by Lili Zander
My heartbeat slowly returns to normal.
Ragnar stood up for me.
“Levitan wouldn’t have just taken people from Frostbloom,” Ragnar continues. “There could be tens of thousands of missing humans. That’s our biggest priority at the moment. Zeke, Tomas, I want you both to scour through records. Look at ShaydeNet. Cross-reference that with census information. Do whatever it takes to get me a list of missing people.”
He turns to Mazer. “Maze, Nero, go door to door. Levitan is holding his prisoners somewhere. Let's work that angle.”
His gaze slides to Ivar Karling. “Dr. Karling, you and your team have my full confidence. Whatever resources you need are yours. We need a vaccine.”
“Yes, Prince Ragnar.”
Tomas clears his throat. “I have a thought. Marya Revit. She destroyed Levitan's lab on Boarus 4. If we can find her, she might know something useful. Maybe she'll talk to us. Maybe she'll cooperate.”
Saber’s face looks like it could be carved from a block of stone. “No,” he says flatly. “Marya was going to take Raven to Levitan, who would have tortured her, who would have caged her. The assassin does not earn our forgiveness.”
Ragnar absorbs the look at Saber’s face. “Let's table that for the moment. Saber, you know Harek as well as I do. I’ll focus on tracking him down, but I need you to figure out what his Plan B is. Also, I'm putting you in charge of evacuating Fateh.” He looks around the room. “News of the virus is confidential. We all need to act like nothing’s the matter, because the consequences of this becoming public could be ugly. Thank you for your help.”
The meeting breaks up. Astrid gets to her feet and approaches Ragnar with a glint in her eyes. “There is one more thing,” she says. “The ball tomorrow night.”
“What ball?”
Mazer winks at the Empress. “I told you he’d pretend like he has no idea what you’re talking about.”
She grins. “You were right, Maze. Ragnar, Family Nedwa is throwing a coronation ball. Kaleb Nedwa sits on the Council.”
“I don’t care,” Ragnar replies. “I have other things to do.”
She gives him an exasperated look. “Oh no, you're not getting out of this. You're in the capital, you’ve been spotted, and the tabloids are already talking about it. You said it yourself: we need to pretend that everything is normal. News of Gerra Clay's death is going to break soon. If you don't show up at the ball, people will speculate that there's a rift between us. This is not a problem we need right now.”
Ragnar exhales in frustration. “Fine,” he snaps. “I'll be there.”
“Excellent.” She turns to me. “Raven, you’ll need a dress. I’ll send my personal tailor around tomorrow morning to take your measurements.”
Wait, what? Why do I have to go to a ball?
I don't have time to respond to Astrid, because she's already turning away to say something to Saber. Ragnar catches my eye and grins. “Welcome to Starra,” he says dryly. “Your first introduction to Shayde society will be tomorrow. I hope you’re ready.”
10
Zeke
I didn't get a chance to talk to Nero earlier, so I find him after the briefing. “How are you doing?”
I'm worried about Nero. He loves his mother very much. What happened to her will haunt him his entire life. Only a few weeks ago, we'd run into Hiram Gratvar and his crew, and now this. Nero can't seem to catch a break.
He doesn't pretend that he doesn't know what I'm talking about. “I'm trying not to think about it.” His jaw tightens. “There's no difference between the slavers snatching people from Merin, and Harek Levitan snatching people from the Deeps. One set was meant to be slaves, the others, weapons of destruction. Both men have the same callous indifference to anything other than their own gain.”
He balls his hands into fists. “I don't know who that woman was, but she had a life, and Levitan snatched her from the Deeps and injected her with a virus and held her somewhere against her will until it was time to deploy her.”
“Harek Levitan doesn’t care about the lives he destroys.” Ragnar and Saber tell me they knew a different Levitan. Someone who cared about the Empire, someone who taught them everything they knew, someone who acted like a mentor, and in Ragnar’s case, almost as a surrogate parent. They hide their distress at his transformation into a sociopath, but it’s there.
I’ve never known the good version of Levitan. I can’t grieve along with them. All I feel is powerful, undiluted rage.
And soul-crushing fear.
So many lives hang in the balance, and the task we’ve been given—to find the missing women—seems so impossible. Nobody in the Deeps trusts the authorities. Census records are routinely dodged. ShaydeNet has flaws; I’ve spent my life exploiting those flaws to my gain. There is almost no way of determining how many people Levitan took, and there is almost no way of knowing when and where he's going to unleash the ticking time bombs that he's created.
In the Army, you learn to set aside your overwhelming fear. You bury your panic, your grief, and your sorrow, and you act, because people depend on you, and you don't have time to fall apart. I’ve done it countless times.
This time, it’s different, and I know why.
Raven.
This time, it isn’t abstract. This time, it’s more real than it’s ever been. Raven will die if I fail.
I yank my mind back from the precipice of terror. “There’s a small part of me that wants to tear off to Fateh,” Nero is saying. “But I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here, and I'm going to do whatever the fuck it takes to thwart the General's plans.”
Nero adores his mother. He would do anything for her. The fact that he's here, instead of en-route to her remote colony? It's a measure of exactly how much is at stake.
Back on Merin, Ragnar had called this a fight for the soul of the Shayde Empire. I had thought of it as a catchy phrase, something that would sound good on the holo-networks. Something that Astrid’s speechwriters could use the next time she had to address the Empire.
It's not a catchphrase. This is the war of our lives. This is not about Harek Levitan’s insane bid for power. It is not about the virus; it is not even about dying vampires.
This is about whether, when people want to tear us apart, we can stay together. Whether, when the times are tough, we can truly stand for what we believe in.
Astrid believes, as Ragnar does, as Saber and Nero and I do, that humans have been treated shamefully in the Shayde Empire. Unlike many, she isn’t giving lip service to the concept of equal rights. She wants to put humans on the Ruling Council. She wants to appoint human overlords to the colonies. She wants to fundamentally transform our society.
Levitan knows that. The virus is an existential threat, but it is also a test. Levitan wants Astrid to pick a side, vampire or human.
That's not what we’re going to do. We’re not going to take sides. Ragnar was right. This is a battle for the soul of the Shayde.
“Your mother would be very proud of you,” I tell Nero.
Nero looks up. “I haven't realized all that stuff about your parents. I knew you couldn't go back to Zola Prime, but I hadn’t known why.” He hesitates, and then plunges forward, because this is Nero, and that's what he does. “Have you talked to them since you left? Do they know who you are, and who you’ve become? Captain of the Imperial Army, hacker extraordinaire, and trusted friend?”
“When I left, they struck my name from the rolls of the family. My father told me that he would kill me with his own hands if I were to ever set foot on Zola Prime again. My mother said that she wished I'd never been born.”
It's an old hurt, one that no longer has the power to inflict pain. “I have family, Nero. I have Saber, and you, and Raven. It is not the family of my birth, but it’s more. It's the family of my choice.”
Nero is at a rare loss for words. “You're right,” he says at last. “Screw them. They're fucking idiots.”
“My father went to priso
n, and my mother is bitter and angry that I put him there, and there's no coming back from that.” I take a deep breath. “But there are others, the next generation of Family Leyva. My cousins Anton and Sergei were eleven and thirteen when I left. Leaving them behind was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.”
They say that when you are confronted with imminent death, your life flashes before your eyes. I have faced death many times, and it has never happened. Yet I’m thinking of my cousins today, and I haven’t thought about Family Leyva in years.
“Why didn’t you take them? Saber would have supported you if that’s what you wanted.”
“They loved their parents. They believed in the family. If I’d taken them, it would have been against their will.” I take a deep breath. “I had to let them make their own choices.”
“But now?” Nero prompts.
But now, things feel different. “I don’t know if I made the right decision nine years ago. I wish I could go back and make sure they're okay. Do for them what Saber did for me, offer them a helping hand if they need it, and a way out of Zola Prime, if that's what they want.”
Nero pats my shoulder. “It's not too late,” he says. “I mean, we got into Banrilia. Compared to that, Zola Prime will be a walk in the park. Once we’ve taken care of Levitan, if you want to get your cousins out, then that's what we'll do. I'm with you. You can count on me.”
We often tease Nero that he's reckless. That he acts before he thinks, that he shoots first and asks questions later.
But I've got to hand it to him. The problem in front of us seems overwhelming, but Nero has perfect confidence that we’re going to solve it. He believes that there will be a future.
His optimism is infectious. I feel the gray cloud over me lift. “Thank you, Nero,” I tell him. I thought I was comforting him, but—surprise!—it turns out I needed a shot of his boundless optimism. “You're right. When this is done, a return visit to Zola Prime is exactly what I need.”
11
Raven
Dr. Karling ambushes me after the meeting. “I’m sorry about what I said,” he says. “I’m a scientist. My job is to stop disease, and there’s a tester available. To me, deploying it was the obvious course of action. I wasn’t thinking about the impact on your life.”
No, he wasn’t thinking at all.
He’s still afraid of the virus in my blood. He doesn’t extend his hand to me, even though he knows perfectly well that touching me won’t harm him.
Still, it’s an apology, one he didn’t have to offer, and we are on the same side, after all. “You were just doing your job.”
He nods. “Exactly. Speaking of which, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take some additional samples of your blood.”
“Of course. Whatever you need. Do you have syringes here?”
He flinches visibly. I guess he needs the full biohazard suit. “Let’s do it in the lab, where it’s safe. I’m headed back there now if you want to come with me?”
Nero catches the last bit and scowls. “I have to chat with Mazer, but I’ll bring Raven to the lab later,” he says, walking over to us and placing a possessive arm around my waist.
Dr. Karling looks unhappy. “It’s quite urgent.”
Nero’s not a fan of Dr. Karling. I’m not either, but the scientist is unthinking, not malicious. “Go with Mazer,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”
His frown deepens. Before he can protest, I feel someone walk up to us, and a hand rests on my elbow. “I’ll take Raven,” Ragnar says, and my pulse starts to race in anticipation. He smiles, wolfish and predatory. “She’ll be quite safe with me.”
A pint of blood later, I’m back in a skimmer with Ragnar. If there are bodyguards following us, they stay discreetly out of sight. It’s just the two of us in the enclosed vehicle.
“Alone at last.” Ragnar places his hand on the back of my neck, and a shiver runs through me. Instinctive fear wars with heated desire.
I haven’t been alone with Ragnar, not since Levitan threatened Astrid. Sexual tension fills the space between us. I’m painfully aware of this man. I’m painfully aware that I told him I’d sleep with him if he killed Gerra Clay.
He’d done his part; he killed Gerra Clay. Ragnar hasn’t collected on his debt. The last time it had come up, he’d told me he wasn’t going to hold me to my end of the deal. He was letting me off the hook.
I’m not sure I want to be let off the hook.
“Why did you defend me to Empress Astrid?” I blurt out.
He gives me a sidelong look. “Is that what you think I did? I merely agreed with your point of view.”
“I spoke out of turn.”
The corner of his lip lifts in a smile. My insides clench. This man is dangerous, lethal, and ruthless, and every time he looks at me, I forget all of that. It’s primal. Ragnar is the apex predator, and I crave him. “Do you really regret speaking up?” he asks. “You shouldn’t. You were at the table, seated to Saber’s right. I warned you on Antaras Seven. Saber has claimed you in front of Astrid. He will publicly claim you at the Family Nedwa ball. You have power now, Raven. Use it.”
My throat starts to close in panic. “I’m not ready.”
“That’s irrelevant. You’re a human in a position of power. You’re an anomaly. You will be watched, and you will be tested.” He glances at me, and his expression softens. “Saber, Nero, and Zeke love you very much. They will shield you from the worst of it until you are ready.” A skimmer comes to a dead stop in front of him, and he mutters a curse and turns our vehicle sharply to the right to avoid a collision. “Let Astrid help too. She is an expert at Starra politics, is extremely good at reading people, and has excellent instincts for trouble.”
“I don’t think the Empress likes me. After my outburst, I’m surprised she didn’t order me to her dungeons.” Another line of skimmers blocks the way ahead. “Why is there so much traffic?”
“That’s Starra for you.” His fingers tap the controls impatiently, but he slows down. Two skimmers instantly pull up next to us. From Ragnar’s non-reaction, I’m guessing these are his bodyguards. “Did you enjoy Mirage?” His eyes twinkle. “Or did it shock you?”
Color rises to my cheeks. I’d been ready to jump Nero on the dance floor. The pulsing music, the throbbing sexual energy in the air, the intense potency of the Galaxy Sandblaster… It had all combined to shred the last of my inhibitions. “Both.”
Ragnar’s hand is still on my neck. His thumb still strokes me. Goosebumps rise on my skin and need shivers through my body. Make a move, Ragnar.
He’s a vampire. A predator. He can smell my arousal. This close to me, he can probably hear my heart hammering in my chest. His nostrils flare, and his eyes search my face, reaching into my thoughts, taking the full measure of my desire. “We never did have our dinner, little bird.”
“No,” I whisper. “We never did.”
“How about now?”
“Now?” Sparkling repartee, this is not.
“Why not?” The traffic in front of us clears, and the skimmers flanking us shoot ahead. “No time like the present. Unless you aren’t hungry?”
“I’m famished,” I admit. “Nero and I were supposed to eat after the club.” Needless to say, that hadn’t happened. “I don't even know what time it is. The light doesn’t help.”
The dome around Starra filters out sunlight, muting the effect of the slumber on the vampires and ensuring that they can be out whenever they want. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s day or night. The residents of Starra don’t appear to sleep, ever. There are just as many skimmers on the streets now as there were six hours ago when we landed.
He chuckles. “Travel can be disorienting,” he says. “It’s one in the morning. This will be a very late dinner.”
If I decline, where will Ragnar go? He found a dead body in his bedroom today, a woman that he obviously cared for. He hides it well, but he’s got to be affected by her death. It’s got to have an impact.
&n
bsp; Ragnar is in charge. He can’t fall to pieces. He needs to be strong. He needs to project an air of confidence. And he does. Day after day, he shoulders the burdens of the Empire, and he makes it look effortless.
He killed Gerra Clay because I asked him to. He stood up for me today. As infuriating and arrogant as he can be, he’s helped me and he’s protected me.
Who helps him? Who protects him? Who gives him a soft spot to land?
“Dinner sounds great. Could it be somewhere low-key?”
He gives me a slow, lazy smile, and my skin prickles with awareness. Anticipation zips through my blood. “I know just the place.”
We land on the roof of Central Tower. “Aren’t these Astrid’s quarters?”
He shakes his head. “We both have access to the rooftop garden. Don’t worry, she’s not at home. She’s at Mazer’s place.”
My mouth falls open. “Your Chief of Staff?”
He gives me an amused look. “You didn’t notice?”
Mazer is a big, scarred vampire who looks like he’s been in more than his fair share of battles, and Astrid looks like a delicate princess. “I was a little too intimidated to pay much attention. They’re together?”
We get out of the skimmer. Ragnar takes my elbow again and steers me down a grassy path. “They keep it quiet,” he says as we walk. “It’s probably one of the better-kept secrets in Starra. Neither of them wants the paparazzi finding out.”
Why is he telling me then? “Why not?”
“Because it would paint a very large target on Mazer’s back.” His expression goes dark. “I thought Astrid was being ridiculous; Mazer is more than capable of taking care of himself. But maybe she’s onto something.”
He’s thinking of his dead lover again. I want to distract him. “When I first met you, I thought you were terrifyingly competent.” I flash him a teasing glance. “Now, I know the truth.”
We round the corner into a lush, green, verdant jungle of a garden. A large pond is to the right, fat red fish lazily swimming through the water. Tall, moss-covered trees are ahead, lacy ferns growing in the spaces between them. This isn’t the carefully-tended, immaculate garden of Level 1990. This is wild and untamed. Dangerous. Even the water looks like it’s lying in wait for an unsuspecting victim.
