He stared at her, struggling for words as he shook his head in wonder.
“Zara.”
Her fingers slid gently up his cheek, and she leaned in to kiss him. A long, slow kiss that lingered in the silence of the room.
Amelia felt her jaw drop open. She was frozen on the spot, unable to look away as Liam’s hands drifted up to grip this woman’s waist as he kissed her.
When the kiss finally ended, they both seemed to remember that they weren’t alone, and their gazes turned to her.
“Amelia,” Liam said quietly, “allow me to introduce Dark Star. Her real name is Zara, once known as Lady Brightlake.”
This is not going to go well, Liam thought to himself as he looked into Amelia’s eyes. Her face was expressionless, her mouth hanging open, but her eyes were burning with a primal fury. His hand was still on Zara’s waist, he suddenly realized, and he pulled it away.
“This is Amelia Virtue,” he said, stepping clear of Dark Star and putting himself at equal distance between the two women. He wanted to move fully to Amelia, but frankly feared for his safety. “She is very dear to me.”
“Always the gentleman,” Zara said with an indulgent smile, “taking care of the beautiful young damsel. How many have there been, Liam?”
He could feel his heart thumping in his chest. It was singing anew at the sight of his first love, at his Zara. She was still alive, and now free. And more beautiful than ever, with a strength he’d never seen when they were young.
But even so, her comment was a smack across the face.
“Just one,” he said firmly, moving closer to Amelia. “And I don’t take care of Amelia. We take care of each other.”
He risked a glance down at Amelia. She was staring at Zara.
Dark Star stared back with frightening confidence, but then her expression softened.
“I’ll give you two a moment,” she said. “When you’re ready, please join me for refreshments.”
She waved Piper and all the guards away, then strolled over to the sitting area, clasping her hands behind her back and gazing out at the chaotic view.
“Amelia . . .” Liam began.
“You knew!” She stabbed a finger into his chest. “That’s why you wanted to be captured, alone!”
“I suspected,” he admitted.
“So you decided to come and find out? Come and rekindle your old romance?”
“No,” he said carefully. “I want to stop Dark Star. But we’ve been fighting her forces for months and not made any headway. I thought that maybe by talking to her in person I could succeed where the entire Empire has failed.”
“Starting with a big, long kiss is a unique diplomatic tactic.”
“I need her to trust me.”
Amelia’s anger blazed, but already he could see her intelligence shining through. And her faith in him. She took a deep, calming breath.
“Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”
He fought hard not to scoff. “What benefit would there have been? Do you think you would have taken it well if I’d explained how I was hoping to meet in person with my first love?”
She frowned, clearly not happy with her own conclusion to that question.
“But we’re here now,” he added. “And we have a mission to accomplish. We’ve done interrogations before, and this is no different. Except maybe I should be the nice guy this time.”
She managed a tight smile. Her anger was clearly not dissipating, but she was fighting it down.
“What’s the objective of this interrogation?” she asked.
“To learn as much about her plan as we can. And maybe to even convince her to stop going down this destructive path.”
“Tall order.”
“You up to the challenge, darling?”
“Against that flirty witch? Bring it on.”
He glanced around. Dark Star and all of her minions were giving them an astonishing moment of privacy, alone in the middle of the room. Zara had seated herself and was pouring a cup of tea. Piper was off to the side of the towering windows, apparently gazing outward. The half dozen guards all loitered near the doors. He looked back at Amelia.
“So, are we good?”
She frowned, then punched him in the chest. It hurt.
“That’s for not telling me beforehand.”
“Sorry.”
She reared back and slapped him across the face.
“And that’s for enjoying that kiss so much.” She leaned in, her eyes indicating their distant audience. “And maybe a bit for show.”
“Thanks,” he said, rubbing his stinging jaw. He gestured toward the seating area. “Shall we?”
She turned and began strolling toward the chairs. He caught up to her, suddenly remembering a similar incident in their past.
“When I saw you kissing another man,” he muttered, “I hit him, not you.”
“The day is still young,” she whispered, her eyes on Dark Star.
Zara rose gracefully, offering a welcoming smile as she gestured for them to sit. Liam took the chair facing her, Amelia sitting down next to him. She poured them both some tea and sat back.
“I have to admire your cunning, Liam,” she said. “You managed to disrupt my operations for months before I knew it was you.”
“How did you figure it out?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“When my base in Silica was destroyed I took a new interest in what was going on there. My captains were screaming about a Sectoid invasion, but I knew the bugs were peripheral—they could never have gained the information on their own. It took a while, but everything seemed to point to one Julian Stonebridge. I’d never heard of a house Stonebridge so I told my network to start paying closer attention.” She reached for a framed picture on the table next to her. “And then this came to me.”
She placed the frame before him. It was the black-and-white image captured by the merchant on the Windfall promenade. A portrait of the noble Julian Stonebridge.
“But I have that image,” Liam said, glancing at Amelia. She nodded in confirmation.
“One can make multiple copies,” Zara replied, sitting back. “As soon as I saw that handsome face staring back at me . . . well, to be honest I was furious at first, but then I realized you were just doing your job. And doing it well enough that I needed to remove you from play.”
“And here I am,” he offered, looking around at the room.
“And I’m delighted to see you.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Amelia demanded.
“For now, just keep you here as my guests.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, you don’t really have a choice, do you, dear?”
“Don’t patronize me, dear.” Amelia started to rise from her chair.
Liam put a steadying hand on her thigh. She lowered back again.
“Zara,” he said, leaning forward earnestly. “How is this even possible? How can you be here? You were killed in that storm.”
“So the Empire believes,” she said. “And frankly, at that time, I would have welcomed death. You have no idea, Liam, what kind of monster my husband was.” She spat the word.
“I can only imagine,” he said, his heart aching at the ancient pain that was billowing up. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything to help you.”
“And we both know you couldn’t have,” she said, leaning forward and taking his hand. Her eyes were surprisingly gentle, before the fire rose in them again. She leaned back. “We were prisoners in the system, forced to do what we hated, for the good of family. For the good of dynasty.”
“There was no way to escape,” he agreed.
“So I made a way,” she said triumphantly. “I could never have left my husband and lived in peace. If I’d fled, I’d have only been hunted down and dragged back in disgrace. But if I was already dead, no one would ever look for me.”
“And the storm that destroyed your ship?”
“Oh, there was a storm, but h
iding within it was a little surprise I cooked up. Piper showed her true courage as my lady-in-waiting by taking my instructions and my money to a gang of pirates before we sailed. They attacked our ship during the storm, looted it, and then set charges to tear it apart. The storm did the rest.”
“The passengers and crew?”
“I paid the pirates extra to torture my husband to death. The rest were left in the ship as it broke up around them.”
The casual viciousness of her words was startling. But, he admitted, a part of him was drawn to it. She was no damsel in distress, and in her terrible actions she’d displayed courage he’d never been able to muster.
“And the pirates didn’t turn on you?”
“I promised them more money once we got to Cornucopia. Piper and I broke into my husband’s home and made off with enough loot to keep the pirates happy and get ourselves on a ship headed as far away as possible.”
“To get lost in the maze,” he mused, looking past her to the wild skies of Labyrinthia.
“Do you remember how we used to lose ourselves in the Brightlake maze?” she asked with a sweet smile. “It always took them hours to find us.”
He remembered well many a stolen kiss among the perfectly trimmed hedges. In the end it had been the only place they could hide, and eventually her father had ordered the gardeners to cut through the hedges and transform the maze into an open, geometric garden.
“And then they banned us from the boathouse,” he said wistfully. “I enjoyed those rows on the lake most of all.”
“So I built my own boathouse,” she said with a gesture taking in the entire shard. “Hidden within the maze. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you found me.”
“You left enough clues. For someone who knew what to look for.”
“Are you going to tell her,” Amelia interjected, “what happened to her family? And that lovely estate you’re both reminiscing about?”
Her voice cut through the spell, and Liam wrenched his mind out of the flood of memories. It really was intoxicating, being face-to-face with a woman he’d known in nothing but dreams for fifteen years.
“What news of the Brightlakes?” Zara asked, expression hardening.
“They were foreclosed, only a few months past,” Liam said. “The estate was seized and . . . and your father was murdered.”
“When and how?” she asked, her eyes narrowing dangerously.
Liam glanced at Amelia, really not wanting to deliver the news.
“In front of all of us,” Amelia declared, perhaps too viciously, “at a grand ball. He was stabbed through the heart with a sword by the man who took everything.”
Zara sat like a statue for a long moment, staring at Amelia. When she spoke, it was just above a whisper.
“Did he suffer long?”
“No,” Liam said quickly. “It was a killing blow.”
She looked upward, apparently deep in thought.
“Too bad,” she said finally. “I should have been more explicit in my instructions.”
Liam caught an astonished glance from Amelia.
“You knew?” she managed.
“I orchestrated it,” Zara said, sitting back again with her tea. “It’s amazing how pliable even the highest lord is when he owes you more money than his entire family is worth.”
“Silverhawk worked for you?” Amelia pressed.
“He didn’t know it. He took orders from one of my people on Honoria. One of my gambling people who knew just how to entice that arrogant dandy into disaster. He was a tool, nothing more. But he was efficient in delivering revenge on Lord Brightlake.”
“Zara . . . ,” Liam breathed. “You ordered the death of your own father?”
She glared at him. “Do you think he deserved better, for what he did to me?”
Her anger washed over him, marshaling his long-simmering outrage: at Lord Brightlake, at the tradition of arranged marriages, at the chains of the whole system. A system that had sent him running to the Navy and had forced his beloved to fake her own death and flee into the outer reaches of society. He still remembered that sunny afternoon when he and Zara had been commanded to say goodbye. How they’d stood in the garden, unable to even touch each other as her parents stood watching them choke out words of polite farewell. Tears had flowed freely down her cheeks as she’d curtsied to him, his own eyes flooded as he bowed. And then her father had ordered her to step away, practically dragging her back into the house. Lord Brightlake had ignored her sobs, assuming the strong, stony expression befitting the master of his house.
But those memories faded, replaced in his mind’s eye with the image of a tired, broken old man, the bloody sword pulling free of his chest as he collapsed in a heap in his own home, humiliated in death in front of hundreds of witnesses.
“I don’t know what to think,” he said finally.
His anger was still there, he knew. It was always there, and at one level it had been steering his life for fifteen years. But it was a smoldering fire. Hers still burned white-hot, even after all this time. And that made her dangerous.
This woman was dangerous, Amelia thought to herself. And possibly unhinged. But far too intelligent and charismatic to be called on it. Amelia sat back in her chair, looking around at the guards, who appeared so casual but whose gazes were all diligently observing. Piper in particular, she suspected, would have a pistol out and fired before anyone laid a hand on Dark Star. Liam’s strategy of talks rather than confrontation made sense.
He was still leaning forward, gazing at his first love. And Dark Star was gazing back with equal rapture. Amelia reminded herself firmly that Liam was just playing a role, as was she.
“Tell me,” she said suddenly, interrupting their moment, “what’s the reason for all this? I understand your desire to run away and live your life in secret, but why the elaborate web of criminal activity? You must know that this would eventually draw attention to yourself—doesn’t that defeat the purpose of your escape?”
Dark Star’s eyes—they really were a vivid green, Amelia had to admit—shifted away from Liam, and for a moment the woman seemed to be considering whether or not to even answer. But Amelia held her gaze fearlessly, and a glimmer of respect alighted in Dark Star’s eyes.
“I can tell by your accent that you were born free of the noble yoke. So let me offer a counterquestion: Do you think our society is fair?”
Amelia crossed her arms, wondering how she could answer that question in the least rude way. Then she gave up and just answered.
“Of course not. You toffs sit at the top making all the rules and stealing everything while the rest of us eke out a living as best we can.”
“Agreed,” Dark Star said, refilling Amelia’s teacup. “The common people are very restricted in what they can and cannot do. But we toffs have little freedom either—we live in cages designed by our own hands.”
“They’re pretty nice cages, from what I’ve seen. Care to trade?”
“Not at all. But I assure you . . . Amelia, was it? I assure you that you wouldn’t care to trade either, after spending some time in a noble cage.”
“I’ve been to your ancestral cage,” she scoffed. “I could get used to it.”
“It’s beautiful, yes. And so expensive to maintain that my father was killed by his creditors. So expensive that he sold his only daughter into misery to prop it up for a few more years.”
“You don’t know what misery is,” Amelia warned, thinking of the miserable, indentured workers she saw all around her hometown.
“Don’t I?” Dark Star’s expression hardened again. “Pretty clothes only cover wounds; they don’t heal them.”
Amelia bit down her initial response. Liam’s world was as brutal as it was beautiful, she was slowly learning. Any system that gave a man like Silverhawk free rein was clearly broken. But, as she looked around at the wealth in this room, it was obvious Dark Star hadn’t abandoned her lifestyle—she’d just rebuilt it.
“Nice tea,�
� she said, hefting the delicate cup. “Guaranteed nobody back in my hometown will ever get to try it. Or drink from such fancy cups.” She swallowed down the rich variety of curses rumbling up her throat, as her anger at the unfairness of the system threatened to boil over. “Something tells me you’re not trying too hard to spread the wealth. This is no different from any lord or lady living high on the backs of the common folks.”
“Yes,” Dark Star said. “This is comfort. But it hasn’t always been so for Piper and I—we spent years scratching an existence across the Halo. And in those years I learned firsthand the truth: our society is not fair to anyone. Not the nobles, and not the commoners. I could have escaped and lived a quiet life of sorts, but to what end? Simply to live? What would the point have been?”
“So you decided to do something about it?” Amelia snapped, venom dripping from her words.
“Exactly. I was free, I was anonymous, I had my dear friend Piper with me, and we had enough money to act.”
“But that comes back to my question: You’ve rebuilt your comfortable lifestyle, but what else have you done? Building a criminal network doesn’t make our society any more fair.”
“That’s just a means to an end,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “If you’re going to overthrow an empire, you need money and people—preferably people who know how to fight. And over time, as word has spread about my activities, other like-minded individuals have been drawn to join me.”
Amelia glanced at Liam. He was silent.
“You intend to overthrow the Empire?” Amelia asked.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“What, by killing one noble at a time?”
“Of course not—I’m not a barbarian.”
“We’ve seen enough noble ship captains tortured to death to think otherwise.”
“Yes, that.” She sighed, dropping her gaze for a moment. “I gained a certain notoriety for my vengeance against my husband, and some of my captains seem to think they’re pleasing me by constantly repeating the act on others. I need to stamp that out.”
“We figured your intent was to kill all the nobles.”
“Personally, my intent goes no further than those who wronged us.” She put her hand on Liam’s. “The Brightlakes are gone. Once the Fairfields are wiped out, I’ll be content.”
Dark Star Rising Page 24
