behind the house, the water continuing in a river through jagged hills and expansive plains filled with fragrant wildflowers. The landscape was engineered, just as Evalon’s had been, but it was extremely well-done and gave the impression of wild, untamed natural beauty.

  Patrice smiled at her faintly as Kyla came to stand beside her at the rail. “We should have done a waterfall back in Evalon,” she murmured. “It really is stunning.”

  “It was all flat there,” Kyla replied. “I’m not sure how we would have managed one.”

  Patrice sighed, her eyes focused on the water crashing down over the rocks. “It’s too late now, I guess. I wonder how everyone there is doing.”

  Kyla was pleased and slightly surprised that Patrice’s thoughts were with the people they’d left behind. She’d always known her sister wasn’t as heartless as she sometimes acted, but she’d always been rather selfish, and it was nice to know that she wasn’t just thinking about herself. “Hall said he would try to get some news. It will just have to go through channels, so it might take a little while. I’m sure they’re fine, though. They’re not going to fight a losing battle. With us gone, they’ll all go along with whatever the Coalition officials say. None of them know where we are or who we left with, so they can easily get through a drug-induced interrogation without getting themselves or us into trouble.”

  “Yes. That’s good, I guess.” Patrice sighed again. Then she glanced down to the bottles Kyla held. “What’s that?”

  Kyla raised the bottles up to show her with a rueful smile. “Blonde or brunette? Your red hair is too distinctive. You really need to change it. Even though our chips were reprogramed and even if they don’t know where to look for us, there’s an off chance we might be recognized. You might be, at least.”

  Patrice closed her eyes, and for a moment Kyla thought she would object. She’d always been very proud of her hair. “Blon
de, I guess.” She took the bottle Kyla offered. “Who would have thought it would come to this? I’m the Empress of Evalon.”

  “Patrice,” Kyla murmured. “You really can’t say that again. You’ll put all of us in danger.”

  “I know. I know. It’s over.” There was something tired, incredibly bittersweet in her tone. “I think I knew it was over all my life. That’s why I was holding on so tightly.”

  “What was really beautiful about our world died before we were even born,” Kyla said. “All we were given was an empty shell. We could try to fill it with something else, but there was just no way of turning it real again.” She reached out to squeeze her sister’s shoulder. “We’ll build something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have any ideas about what you want to do now?”

  “What I want to do?” Patrice gave a bitter huff. “I’m not good at anything except being an…” She cleared her throat. “Being in charge. I do like it here, though. This place is beautiful.”

  “Sure, but if you stayed here, I think our old, rather sleazy host will expect something in return.”

  “I’m sure I could provide.”

  “Patrice,” Kyla gasped. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is your chance to be someone on your own, for yourself, rather than just a figurehead or a pretty object.”

  “That’s not as easy as it sounds. What do you want to do, anyway?”

  “I really don’t know yet. I haven’t really figured out what I’m good at, what makes me happy.”

  “Well, you know Hall does.”

  Kyla felt a wave of hot self-consciousness, although she didn’t really know why. She stared down at her hands on the railing.

  “I knew you had a man,” Patrice added.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But what was I supposed to say—hey, one of your Potentials is actually a smuggler who doesn’t want to be your partner at all. In fact, I’m falling for him pretty hard. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I would have liked to know.”

  “I know. But it was an impossible situation. My hands were tied by so many things.”