An enormous tree loomed in front of them, and the ship screamed as Lira tilted them sideways to avoid it. Dex toppled into Andi’s lap.
“Lira!” Andi yelled, shoving Dex away. “Steady us!”
But the ship was careening even farther, tilting so far to the left that Andi felt as if she’d been turned onto her head.
With horror, she looked back at Lira, just in time to see her pilot slump forward in her seat, her head lolling against her chest, her scales so bright it was like staring into a purple sun.
“She’s out!” Andi yelled.
And they were out of time.
Every muscle in her body clenched as she saw the rapidly approaching field and village in the distance.
Memory’s voice spoke, loud and clear, through it all.
“Prepare for impact in 3, 2, 1...”
Chapter Forty-Three
* * *
DEX
DEX DETESTED THE weightless, stomach-dropping sensation of falling from the skies. There was no control, no stopping it.
The feeling of impact, though, he hated even more. He had just one second to enable the ship’s metal outer shields before they hit the ground.
As they crashed into the planet, it felt like the Marauder was a giant bullet gouging through hard, solid rock.
Dex’s skull rattled as he was knocked off his feet and back into his seat. His bones felt like they were going to snap beneath his skin as he clung to the armrests of his chair, trying to avoid being flung into the air. The wounds he’d sustained on Lunamere screamed in protest.
There was a horrible, jarring jerk as the ship bounced once. Twice.
Oh, hell, Dex thought.
The ship soared across the Adhiran landscape as if it had sprouted claws and was tearing apart the ground.
“Emergency,” Memory’s cool voice spoke, barely audible over the screeching and rumbling as the ship mercifully slowed its forward movement. “Emergency.”
Her voice flickered out, and the entire system went dark as a last final screech and groan exploded from beneath them.
Another lurch, like the ship was teetering on the edge of a cliff, followed by the sound of something cracking.
Then it all stopped, as quickly as it had begun.
Silence, pure and simple, so sudden that Dex wondered if maybe he was dead. He groaned, and tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t hold him. His teeth were still vibrating, and his head, holy hell of all hells, felt like it was going to explode.
“Not exactly my idea of fun,” Dex said, stifling another groan.
No one answered.
Maybe he’d survived, and they were all dead.
Then, somewhere in front of him, a whimper, a rustle, the pop of a harness coming loose. Andi’s disembodied voice came from the captain’s chair. Dex’s heart leaped at the sound. “Is everyone okay?”
Gilly and Breck answered in a soft chorus as the Marauder settled to stillness around them.
“Help me with Lira,” Andi commanded. The pilot was still hunched over in her harness, the scales on her skin finally dimmed but still smoking. As if she’d been aflame moments before.
A horrible pop sounded, and then a flash of light blinded them as part of the Marauder’s metal shielding actually fell away from the viewport.
Like a piece of flaking skin.
Dex stared through the new opening. They’d stopped a mere wing’s length from a row of stone houses. People flocked outside, all of them wide-eyed, most of them looking furious as hell.
Adhira, like most capital planets, had a melting pot of citizens. But despite their dizzying array of appearances, the villagers all had the same look of hatred plastered on their faces as they glowered at the Marauder.
Dex was a little impressed. Anger and hatred were incredibly rare emotions on this peaceful planet.
He loosed a sharp exhalation as the ground trembled beneath the ship.
In the distance, beyond the row of homes, the edge of the rainforest loomed. Already, he could see the cause of the shaking earth.
A set of two monstrous, black-tusked creatures emerged from the tree line. They were ugly as sin, with scaled, rough hides and curling tusks that stretched up toward the rainforest canopy. The beasts pulled a two-story wagon double the size of the Marauder behind them. Its wooden wheels were as tall as most of the village homes, and painted on their axles was a golden spiral with a horizontal line jutting through the middle, the symbol of Adhira.
Sentinels. The queen’s personal, private guard.
The waiting crowd split like a river to allow the wagon to pass through as it headed straight for the wreckage.
Dex took it upon himself to break the silence.
“I hate to break it to you, loves,” he said, finally managing to stand up from his chair on unsteady legs.
“Then don’t,” Andi told him as she and the girls gently unstrapped the unconscious, still-steaming pilot. “Please don’t.”
Dex spoke up anyway. “We are so dead.”
Andi sighed as she looked out at the oncoming wagon. “For once, Dextro, you have no idea how right you are.”
Chapter Forty-Four
* * *
ANDROMA
THE LAST TIME Andi saw her home planet, she’d been a fourteen-year-old girl with tears in her eyes and her best friend’s blood on her hands.
By sheer mercy, she’d been able to escape her death sentence. After that, she’d made her way out into the galaxy and traveled through worlds she’d never known, unsure of who she was, where she was going or who she would have to become to survive.
The only thing certain was the whisper of death, a monster made of fear and fury that followed her no matter how far she tried to go. Many nights, Andi stayed awake, looking over her shoulder, terrified that General Cortas would send men from her planet to come and lock her away.
They’d never found her.
Instead, she’d found a bounty hunter with a lust for life and a bag full of Krevs, and he’d helped her rediscover her strength. He gave her a reason to keep going, and later, replaced that with a broken heart.
In return, she’d stolen his ship, filled it with the fiercest females in the galaxy, and together, the girls had made it their own.
The Marauder was Andi’s true home, a spear that was capable of tearing apart the skies.
Now it was a junker. Her pilot, who had succumbed to the exhaustion of her emotions, was still unconscious. The medics had injected her with adrenaline when they disembarked from the ship, but Lira had yet to wake.
And Andi was pissed.
She sat on the upper deck of an Adhiran transport wagon, the strange, tumbling roll of the massive wheels below her churning her stomach into a state of unease. The animals stank like dung, to no one’s surprise, what with the person-size piles of it they left behind.
And Andi’s ship, her blessed, beautiful Marauder, was currently being dragged behind the wagon, balancing precariously on a wooden sled of sorts.
One of the beasts dropped another pile of steaming, stinking dung.
The Marauder’s sled slipped right over it with a squelch that splattered green on a ruined viewport.
Andi had to look away.
“Is it dead forever?” Gilly asked, wide eyed. She sat across from Andi on the wooden floorboards of the wagon, waving her hand as winged bugs the size of her fists fluttered around her, flashing different colors each time they dodged her swings.
“Not entirely,” Breck said, staring past Gilly at the Marauder’s sad, corpse-like form. “It just needs a little love.”
Valen, still unconscious, was with Alfie, wrapped in a clean moss blanket on the lower deck of the wagon. Dex, blessedly, was up at the front, chatting happily to the Sentinels as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Andi had a feeling that if she hear
d him speak right now, she’d rip his throat out with her nails. She still hadn’t sorted through her feelings since their fight in her quarters. But right now, allowing her anger to overwhelm her was easier. To even consider forgiveness, to consider anything when her ship was so destroyed...Andi couldn’t fathom it.
“We can fix the ship,” Lira said in a weary voice.
Andi turned to her, surprised, and glad to see that their pilot had finally awoken.
“Are you alright?” Andi asked.
“I feel terrible, but I’ll survive,” Lira replied, sitting up and glancing back at the Marauder. “The repairs will set us back a few days, but Adhiran ship workers are capable of getting us back in the air.” She sighed. “And connections, of course. I’m in for a world of trouble.”
“That you are, Lira,” Breck spoke up. “But don’t worry. We’ll be there to pick up the pieces.”
Andi knew she should be more concerned about Lira’s issues. Her pilot’s past with Adhira was muddled and painful, a constant struggle for Lira to overcome. But Andi’s mind was ragged, stripped free of the pieces that made her mortal. In this moment, she felt as if the veil of the Bloody Baroness was still stuck to her eyes.
“General Cortas will fix the ship, as he should have before,” Andi said with a heated growl. The eyes of her crew went wide at the sudden rage in her voice. “If he doesn’t, I’m going to tear the sagging skin from his face.”
This whole mission was the general’s fault. If he hadn’t allowed Xen Pterran spies to come in and steal his son, the old man would never have sent Dex after Andi and her crew. Then they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place, and the Marauder would still be up there in the sky, doing what it did best.
Smuggling. Thieving.
Not rescuing a privileged, somehow-still-unconscious general’s son with a mysterious, unknown pathogen in his blood, nor with Dex, sharing all his terrible truths about the past.
Andi couldn’t help remembering that smile they’d shared just before the Marauder crashed... What did it mean, that she was still able to share such a moment with him?
What is happening to my life? she wondered. It was out of control. She was out of control.
There were a million questions in Andi’s mind, none of which could be answered.
“There’s nothing we can do right now,” Lira said. She reached out, and Andi felt the warm flutter of Lira’s fingertips on her shoulder. She stiffened at the touch, and Lira pulled away. “A calm mind is a decent one.”
“Not now, Lira,” Andi growled. “Save your Adhiran proverbs for another time.”
Lira sighed and turned to look at the others. “Your home may be the ship, Androma. It’s all of ours, too. But Adhira is the planet that gave me life. I just lost control of myself before I could stop our ship from crashing into one of its most profitable crop fields. When Queen Alara finds out...”
Andi didn’t answer.
Lira’s eyes narrowed. “You are not the only one suffering today, Captain.” She scooted over to sit with Breck and Gilly.
Andi slumped back into her seat, hating the action as soon as she’d done it.
She was tired. She was also hungry, and—for some hellish reason unbeknownst to her or her crew or that ridiculous AI the general had sent with them on this death mission—she may have just lost her damned ship.
She needed to be a leader. She needed to talk to her crew and devise a plan. She needed to apologize to Lira. She needed to sort out how she felt about her conversation with Dex.
But right now, she simply wanted to sit and not be bothered.
So she did.
With her mind reeling, her hands balled into fists at her side, Androma Racella, the Bloody Baroness of Mirabel, stared out the back of the wagon as her ship slid over another pile of fresh green dung and allowed herself to pout like a child.
Chapter Forty-Five
* * *
NOR
LEAVING HER TOWER for the city was like entering a completely different world. The one she came from was that of privilege and wealth, while the one she walked into was born from death and chaos, left to rot under the clouded sun.
Queen Nor Solis lifted the train of her burgundy gown as she, Darai and Zahn mounted the steps to the waiting hover carriage that would carry them to the former palace grounds just outside the city. Today her people would answer her call to action. Today was the day her plan would be set in motion, all the pieces finally sliding into place.
“Where to, Majesty?” a servant asked from the driver’s seat just beyond the curtained barrier.
“The palace ruins,” Nor said with a casual wave of her prosthetic hand. Her scars ached today, as they did every day. But something about returning to the place where it all happened made the throbbing worse. A constant tick in the back of her mind that whispered, Death, death, death. “Make it slow. I want every eye to see us pass.”
“Just be sure they don’t get too close,” Zahn added to the driver. “Hover just above their reach.”
The moment Nor settled into the plush cushions, the hover started moving. Darai sat on the seat across from her and inclined his head toward her. His scars and the bits of metal holding his flesh in place practically squirmed as he smiled.
“You are a vision today, my queen. Your people will be blessed to look upon you.”
She slid the curtains open, the better to see her city and its citizens below. The better to remind herself of what she was striving so hard to save.
So close to her tower, the only residents around were the few remaining wealthy citizens of Nivia, the last habitable city on Xen Ptera. Old crumbling buildings stood like skeletons, stretching their ragged arms into the sky. The hover carriage glided through a plume of smoke, bathing the windows in sooty gray.
“I trust you are prepared?” Darai asked. “I haven’t heard your speech yet. Are you sure you’ve...”
“Be silent, Uncle.” Nor did not bother to even glance his way as she continued her admonishment. “If you really trust me as you say you do, you would not have to ask.”
His silence was a welcome gift as the smoke cleared and the carriage continued on, its engine wheezing in the background.
“Nor,” Zahn whispered, leaning close enough that his breath tickled her ear. “You’re too tense. The people will see it, and it may cause them to doubt.” His hand grazed her thigh. “I know it was a late night. Perhaps we should try this tomorrow.”
Warmth shot through her at his touch, quickly followed by a spike of frustration from his words.
“They will see what I wish them to see,” she said. She gently moved his hand away. “In this time of darkness, they will find a queen able to guide them into the light.”
Darai chuckled silently across from them. “Someday, boy, you will learn that she does what she pleases, when she pleases. And she does it with flair.” His smile stretched as he added, “A gift inherited from her late mother, no doubt.”
“I thought I asked for silence,” Nor snapped at him, her frustration barreling toward fury. “Your bravery lately is verging on foolery, Uncle. I’m growing tired of it.”
Darai’s eyes flitted to hers. “A wise queen does not speak down to others.”
Nor sighed. “But a niece, desperate for silence from her talkative uncle, does.”
Darai shook his head, a smirk on his face, but he remained mercifully silent.
Zahn’s hand found Nor’s thigh again. This time, she allowed it to stay.
Outside the carriage below, the streets transformed from sturdy, fortified houses made to withstand the unstable planet’s constant trembling to rickety pieces of rubble thrown together by shaky hands. For most people, having a roof over their heads to protect them from the poisonous fumes and acidic rain was a luxury. Others were not so blessed.
As they passed, beggars reached t
heir dirty hands up in hopes of touching their queen, starvation and illness etched on their faces. Nor glanced down at them, the fissure in her heart widening.
The Unified Systems had done this. She would make sure that they paid for such a heinous crime.
“Start distributing the rations and med kits,” Zahn said to the driver and the guard seated beside him. “Make sure the citizens follow us to the grounds.”
The guard nodded, then motioned for his soldiers to drop the silver boxes down to the citizens as he exited the carriage. One by one, the boxes fell, like angels descending to the needy. The citizens crowded around them like bugs, ripping and tearing at the contents inside.
“Greet them, Darai,” Nor commanded.
Her adviser opened the window and leaned his balding head out. “Come, Xen Pterrans!” Gasps rose from the now-massive crowd of onlookers. Darai’s voice was soft, but it carried like a wave. Faces covered in filth and grime angled toward the carriage in the sky. “Your queen will feed you. She will heal your afflictions, if you will only come and listen to her words.”
Below, the citizens trailed after them in hordes.
Darai leaned back into the hover and smiled at Nor, the bones in his cheeks standing out. The scars on his face had never faded, though his, unlike hers, had not come from the war. And yet he wore them with a survivor’s pride.
“Why feed them, my dear, when you know how low our resources are running? We have soldiers to feed, scientists to...”
“I do not wish to hear any more of your opinions on this matter,” Nor said. They’d been arguing about it for weeks. “This is your last warning, Uncle.”
Darai crossed his arms over his chest. “Someday, I will grow old, and I will be gone. Then you’ll miss my commentary, and my advice.”
Nor huffed out a breath.
Many times, Zahn had asked Nor about her short temper when it came to the old man. He’d raised her, protected her, and yet she was often so cold with Darai that he could have been an unwelcome stranger. But Nor knew Darai didn’t truly mind it.
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