Their voices were like gunshots to his head.
The little fire-haired gunner had wanted to know if the blood on Andi belonged to her or some “now-ball-less bastard,” to which the giantess had responded, Of course it’s not hers, Gil. And don’t say bastard. Say prick. Are you hungry, Andi? All of which was followed by the Adhiran pilot circling Andi like a bird of prey, pecking at her cuts and bruises, then throwing icy glares in Dex’s direction, as if he had been the one to give them to her.
“This,” Dex said as he sat in the med bay, letting the AI fawn over his own cuts and bruises, “is my own personal version of hell.”
“You may experience some pain,” Alfie said, tugging a little too hard on a fresh line of stitches on Dex’s brow, only adding to the already planets-wide list of things he wanted to drink himself into forgetting tonight.
Andi glowered at him from the table next to his, then resumed whispering to her crew. She’d refused Alfie’s help and given Dex a dismissive wave of her hand as thanks for helping her haul Valen’s body into the med bay.
And hadn’t said a word to him since.
It was so purely Androma to be as cold as a Soleran day, and that ounce of normalcy took a bit of the tension from Dex’s shoulders as he quickly thanked Alfie for his stitches, then slid down from the table.
“I’m going to check in with the general,” Dex announced.
Alfie turned back to Valen, who still lay unconscious on the table in the center of the med bay, eyes closed and bruises deepening in the bright white light. The crew didn’t even lift their heads to acknowledge Dex, save for the littlest one, who quickly lifted two fingers in his direction, a Tenebran signal for him to go screw himself.
He sighed, working his sore jaw back and forth as he headed for the exit. The cool metal doors slid open, then closed shut behind him.
Silence. It was so immediate, Dex almost wept with relief. For years, he’d been on his own, doing things his way. Keeping every reward for himself. Working with a crew, especially Androma’s, was almost more than Dex could take sometimes.
“Krevs, Dex,” he told himself. “So many Krevs you could drown in them, and the glory of becoming reinstated as a Guardian.” He enjoyed being a rogue bounty hunter. It made quick money, but his whole life leading up to the moment he met Andi had been devoted to Guardianship over Mirabel. Now he had a chance to get the status he’d lost back, and he’d taken it. He had his last bounty in hand, and both the Krevs and his title were so close, he could hardly contain his triumph.
He actually smiled as he made his way through the narrow hallway, then hauled himself up the ladder and onto the level above. His muscles cursed him for the effort.
Dex passed through another narrow hallway, heading toward the meeting room. There were drawings tacked to the walls, mostly stick figures with heads blown apart, little red dots in the background that he assumed were splatters of blood.
He’d have to keep an eye on the smallest Marauder. And sleep with his pistol in his hand. And booby-trap his door with a paralytic fog. And not wander into dark corners where she might be waiting.
Dex entered the meeting room and slumped into the chair at the head of the table, trying not to grimace as he realized his old prized seat no longer conformed to his body the way it used to. How he felt out of place in what had once been his home.
He scooped up the Com Box and, with a sigh and a hell of a lot of reluctance, hit Send on the call.
General Cortas picked up immediately.
“It’s the middle of the night, bounty hunter.” His face, projected on the wall across from Dex, seemed to have produced more wrinkles since the last time they’d spoken. Why he didn’t take advantage of Arcardius’s facial rejuvenation procedures, Dex didn’t know. “This had better be urgent.”
Dex leaned back in his seat and crossed his tattooed arms over his chest. The white constellation of The Foxling seemed to peer up at him. “Hello, General. I’m alive and well. Thank you for asking.”
General Cortas was lying in a plush golden bed. Beside him, Dex could just make out the shadowy form of his wife. “My son,” the general said without skipping a beat. His graying hair was mussed from sleep. “Do you have him?”
Offscreen, his wife asked, “Is Valen safe? Is he coming home?”
Dex took his time responding, relishing in the fact that, if only for a moment, the tables had turned. Now the general was at his mercy.
“Speak, bounty hunter,” General Cortas said, “or I’ll make sure I cut your funds in half.”
Not quite turned, then, Dex thought. “We have him,” he said. He picked at a fleck of dried blood on his forearm. “He’s alive but not well.”
His wife burst into tears. Dex waited a moment while the general calmed her.
“Details,” General Cortas said when he turned back to the camera. He glanced sideways at his weeping wife. “Keep them delicate.”
Dex nodded. “It seems they had...less than pleasant ways of garnering information from him, all this time in Lunamere.” The general’s face twitched, but Dex went on. “He’s under Alfie’s watch right now. The AI has assured me, many times, that Valen’s health is of the highest priority.”
“Good,” the general said. Already, he was raising a hand, snapping his fingers at some hidden attendant just offscreen. The red-and-blue lights of a servant droid flashed as General Cortas addressed it. “Send a message to my office. Let them know that my team has rescued Valen. Begin preparations for his return at once.”
“We lost several hours in Lunamere,” Dex interrupted. “A few unforeseen problems, but we’re estimating no less than a day’s delay in returning him to you.”
“Make up the time,” General Cortas said, his pale eyebrows knitting closer together, “and I’ll add to your pay.”
Dex nodded. “I’ll do my best. If you’d hired me alone...”
“If I’d hired you alone, your head would be stuck on a spike in the darkest corner of Lunamere. I was right to bring in the Bloody Baroness.” The general’s voice turned acidic when he spoke of Andi. “Keep an eye on my son, bounty hunter. Don’t leave him alone with that girl for a second. His safety is of the utmost importance.”
Dex nodded again. “As you wish, General.”
“I don’t need to remind you,” the general added, leaning closer to the camera, “of your fate, should you fail to deliver him safely back to me?”
“I remember quite well.”
“Very good.” General Cortas lifted a hand to hover near the screen. “Don’t signal me again on this line. I don’t want Xen Ptera picking up on any transmissions.”
“Don’t you want to see him before you go?” Dex offered.
The general froze, his eyes taking on a strange haze. “I’ll see him when he’s safely home. Remember who you are, Arez. Remember that you’re nothing without me.”
With that, he tapped the screen. It faded to darkness.
Dex took a moment to gather himself.
Then he rose, remembering Androma’s promise to him back in Lunamere.
His heart in his throat, he slipped back out into the halls of the Marauder, walked the familiar path to his old quarters and stopped before the closed door.
Classical music spilled out from inside.
He sighed as he imagined her in there, alone, facing the ghosts of every man and woman she’d killed over the past several days.
He knocked. He knew she wouldn’t answer, even if the music hadn’t drowned out the sound.
But it was now or never, he supposed.
With a deep breath, Dex opened the door of the captain’s quarters and slipped inside.
Chapter Thirty-Five
* * *
ANDROMA
THE DEAD WERE watching her dance.
Andi closed her eyes tighter, willing them away. Though she sat
in the darkness of her captain’s quarters on the Marauder, classical music blaring over the loudspeakers, her mind and her body were light-years away.
Arcardius. A planet adorned with glass that she had once called home.
She spun on the stage of the Academy, the domed ceiling overhead speckled with lights in the shape of Arcardian bursting stars. The seats that overlooked the stage were filled, though not with the living.
They were filled with the dead.
Her victims watched as Andi took the stage. As the music began, gentle at first, the tinkle of bells. Then a great swell of cymbals, and she took flight. Her body was a vessel, a conduit through which she allowed the music to move.
Her arms extended. Her toes rose to a point, and she spun, round and round, a planet in orbit.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the first man rise from his seat.
Blood pooled from a slit across his throat, red like a smile. Staining the Arcardian Patrolmen badge on his chest.
“I’m sorry,” Andi said. “I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t speak. The dead never did, and so she extended her hand to him. He took it in his featherlight grip, and together, they danced.
Round and round, they spun, gliding across the stage as weightless as two ghosts in the night. As they danced, Andi forced herself to look at him. Through the blood, through the mask of horror that he’d held in his final moments as he died by her swords, she saw the man she’d murdered.
He was a human being. A man who had lived and breathed and loved and hated, a man she’d killed in cold blood. She’d done it because he would have done the same to her. Because if she hadn’t, she would have died.
As they danced, she forced herself to look at every detail of his face. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the way his skin was tanned, as if he’d recently spent time outdoors beneath the blazing sun. A soldier training for a mission he knew was soon to come.
He couldn’t have known he would die by the hand of the Bloody Baroness on board the Marauder as his borrowed commander, a bounty hunter with eyes that pierced, urged him to take his enemy down.
Tears streaked down Andi’s cheeks, pulling her from the vision she’d created so clearly in her mind. The music grew louder, silencing her tears. She closed her eyes and forced herself back into her mind. She owed this to the dead. This pain, this dance, this time where she gave herself fully to their memory.
The next corpse stepped onto the stage.
This one was a woman, a guard she’d silenced in Lunamere. As they joined hands and spun in time with the sorrowful strings, Andi saw that the woman was young. She had tired eyes in a thin face. As if she hadn’t slept, hadn’t had a full meal, in days.
“I’m so sorry,” Andi said to her.
The woman simply danced, on and on, until her form faded like mist.
Another of the dead took her place.
They danced, cold palms pressed to Andi’s warm ones. Bodies intertwining like vines that twisted together and then came apart.
Andi danced until she’d remembered them all. Every last person she’d killed, every beating heart she’d stopped too soon. It didn’t matter that they were her enemies. It didn’t matter that in those final moments, Andi had allowed herself to make a choice.
To cross the line she’d drawn for herself. Deal out death to another, or die.
She danced in her mind until her tears had run dry. She danced until the audience was nearly empty. Until the lights of the stage had begun to grow dim, as if the stars overhead were falling into a restful sleep.
Only a single form remained in the audience now. Andi turned to face her as the figure stood. She was dressed in a shimmering blue gown that swirled around her ankles like fragments of cloud. It had always been her favorite, had made her smile and feel, for a time, like a queen.
Her pale hair, matted to her skull on one side, had turned red from fresh blood. Her eyes were closed as she stood at the base of the stage, unmoving.
Every time, no matter the dance, no matter how many deaths Andi had to remember, this girl appeared.
“Kalee,” Andi said. “Wake up.”
The girl did not move, did not open her eyes.
Andi tried to reach her, but the stage had morphed into something smaller, the space tightening, the walls closing in until she was seated in the captain’s chair of a transport ship, fire blazing, smoke clouding her lungs.
“WAKE UP!” Andi screamed.
The transport creaked. Groaned, as the fire licked closer and closer.
Heat had begun to bloom across Andi’s wrists. Pain that throbbed and screamed and begged for her attention, but she could not give it.
Because Kalee was dead.
Tears pooled in Andi’s vision, and she reached out a final time, desperate to save her charge.
Something touched her from behind.
She slipped from the vision like water through fingertips, and turned around to see him standing there, bathed in the starlight that glowed through the glass wall of Andi’s quarters.
“You promised me a conversation,” Dex said. She could scarcely hear him over the music still playing. Over the echo of her own screams, still haunting her from her vision.
Wet tears still streaming down her cheeks, Andi nodded.
Dex sat beside her on the floor of her quarters. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said. He knew her routine. She had done it since the very first night they’d shared together. Different places, different times, but the motions were always the same.
Wrapped up in the music, they sat until the song ended. Silence swept over them, thick and uncomfortable and still, but familiar. Like a long-unseen friend returning home.
“Go ahead, Dex,” Andi said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
* * *
ANDROMA
“DANCING WITH THE dead again?” Dex asked.
“Some habits aren’t meant to change,” Andi said.
She turned to face him. Alone in her private quarters, his presence felt too large. Too real, after all they’d just shared in Lunamere. Old memories of the two of them, once lovers who had shared this very room, began to take shape.
I love you, Androma, Dex had said. He’d picked her up, carried her to the small cot in the corner of the room. In between kisses, he’d looked at her like she was sunlight in the darkness.
Three days later, he’d sold her to the Patrolmen for her crimes.
Andi silenced her mind. She would not allow the memories in. Not now, when she already felt so weak.
Dex had showered, finally, the dried blood and vomit washed away, the collar of his shirt open to reveal the scar she’d once given him. The bruise from Soyina’s stun shot had darkened on his forehead. Even now, the one on her chest throbbed.
“I still can’t believe she shot us,” Dex said, noticing Andi’s stare. He placed a hand to his bruise and winced. He swallowed and looked at her directly. “When...when I saw you in that pile of bodies, Andi...”
“I promised you five minutes,” Andi said, cutting him off. “You said you wanted to talk about the past. Let’s talk about it.”
His lips parted slightly. Then he closed them and looked away, hesitating before he spoke.
“I’ve run through this conversation in my mind a million times. And now that we’re actually together, I’m not sure where to begin.”
“How about this?” Andi asked. The weakness from her dancing visions, the pain of facing her ghosts, suddenly faded. Acid took its place. “You betrayed me,” she said. She got to her feet, suddenly unable to sit still. “You knew I was facing a death sentence back on Arcardius. You left me in the hands of those who would give me that death, all for a few Krevs!”
The words were out.
She’d told the girls about the horrific fate Dex had left her to, but never,
in the years they’d spent apart, had she imagined seeing him alive and saying it to his face.
It was so absurd, and he was so silent that she threw her head back and laughed. He flinched as if she’d hit him. “Oh, Dextro,” Andi said, stepping closer to him as he got to his feet. “Don’t tell me you thought, just because we managed to do a job together without killing each other, that I’d forgiven you? Let me remind you that this job wasn’t my choice. I took it only because you forced me to, by teaming up with that devil of a man!”
“If you only knew the full story—” Dex began, but Andi didn’t want to listen. She was so angry, but hidden behind that rage was pure pain. It was so raw it made her want to burst. Had he ever thought about the pain he’d caused her? Had he ever imagined himself in her place, betrayed by the one who’d sworn her his love and facing the death she’d spent so many years running from?
“I loved you!” she yelled. Her voice cracked on those horrid words, but she kept going, unable to stop. “I loved you, and you threw me away like some common whore!”
Her heart beat so fast she thought it would explode.
He took a step backward, as if he’d been shoved.
“You have to listen to me, Andi,” Dex begged. His dark eyes were wide, his tattooed arms held out, hands pressed pleadingly together before him.
She hated how handsome he was. Hated the curve of his jaw, the brown of his eyes, the way the starlight spilled across him like a lover’s caress.
She could scarcely stand to look at him.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Andi growled.
She didn’t feel the cool trickle of tears trailing from her eyes, didn’t know there were any tears left to cry until she tasted the saltiness on her lips. She sucked a breath through her gritted teeth. She felt her fists clench, felt the weight of her cuffs begging to swing. To give in to the anger. To sink into that darkness she’d been swallowed by years ago. But as much as she wanted to swing at him, she knew her fists weren’t in control of this fight.
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