Traitors

by Bella Forrest

  Lorela instantly brightened at the news. “You’re marrying her?”

  “Yes, he is,” I interjected, moving toward the bed. “The wedding is set for four days from now, at sunset, at the Decorum Chapel.”

  “A beautiful location for a beautiful couple!” she cried.

  “Why don’t you tell her some more about it, Navan,” I urged, knowing it would help improve her health and hopefully the tension between them. I had no warm feelings toward Lorela, but I didn’t want them to keep hurling insults at each other.

  “Yes, do tell me more!” she pleaded, the twisted changeling replaced with a much calmer woman. “I will endeavor to be better in time for the ceremony; you can be sure of that!”

  Navan rolled his eyes, refusing to move from his spot by the window. “I don’t know any more than you do. Seraphina’s parents are planning everything. I just have to show up.”

  Lorela’s eyes narrowed. “I wish you didn’t look like a sad vagrant who’s just come back from doing hard time in a Carokian mine! Why is your back all lumpy? What’s the matter with you?”

  “I injured a wing in battle. It’s nothing.”

  “No, not your beautiful wings!” she gasped, aghast. “You should have taken better care of them!”

  “I didn’t have much choice, Mother. There’s a war going on, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he grumbled.

  “A man of your status shouldn’t be getting involved in such things—you’re an Explorer, not a soldier. Fighting on a battlefield is beneath you, regardless of which side you were fighting for!” she snapped. “Idraxes do not sink to such lowly occupations unless they are in the elite corps!”

  Navan scowled. “Kaido is an infantry soldier!”

  “Yes, but Kaido is… Kaido doesn’t count. He’s not a proper Idrax.”

  It broke my heart to hear her say that. With his relentless admiration for her, I’d hoped Lorela might have been his one ally in that house, but it appeared I was wrong. She didn’t care about him any more than the others did. And still, even if she said those awful things to his face, which she probably had, he would continue to adore her, feeling as though he owed her something just because she hadn’t killed him as a child. Any pity I’d had for Lorela died in that moment.

  “You want to know what you did wrong as a mother?” Navan said quietly, his voice raw with emotion. “You didn’t stand up for the ones who needed you.”

  I didn’t know if he just meant Naya, or if he was finally including Kaido in the mix. Either way, tears sprang to my eyes as I watched him walk across the room and out the door. I followed him into the hallway, pulling him into a doorway so I could put my arms around his waist and look up into his eyes, without anyone seeing.

  “I’m sure your mom didn’t mean that about your wings. She was probably just worried about you getting killed,” I said, wanting to comfort him despite my personal hatred toward Lorela.

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t care about anything but reputation. If she knew what had happened to Jareth, you’d see her reaching for another bottle of tonic before you could finish the sentence.”

  “Is that why you didn’t tell her?” I’d thought it a little weird that he hadn’t used Jareth’s arrest against his mother, who’d been out cold after her near-smothering and was still oblivious to the fact.

  “I didn’t want her wailing about how much of a victim she is.” He sighed. “My parents are selfish creatures. They’ll never change.”

  “I guess visiting the prison is out of the question, then?” I joked.

  Navan snorted. “I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He’s made his own deceitful bed. Now he can lie in it.”

  A siren blared, startling us both. I peered out of the doorframe to see a cluster of medical personnel, dressed in the same black uniform, burst through the double doors nearby. They stampeded through the hallway toward a room at the end, where a single red light was flashing above the door. They’d just hurtled past us when Mort stumbled out of the room in question, in the guise of Doctor Ulani, his hands covered in Vysanthean blood.

  “Oh, God!” I gasped, clutching Navan’s arm.

  “What happened, Doctor?” I heard one of the medical staff ask.

  “Well, you’ll never believe it, but the poor bastard had a seizure. It forced him up out of his bed, and he fell, chest first, onto the vascular needle I’d been preparing to relieve the pressure in his valves,” Mort said. “I tried to stop him, but there was nothing I could do—he was too strong for me!”

  He caught sight of us and grimaced, waiting until the staff had sprinted into the room before sneaking up the hallway toward us.

  “People might actually die because of you, Mort!” I whispered. “You’re in way over your head here.”

  “Eh, get down off your rainbow griffon, Miss Perfect. I’ll have you know I’ve delegated the truly sick to my assistants and the other doctors, while I get the easy cases,” he explained proudly. “I just didn’t expect sticking a needle the size of a chopstick into someone’s heart to be hard. There really is blood everywhere. I’ve never seen anything spray so far or so fast in my entire life!” He grinned, waggling his dripping hands, as if to prove a point.

  “Why didn’t you get someone to help?” I hissed, incredulous.

  He shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t think it would be hard. Ah, well, you live and you learn.”

  “That poor guy might not!”

  Mort laughed, his cheery demeanor fading as he set eyes on Navan. “Well, if it isn’t Captain Abandonment! How are you, bloodsucker? Finally decided to make an appearance, did we?” he mused. “I see the landmine didn’t get you—more’s the pity.”

  “You must be the oh-so-unhelpful voice on the comm device,” Navan retorted. “Not once did this guy tell me how you were, though I must have asked about a million times.”

  “You didn’t care! You left her all alone. But I didn’t abandon her, did I, sweet cheeks?” Mort wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Sweet cheeks?” Navan scowled. “I’ll sweet cheeks you in a second, skinbag!”

  “Hey, I’m not the one in the wrong here, grayskin. I didn’t leave your precious lover to a bunch of pumped-up, fang-mouthed enslavers!”

  Navan rolled his eyes. “Enslavers? One time, skinbag! We forced you to take us to the rebel base one time!”

  “And have I heard a sorry? I don’t think I have.”

  “That’s because you deserved what you got. Your people are a bunch of untrustworthy leeches, always clinging to a superior species to get yourselves noticed,” Navan shot back. “Why don’t you go back to Mallarot, and Malla-rot in hell!”

  “Oh, very clever, Mister Wordplay,” Mort taunted. “And who’re you calling a superior species? Coldbloods? Don’t make me laugh. You all would have died out centuries ago if you hadn’t gone around stealing everyone else’s things. Vysantheans are just space pirates in nicer clothes!”

  “Says the one who steals other people’s identities!” Navan hissed.

  Mort snorted. “Pipe down, Captain High And Mighty!”

  I was almost too amused to stop them, but I had to step in if we were ever going to get anything done.

  “If you two don’t stop, you’re going to start drawing unwanted attention,” I snapped. “So I suggest you both shake hands and get over it. We’re in this together now, whether you like it or not.”

  Mort wiped his palms quickly on the clothes he was wearing, removing most of the blood. They looked at each other sourly, before shooting out their hands as if they were in a Wild West standoff, both desperate to be the first one to make the move. I stifled an exasperated sigh as they gripped one another’s hands and shook firmly, neither of them wanting to be the one to break.

  “Enough!” I barked, forcing them to let go. “Mort, we’ve got a task for you, if you’re up for a challenge.”

  He eyed me curiously. “Is this part of our deal?”

  “It is. It might just be our way out.” It wasn’t entir
ely the truth, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “In that case, what’s the order of the day, princess?” he asked, grinning.

  I smiled back, feeling a bristle of excitement. “Do you have access to the palace mailroom?”

  “You know me. I can wriggle my way into just about anywhere… if you catch my meaning.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me, only stopping when Navan shoved him in the ribs.

  “I think that means yes, he can get into the palace mailroom,” Navan said coldly, flashing Mort a warning look.

  “Would you be able to send a large package from the mailroom without it being processed through the machines?” I continued. “And, for the love of God, please don’t make any large package jokes—it’s too obvious, and, frankly, it’s beneath you, Mort.”

  “I know what I’d like beneath me.” He chuckled, getting another shove in the ribs. “But yes, I think I can make that work. I know my way around a mailroom. I bet you do too, Riley, am I right? See, bloodsucker, I can do wordplay too.” He grinned triumphantly.

  Even I had to smirk at that one. “Focus, Mort.”

  “I can do it, but who’s the package for?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Let me guess… The Fed? Your human buddies? The Darians? The Sonorans? Orion—is it Pandora’s head in a box?”

  I pulled a face. “That’s disgusting, Mort.”

  “What? It’s a valid guess!”

  “I’m not telling you where the package is going. It’s no slight on you, but you don’t need to know,” I insisted.

  He gave an accepting shrug. “Hey, what can I say? You’re smart not to fully trust me. I know me, and I wouldn’t fully trust myself.”

  “We also need some help finding a contact in the darkstar market,” Navan added.

  I glanced at him in surprise. I’d never heard him mention the darkstar market before. In fact, the only time I’d ever heard about the darkstar market was when that three-eyed guy mentioned it to his crew of scavengers, back at Tristitia Lake. Judging by the sound of it, and what those scavengers had been loading onto their ship, I guessed it was some sort of black market. Maybe Navan had an idea for what we could send the Titans. After all, although I’d been planning the route to get the package out of Vysanthe, I’d had no clue what we were going to put in it.

  “Ah, my second home,” Mort said with a smirk. “I’ll let you borrow my code, since I’m such a nice guy. And please, if you happen upon the right part of the market, give my warmest regards to Rosita at The Legless Merman.”

  With the code safely in our grasp, and the security of having an inside man in the palace mailroom, we made our way back to Sarrask’s cottage, leaving Mort to his medical misconduct.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Everyone seemed to have questions for us when we returned to Sarrask’s cottage that evening. I answered the onslaught as best I could, but it quickly got to the point where my nerves couldn’t take it anymore. Ronad still couldn’t wrap his head around it, and I didn’t want to hear him say how strong I was being one more time. The truth was, I didn’t feel very strong at all. Although I was trying my best to put on a brave face, it was getting harder by the hour, especially now that everything was set in motion. There was a date and a venue, and it was starting to feel very real.

  A storm was brewing, and the clouds were settling on our shoulders. Navan wasn’t dealing with it particularly well either, but neither of us could bring ourselves to discuss it with each other. It was awful—he was the one person I wanted to talk to, to release all of my fears and doubts, but he was the one person I had to keep it from. He already felt badly enough, and I didn’t want to add to it.

  I desperately wanted to speak to my friends, knowing they’d be able to talk me down off my mental ledge, but Ronad had been trying all afternoon, and the long-range comms were still down. All I wanted to do was hear Angie’s voice telling me to woman the hell up, and Lauren coming in with the voice of reason, giving me every single explanation as to why all of this was going to be okay. Without my girls, I felt completely alone.

  Giving in, I sought refuge in Kaido’s newly set up lab, which had once been Sarrask’s spare room. The bed had been turned on its side, freeing up more space, and every single surface had a tank on it, with a plant inside. I sat quietly in the corner, sinking into a deep, squishy armchair, while Kaido busied himself making sure his plants were okay. We didn’t speak much, which suited me just fine. More to the point, he didn’t ask about the wedding. It wasn’t something that interested him; he was just happy to be around his plants, and so was I. There was something oddly peaceful about the steady glow of them.

  My gaze drifted toward the hypnotic pulse of a bulbous shrub, the light drawing me into a strange trance. It was the last thing I remembered seeing before sleep took me. After all, it had been a really long day.

  I awoke, disoriented. The room was dim, but I didn’t know if that meant it was still evening or not. Kaido had put blackout blinds across the windows, to nurture his plants, so there was no way of knowing what time of day it was.

  As I sat up, I realized someone had tucked a blanket around me and put a pillow under my head. Kaido was nowhere to be seen, but there was a cot set up on the floor at the far side of the room, and the sheets were neatly made.

  Rubbing my eyes, I headed down the staircase to the kitchen. As soon as I saw the sunlight streaming in through the windows, I knew it was morning. I’d slept for hours, but I didn’t feel any better because of it. My dreams had been haunted with visions of a girl in a dress standing beside an altar, with Navan standing in front of her. It felt like it might be me, until the last moment, when the veil was lifted, and another woman stood in my place. Sometimes that woman was Seraphina. Sometimes it was Gianne; sometimes it was Brisha. Once, it had even been Orion, but that nightmare was best left forgotten.

  “Kaido, you didn’t experiment on me in my sleep, did you?” I asked, blinking into the fierce light. He was flitting around the kitchen, decanting a five-liter canister of lurid yellow liquid into smaller bottles.

  “I would never experiment without consent, Riley,” he replied, surprised.

  I smiled. “No, of course you wouldn’t.”

  “Is everything okay?” Navan asked, appearing in the doorframe of the living room.

  I walked up to him and put my arms around his waist, snuggling into him. “I’m just a bit worn out,” I admitted. “Why didn’t you come and wake me?”

  “Kaido said you were in the middle of a deep slumber, and that if I woke you, I risked doing permanent damage to your frontal cortex,” he said with a chuckle. “I figured it was best to let you sleep, after… everything.”

  “Don’t let me sleep alone tonight,” I murmured, hugging him tighter. “I don’t want to spend another night without you.”

  “I promise. Even if waking you will set your whole brain on fire, and you’re tucked up in that janky old armchair of Sarrask’s, I will snuggle in right next to you.” He lifted my chin and kissed me tenderly, his smile moving against my mouth, coaxing a mirrored smile out of me, too.

  Kaido tapped Navan on the shoulder. “You really shouldn’t do that in the kitchen. It isn’t hygienic.”

  A laugh bubbled up inside me as I clung to Navan’s waist, breaking the kiss and staring up into his eyes. “Thanks, Kaido, we’ll bear that in mind,” I said, still giggling. It was nice to see a smile on Navan’s face, too, as he turned to his brother.

  “If you’re not careful, I’ll come upstairs and smooch every single one of your beloved plants,” he teased.

  Kaido stared at him in shock. “You wouldn’t.”

  “If you don’t let me kiss my girlfriend in peace, I absolutely will.”

  Kaido gathered up his vials of lurid yellow liquid and hurried upstairs, casting a horrified look over his shoulder. As soon as he disappeared, Navan burst out laughing. I knew what he’d said had come from a playful place, unlike Sarrask’s perpetual disdain for his differently wired brother.

>   “I love you,” I murmured.

  He grinned. “I love you more.”

  After today, there would be three more days until the wedding, but I was determined not to let it get to me. I wouldn’t allow jealousy to drive a wedge between us, and I wouldn’t let him fall into a pit of guilt and despair. We were doing a good deed, for all the right reasons; that was all we had to remember.

  “So, where is this darkstar market you were talking about?” I asked, nuzzling into his chest. “Now that we have the code to get in, do you want to go today and pick up something for the Titans? What did you have in mind?”

  He laughed. “The darkstar market isn’t a place. It’s an online location in the darkstar network. It’s all digital,” he explained. “People post items from all over the universe, and anonymous bidders vie for what they want.”

  “So kind of like Earth’s dark web?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Navan replied, “but bidders can talk to each other, too, through a chat system. You don’t see the person’s face, but you can hear what they’ve got to say. Usually, you don’t want to hear a word that comes out of their mouths.”

  I frowned. “Do you go on there a lot?”

  “I’ve only looked at it once, when Bashrik was searching for something a few years back.” His cheeks reddened.

  “Not Rosita at The Legless Merman?” I gasped.

  “Not quite, but I think it might have been something similar.” He grinned sheepishly.

  I grimaced. “I guess teenage boys are the same wherever you are in the universe.”

  “Bashrik’s shady endeavors aside, I thought we could browse what’s for sale and see if we can find anything to entice the Titans into alliance negotiations,” he said grimly. “If anywhere has something they’ll like, it’s the darkstar market.”

  “Sounds… intriguing,” I said, as we sat down at the kitchen table.

  The black box device that Ronad had been using to try and contact the others was sitting in the center, where he’d left it. Navan reached for it and flipped up the screen, before delving into the darkstar network. He clicked through file after file. A dialogue box popped up, and Navan typed in the access code Mort had given us.