by Natalie Grey
“Nyx said that he used the Dragons on Ymir.” He heard a tremor in her voice, and she very nearly flinched when his head came up.
“He did.” His voice sounded like it didn’t even come from a human throat. “He used my soldiers, he used me, and he sent us to kill civilians who thought—how could they not?—that the Dragons, the fucking Dragons, were coming to kill them for daring to stand up to him. Because we were! We killed them. We trusted our intel and we killed them. He used my soldiers, he put that blood on their hands, and he had no right! No right.” He wanted to scream; he wanted to feel the impact of his hand slamming into a punching bag.
Silence. And then he realized she was beside him, that she’d moved as silently as Nyx. He raised his head to look at her, and she met his eyes in the way no one would now. Unflinching.
“That’s what vengeance is,” Talon said finally. “It’s justice, when you’re willing to die to see it done. And I’m sorry, Tera, I’m so sorry. I never expected to meet someone it would hurt more than it hurt the Dragons. That’s why I came here now.”
Slowly, deliberately, she reached out for his hand. This close, he could see the wild tangle of emotions in her eyes.
“You feel guilty,” she guessed. “Even knowing what he did, you feel guilty for turning on him as a person.”
Talon felt his head dip.
“You can’t reconcile….” Her voice trembled. “What a person has done, with the person you know them to be. And no matter how much kinship you feel—”
She broke off at last and turned away.
“Tera.” Where a moment before he had felt only emptiness and grief, now there was strength. He could not banish his own guilt, but perhaps he could banish hers. Tentatively, he reached out his hand to turn her face back. “What you’re doing is no less than what you have to do.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Tera?” He could not have been more shocked if the Ariane had turned into a floating marshmallow. Never, never would he have expected to see Tera cry. But the evidence was before him: tears threatening to spill over her lashes, her mouth downturned, teeth gritted together for composure.
She could not seem to speak. She shook her head slightly, desperately.
“Tera,” he said again, and he knew she could hear the difference in his voice. He saw the way her lips parted in answer, the pulse beating wildly at her throat.
He should have ducked his head to kiss her; she should have leaned into his touch. But neither of them moved, and as a routine alert blared through the ship, she jerked away from him. Talon left without a word. His footsteps might be measured, his breathing even. She might be sitting still, watching him go.
None of that changed the fact that they were both running.
16
She jumped when the door slid open. Tera never jumped, and she did not get nervous. She also did not have dreams about the feel of callused fingertips on her skin and the weight of another body pressing against hers, dreams that she awoke from with her heart racing and her skin slick with sweat. Tera did not, as a rule, think of such things at all. They, like dresses and puppies and childhoods in warm houses, were part of a world that did not include her—a world she sometimes suspected did not really exist except in advertisements.
She had tried, very hard, to consider the events of the previous day objectively, but she could not. Thinking of Loki and the others should fill her with satisfaction; instead, there was guilt. Thinking of the message should remind her that she was doing her duty to Aleksandr; instead, it reminded her of his admonition not to go chasing after Talon. And where she should feel quite glad that Talon was slipping away from objectivity, she could not think of his words without anguish, or his touch on her face without feeling like she wanted to dance, and at the same time, hide somewhere very dark and far away.
Which was ridiculous. She never danced.
So when the door opened, she was not surprised that she felt both terror and joy to see Talon’s face looking around the frame.
“Hey. Want to get out of here?” He looked conspiratorial.
“Yes.” She was halfway across the room by the time the word came out.
He laughed and jerked his head down the hallway. “This way.”
They went down a set of stairs, Tera holding the rail awkwardly with cuffed hands, and followed the line of the ship all the way to the cargo bay—transformed, here, into an armory and training ground. Talon turned to remove the cuffs, and for a moment he was so close that she could feel the heat of his body.
“I thought you might like to train.”
“Oh, God, yes.” Pushups and sit-ups and stretching could only distract her for so long. Tera spread her arms out and swung in a slow circle, feeling the space around her. She heard Talon’s low laugh and knew she was smiling in return.
And this place…. She took off for the far wall, feeling a hit of adrenaline in her blood, and leapt, pushing off the wall with her legs. The edge of the hanging walkway bit into her hands but she did not care. She pulled herself up and over, and launched out into open space, landing lightly on a set of crates stacked near the boxing ring. When she hopped down, breath coming more quickly, Talon’s eyebrows were raised.
“Where did you learn that?”
“Learn what?”
“That sort of … acrobatic stuff.” He raised one eyebrow, mock-seriously. “Did Soras train you to be an assassin, or for the circus?”
She laughed as she dropped into a stretch. “The circus. I’m a trapeze artist on the loose. He was very disappointed.” She rolled her neck, sighing happily. “You don’t know how to do that sort of thing?”
“Not particularly. The components of it … perhaps. What is it called?”
“It’s not called anything.” Tera gave him a look. “It’s how you stay out of trouble in Osiris. Or get away once you’re in trouble.”
“I forgot about that.” He sobered at once.
“You don’t need to look so grim. I’m here now.”
“Still, it can’t have been pleasant.”
Tera considered this. “I got out,” she explained. “Others had it worse than I did. I didn’t know anything else until he took me away. I was happy enough.”
“Happy enough?” The stress was faint, but it was there.
“No one sold me. No one…” She shook her head. They did not need a litany of the things that could happen to people on the streets of Osiris; they both knew. “My life is more my own than I ever believed possible.”
He nodded contemplatively, and she looked around herself, trying to think of a diversion. It was best if he did not wonder just what her father had saved her from. If he did not wonder how far she would go to protect him.
“I assume there are limits on this training offer of yours.”
“What?”
“I don’t get guns, do I?”
“No.”
“I thought not. Knives?”
“Nope.” He was grinning.
“Sledgehammers? Weaponized plutonium?”
“Plutonium, yes. We don’t have any sledgehammers.”
“Disappointing.” She pushed herself up smoothly and started into a set of movements she used for warming up. Small movements gave way to larger ones, and at last to a series of kicks and punches in increasingly difficult combinations. She was aware of Talon watching her closely, and when she finished, he said simply:
“Again.”
He watched just as closely the second time, and as she began a third repetition, he joined in smoothly. He had been trained in a different style of kick, she noted at once, but his kicks were, if anything, more practiced than his punches. Tall men, she had noticed, tended to fight more with their fists than with their feet. Talon was a puzzle.
“All right, Dragon.” They were both breathing hard and Tera stripped off her outer layer. “Let’s see what you got.”
“What?”
“No actual breaking of things,” Tera clarified. “Arms and legs
and so on. I’m in no mood to get over a bone break.” She bounced into a boxer shuffle, grinning. “But I want to see this famous training in action.”
He hesitated for a moment, but he could not hide his smile—or the answering curiosity in his own eyes. He, too, stripped off his top layer, and Tera was treated to the sight of muscles rippling under tanned skin before he smoothed his undershirt back into place.
She looked away hastily before he could see her staring, and thus only just managed to get out of the way of his first rush. He was light on his feet, and nearly as quiet as she was. When she led with a rush of her own, he melted away just as she had expected, his leg uncurling as he went so that his toes caught her along the side of the ribs. Her eyebrows shot up at that, and she continued her retreat, shifting her momentum at the last second to drive forward with a push kick.
He slid sideways, but she was quick, and her foot caught him on the arm, throwing off his balance. She followed up with a sidekick into the center of his chest, and her foot lashed up again towards his head.
She knew he would get out of the way of the third kick. What she did not expect was just how quickly he would do so. His shoulder drove the breath from her lungs as he tackled her and bore her down onto the metal floor. She landed hard, slapping her hands out to absorb the impact and knowing it did little good. He seemed hardly the worse for wear after her kick; the man was built like an ox. The muscles in her abdomen spasmed, trying to draw in air, and she did the only thing she had the strength for: looped her arm up and around, quick as a snake, trapping his head between her arm and her side.
He rolled, his head not free but hers now squashed against the floor instead of his. His arms yanked at hers so that it took every ounce of her strength to keep her forearm pressing against this windpipe. Any moment now he would have to—
He picked her up off the floor in one smooth motion and went for the crates. She felt her arms weaken as she realized what was coming, and he must have intended that, for he was able to pull his head free and swing a punch at hers just as her back slammed into the crates. She ducked and came back up, her foot lashing at his head, and she tripped him when he tried to jerk his head out of the way. They went down together with his hands tangled in her shirt and her shriek of—to her own surprise—laughter echoing in her ears. She had never fought someone as sneaky as she was.
It was when they rolled that the laughter died. His face hovered inches from hers and she saw the change come over him slowly. What had been the pure, taut energy of the fight softened. There was a look in his eyes she had seen before, and recognized, but never truly understood: a hunger that came in a rush and left her breath coming shallow. Her legs parted under his, she wanted to reach for him and draw back at the same times, uncertain—
Footsteps sounded nearby.
“Boss?”
Talon pushed himself up with a muttered oath. “Yes?”
“We have a possible location.” Nyx had come into the room and her eyebrows were raised slightly. She was practically radiating curiosity. “A planet.”
Tera let out a breath and sat up slowly. She did not look back to where she could feel Nyx’s eyes on her. She looked down at the floor instead and tried not to think of the feel of Talon’s body against hers and the scent of his skin.
She swallowed, pushed herself up, and tried very hard to think about nothing as they took her back to the brig. There, she wrapped her arms around her knees and breathed, in and out, in and out, trying not to replay the memory. It was dangerous. It was so dangerous.
And all she wanted to do was go back to that training room.
17
All of the lights blinked red, and the silence lay softly around them, the sparse lines and angles of the room empty. Quiet.
“There’s no one here.”
You sound relieved. Talon did not say the words. To judge by Tera’s expression, she was already unsettled, and she had spent the ride down to the surface carefully not looking at him. The Dragon in him said that this was the best time to push for information, and the human in him said that the last thing she needed was an accounting of her guilt. Instead he asked, “But it is his house?”
“Yes.” She considered. “Or an exceedingly good decoy. There are a lot of little details, so many that….”
“That what?”
She looked at him, her brow furrowed. “That the decoy would need to be for me.” She looked around herself.
Talon looked around as well, his gaze traveling over white walls, hardwood floors. He could not for the life of him see what Tera saw, the little details she had mentioned. Other than the fact that this house was ridiculously expensive, built on a planet that had almost nothing else and could be reached only by a ship with hyperdrive, he saw no similarities between it and the house on Ragnarok. There, the carpets had been plush and the scent of greenery filtered through the whole complex. This place was small, sterile.
No guards, however. That, they had checked. And as much as Talon had hoped for a missed reading, and even hoped that Soras would be here, there was hope still left. For it was possible—just possible—that there was a computer terminal here with Soras’s information in it. He remembered that during the assault on Ymir, Aryn had said the computers were not password-locked.
It was something to try.
“Where would the study be?” he asked Tera in an undertone, and she looked around herself with a frown.
“Somewhere with an easy route to the launchpad.”
“Right.” He held up two fingers and gestured the rear guard to move forward. They fanned through the living room, an absurd sort of spectacle he had not seen since his training days. His fights took place in back alleyways and on ships—rarely in homes.
The house was a strange collection of lived in and sterile. A man with as many homes as Aleksandr Soras would be constrained in decoration not by money, but by effort. The majority of things, from the standard open doorways of outer-planet homes to the spare, lightweight furniture, seemed cobbled together from the supplies even a miner or farmer could afford. But the lighting was expert, perhaps rewired to accommodate for the security systems, and the house had been expertly closed off, reliant on a power system that lay deep in the basement. And…
Talon stopped, and beside him he saw Tera swallow.
The picture sat on the bedside table, not the standard school portrait most children had, but a candid shot taken as Tera played outside on some distant planet. She was looking over her shoulder, her brown eyes shining, sunlight catching in her hair. She was twelve, perhaps, or maybe thirteen, but no older. Despite what she had suffered on Osiris, despite even the serrated knife he saw in her leg holster, she was smiling with a carefree innocence that made Talon’s heart clench.
When he looked over at the woman beside him, her lips were slightly parted. She was still frowning, but her eyes were wide; he did not think she could turn away from the picture, though she looked as if she desperately wanted to do so. She swallowed, and still could not look away, and Talon reached out to lay a hand on her arm. Her eyes darted to his and then away.
“Where is that?”
He had a sense that facts might disrupt the horror in her eyes, and he was right. She shook herself like someone coming out of a daze. “Gemini,” she said softly.
“Gemini?” The planet that held the capital city of the Alliance was bright and cheerful … and very closely watched.
“It was the first place of his that I saw.” Tera’s eyes had strayed back to the picture. “He brought me there once. Until then, I’d been—well, it doesn’t matter. I’d never seen anything like that city.”
Talon thought Osiris, the never-ending sprawl of skyscrapers and tenements, faded browns and blacks under a grey sky. “Very different from where you grew up.”
She nodded. Her eyes did not come back to his. “I only went there once. I don’t think anyone had ever taken a picture of me before.”
“Boss?” Nyx’s voice came across th
e comms with a crackle that made them all jump.
“What is it?” Her worry sent his heart rate up.
“Four ships just appeared on radar. We’re flying silent, but they’re headed right for the planet.”
She did not need to speculate. No one needed to speculate.
“Find the study. Now.” He was not letting another ambush derail them. “Keep your eyes open, but go.”
They fanned out, down the dim corridors and up stairs, until a shout brought them all to a tiny room at the back. A door at the back led to narrow stairs, those leading to the launch pad as Tera had guessed, and bookshelves held paper copies of the books Aleksandr liked so well: classic philosophy, history, moral treatises. Talon wondered wryly just how everything had gone so wrong in the man’s head.
“Do you know his passwords?” Tersi asked Tera.
She shook her head. “He was always very private.”
“Aryn said his computer on Ymir didn’t have them,” Talon told Tersi. “See what you can get.” As the tapping of keys began, he gestured around the room. “Anywhere we should look for safes? Important documents?”
“The only thing he would lock up is food.” Tera looked around. “He was terrified of being cut off and dying slowly.” She paused at the absurdity. “I suppose everyone is afraid of that.”
“He knew he was going to have to run someday,” Talon responded simply. He saw a flash of discomfort on her face and looked away, focusing on Tersi. “Anything?”
“He clearly learned something from Ymir,” the man said with a grimace. “I’ll try to get his messages.”
“Good.” With that, hopefully, they could run a more thorough trace. “Any way to tell when this console was last used?”
“A few days ago.” Tersi looked up. “But it was remotely activated.”
Talon swore. If Soras had routed his message to the Alliance through here….
