by Aileen Erin
Where did we go from here?
That’s a question that I asked myself all the time, especially when things got really rough. It was the best way to start a plan. And a backup plan.
Things always changed, adjustments would have to be made, but how I planned never changed.
I am here.
Where should I go next? And after that? And after that?
That was exactly what I was going to do now.
But first, I was going to start with Lorne’s plan. Get inside, rest, eat, and wait for Audrey to arrive.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
AMIHANNA
I was exhausted, the pounding in my head was getting worse, and my legs felt too heavy for my body, but if I said any of that aloud, Lorne would lose it. Instead, I kept that to myself and steadily made my way through the twinkle-lit garden to the cottage.
Eshrin stood by the door, watching me carefully, and I wondered if he saw more than Lorne did. Or maybe he saw me differently. “There’s a living room off to the right with a comfortable couch. They’ll bring food in there. Rest.”
I nodded. “Thanks. I will.”
He pressed his fist to his heart.
I stepped through the doorway, and noticed a slightly rosey and woody scent in the air. The inside was rustic and felt old without being dirty, rusty, or rundown. There were knickknacks here and there, and a painting of a forest with little, large-eyed beings peeking around the trees but nothing made the cottage feel like I was stepping inside someone’s private home. Everything inside seemed to make it feel more homey and welcoming, even the scent.
The Yhona seemed to be a people of comfort. Not necessarily luxury but the type of comfort that soothed the soul like a solid hug from someone you loved. Except something about it felt a little fake.
No one had actually lived here and none of the things in the house really meant anything to anyone. It was all staged.
I shook my head. I was exhausted and finding hidden evils everywhere. I needed a nap and some food.
Just as Eshrin said, I spotted a living room to the right and veered that way. I’d look around the house later.
There were two steps leading down to the living room. The couch had too many pillows and patterns—geometric mixed with floral and two distinct color palettes that should’ve clashed but somehow didn’t. A low, wooden coffee table with a silver bowl full of dead dried things on it took up the center of the room. There was a lit fireplace to the right of the couch with two chairs on either side of it, and armchairs opposite and to the left of the couch. The walls were all built-in shelves—some of them held books, some knickknacks, and others were empty. It was odd, but what did I know about decorating a place like this.
I collapsed onto the couch and found it to be softer than a cloud. I picked up a green and blue round pillow, hugging it to my stomach. My eyes grew heavy and I knew I didn’t have time to sleep. Not yet.
The only way to stay awake was to start making a plan for what came next. “What did you learn tonight?” I asked as Lorne settled in the armchair next to me.
“I learned that SpaceTech has a number of weapons that we cannot yet detect.” Lorne scooted his chair just a little so that he could stare at me, and then propped his feet on the low coffee table. “They have already begun to infiltrate our cities, and in a matter of days to weeks, they could use these bioweapons—which this classifies as because lucole in this form is a toxin to the Aunare—to murder millions of Aunare in their hometowns.”
Okay. That sounded freaking horrible.
“There has to be something we can do to stop this. Like finding an antidote. That should be our priority. That and finding the spies.” I turned to Roan, who had settled into one of the armchairs across from me. Fynea stood beside him, reading something on her tablet. “I have no idea what time it is on Sel’Ani, but I need to talk to Captain ni Eneko and the men I’ve been training. They’re pretty good at spotting SpaceTech spies now, and they need to spread what I’ve taught them, concentrating on wherever SpaceTech might hit first.” I sighed. I knew where they’d gone first. “Send them to Sem’ansh, Hemt’alan, and Veyet.”
Lorne dropped his feet to the floor. “You’re right. I don’t know how they got ships to the surface of our colonies undetected, unless—” He huffed, and it wasn’t because he thought this was funny. “—the ships at the borders were a distraction.”
That’s exactly what they were. “They still have protection there, right? The ships my father sent.”
Lorne nodded. “Yes. Of course, but it won’t do them any good against this poison.” He looked at Fynea. “Message Rysden for me. Loop him in on everything so far, and tell him we’re working hard to find something to help Amihanna and the rest of the Aunare. I’ll call him when I can. Keep him up to date because Goddess knows I don’t have time to.”
“Of course, your majesty.” She settled down in the chair next to Roan and immediately started typing on her tablet.
“I’m on it, too.” Roan was already typing on his tablet. “It’s the middle of the night on Sel’Ani, but if my messages don’t wake ni Eneko, I’ll find someone to bang on his door until he answers.”
Good.
I turned to Lorne. “What do you want to do? Is staying here worth it? If our colonies are truly in danger, should we leave?”
Lorne put his feet back on the coffee table and leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling as he thought. I wanted to push him, but I also wanted his honest answer, even if that meant he needed to think about it for a bit.
“I wanted to leave tonight, but then the poor man died in the streets,” he said finally. He glanced at me, then there was anger in his eyes. “Now all I care about is finding the device that activated the lucole in your body and a sample of the poison. One day of searching might make the difference between neutralizing this bioweapon and millions of deaths. The first one being yours. So we stay. For one day. We can’t stay longer. Too much is happening, and I don’t like being away from the Aunare right now. It feels like we’re being baited here, and I don’t like that. Especially given what Cheztkena said.”
I didn’t like it either. Any of it. “One day,” I muttered. There was an unease growing in me.
He turned to me. “What?”
I shook my head, trying not to get overwhelmed. “It feels like we have a lot to achieve in one day, but I’m never one to back down from a challenge.” I tried to categorize every idea I had into two sections. Biological weapon or warfare strategy. We needed information on both of those things before we left here.
One day. It seemed like no time and too much time, but I didn’t have a better plan.
“Vyic doesn’t have a sample, but we need one.” Where, though? This was an alliance, but so far, it didn’t feel like any of the people here were actually our allies. “If the Yhona invited us here for this meeting as a ploy to get us away from Sel’Ani, then that would mean they were working with SpaceTech. Which means they could have one of the weapons. Where on Telnon would they keep—”
An alarm sounded and suddenly there were guards filling the room with us.
My gaze found Eshrin in the living room doorway. He made a signal.
Two signs.
Enemy. Approaching.
Someone from SpaceTech was here? Or someone else?
Ice it. I needed more information.
“Who?” The word was half out before I realized it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that we were here together—Lorne and I. And I had an activated biological weapon in my veins that could kill us both.
My first instinct was to tell Lorne to run, but he wouldn’t. Just like I knew I wouldn’t either. I couldn’t back down from a fight.
I rose—moving toward the doorway—and pulled my faksano from my pockets. Lorne did the same as he rose to stand beside me.
Because that was right. That was us.
We’d live or die together.
I flicked my wrists, lengt
hening my faksano and waited. Whoever was intruding on my planning session was going to find out what everyone else who’d gone against me knew.
I was damned hard to kill.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
AMIHANNA
There was a quiet pulsing in the room that seemed to scream a warning.
Here they come.
Here they come.
Here they come.
Guards stood between us and the door, the windows, any entrance.
It wasn’t until I heard the approaching ship that I really believed there was any danger. I knew that sound. I knew it well. I’d grown up hearing it. And most recently, I’d ridden in a ship that sounded just like that.
SpaceTech.
Lorne said something in Aunare, and a few of the guards cleared out, one of them typing on his wrist unit.
“Should we go out there? Blow it up?” I asked.
“Not until they exit the ship.”
My face should’ve shown exactly what I was thinking. Why the hell not?
“The second they leave the ship, we attack, but they haven’t landed, which means they’re not in our embassy territory yet.” Lorne glanced at me. “We should’ve snuck you out of here.”
“Too late now.” But I wouldn’t have left.
“No. It’s not too late.” Roan stepped toward me, gripping my arm. “Come on. We’re getting you out of here, and—”
“It’s too late,” I said slowly.
He knew me well enough to know when I wasn’t backing down. His fingers loosened their grip, and I pulled my arm free. “I’ll be fine. I can take one more hit, but then I’ll need to go in orbit for three days.”
“You say that like it’s okay, but that’s not okay.” Roan turned to Lorne. “Do something.”
“She’s not getting hit again,” Eshrin said as the guards filed in, forming a wall. “Anyone that comes inside is as good as dead.”
“Good,” Lorne said. “No mistakes.”
That was something I completely agreed with. We couldn’t afford any mistakes.
I desperately wanted to go outside and destroy the approaching ship because I could. I knew that I could, but I also knew that I shouldn’t.
Being a responsible leader right now could get us killed, but it was the right thing to do.
Eshrin turned to me and watched for a second. I wasn’t sure what had clued him in to the fact that I was ramping up to blow, but it didn’t take long for him to close the distance, retracting his faksano as he moved. Without saying anything, he pulled my bracelets from his pockets, efficiently placing them on my wrists.
Lorne muttered something softy to him in Aunare, and Eshrin gave him a small, short bow before silently taking his position again, faksano in his hands, ready to sacrifice his life for mine.
There was a series of hand signals among the guards, most of which moved too fast for me to follow. A quick glance at Lorne told me he had.
Ashino looked at him, and Lorne nodded.
What was happening? I hated not knowing. I needed to know what to prepare for.
Before I could ask, there was a blast and the door flew from the hinges.
Windows shattered.
Darkness plunged into the house, invading every corner.
The fight happened quickly. I moved to Roan and Fynea who were both standing beside the fire. They didn’t have weapons, although I wasn’t sure Fynea needed any. But I wasn’t letting Roan get hurt. I wouldn’t be able to live with that.
But I shouldn’t have worried. I wasn’t even going to break a sweat tonight.
I stood there watching a fight between SpaceTech and the royal guards, and not a one got through the line.
I knew my guards were good, but I didn’t realize that they were this good. It was still dark in the house, but my guards were glowing, giving me more than enough light to see by. I watched, waited, ready to defend myself or explode any device that might activate the lucole in my blood for a second time. But I didn’t need to. My guards moved like liquid fire flowing over their enemies and destroying everything in their path.
More men invaded, but our guards held a firm line.
It took minutes, and the fight was dying down. No more SpaceTech operatives showed up.
“Is that it?” Only five remained fighting against all of the guards. Eighteen on the ground.
One of Lorne’s guards signaled that there were no more coming from the ship.
Good.
One more hit the floor. Now only four were left fighting. Soon, there would be none left to fight.
Wait. That wasn’t right. Four and nineteen wasn’t the right number. We were missing one.
And then the last one walked through the door, a gun raised in his grip.
I pulled on my power, hoping that I could aim through my guards and hit this man before he could fire the weapon. I might not be able to hit something as small as his gun, but I could definitely hit the man.
But then he aimed, and I froze.
He pressed the gun an inch from the head of one of the four still fighting and fired.
Blood splattered the room as the bullet went through his brain.
He aimed again.
Bam.
Again.
Bam-bam.
All four shot within a heartbeat of each other.
He’d done it so quickly, so efficiently, that the fight was over before the first body he’d shot hit the ground.
My breath flew out of my lungs in one harsh rasp.
What the fuck?
Our guards had neutralized the SpaceTech officers stupid enough to enter our house, but I was pretty sure most of them were still breathing. Maybe they had some broken bones or a concussion, but I was pretty certain that most of the nineteen on the ground would live through the night.
The room was suddenly quiet again. The sound of the gunshots had frozen everyone in the room, not just me.
The man strode through the room like an angel of death. He pointed his gun at a fallen SpaceTech officer.
Bam.
Two more steps to aim at another. Bam.
A turn to get to one more. Bam.
He was going to murder every fallen SpaceTech goon that had entered the house.
No one was stopping him.
Why was no one stopping him?
Fuck that. I was stopping him.
Bam.
I pushed power to get in front of him before he could get off one more round. I dropped one of my faksano and put my hand over his, gripping it and moving the gun down and away from me. “Not one more gunshot or you die.” It’d been maybe two or three seconds since he’d entered the house, and he’d already killed so many.
There was a click. I’d felt his thumb move, and I knew he’d moved the safety in place.
“Give it to me.” My words were coated in ice as I stared him down.
I saw the debate in him while he decided what to do, but I would’ve fought him for the gun. He must’ve seen that in my eyes because he handed the gun over and raised his hands in the air. “That was the one weapon I brought in.”
“Good.” I passed it behind me, not caring who took it. “But you’ll have to excuse me if I have my head guard search you.” I took a step back and waved Eshrin forward.
Eshrin flicked his wrists as he moved toward me, retracting his faksano. He put them away, and then systematically started searching the man for weapons.
It only took a second, and then Eshrin stepped back from him. “No other weapons.”
“Thank you.” I focused on the man in front of me.
“You don’t want me to kill the people that came here to kill you?” He said it like I was the crazy one. Like I’d lost my mind.
I could feel Lorne standing behind me, but I couldn’t look away from this man. Not until he understood. “Not like this. Not while they’re down. This is cowardly. They made a grave error and they would’ve paid, but not like this.”
I studied the killer in front of me
. His hair was cut close to his scalp. He scanned the room, up down, left right. His shoulders were stiff as he turned and met my gaze. His eyes were a light stormy color—not quite blue, not quite gray—but there was a darkness inside him. I saw the absence of a soul in his eyes. There was death there, but not like in Vyic’s eyes. This man in front of me had seen too much, done too much, and lost track of what was good and what was evil. Everything was gray for him, and that was dangerous.
This man was dangerous.
Lorne stepped forward, putting away his faksano, resting his hand on my shoulder. “This is Caleb Brown. He’s been working with Declan for nine years, running the resistance inside SpaceTech.”
Okay. Now it was starting to make sense. If he’d been working both sides—SpaceTech and the resistance—for so long, everything would be gray to him. “You can’t kill everyone.”
“I have to kill everyone here. Especially now. They know for sure I’m a traitor. So, they either die or my part in the resistance dies.”
I suddenly saw it from his perspective and it sickened me. This was so messed up.
“If they live, they’ll know that I came here to give you some information and a warning. It’s my life or theirs. I handpicked this group to come here because they’ve raped, murdered, tortured and felt nothing about doing any of it. They deserve to be tortured awfully for the rest of their lives, but I can’t do that. I don’t have time for it. Instead, they’re my buffer. They deserve to die, and now their deaths will mean I can keep fighting for what’s right on Earth.”
I understood. I completely got his reasoning and why he was okay with murdering these men, but it was still murder. I wasn’t sure I could let him kill all the rest of the SpaceTech officers in front of me and still be who I was. It would cross a line that I never wanted to cross.
The SpaceTech officer on the ground rolled over, pulling out a device.
Caleb squatted down and slammed the man’s head into the ground, knocking him out. He pulled the device from the officer’s hands. It was a slim, small square, no bigger than the palm of my hand. It only had one round button on one side. Other than that, it was all black. No writing or words or way to identify it at all.
