by Natalie Grey
“No,” he said at once. Of the righteousness of their cause, he had not a single doubt. And then: “Yes. The mercenaries.” He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, clenching his hands and digging the short nails into his palms. “He threw them away like they were nothing, to swarm over our corpses.” For a moment, the image of insects was so vivid in his mind that he felt bile rise in his throat.
“They didn’t have to follow their orders.”
“Anyone who says no to that man dies, you know that. At least with us, they had a chance.”
Her eyes went to the row of bodies and he knew she was thinking the same thing he was: not much of a chance. There were too many of them here, kids who’d enlisted and come out into the black and died for nothing. What had they hoped for when they signed up? At least in a war of nations, you knew that sort of thing. He’d taken these lives and it occurred to him now that he knew nothing about these people.
He wasn’t used to killing like this. It unsettled him deeply.
“There’s something more to it.” Nyx looked him over critically. “It’s not anger. It’s not sadness. Are you afraid?”
He paused before he spoke. “I’m losing objectivity,” he said finally.
“So get rid of her.” Nyx nodded toward the cargo door at the end of the bay, her face flat. “Throw her out the airlock.”
For a moment, he could not breathe. The world went black and he wanted to lash out, demand she take the words back and never speak them again. But he knew why she had spoken them, the point she had been making.
“I thought you liked her.” Joking was all he could manage right now.
“I do, and it scares me as much as it scares you.”
Probably not quite as much. But he was sure as hell not going to tell Nyx that.
“She’s always been an unknown quantity,” Nyx told him. “She’s helped us, but it never stacked up. Boss, you filled your crew with people like you. All of us know better than to like her, all of us are kinder than to judge her based on that bastard alone, and not one of us is going to speak poorly of her skills.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “And if it was just that with you, we’d have something we could deal with. But she’s fucking with your head now.”
“Yes, well, unfortunately, we can’t just throw her out the airlock.”
“I really think you mean ‘shouldn’t.’”
He was startled into a laugh and looked over at her, only to see her eyes warm with understanding. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “Just think about it. Don’t let this get out of hand.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
“Captain?” Sphinx’s voice. “You’re, uh … you’re gonna want to see this.”
Talon pressed the button for his comm. “What is it?”
“We got a call. Encrypted. Says it’s for you.”
Talon looked at Nyx. Neither of them needed to ask who it was.
“I’ll be right there.” He looked over at Nyx. “You, go to the bridge. Get Tersi. I’m going to—”
He stopped, then, his eyes narrowing. He had a good idea of what might happen if he went to the brig alone. Things that would make it clear what was going on. Things he might have been thinking about non-stop for two days, his blood on fire. It had been all he could do not to go down there and take her right there in the doorway.
“Maybe you’d better go get Tera,” he said to Nyx, hoping that his voice seemed reasonably calm.
“Mmm.” Nyx left without another word.
24
Nyx came for her in silence, jerking her head out toward the hallway and ushering Tera up the stairs quickly. They walked along darkened hallways, now cleared of smoke and debris. Tera closed her eyes against the memory of what had happened here, the touch that seemed to be seared into her mind. It had been the better part of a day, but her lips still felt swollen. Nyx, luckily, seemed not to have any idea what sort of images were chasing one another through Tera’s head; she avoided Tera’s eyes and walked quickly, silently.
“Should I be worried?” Tera asked finally.
Nyx shook her head and held a finger up to her lips as they made their way to the brig. When they stepped inside, Talon pivoted in the pilot’s chair. Tersi was at the second desk, his hands hovering over the keypad. They nodded to one another, and Talon pressed a button.
“Soras.” His voice was almost cheerful.
“Did you find it amusing to keep me waiting?” The voice was everything Tera remembered, curt and unamused.
“You have only yourself to blame.” Not a flicker of remorse showed on Talon’s face. He looked over briefly to where Tersi was tapping frantically at the keys, though whether he was tracing the call or hiding their own signal, Tera did not know. “I was preparing the bodies of your mercenaries for burial.”
“Always the white knight.” Contempt dripped from that voice. Tera winced. For a moment, just a moment, she could see Talon through her father’s eyes: determined to do the Right Thing. Talon, she saw now, was one of the people Aleksandr had warned her about all those years ago on the streets of New Arizona. People who didn’t understand the world the way it really was.
Only, that wasn’t the impression Tera got from any of the Dragons. They were many things, but—with the possible exception of Loki—she would call none of them naïve.
“Did you really think they could defeat us?” There was anger in Talon’s voice. “Did you think we had slipped that much, that mercenaries could take us out?”
“With sufficient numbers, yes.” There was curiosity now. “How, exactly, did you persuade them to leave? I haven’t managed to get a coherent story out of the captain.”
Tera opened her mouth, but Talon shook his head. Their eyes met for one moment, burning, and then both of them looked away hastily.
“We pointed out that all of them would die if they kept fighting. They saw the wisdom of our point of view and left.”
“I see.” Tera could almost see Aleksandr making the note to get rid of the mercenaries; for the first time, she was scared of what that might mean.
“It was cruel, you know.” The anger was there again, barely held in check. A muscle jumped in Talon’s cheek and Tera saw that he was holding himself still with great effort. “You sacrificed them.”
“You of all people know I never hesitate to sacrifice lives when the prize is worth it.”
Tera shifted uncomfortably. She remembered these lectures, the unending calculus of Greater Good that her father drilled into her and she was only too ready to believe. There was no perfect—living on the streets had taught her that much. And there were people, too, who could not be saved no matter how good they were—she knew that, too. Hadn’t she watched it happen? But somewhere along the way, she could not even remember when, she had begun to diverge from that path. She remembered telling Talon that she only killed those who did evil in the world, and the spark of understanding in his eyes.
Now she had the uncomfortable memory of saying the same thing to her father, and seeing him go still. She swallowed.
“And what prize,” Talon asked now, “is worth that many lives?”
“My daughter.” The voice came out like a whiplash, and everyone in the cockpit shrank away. There was fury there, and grief, and a terrible, terrible fear that yawned beneath their feet like an abyss. He was terrified that he would never see Tera again.
She could hardly hold herself still. Her hands clenched into fists. She wanted to bite her lips until they bled, tear the cuffs apart and scream her own fear into the night, that she was too far gone and she didn’t understand anything anymore.
But she was a child of Osiris; she had long ago learned silence. She stood still as a statue and stared at the receiver, conscious of the Dragons watching her, and after a moment they looked back to the speaker.
“I see.” Talon spoke merely for something to say; he had seen the pain Tera held in check, and she knew he was shaken by the fury in Aleksandr’s voice.
He, however, did not understand. What he heard was carelessness and mockery. “Where is she, you son of a bitch?”
I’m here. Tera bit down on the words, not for their sake but for what would come after. For she could not say that she would see his job done. These few words would gain her nothing at all, and sacrifice all of her progress. And what if he heard the doubt that clawed at her, day and night? The doubt that she might not be able to bring herself to kill these warriors?
“She’s here,” Talon answered simply. “She joined us of her own free will, Soras. She’s the one who told your mercenaries to flee. She’s killed everyone you sent for her, haven’t you noticed? She’s part of my crew now.”
If Aleksandr noticed the faint, possessive stress of the words, he gave no sign of it. “I will never believe that.” His fear, however, sounded clearly in the air. He did believe it. It was exactly why he was calling now.
“Did you think if you just kept her with you forever, closed in, cut off from the world, that she would never find out what you were?” Talon’s voice was tight.
“You leave Tera out of this! Whatever you are, whatever you think you’re going to do to me, you give her back.” The voice shook. “If you have any true honor in you at all, you’ll release her to me.”
“So you can keep telling her lies?” Talon asked softly. “Do you think the truth can be un-heard, Soras? Do you think she’s an utter fool?”
There was only silence and Tera shrank away. I don’t believe it, I know he’s wrong. But she could not speak; it was too dangerous.
“You picked Tera,” Talon said finally, “for what she is. For her intelligence, for her spark.” The love was naked in his voice. “Her honor,” he added quietly. “Did you think she would make you a better person?”
“You leave her out of this,” Aleksandr whispered. “Give her back to me.”
“No.” Talon shook his head. “You think I would hand her over like a parcel when she doesn’t want to go? You should thank me. What did you think would happen when she found out?”
“In time, I could have explained it to her!” The words rang out through the cabin and Tera froze.
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.
“What do you think you could have explained?” Talon snapped back furiously. “You didn’t make Ymir better.”
“They lived in hovels before I came, I gave them—”
“I saw what you gave them! I did your dirty work and I killed their resistance leaders for you!” Talon’s voice was raw. “What the fuck do you think you can explain away about that, Soras? What do you think you could possibly have said to make her accept what you did?”
“She loves me! She would have accepted it in time. She would have understand that Ymir was lost, one way or another. They were a backwater, a nothing.”
Tera was shaking her head, backing away. It wasn’t true, wasn’t true, wasn’t true. Her hands were moving before she could stop herself, grabbing a datapad and typing.
When Talon saw what she had written, he shook his head, but Tera thrust the pad at him, her jaw set. Do it.
Talon opened his mouth and hesitated. “And what would you have done,” he asked quietly, reading off the pad, “if you hadn’t been able to convince her?”
Tera watched the speaker, rocking back and forth, hoping beyond hope. But the silence was answer enough, and as she heard the faint draw of breath from the other end of the call, slammed her bound hands down on the button to end the call, backing away in the sudden silence.
It was true. It was all true.
25
She walked back to the brig like she was lost. Twice, Talon had to reach out and take her arm to guide her around turns, and once, she stopped walking entirely. She was so far gone that Talon did not want to touch her for fear of reawakening the grief that seemed to have washed over her and left nothing in its wake—but she hardly seemed to notice him at all.
Fear yawned within him, that she was truly broken by this. He thought back to his own mother and father, his sisters, all living on Pallek—and he wondered what he would feel if one of them betrayed him this way. Only, Aleksandr had been more to her than that.
Talon led her into the brig and she went immediately to the back, to the bench. She curled up with her face turned to the wall, and the sight of her made his heart twist. He would take it all back if he could. She should never have had to hear that. He thought she would scent out Aleksandr’s lies, but the truth had been far more dangerous.
“Should I stay?” he asked her.
The look she gave him was incredulous. A moment later, he realized she thought it was a proposition. He shook his head. Not knowing what else to do, he sank into a crouch, the way he did when he was resting on the battlefield; her eyes marked the movement in a way that said it was familiar. He could see her mouth moving, beginning to shape words before abandoning them, compressing into a tight line below empty, shocked eyes. Her composure was hanging by a thread.
“I shouldn’t have asked him,” Talon said at last.
This seemed to jolt her awake. “I asked you to,” she said tonelessly. She turned her face away and leaned her head against the wall. “I had to know.”
A fact he understood. Why, after all, had he gone out of his way to make Soras say the truth? It was unbelievable, and therefore he had to hear it. He wished he had not.
“Tera.” Her name dropped between them and she did not look over. “Talk to me.”
“Why?” Her gaze met his, eyes narrowed. She looked at him like he was insane.
“Because saying things out loud makes them real.”
She swallowed hard. He knew the words that lay in her mouth: I don’t want it to be real.
“When it’s not real,” Talon said, “it’s a shadow. It grows beyond itself. Making it real gives it a shape.”
She tilted her head to the side, curiosity wiping away the rest of it. “You didn’t learn that on your own,” she guessed.
“No. I had to learn it from the other Dragons.” He found himself confiding things in her that he had never told anyone for fear of what they might think. Those first years in command, not knowing what the others were going through. “I didn’t realize the toll combat takes on some people.” He looked up to see her watching him, very still. “I’ve never regretted things as much as the rest of them.”
“There’s nothing….” I regret. But her voice broke on the words.
“It’s not just regrets,” Talon said quietly. “We’ve seen some things no one should see, you and I. We’ve failed sometimes—or I have.”
“I’ve failed.”
He waited for more, but it was not forthcoming. “Do you want to be alone?”
“I … don’t know.” Her hands clenched and she took a deep breath. She was choosing her words very carefully. “I do have regrets,” she said suddenly. “I keep thinking back to all the moments when I saw him hiding things from me and I didn’t press him on it. I knew I didn’t believe the same things he did and I didn’t question. When he said that sometimes only violence could solve things….”
“You still believe it.”
“Yes,” she said fiercely. Her eyes locked on his. “I’ve seen people who could be stopped no other way. I’ve done things other people were too afraid to do, and I’d do them again.”
“I know.” It was no hollow platitude. Who knew that better than he did? “And you did it alone.”
“Don’t you ever wish you worked alone?” she asked him. “No one to hold you back, nothing to get in your way? Just you, doing everything you could—always reaching for more?”
His eyes drifted closed on a wash of something that felt uncomfortably like desire. He did want that; so much so, sometimes, that it made his breath come short. He considered his answer for a moment.
“Other people aren’t just a liability,” he said finally. “I’ve had to learn that being a Dragon means not being the best. To have them here … I see Loki, with all that speed, I see Ters
i, who could make a fortune hacking like that. All of them are better than me in some way, and none of us let it stop us from trying to be the best at everything. That’s what we do. It’s what we are. On my own…” He tried to find the words. “Once you stop training like a Dragon, you die. The people that were Dragons and left—they’re nothing. They get twisted, thinking what they were born with is enough. I’m terrified of becoming that, of letting myself think that I might already be the best at anything.”
“You’re good at leading them,” she said quietly. “You know there’s no one they’d rather follow.”
“I’m leading them to their deaths.” The words spilled out and something twisted so sharply in his chest that he looked down to see if there was a wound. “I’m going to get them killed. If it was just me….”
“They’re here because they want to be.”
“There here because I asked it of them!”
“For the same reason you asked everything else. This man—” It seemed to dawn on her what she was saying and she looked away.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again, because there was nothing else to say.
“I never expected to hear him say it,” she said finally. Then, stronger, her voice rising on conviction: “I never wanted it to be real.”
He took a seat on the floor at last, leaning up against the side wall and watching her. Her fingers didn’t stop moving as she looked into the middle distance. She was far away from here, lost in memories of her childhood, trying to make it add up, and that had been difficult enough for Talon.
“He loves you,” Talon told her before he thought to stop himself.
He’d offered it up to try to soothe the sting, but the quick turn of her head told him that this was the worst thing he could have said. He remembered the silence, too long, while Aleksandr tried to answer Tera’s question.
Aleksandr loved her, of that Talon had no doubt. No one who heard the fear and fury in his voice could think otherwise. But what did it matter to hear that her father loved her, when her own morality was what had driven a wedge between the two of them?
