Dragon's Honor

by Natalie Grey

  He’d been frowning, but on the last sentence, his face cleared. “That’s what I signed up for,” he pointed out.

  “It isn’t,” Nyx told him bluntly. “You signed up to be part of the Alliance, and for all I can say, you might wind up fighting them. I have no idea what this person can lob at us.”

  Loki gave her the courtesy of considering the question instead of bursting out with an answer again, and finally he said, “No, I think it is what I signed up for.” He met her eyes. “Doing the right thing because other people don’t.”

  Nyx watched him.

  “Talon—” he swallowed, his throat working on the name “—the Major knows about this?”

  Oh, honey. Nyx wanted to give him a hug. It was all there, in that one moment: the way his pupils dilated, the way he stumbled over Talon’s name.

  She had to give it to the kid, he had good taste.

  But he wasn’t going to want to talk about it. They didn’t know one another well enough yet. The kindest thing she could do would be to ignore it, and so she did. “Yes. He and I agreed on who we could trust to bring with us. You’re one of those people.”

  “Who else?” He looked at her.

  She listed the names, watching him, and he considered.

  “Because someone might report back to whoever it is?”

  She nodded.

  “Mars and Camorra,” he said suddenly. “The two that died before I was here. Was that why? Did this person ambush them or something?”

  She could sugarcoat it. But she wasn’t good at that. “No, kid.” Nyx tried to smile. “No. They died because they turned on Talon.”

  He absorbed this in silence. “No wonder he’s so quiet,” he said finally.

  “Talon’s not quiet.”

  “He talks,” Loki agreed, “but he’s quiet about what he’s thinking.” He considered. “I’m still in,” he said finally. “I’m not just going to run away now, when the going gets tough. I’m in.”

  Nyx reached out and clasped his hand. “I think we’re going to get along real well, kid.”

  “I hope so,” Loki said without pretense. “If we didn’t, I don’t think I’d wake up in the morning.”

  But he said it with a smile, and Nyx grinned back.

  “You’re not wrong. You and Aegis will leave the ship tomorrow at 0845. Go get him at 0800 if you haven’t seen him in the armory, and tell him Nyx says helios—he’ll listen. Go to the spaceport, docking bay 4a. Gear … but no red. Talk to no one else about it.”

  He nodded, and she left quickly. There wasn’t much time to prepare.

  She remembered the sight of his face when he’d said Talon’s name, and winced in sympathy. Poor kid. He’d get over it, though. For a moment she was curious. What would that kind of infatuation feel like? It had been so long since she’d wanted anyone—

  “Survive, Alvarez,” she muttered to herself. “Then think about dating.”

  Christian paced.

  The weapons had moved by now—they must have, they hadn’t shown up in Ellian’s buy-in—and still there was no word from the spaceport.

  A manual check revealed that someone had deactivated Christian’s alerts, and after a few minutes of swearing and throwing things, he’d calmed down enough to run the checks himself.

  Still nothing.

  He’d even read over the openly declared weapons manifests, trying to see if they were hiding in plain sight, and manually reviewed every ship passing even close to Ymir, just in case someone was suicidal enough to try to get pass the Warlord’s defense satellites. No one seemed to be.

  So where? Where were the weapons? He was missing something, and he couldn’t afford to. He had been lucky to get out of the first disaster with his head still on. Fail Ellian again, and he was a dead man.

  He ran through the ships again, shaking his head at the sight of the Niccolo on the manifests. Ellian indulged Aryn entirely too much, in Christian’s opinion, but a trip to Ymir was over the top, even for him.

  Not only that, the servants thought it was terribly romantic and tragic, Aryn going back to see her family after all this time, loving them so much that she would go into danger….

  Christian rolled his eyes. He’d never liked that woman, even if he was too smart to say as much to Ellian. He’d seen the parade of advisors who came and went, each telling Ellian honestly that he was too devoted to his wife. All of them were gone, and Aryn was still here. Christian wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  So, let her go to Ymir. Maybe he’d throw another woman into Ellian’s path while Aryn was gone. Yes, that was a good idea. He could already think of several society ladies, just off the top of his head, who would make a more suitable wife. Let Aryn go to Ymir.

  He stopped, looking up at the opposite wall.

  A ship going to Ymir.

  A ship Ellian would almost certainly not have run diagnostics on. That would have a standing arrangement for the guards at the spaceport to look the other way—

  His eyes closed. Was he sure? He had to be sure.

  But he was. It was the only thing that made any sense. There was a ship going to Ymir, and the weapons didn’t seem to be anywhere else. Hand trembling, he reached out to press the comm button for Ellian’s office.

  “Yes?” Ellian’s voice was harried.

  “Sir, I have something to show you.” Christian cleared his throat. “It’s important.”

  29

  “Are you sure about this?” Stefan was sitting propped up against the wall, his chest an abstract masterpiece of greens and purples.

  “Yes,” Arlon and Samara said in unison. They turned, uniforms on and adjusted, for Stefan to look them over.

  “You look fine,” Stefan said impatiently. “That’s not the problem with this.”

  “Stefan—”

  “No, you listen to me! You didn’t hear her.” He pushed himself up, and when Samara went to help him sit again, he batted her hand away angrily. “She’s fucking crazy, Sam. She’s crazy, and they’re all doing what she says. They’re afraid of her, you heard what they said.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No. If she’d had a chance to get at me, I would have cracked. This is too dangerous.”

  “You remember why she didn’t get at you?” Arlon asked.

  Stefan gave him an unpleasant look. “Because Samara did another stupid thing.”

  “Because the resistance is done being as cruel as the Warlord is,” Arlon said strongly. “Samara went in to get you. If something happens to us, do the same.”

  “And what happens when they figure out we’re weak like that?” Stefan demanded. “They’ll set traps for us, they’ll—”

  “They already do all of that,” Arlon argued.

  “Enough,” Samara said. Both of them stopped, looking at her. She had raised her voice. She looked at Stefan. “We’re doing this not because we’re ignoring the fact that it’s dangerous, but because it’s too dangerous not to take her down. You were right when you said she’s crazy, and she has people listening to her. The longer we give her to prepare, the longer she has to bring in more reinforcements than we could ever fight.”

  “We lost Jacinta.” Stefan hung his head. His voice was muffled. “We can’t lose you, too.”

  “You can,” Samara told him. “I promise you. If the worst happens, and Arlon and I are killed—the resistance won’t die.” She looked around at the people trying to pretend they weren’t listening. “You just have to hold out a couple more days. There are people coming from off-world to help us. Do what you have to do to protect each other. Keep the resistance alive. Hopefully, I will be back very soon with good news.”

  She left, with a gentle hug for Stefan and Arlon at her side, and when they arrived at the mouth of the tunnel, it was easy work to wait until the guards looked away and slip out onto the street, dressed in their borrowed uniforms.

  India walked along the thin strip of grass that lay between the wall of the second guard barracks, and the building its
elf. In the moonlight, it was slightly less depressing. She couldn’t see the sickly color of the grass or the dirt and grime that had accumulated on the walls over the years.

  The guards didn’t seem to care enough to keep this place clean.

  God, she hated it here. Every damned thing about the life she’d led up until now, she hated with a passion. Her father liked to claim that he hadn’t known what job he was taking when they were all brought to Ymir, but he’d chosen to become a mercenary. He’d known that they were bringing families.

  He’d volunteered India for this life, and she would never stop hating him for it. When she went to the city, she wouldn’t bring him with her—him, or her mother. Nell Quince should have talked some sense into her husband, as far as India was concerned. Let them rot in the life they had chosen.

  Would she consider marrying and having children after this? It was a thought, though she didn’t think much of her selection.

  There was another soldier walking toward her, rounding the corner at the edge of the building, walking fast with his head down.

  “Officer,” India said, and he looked up, surprised to see her there: a man with melting brown eyes and a young face.

  He ducked his head nervously. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “What are you doing away from your post?” She kept her voice hard and cold.

  “It’s my break, ma’am. I like to come out and walk. It keeps me sharp for the second half of my shift.”

  In the week or so she’d been here, she hadn’t ever seen him before. India frowned at him suspiciously.

  “Let me see your badge.”

  “Sure. I mean, yes, ma’am.” He walked toward her, haltingly, as he scrabbled around in his pockets, and he tripped over his own feet and sprawled in the dirt, the sound unnaturally loud in the stillness.

  “Oh, get up.” India did not offer him her hand. She watched, annoyed, as he pushed himself up and set about slapping his pants to get the dirt off them. “Why did they ever allow you into the guard?”

  “They didn’t,” he said, still slapping at his pants. He looked up and gave her a smile so sweet it took her breath away. She was still trying to make sense of the smile and the words when he added, “I just needed to make some noise so she could sneak up on you.”

  As India’s head whipped around, he moved, fast as a snake. He grabbed her arms to hold them away from her weapons, and India met the eyes of the young woman she’d seen two days before.

  “‘Eddis,’” she said coldly. “If you think for a moment that you’ll get away with—”

  The woman drove the knife forward, into her throat, and India’s words cut off with a gurgle. She was choking, she could hear the rattle of her own breath. She stared at the young woman in horror as she stepped close enough for India to feel the breath on her face.

  “It’s over,” the rebel said fiercely. “It’s over for you today, and it’ll be over for the Warlord soon, too.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She could taste blood in her mouth. She was struggling, India thought, but she wasn’t telling her body to do it.

  “Why did you do it?” the woman asked her. “Hurt us like this? Treat us like animals? Why?”

  Because… But India couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t even form the full thought.

  “Never mind,” the woman said. “It doesn’t matter.” She knelt down and started checking India’s pockets, at last withdrawing the little drive that held all of the data India had collected. She held it up in front of India’s face. “All of your work will die with you, too.”

  India opened her mouth to speak, and darkness took her.

  They were out of the barracks and slipping back through the streets in a moment, and they were nearly back at the entrance to the hideout when Arlon said, finally:

  “Are you okay?”

  “No.” Samara could taste bile in her throat. She’d been telling herself not to throw up with every single step. “She deserved to die. Why do I still feel like shit about it?”

  “It’s one thing to know someone has to die, and be the one who makes it happen,” Arlon told her. He looked over at her in the moonlight. “It’s another to like doing it, or to do it easily. That’s what Jacinta told me, after my first time.”

  A laugh bubbled up in Samara’s throat, half-hysterical. “You know, when people talk about their first time, that’s not usually what they mean.”

  Arlon didn’t laugh. “Yeah. Maybe that’s what people after us will mean. When they don’t have a Warlord to take down.”

  Samara reached out and took his hand. “Thanks for coming with me.”

  “Thanks for dragging the resistance along when I was being an ass.” He shrugged and held open the door into a warren of abandoned buildings. “We should get some sleep. This won’t hold them off for very long.”

  “Not very long,” Samara agreed. “But long enough.”

  30

  The spaceport thronged with activity, but Aryn didn’t seem to notice any of it. Cade had raised his eyebrows, smiling to see her out of her evening gowns, realizing how much more naturally she moved in pants, boots, and a jacket, but she hadn’t returned his smile.

  In fact, he hadn’t seen her smile almost all morning. She stared out the car windows, answered in murmurs, and when she stepped out of the car, she would have left her bags behind if Cade had not rescued them. Her distracted thanks died mid-sentence and she peered around herself, studying every passerby.

  The more Cade watched this, the more uneasy he got.

  “Are you looking for someone?” he asked finally, and she jumped.

  “No,” she said instantly.

  “Very convincing.”

  Her eyes flashed and she threw him a look before starting through the crowd to the private terminal, her arms crossed over her chest.

  A baggage assistant pushed the piles of luggage on a cart, leaving Cade free to study Aryn. She was vibrating with tension, her strides short and her shoulders curved forward. Her head swung side to side as she looked for…

  “Aryn.” In the swirl of the crowd, he was relatively sure no one could pick their voices up on scanners. After days of watching her suspicious behavior, he had decided that he would confront her here. Whatever she was doing, researching weapons, he could stop her now before Ellian found out. Neither one of them wanted to fight that man, Cade was sure. He would keep Aryn safe, and Talon would stop Ellian from giving the Warlord … well, whatever the weapon was.

  That was Talon’s business.

  “Yes?” She turned reluctantly and backed up when he approached her. When Cade held out his hand to draw her closer, she paused before taking it.

  “What’s going on?” he asked her, his voice low. He saw the answer on her lips and cut it off. “Don’t say it’s nothing, Aryn. You know how I was trained. You know what I’ve seen. I may not be able to put the pieces together yet, but I know you’re up to something.”

  She paused, considering this.

  “And?” she asked finally, her head tilted slightly as she looked up at him.

  He swallowed, looking out over the crowd. He thought he saw a familiar face, but as he turned his head sharply, it vanished. He was jumping at shadows again, the chaotic swirl bringing tremors to his muscles. His heart was beginning to speed at the thought of a transport ship, with its glass partitions and flashing lights—

  They weren’t going on a transport. They were going on a private ship. Cade took a deep breath, and when he saw Aryn’s silent wince, he realized he’d been crushing her fingers.

  “Are you hurt? I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Are you all right?” Her voice had lost its edge.

  He wasn’t, and he couldn’t figure out how to make his mouth move to tell her that. He looked down at her helplessly, lost in her eyes. The panic faded, and he managed to draw a deep breath. Slowly, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing, Aryn reached out a hand and laid it against his chest, over his heart.

  How long sinc
e someone had seen him, seen his panic and asked if he was all right?

  “Cade?” Her voice was soft. “Are you all right?”

  To his surprise, he told her the truth. “No.”

  He saw her struggle with something, looking away and biting her lip. When she looked back, she had come to a decision.

  “Do you need to go? We can go.” But it was clear it would cost her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked her again, his voice low. She would have stepped back, but he held her hand trapped against his chest.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, after a pause. “You stay here. I’m going to get you a drink of water.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Even if he felt something melt inside him at that little bit of kindness.

  “Stay here. With the luggage cart. You’ll be all right, I promise, and I’ll be back in just a second.” She was gone with a glance over her shoulder, and he braced himself on the edge of the luggage cart, gripping the metal until it started to warp. He only had to last a few more minutes in this hell of noise and lights and people moving with no pattern and—

  The sound was so faint he hardly heard it: a little cough, someone clearing their throat.

  Aryn.

  His heart turned over. He had left her alone and—

  He was yelling her name, shoving people aside as they shrieked in complaint. For a terrifying second, he could not find her in the sea of people, and then he caught a glimpse of her auburn hair, her head twisted to catch a glimpse of him. The man pulling her away had a gun to her back and his hand clamped around her arm.

  The crowd parted before him, apparently seeing the trail of downed carts and passengers he’d left in his wake, and Cade had thrown his knife before he was even aware of drawing it. The man went down with a scream, the blade embedded in his calf, and Aryn stumbled away—into the convenient grasp of another black-clad man who’d materialized out of the crowd.

  This one didn’t draw his gun because he didn’t have a chance. Cade was on him a moment later, his world narrowed to his opponent and his hands catching the weak points he had scanned for. Weight slightly lighter on the left leg—a strike to the thigh weakened the muscle. An opening at the neck of his coat gave the space for a blow to the trachea, and the man’s knife had gotten tangled in its holster. He was on the ground choking within a split second.