Heart on Fire (The Kingmaker Chronicles Book 3)

by Amanda Bouchet

  Bridgebane’s voice barked over the com. “I’m taking the Overseer’s lab back, and you’re all going to be court-martialed in Sector 12.”

  “Tell him who you are, Tess,” Jax whispered, the scar on his cheek whitening from the tension in his jaw. “Your name alone will stop him. Your father—”

  I laughed. It burst out of me, awful. Then I squared my shoulders and told my best friend and first mate the one thing he still didn’t know about me.

  “My father handed me over to Bridgebane when I was eight years old and only three days after my mother died, with strict orders to keep me in an air lock on Dark Watch 12 until the ship was out of my home Sector and then float me into space.”

  Jax’s jaw dropped. Miko gasped. Shiori stayed silent.

  “Who the hell is your asshole father?” Fiona snarled.

  “Bridgebane took me to the Starway Orphanage instead. He said if he ever saw me again, he’d do what my father first asked.”

  Jax cursed. “You mean Bridgebane is the good guy in all this?”

  “Bridgebane is a bastard. And I mean that my name will only get us all killed faster than we’re going to get killed anyway.”

  “Who the hell is your asshole father?” Fiona practically shrieked.

  I wanted to shriek back what had always been in my heart. That man has never been my father!

  “Who the hell are you?” Fiona demanded.

  My pulse pounded hard, so hard I could hear it in my head. Tess Bailey was about to die along with the rest of us. “I’m Quintessa Novalight.”

  My friend stumbled back against Jax’s broad chest. That was the power of a name.

  The blood visibly drained from Fiona’s face. “As in Galactic Overseer Novalight’s dead daughter?” she choked out.

  Clearly, not so dead after all. Yet.

  Nodding, I owned up to the name I hadn’t used in years and the family I wish I didn’t have. “Daddy is the evil overlord of the galaxy, and Bridgebane is my uncle.”

  Everyone stared in shock, even Jax, who already knew who I was.

  “Soooo… No one’s leaving?” I eventually asked, not surprised, but not happy, either.

  No one spoke. The Endeavor rattled like a sick metallic animal and then groaned again—hard.

  “We’re as dead out there as we are in here,” Miko finally answered. No one contradicted her, so I figured she spoke for them all.

  I nodded. “Big Guy?” I asked, turning to the bearded man.

  He just shook his head.

  Fine. His choice, although I had no idea why.

  “Power up, Jax, and get ready to punch it. Miko—set us thirty degrees to the left.” Portside was nothing but the Black Widow. The huge, lightless area gave new meaning to the oft-used expression “endless Dark.”

  I turned away, my stomach knotting. I feared the unknown as much as anyone else.

  Focusing once again on my crew, I announced, “Strap in. Don’t strap in. It doesn’t really matter at this point.”

  We’d never been much for emotional speeches, so I didn’t give one. Shiori got out of the captain’s chair and felt her way to Miko. The two women stood side by side by the navigation controls, holding hands. Fiona and Jax stayed close together. I was alone. Except for Big Guy. He stayed pretty close.

  My gaze returned to the Widow, as if drawn by its massive gravitational force. Twenty-six years, and it hadn’t been a bad life, even if a lot of it hadn’t been fun. I’d wreaked more havoc on the galactic government than most rebels could manage in five lifetimes. With the help of my crew, I’d kept the Outer Zone colonies from true starvation for years. And everything else I ever had, I gave to the kids in Starway 8. I didn’t regret a thing.

  And I was a Novalight. I wouldn’t go out like a sigh in the Dark. I’d go out like a fucking bomb.

  I reached for the external com and opened the line to Bridgebane. “Your boarding crew has thirty seconds to detach. After that, I’m taking the Endeavor and your vaccines into the Black Widow. Everyone on this ship would rather die than see that serum back in the hands of the Galactic Overseer.” I lifted my finger but then pressed it firmly back down on the button again. “By the way, this is Quintessa, and you can tell my tyrant father that I hate his fucking guts.”

  I pulled my hand off the com. The line went dead, then blinked red again.

  “Quin?” Bridgebane said.

  I counted down in my head. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…

  “Let’s talk, Quin,” my uncle said. “Give me the lab, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…

  “I saved you, Quin. You owe me.”

  Five, four, three, two…

  I turned to Jax, seeing the Black Widow looming through the wall of windows behind him. I felt a lurch and hoped it was the boarding cruiser beating a retreat.

  “Quin!” Bridgebane yelled over the com.

  A second later, the Dark Watch frigate fired on us. The resulting jolt nearly knocked me off my feet. Alarms flared all over my controls—pressurization compromised in three zones. Another blast like that, and they might disable us enough to hold us in place.

  I gripped my console. The Endeavor was a good ship. It was too bad I had to take her out.

  My heart pounded so violently that each beat felt like an explosion inside my chest.

  Some ends are just a new beginning…

  My mother’s words to me, when she’d gotten so sick. Too sick for anyone to save her.

  The Black Widow stretched before us, ready to snare us in her web. Nothing escaped a black hole. Not light. Not matter. Maybe not even a soul.

  I swallowed. Some ends are just the end.

  “Hit it, Jaxon.” I nodded to my first mate.

  Jax looked at me one last time. Our eyes met, and seven years of shared history struck me in a bittersweet rush. Then he grabbed Fiona around the waist and threw the hyperdrive switch with a cosmic roar.

  I inhaled sharply. Everything blurred. My bones crunched, and my chest folded in on the thousands of things I’d still wanted to do as the Endeavor shot toward the event horizon—and the end of us all.

  CHAPTER 2

  Shade Ganavan flipped the sign on the door of Ganavan’s Products and Parts to closed and locked it. He didn’t care who might need a spare part today, tomorrow, or any fucking day. He cared about Tess Bailey and her little stream of lies.

  Under her pale skin, her fireworks of a blush, and her rabbiting pulse, there was a woman running scared. She looked like she’d been that way for a while, like she never stopped. Never came down. No one got that white unless they spent all their time in the Dark.

  Shade strode into his office, tension like he hadn’t felt in a while whipping through his body.

  Sitting at his desk, he powered up the tablet that might give him some answers. He typed in the passcode to the secure database only he and about a hundred other people in the galaxy had access to. This was where shit went down. This was where he made his money.

  He scrolled through the latest entries first. Rebel. Rebel. Rebel. Escaped convict. Kidnapped scientist. Rebel. Priest.

  Priest? His eyes stopped for a moment. That was unusual. Not many people fucked with the Powers, just in case they were real.

  “Not interested,” Shade muttered.

  Going to the search bar, he typed in Tess Bailey.

  No matches came up for a current job. No bounty. No info.

  Pursing his lips, he typed in just Bailey.

  Again, nothing.

  He tried Baylee, Bayleigh, Bailee, and Baileigh, all without a hit.

  Good. She wasn’t anywhere on the up-to-date Wanted or Retrieve lists. That brought a little relief to the tension in his gut.

  Shade switched databases to hunt for birth records, looking for women under th
irty.

  After a long wait, about two kabillion Baileys popped up.

  He groaned. It’d take forever to sort through all that. She’d probably given him a false name anyway. This was a wild goose chase.

  Shade ran a hand through his short hair, still not used to feeling it so close to his scalp. The movement wasn’t very satisfying with nothing to shove back.

  “Well, shit. Who the hell are you, starshine?”

  He hadn’t expected his tablet to answer, but all of a sudden, there she was, filling his screen as a new message came through from the first window he’d opened to the private database. His eyes widened, and adrenaline ripped through his body.

  He stared at the enormous WANTED above her head.

  The sum below it of two hundred million in universal currency made his jaw drop.

  Shade stood up, thunking both hands down on his desk and glaring at the tablet. He leaned over for a better look—and to make sure he was reading this right.

  He’d never seen that much money offered for anyone. Ever. If he was seeing this new post, other people were, too. There wasn’t a bounty hunter with access to this list that wasn’t pissing his or her pants right now with excitement, but Shade felt like he was about to throw up.

  His shoulders tensed as he pushed away from his desk, straightening. Those others, though, they didn’t know where she was. The exact platform where her ship was currently docked. They had no idea where to start looking for Captain T. Bailey in the whole fucking galaxy, but he could walk right up to her and she wouldn’t even wonder why he was there.

  Shade swallowed the bad taste in his mouth. Two hundred million. He could buy back his birthright and live like a king forever on that. Never compete for another job in his life.

  He studied the picture again before looking at the rest of the info. It wasn’t an exact likeness. Someone had taken an image of a kid—less than ten years old, if he had to guess—and then used algorithms to transform it into an adult woman. They’d gotten the blue eyes and straight brown hair right, but there were no freckles where there should have been.

  He turned his eyes to the text. Names may be false.

  He snorted.

  Shade glanced at the top of the screen to see who’d sent out the post. Captain Nathanial Bridgebane, Galactic General, Dark Watch 12.

  For fuck’s sake, this just kept getting worse. They’d brought out the big guns. Bridgebane was the Overseer’s right hand. His brother-in-law. And he either had no idea who Tess was, or he knew, and he didn’t want to tell anyone.

  Captain T. Bailey.

  Cargo Cruiser model 419—Endeavor.

  Subject presumed dead.

  Shade frowned. “Then why are you sending this out?”

  Last seen in Sector 14 in possession of highly sensitive government materials.

  Shade’s eyebrows nearly flew off his head. He’d seen hints of fragility in her, but she must have had balls of steel if she’d been zooming around Sector 14 with the Dark Watch on her heels.

  The bounty will be doubled for recovery of the stolen goods. Bonus for a live capture.

  Shade’s heart stopped. Holy Sky Mother, the galactic government wanted Tess and whatever she’d taken more than it had ever wanted anything since its inception, as far as he knew.

  And they preferred her alive. Some of the sick feeling inside him eased.

  Unless they just wanted to torture her for answers? The sick feeling grew again.

  What had she taken? Bridgebane didn’t want to say outright, that much was clear. He was dangling bait, and the hunters had to figure it out for themselves. If they found her, they probably found it.

  The photo blinked out, and Shade lunged for the tablet, picking it up. Bridgebane couldn’t have taken down the job already. No one could have found her that fast.

  A sort of rage-filled panic had started drumming against his ribs when another image finally popped up to replace the first one. It was a mug shot. In the time he’d been reading, they’d traced her to where she’d been—he looked at the date on the photo—seven years ago.

  Tess Bailey. It might not have been her real name, but she’d been using it for a while now.

  He looked at her birthdate. A quick calculation told him she was twenty-six.

  The sentence stamped in red across her mug shot said Life.

  He cursed. Fucking nineteen years old and sent to Hourglass Mile. What had she done to get locked up? He knew what they did to the inmates there. The mines. The whips. The pairings.

  The lunch he’d eaten earlier turned to lead in his stomach. Who had they forced on her? What had he been like?

  How the hell had she gotten out?

  Then he remembered the explosion about five years back. A bunch of prisoners had died. In the confusion, some had managed to escape. No bounty had ever been offered for any of them. The galactic government had probably been too embarrassed by the chaos at one of their maximum security prisons to post.

  Beautiful. Ballsy. And Brave.

  A wanted criminal.

  Fuck!

  He worked on the fringes of the law, dipping his toes into the murky side of the system, but he was still part of the galactic machine of all-encompassing order. He knew who signed over the checks. One big job like this, and he could leave it all behind, set himself up for life.

  Indecision clawed at Shade’s chest. His mind worked. He knew where she was.

  The easiest nab and grab of his life was waiting for him on the three hundred and fourteenth level. He could land two hundred million in his account.

  Double that if she still had the goods.

  COMING SOON

  Click here to order!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am so grateful to so many people for helping me accomplish my goals and make my writing the best it can be. First and foremost, my family. You are a huge support, a huge help, and I couldn’t do this without you. I love you.

  My thanks also to my agent, Jill Marsal, and to my editor, Cat Clyne. My heartfelt thanks to the whole team at Sourcebooks for all of their hard work and support. I’m so lucky to be part of such a dynamic publishing house. My thanks to Dominique Raccah for taking a chance on this series, to Stephany Daniel for being a dynamo publicist, to Rachel Gilmer for her eagle eyes and for being incredibly understanding when I freak out around deadline times, and to Sara Hartman-Seeskin for working on audio and international rights. Also, I am sure that I have the most beautiful book covers ever created, and I’m very grateful to the Sourcebooks Casablanca design team, to Dawn Adams, and to Gene Mollica, for giving them to me.

  There’s a core group of people who help keep my stress levels from exploding. Alexis and Callie, you are the best friends and the best beta readers a person could ever have. I would be lost without you. Adriana, Rusty, Heather, and Lynn, I’m so lucky to have found you and to have you in my life—for writing and whatever else. And Katerina, I value our friendship, and I’m so fortunate to have you as a resource for all things Greek.

  Finally, my sincere thanks to readers and reviewers. Books would go nowhere without you. And my warm thanks to the authors who have so generously supported my work. That remains a thrill for me, and I’m sure always will. The reading and writing community is truly remarkable, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  USA Today bestselling author Amanda Bouchet grew up in New England and studied French at the undergraduate and graduate levels, first at Bowdoin College and then at Bowling Green State University. She moved to Paris, France, in 2001 and has been there ever since. She met her husband while studying abroad, and the family now includes two bilingual children, who will soon be correcting her French.

  Heart on Fire is Amanda’s third novel. For contact details and to find out more about the Kingmaker Chronicles, please visit her website at amandabouch
et.com.

  Thank you for reading!

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