Dragon's Honor
Date: 2018-05-01 00:00:00+00:00
Description: *Book 2 in the DRAGON CORPS series by Natalie Grey, author of SHADOWS OF MAGIC and the TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS series in the Kurtherian Gambit Universe! New to the series? Start with THE DRAGON CORPS!* Talon Rift has learned his enemy’s name - and he is ready to take the man down, no matter what it takes. Step 1? Arming the resistance on Ymir. Now leading a resistance cell, Samara has to keep her fighters alive until Talon can get to the planet - and she has a new enemy, India Quince , a mercenary officer who will stop at nothing to wipe the resistance out. Cade Williams left the Dragons after o
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing

Dragon’s Honor

Natalie Grey

Contents

Also by Natalie Grey

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Dragon’s Hope

Chapter 1

Also by Natalie Grey

Original Series

Bound Sorcery (Shadows of Magic, Book 1)

Blood Sorcery (Shadows of Magic, Book 2)

Bright Sorcery (Shadows of Magic, Book 3)

Set in the Kurtherian Gambit Universe

Bellatrix

Challenges

Risk Be Damned (Trials & Tribulations, Book 1)

Damned to Hell (Trials & Tribulations, Book 2)

Vigilante

Sentinel

Writing as Moira Katson

Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1)

Daughter of Ashes (Rise of Aiqasal, Book 1)

Meridian (set in Nick Webb’s Legacy Fleet Universe)

Mahalia

For Susan

1

India Quince sat at attention. Her back was ramrod straight, her uniform was crisp, and her curly brown hair had been successfully pulled into a tight French braid. She looked—or she hoped she looked—capable and calm. The Warlord liked both of those things. He did not like people who second guessed themselves, or who were too excitable.

Twenty other officers of the Kell Corporation also sat in the stuffy room, and it did not escape India’s notice that there were 21 of them and 21 districts around the city. They were here to be promoted to District Administrators, they had to be—or something even better, something new.

It was a chance to prove herself. India’s hand clenched around the hat she held under her arm, and she forced it open before she warped the thing.

She had been five years old when her family moved here, her father one of the mercenaries on permanent assignment to Ymir, her mother hurriedly taking work in the new bureaucracy, and India had grown up in the neighboring city that housed the soldiers and their families.

The Warlord called it Kell District, but the soldiers hated that. They weren’t just more of the dirty miners and brutal resistance fighters. They were the backbone of Ymir. Without them, nothing would function.

And India, now old enough for her own command, was eager to rise beyond Kell District and into the inner circle. Into the city, itself, with the mansions and servants and fresh foods. She was not going to live out her life on canned rations, getting home every day from the same old patrols.

No. She would do more for herself.

The screen at the front of the room lit up and the other officers scrambled to get back to their seats, while India sat, already there, with a faint smirk. No one else seemed to be taking this seriously. It should be easy for her to stand out.

When the Warlord’s face appeared, it was with the familiar mask and nondescript black clothes. He sat in a room India recognized as his personal office in the palace, lined with books and artifacts from Old Earth.

“Welcome. Thank you for joining me.” His voice was, as it always was, cultured and smooth, and India shivered. This was the sort of life she wanted, far from tumble-down houses with leaking roofs, everyone just trying to get by with no thought of bettering themselves.

Everyone nodded silently. Unless there was a specific question, you did not speak to the Warlord.

“You will be wondering why I called you here today.” India could tell that he was smiling. “It is because each one of you has a distinguished record as a patrol officer. Of all officers on Ymir, you have shown yourselves to be efficient, capable, and immune to the emotional manipulation the resistance tries to use against my soldiers.”

India’s lip curled. She hated the other soldiers who let lawbreakers go. She hated the pleas from the jail cells. They asked her to overlook curfew violations, theft, possession of contraband materials. As if it wasn’t their own damned fault for doing those things in the first place.

“I am beginning a new initiative,” the Warlord told them, “one designed to eradicate the resistance completely. Too long we have let them scurry around like rats, spreading rebellion wherever they go. They never gained a toehold, but they remained a thorn in our side. The time for that is through. The citizens of Ymir must give up their fruitless insistence on mayhem and violence.”

There was a pause, and the Warlord smiled.

“You want to know what the plan is. I can see it in your faces. But I did not choose you all simply because you are efficient and dedicated—I chose you because you are creative. Each of you here today will be given jurisdiction over one district, unlimited resources … and free reign to do whatever it takes to bring the resistance down. I have complete faith in you. Each one of you was given an envelope when you came into the room. Open it, and you will see your assignment.”

India pulled out the envelope and slid her finger under the flap to break the seal. She drew out a single piece of paper, on which was printed two words:

IO DISTRICT

* * *

“—and I have complete faith in your abilities.” Aleksander Soras ended the call and looked over to where his aide, Julian, was waiting. The younger man held out his hands to take the mask as Soras took it off with a sigh.

It was a risk, sending the transmission from here. He had covered the signal in ways that should be unbreakable, and no one should be looking for the transmission … but Soras had learned the hard way, recently, not to rely on luck. Luck could run out.

Which was why he was determined to harness a power that had never once failed him: human ingenuity. Ingenuity, in Soras’s mind, was not the stuff of scientific breakthroughs and inspiring speeches—it was cowardice, it was backstabbing, and it was self-interest.

“You think this will work?” Julian asked him.

Soras felt a surge of annoyance, but he kept a smile on his face as he looked over at the younger man. “I know it will,” he said simply. When he saw the fractional rise of Julian’s brows, he cursed himself. In his need to bounce back from several distressing setbacks, he was beginning to indulge in overconfidence.

He sighed.

“Do you know why micromanagement does not work?”

A flick of Julian’s eyes assessed him, trying to divine the correct answer. Slowly, he shook his head.

“It is a waste,” Soras explained. “I could spend my time trying to come up with a plan that would account for all 21 districts, all of which have slight differences … or I could deputize 21 officers and hint to them that the one who achieves the objective first will be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams.” He smiled and spread his hands. “And their wildest dreams are very, very small. Draping a backwater family in silks and giving them a mansion is far cheaper than a rebellion.”

Julian nodded, his eyes faraway as he considered.

“I chose only officers from families in the initial wave,” Soras added. “For years, I’ve gone to Kell District every damned year to tell them how important they are, how indispensable they are, and they eat it up. And it’s important to give them that, you see, but not give them everything else that they want. They know life isn’t quite to their liking—leaking roofs, army rations … they know they want more…. And so I tell them how wonderful they are, I give them a reason to reach for more than they have, and I simply put the resistance in their way. Because they will find a way. Human ingenuity is limitless.”

Julian looked for a moment as if he might object, but in a moment, the look was gone. He gave a respectful nod.

“Would you like me to connect your call to Ms. Kuznetsova now, sir?”

Soras’s hand clenched. He did not want to make this next call.

And so, for now, he would delay. He lifted a finger to hold off the call. “In a few minutes. For now, call Tera. And leave us. I will call you back in when I need you.”

What Julian thought of Tera, Soras had never determined. His face was entirely blank as he started the call and withdrew, and Soras looked at the screen, waiting until his daughter’s smiling face appeared.

“Hello, Tera.”

* * *

Tera smiled at her father and folded her hands in her lap. He hadn’t called in days, and, as her only true contact with the outside world, his calls were her lifeline.

“How have you been?” She noted the faint signs of stress in his posture. “Is everything all right at work?”

His lips tightened, and he swallowed. “Yes.” He saw her look and sighed. “No. Well, what I mean to say is, there is a problem I’m working to resolve.” He forced a smile. “One should expect such things, yes? This is Alliance Intelligence, not an ice cream shop.”

Tera gave a little smile. Her father was trying to be good-tempered so as not to worry her. “I see. And, uh … how is … Julian?”

“Julian?” Her father blinked in surprise. “Well enough. Why do you ask?”

“I was trying to talk about something other than your work.” Tera gave an embarrassed smile. “I’m not too good at that, though.”

Her father’s smile was warm, and she saw him relax. “I appreciate it nonetheless. Tell me about you, Tera. Tell me about your vacation.”

She saw him steel himself for complaint, and resolved not to make one. “I’m well. Of course, I’m well. It’s beautiful here, you know that. You should come. Just for a few days. I know you can’t right now, but maybe soon.”

He looked almost sad. “I will when I can. I may have one of the other estates readied for you. A change of scenery, but still a vacation, I promise.”

“Whatever you wish.” When he raised an eyebrow, she smiled. “Your work is stressful right now. I don’t want to argue and make things worse.”

“Thank you.” His smile was wry, but genuine. “I mean it, Tera—thank you. I have to go now. I will be in touch when I can. I know … this wasn’t a proper conversation. I just wanted to see your face and know that you were well.”

“I am.” Tera smiled at him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He ended the call with a smile.

Tera waited until the camera was off and stowed away, and then she blew out her breath. She looked around herself at the room, at the scattered papers and maps and books. She had dragged the computer into the corner when she heard him calling, so that he wouldn’t see her work.

He would only worry if he saw it, and she didn’t want him to worry.

That was why she was doing this, she told herself. Well, that and the fact that she’d started wondering, recently, what the best use of her talents was. To be an assassin was both to strike in a very limited way, and to know that sometimes one life held the fabric of the world in a knot, and so one death could do a great deal of good.

Which was why she had decided to stop going after weapons dealers and slavers. Someday, she might return there.

For the moment, the world had a bigger enemy: the Warlord, himself.

And when she took him down … her father would see what she was capable of, and, with the Alliance’s greatest enemy defeated, he would no longer be so stressed.

Tera rubbed at her forehead, stood, and walked wearily back to her main table. It was littered with papers detailing, as best as she could tell, the electrical sources, financial transactions, and defense contracts that kept Ymir afloat as a dictatorship.

She couldn’t just strike at the Warlord. She had to think bigger. She had to begin to dismantle what he had built, so that the planet could be free once more. She was going to bring him to his knees.

And then she was going to kill him.

2

Samara—I miss you. It’s been a long time since we talked, but Ellian swore this connection would work. If so, give me a time to call you. Aryn.

“Samara?” A hand came down on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Samara wiped at her eyes. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

To her horror, Stefan leaned in to look at the screen, and then, almost without volition, his head turned to look across the room at Nura. Despite herself, Samara followed his gaze.

Nura and Aryn shared the same delicate bone structure, the same full lips, and the same eyes, so deep a blue that they almost glowed. But Samara could not think of two people more different.

Neither of them spoke much, but where Aryn’s silence invited confidences, Nura’s seemed to forbid them. Where Aryn wanted to see the good in everyone, Nura seemed to suspect that everyone in the resistance cell was a traitor. And where Aryn had been a terrible soldier, always better suited to tending the wounded and finding ways out of engagement, Nura was the sort of person who only ever came at anything head on—and with a gun in her hand.

Samara had to admit that Nura’s relentless suspicion had proved useful in the past. Her instincts on who not to trust had proved correct on more than one occasion, especially as Samara’s bolder tactics attracted more attention from the Warlord. With that attention came more genuine recruits … and more potential traitors.

But it had been Aryn that Samara loved, and Nura unsettled her, looking so much like Aryn and being so very different. And she knew, as Stefan didn’t, that the last thing Nura wanted to know about was how Aryn was doing.

She was too late. Stefan had already jerked his head at Nura to bring her over.

“Nura.”

“What’s going on?” Nura wasn’t one for small talk. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked between Stefan and Samara.

“Nothing.” Samara hoped her tone was clear enough to Stefan that he wouldn’t speak up. “How was your patrol last night?”

“If there was anything noteworthy, I would have told you.” One beautiful brow arched.

And then Nura caught sight of the message. She leaned forward, eyes scanning the text quickly, and she jerked back as if she had been stung. One scathing look at Samara said she remembered just how close Samara and Aryn had been—and she didn’t think well of Samara, if they were still close enough to be speaking.

On the one hand, Samara couldn’t blame her. When Aryn had left Ymir, it had been to marry Ellian Pallas, the Warlord’s arms master. Ellian was a snake, and Samara would just as soon plunge a knife into his heart as see him happy … but for the fact that he’d been willing to take Aryn away from all of this. He’d arranged for her parents to be housed in the inner part of the Warlord’s sanctum, released from their duties in the mines—where Nura would be as well, if she hadn’t rejected the offer.

And, most importantly of all, Samara had made sure that Aryn didn’t know who Ellian actually was. It was a lie Ellian had been eager to participate in. As far as Aryn was concerned, Ellian brought food and medical supplies to Ymir.

Samara took one look at Nura’s face and knew that none of those reasons meant anything to her. Nura was too straightforward. She wouldn’t see why Samara would be happy for Aryn to be with someone else, and she would never have lied to Aryn about who Ellian was. To her, Aryn was a traitor.

She turned and strode away, and Samara gave Stefan a look.

“…Right.” Stefan shook his head. “Sorry.” He nodded. “You have another message.”

“She wrote again.” Samara heard the ache in her voice. Everyone on Ymir nominally had the ability to communicate, but the communications were, in reality, heavily controlled by the Warlord. That Aryn’s message had gotten through at all was a testament to Ellian’s influence—and, likely, his encryption systems. He was doing this as a favor to Aryn. Samara sighed as she opened the message.

At her frown, Stefan leaned down to read the message, and his brows drew together as well.

Because the message was not from Aryn.

My name is Talon Rift, and I have received word that the resistance on Ymir is preparing to mobilize. I will arrive soon with weapons and soldiers to aid them. Further communication will be risky, but if it is worth the risk, you can respond to this message. Move carefully, and wait for our arrival.

“They heard us.” Samara breathed the words. Three weeks ago, she had gotten a message off-world, but the transmission had been intercepted, and there had been no way to know if those who had received it had passed word along.

But they had. Someone was coming.

All Samara had to do was keep the resistance alive until they came.

* * *

“Ariane, you are cleared to land in dock 74-a.”

“Roger that.” Jester guided the Ariane down, his eyes locked on the screen as the ship broke through the perpetual snowstorms of New Arizona. Snow and sleet beat against the glass, but Jester’s touch on the controls was steady.

Over his head, Talon met Nyx’s eyes. In the past week and a half, the two of them, and Tersi, had spent their time trying to determine which members of the crew were loyal … and which were agents bought by the head of Alliance Intelligence, Aleksander Soras. The information, which might have been only a fun game otherwise, had become absolutely vital since Talon had learned the truth about Soras.

He was the Warlord of Ymir, and he had used his position first in the Alliance Navy, and then in Intelligence, to tighten his hold on the planet he ruled. He had crashed Navy carriers, changed intel, had spies murdered, and had used the Dragon Corps to take out leaders of the resistance on Ymir. With spies even in most of the Dragon crews, Soras had an impressive amount of information about where his potential enemies were and what resources they had.

He had failed to appreciate one fact, however: Talon Rift was, to a fault, a stubborn and vengeful bastard who did not intend to rest until Soras was dead at his feet. He had killed two of Soras’s agents so far, and he intended to find each of the others.

It would be particularly convenient if Jester were loyal. They had no finer pilot on Team 9, and Talon had fought beside Jester since before he had taken command. Jester had followed him to Team 9, and if Talon were honest with himself, a betrayal from Jester would cut deep.

But taking shortcuts and making assumptions based on what he wanted was a surefire way to end up dead in a ditch. The Warlord had no compunctions about killing his enemies, and Talon had—before he knew the man’s identity—proclaimed to Soras that he would not rest until the Warlord was dead.

Talon, Nyx, and Tersi had planned to work with only those they could be sure were loyal, and cut out the rest of the team at the last minute. Killing any more of Soras’s agents would tip him off to the fact that they were onto him, which, right now, was their only element of surprise.

So it was a surprise when Jester got up and slid the door to the bridge closed.

“I got an offer the other day,” he said bluntly. His eyes flicked between Talon and Nyx. “From Intelligence, to pass information on your plans regarding the Warlord.” He went to sit down, his hands splayed out, away from any weapons. His brown eyes met Talon’s. “And it seemed to me that it was an interesting coincidence that we’d lost Mars and Camorra, who left the ship when you’d said expressly that you didn’t want to be followed … and now other members of the crew are getting offers to be informants. So, what I want to know is, why the hell do you care enough about Alliance Intelligence knowing what you’re up to, that you’re willing to kill your own crew mates?”

There was no warmth in his face, and Talon blew out a breath.

Jester looked at Nyx, and there was desperation there. “Tell me he has a good reason. Tell me the two of you aren’t doing something shady.”

It was his tell that gave away his sincerity: when Jester was worried, he tended to clench his toes and release them. To Talon’s knowledge, the Dragon wasn’t aware of his tic, and Talon had never told him about it. Suspicious by nature, he liked to know his crew’s tells.

“There’s a bomb in here, isn’t there?” He looked at Jester, who swallowed. “You were ready to take the two of us out if we’d been going bad.”

Jester hesitated, then nodded.

“And did anyone at Intelligence suggest that strategy to you?” Nyx’s voice was too soft. She was still wary.

Jester gave her a look. “I wasn’t going to let the two of you get strung up on trial or hunted down by the other teams. That would be the way they would do it, and it would mean a lot of Dragons would die.” His hands clenched, and he looked at Talon. “But we trained together. Tell me you’re not—”

“I’m not,” Talon said simply. “Which means….”

Jester frowned. “That there’s someone in Intelligence who shouldn’t be there.”

“That,” Talon said with feeling, “is an understatement.” He stared the man down. “Did you take the offer?”

“For fuck’s sake, first her, now you? No. I was going to take care of it myself if things were wrong.” Jester looked between the two of them. “I … didn’t think they were, or Tersi wouldn’t still be on the team. But I knew I didn’t want either of you to be traitors, and that would cloud my judgement.”

“Fair enough.” Talon looked at Nyx, who nodded. He knew her aural implants were tuned to catch the faint distortions in tone that occurred with lying. From everything he could see, Jester was telling the truth.

The fact that he’d been willing to sacrifice his own life to take Talon out was surprisingly touching.

…It was possible Dragons weren’t very good at creating touching moments. Talon gave a grimace and tried to figure out what to say.

“Soras is the Warlord,” Nyx said bluntly, while Talon was trying to marshall his thoughts.

“What?” Jester looked between the two of them.

“I was trying to come up with a good way to say that,” Talon muttered to Nyx.

“I think my way got the point across.” She frowned at him, then looked back to Jester. “So far, we know you, me, Tersi, and the new kid are loyal. We’re still trying to figure out the rest.”

“Can’t see Aegis taking a bribe,” Jester said contemplatively. He considered. “Look, why don’t you leave Nyx in charge. Tersi and I will run through communications and see who’s been contacted and what’s been sent. We’ll start with Mars and Camorra’s transmissions so we know what to look for.”

“Good call.” Talon nodded and stood.

“So, what are we here for, then?” Jester looked out at the too-clean landing bay. “You know most of the people here wouldn’t give a damn if they sided with the Warlord over the Alliance.”

“I know,” Talon said, unperturbed. “But there are resources here we can’t find anywhere else. Including Cade.”

“Cade.” Jester whistled. “Well, good luck getting him.”

“Why does everyone think I’m going to fail at this?” Talon shook his head. “I am your commander, you could have a little bit of respect. Hold down the fort and I’ll be back soon. I’m taking Loki and Sphinx.”

“Why them?” Nyx asked, with a frown.

“They’re the only two who don’t have dress clothes,” Talon explained. He left the other two frowning after him, and headed off, whistling.

Let them wonder. He had a plan.

* * *

On the screen, a small figure lounged in a pilot’s chair. Alina Kuznetsova was 4’10” in very thick-soled shoes, and still—to hear the Dragons tell it—one of the most intimidating people on the force.

Right now, she was also a thorn in Aleksander Soras’s side.

“We double-checked the intelligence before we passed it through.” He tried to keep his voice from rising with annoyance. Right now, he needed to pretend he was on her side, so he forced a regretful smile. “We would not have advocated such strong measures unless we were absolutely sure of what was going on.”

“I’m not sure.” Her tone was blunt. White-blonde hair glittered in the low light of the cockpit, and she raised her pale eyebrows at Soras. “And I’m not going to assassinate a Dragon commander until I’m sure. So, either you pass me your sources so I can figure out what’s going on, or you wait while I investigate it myself.” She considered. “Or, I suppose, you could give me different intelligence that’s verifiable.”

“Commander Kuznetsova—”

“I always double check my intel before an operation.” She was not in the least swayed by his attempt to pressure her. “I don’t object to killing. I think it’s often a good tactic. But I don’t do it unless I’m absolutely sure that the person I’m killing deserves it. And you haven’t proved to me that Talon Rift is actually participating in the slave trade.”

Soras considered. There was no way to back out of this. If he withdrew his request for her to assassinate Rift, she would only get more curious. Which meant he either had to prevaricate and delay, or push through some intel that she could verify on her own.

Which was what he thought he had given her the first time. He’d made sure that sources were available to parrot the story he’d made up.

What the hell had he seen that spooked her?

“I will see what I can do,” he said, as pleasantly as he could, and he hung up.

The Dragons were going to be a problem. Three had already, apparently, decided not to take the requested job, and the fourth was being problematic. All four certainly couldn’t have accidents at once, and the orders might begin to circulate.

Soras rang the buzzer for his assistant and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Yes?” Julian appeared in the doorway.

“More evidence for Kuznetsova.” He was in no mood for further questions, and so when Julian opened his mouth, Soras only snapped, “Just handle it.”

The man disappeared without another word, and Soras resisted the urge to sink his head into his hands. It was all coming apart. If he couldn’t arrange for Rift to be taken out, things were about to get very ugly.

3

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.” Ellian Pallas gestured to a hardwood-and-velvet chair. “Can I get you a drink?”

“No, but thank you.” Talon allowed a moment for regret. Ellian’s liquor cabinet was, doubtless, absolutely fantastic. He would love a drink.

But he was on duty, and he did not drink when he was on duty—especially around someone who was a big enough snake to be the Warlord’s armorer. Talon hadn’t gotten this far in life by underestimating his opponents.

He gave a bland smile. “So, I understand you’re looking for a bodyguard.”

“The best money can buy. Which is usually quite spectacular.” Ellian settled back behind his desk and narrowed his brown eyes speculatively. “I admit, however, even I did not expect I could get a Dragon.”

“Yes, well.” Talon smiled. “I would do anything for my crew, and one of them would like a civilian life. In a manner of speaking.”

“Old?” Ellian went right to the point. “Injured?”

“No. If I didn’t think he could still fight to my standards, I wouldn’t recommend him for this.”

“I don’t think a Dragon is strictly necessary.” Ellian gave a small smile. “Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?”

“I’m afraid so. And, well, you and I both know what you do for a living.” The fact that Ellian worked for the Warlord was not widely known, but his profession was. “Perhaps a Dragon isn’t necessary, but, then again, perhaps it is.”

“Ah. I should clarify.” Ellian leaned forward with a smile. “The bodyguard is not for me. They would be protecting my wife.”

“Your wife.” Talon felt the first flicker of unease. This might not be the best plan, after all. “Perhaps I should have inquired before I came here … do you care if the bodyguard is male or female?”

“Why would I care?” It was clearly a test. Ellian drummed his fingers on the desk and leveled his too-sharp gaze at Talon.

Most men wouldn’t want their wife in close proximity to a Dragon, Talon wanted to say. He was, by nature, blunt and to the point. However, it probably wasn’t politic to hint at the possibility for a wayward spouse. He lifted one shoulder.

“A good bodyguard will be there while your wife—what’s her name, by the way?”

“Aryn.” Ellian’s tone said how unwelcome any attempt at friendship would be.

“Aryn. A bodyguard would be there while she … changed, ate, right when she woke up. She, herself, might prefer a female bodyguard for that very reason. As might you.”

“She has left the choice of bodyguard up to me.” Ellian’s voice was pleasant, but cold as winter. “And I have no concerns. Aryn is mine. Body and soul.”

Mine. Body and soul. Talon had done his research, and so he knew the woman was a fugitive from Ymir, living with the Warlord’s armorer. While it was indubitably a better life than dying young in the mines, Ellian held her life in his hand. He could easily send her back if she did not meet his specifications. There could be no true give and take, no opportunity for her to have any life of her own. Ellian owned her.

Talon fought the urge to pick one of the brass ornaments up off the desk and use it to crush Ellian Pallas’s throat. He didn’t like slavers, and this man was getting perilously close.

But he needed this connection. Alienating—or, worse, killing—Soras’s armorer now would touch off a round of chaos that could take thousands of lives.

So Talon smiled. “Well, then, we have no problem. I can personally vouch that he’s one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen, and as honorable as they come. He will let nothing past him and allow no risks to your wife.”

“You know, with most people, I would assume they were over-selling the situation.” Ellian steepled his fingers and gave a smile that, while not unfriendly, was certainly not comforting. “With you, I will assume you are, in fact, under-selling. He has the job. Can he begin tonight?”

Talon tried to keep his face from flickering. “Surely you’ll want to interview him?”

“You’re a Dragon commander, and you do not appear to be lying when you tell me that this man is one of the most impressive fighters you’ve ever seen. Your word is good enough for me.”

“But, you know—whether or not people like one another, that sort of thing.” He was babbling. Shut up. “Also, I assumed you would want to interview him yourself, so I did not tell him to be available today. He has business to conclude.” One of the secrets of negotiation was to put personal pride away for the duration. “Entirely my fault for assuming. I hope you won’t hold it against him.”

“Of course not,” Ellian said smoothly. “I’ll interview him tomorrow, then.”

There was no point in arguing. Whatever Ellian wanted, Talon would find a way to give him. He pushed himself up, casually pressing a listening device into the bottom of the arm of the chair and allowing another to fall into the lush pile of the carpet, and reached out to shake Ellian’s hand. Unnoticed by Pallas—he hoped—a tiny, spider-like robot eased itself down from the inside of his pant hem and skittered under the desk.

The two men smiled at one another, Ellian’s a reminder of just who he was and how ruthlessly he conducted his business, Talon’s insincere and hopefully clear of his desire for Ellian’s painful death at some point in the not-too-distant future.

“Oh, and you never mentioned.” Ellian gave a little frown. “What’s the man’s name?”

Talon turned from the doorway and gave as bland a smile as he could. “Cade Williams.”

* * *

Ellian stared at the closed door and narrowed his eyes.

He did not, as a rule, like Dragons. No one who operated out of the confines of strictly legal business did like them. You could never tell when one of them would take offense to a perfectly logical, reasonable business decision and burn your entire business down—most likely, literally.

Which had been something Ellian meant to ask about, but he’d found, much to his shame, that as he stared Talon Rift down, he didn’t particularly want to run the risk of pissing the man off. It was one thing to know that in a long, drawn out conflict, he could most likely sabotage the man. It was quite another to stare across a desk at him and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if it came to a physical fight, he would die.

Ellian did not like being the less powerful man in the room. He gave a sigh and tapped his fingers on the desk. He had hired any number of bodyguards and servants over the years who were more capable than he was of winning fights. He did not believe in hiring incompetent people, after all. That was the mark of a weak leader.

So what was strange about Talon Rift?

He shook his head. It wasn’t important. The man he’d be working with was someone else, ‘Cade Williams.’ Ellian would never need to interact with Talon Rift again, which was probably better for everyone involved.

And the more he thought about it, the more he thought it was truly a good idea to interview this Williams man.

After all, he had very … unique … specifications for a bodyguard. Unconsciously, his head turned toward the part of the house where, even now, Aryn was getting ready for an event. Ellian could picture the curve of her cheek, hear the sound of her laugh in his head.

If he wanted to prevent everything he had from crashing down around him, he needed this Cade Williams to be perfect.

* * *

Lesedi looked at the incoming call and smiled. After a recent assassination attempt, she had spent most of the past two weeks moving from decoy apartment to decoy apartment. As far as she knew, her would-be assassin did not know she was still alive, and she didn’t want to screw it up.

Especially now that she knew the truth of Talon’s operation against the Warlord of Ymir.

She had made plans. She checked in with certain databases every day, entering a rotating series of codes. If she did not, a packet of information would be sent to every senator and then, if certain activity did not commence within a specified window of time, the information—including the fact that it had been sent to parliament, and they had not acted—would be sent to every major news outlet.

Talon had his methods of revenge. Lesedi had hers.

She picked up the call with a smile. “Talon. Hello.”

“Lesedi.” He sounded pleased with himself, though cautious.

“Talon, what did you do?”

“Oh, you’ll like it. I’m fairly sure.” He paused, and she waited as well. He sighed. “You never play along, do you?”

“On the contrary. You’ll recall I played along very well with the Talon-in-a-tutu plan.”

He ignored that. “All right, I’ll tell you. I bugged Ellian Pallas’s office, and I’m going to have an agent on the inside soon.”

Lesedi’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve got some brass ones. Ellian is—”

“Someone who prefers stone cold revenge, which hopefully takes more time than it takes me to to kill the Warlord. I’ve thought this through.”

“…Yes, clearly.” Lesedi rolled her eyes. “All right, what do you want for access to his study?”

“Lesedi.” She heard the sound of an airlock opening, and guessed he was going into his ship. “I’m sending you the frequencies.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“But I am.” There was the sound of another door opening, and footsteps on metal. “You know very well that you haven’t been charging me as much as you should have for my information.”

“Maybe I’ll invoice you,” Lesedi said tartly. Generally speaking, warm sentiment wasn’t her forte. She preferred humor and competence. It was why she got along with Dragons so well.

She got the sense Talon understood, because she could hear the smile in his voice when he spoke. “All right, then let’s put it this way: you want to take him down as much as I do. I need your help. For your help to be useful, you need the best possible information. Ergo….”

Lesedi gave a small sigh. “That works.”

“Excellent.” There was the sound of crystal and soft piano music.

Lesedi frowned. “Where are you?”

“Oh. Tailoring shop.”

“…What?”

“There’s a plan,” Talon said, unconcerned.

“And what is that plan?” She was squinting into the distance, amused.

“Well, one part of it is a mystery for now—to you, not me, I hear you getting ready to be sarcastic over there—but the other part is recruiting a team I trust.” There was a pause. “You didn’t ask who’s going undercover with Pallas.”

“I didn’t, did I? Aegis?”

“No. You know he’d as soon smash all the crystal as pretend to pander to a billionaire arms dealer.”

“Mmm, very true. Sphinx?”

“Nope.” Talon was grinning again. “Cade Williams.”

Lesedi laughed incredulously. “You managed to recruit Williams back?” At the minute hesitation, she felt her face settle into a frown. “Talon….”

“Well.” He drew the word out. “Not yet.”

“Let me get this straight: you told Ellian Pallas, a notoriously vengeful arms dealer, that Cade would be showing up there for some purpose—”

“He wants a bodyguard for his wife. One moment.” He put his hand over the comm unit, but Lesedi could still hear his voice. “The gold, I think.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Part of the mystery, remember? Anyway, Williams is going to be his wife’s bodyguard.”

“And Cade doesn’t know this yet.”

“Not precisely.”

Lesedi didn’t know whether to sigh or start laughing. “You’re insane.”

“Only way they make Dragons,” Talon said, unrepentant. “I’ll send the frequencies and be back in touch when I know more.”

He hung up before Lesedi could say goodbye, and she looked down at the comm unit with a wry grin. “Good luck,” she said to empty air. “You’re going to need it to get Williams back.”

4

“Cade Williams?”

The words came through the haze of smoke and drunkenness like a hallucination. Cade knew that voice. He was never, ever going to be able to forget that voice, and it had to be a hallucination because there was no way in hell the owner of that voice had chased him across three systems only to walk into a dive bar on the lower streets of New Arizona. So he went back to his drink.

He picked up the glass and stared at it. It was a scotch he’d been nursing for about three hours now, and not just because “scotch” seemed to be a loose term for colored grain alcohol. When he finished his drink, he had nowhere to go. And in the ever-drifting snow of New Arizona—he’d never figured out if the name was born of ignorance or irony—he needed to stay indoors as long as possible. The cold was fierce, and whatever acid was in the water on this planet, it would burn his skin raw in less than a night.

And if he didn’t get ten thousand credits to Osiris within a week, he was a dead man. But one thing at a time. Cade shook his head and let the moment slide away from him, a tiny drift into memory and nothing more.

“Williams,” the voice said again.

That was definitely not a hallucination. Cade’s eyes traveled along the arm that had come down on one side of him. Callused fingertips, last joint of the right index finger missing, the hint of a tattoo poking out from under a blue cuff. The arm underneath the suit jacket was well muscled, leading to broad shoulders and a clean-shaven jaw, and with a sinking feeling of dread, Cade looked up at one of his worst nightmares.

“Lieutenant Rift.”

“Actually, it’s Major now.” Talon’s face was expressionless, as it almost always was. He watched as Cade’s eyes traveled over the understated suit, across the planes of the handsome face. At last, sensing the question Cade would never ask, he flipped over the hand on his resting arm. There, glimmering in the faint light, were blood-red cufflinks.

A Dragon always wore red.

Talon absorbed Cade’s bitter smile in silence.

“You look surprisingly well.” Cade looked down into his scotch and considered drinking the rest in one gulp. The pours in this bar were generous, and with the alcohol being of dubious provenance, a gulp might well kill him. Right now, that wasn’t seeming so bad. It was all coming back to him, without warning, as it always did. He’d known the moment he heard the voice that this was going to be a bad night, even worse than he’d thought.

And he’d already thought it would be pretty bad.

There was screaming at the corner of his mind, the flashing of the lights in the bar taking on a reddish hue, the emergency exit sign too clear a reminder.

He closed his eyes, clenching his jaw until he thought his teeth would give way. He had to keep breathing, or the memories would take him, and the world would devolve into the chaotic mess he so feared, every face reminding him of the pods, the children pounding on the glass—

He was going to be sick. His stomach heaved.

“Should I go?”

“No.” Cade’s answer surprised even him. He opened his eyes and looked down into his drink again. He could force the world back into its neat shapes if he tried hard enough. In the vacuum of space, in the long silences of a courier’s job, he’d learned to face his fear and press it away.

He could face this, too.

“Okay.” Talon sat, pulled reflexively at both cuffs, and looked over at the bartender. “What won’t kill me here?”

“Don’t try the scotch.”

“I see.” Talon watched as the bartender ambled over.

Her eyes marked the cut of his suit and the look of his face, and, with a flicker, the cufflink. Interest faded—bartenders knew trouble. She raised an eyebrow.

“One beer,” Talon said.

“What kind?”

“Surprise me.”

“You’re going to regret that.” Cade could hear a laugh in his voice.

Dammit.

“I know.” There was a flicker of a smile, gone in an instant, and Talon leaned forward on both arms and looked over. “So what happened?”

“I lost my job.”

“Which one? Postman? Busboy?”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?” It shouldn’t have surprised Cade, but it did.

“Of course.” Talon took his beer but didn’t drink. So quietly that Cade could hardly hear him, he said, “You’re one of my guys.”

“I’m not.” The answer was instantaneous, accompanied by a wave of revulsion so deep, Cade very nearly lost what little dinner he’d been able to scrounge. He was not that man. He was not. “ Not anymore.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.” Even knowing his words would hurt, Cade couldn’t keep them back; his own pain was beating at his temples. “I walked away. You don’t owe me shit anymore.”

“And you don’t owe us shit, either.”

“Yeah, you pulled strings. I know.” Cade resisted the urge to throw his glass at the back wall.

“Williams, I kept tabs on you because I care about you.” Talon held up a hand to forestall protest. “You know how many guys walk off the team swearing that they’re never going to kill again? Won’t even kill a spider in their bunk, they say. And we let ‘em go. And half of them come back, and half of them go the other way.”

“My way.”

“No.” Talon looked over at him. “They go back to fighting, but for the bad guys this time, and sometimes I meet them in a dark alleyway, and I turn a weapon on someone I trained. And I win, Williams, because I’m better. I kill the guys who walk away from me, one by one.” He looked over at Cade, and Cade was surprised by how raw his expression was.

Something had happened. Something recent. Cade swallowed back the question of what it was. He wasn’t one of Talon’s team anymore.

Talon’s eyes tracked the expression in Cade’s eyes, and Cade was fairly sure he had seen both the question, and the choice not to ask. He didn’t mention it, though. “So I keep tabs on the ones who leave. Used to be because I cared. Now it’s because I want to know when I’ll meet them. You, I keep tabs on because you’re the only one who never got back in the game.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Is that what you’re taking from this? No, Williams. I don’t blame you. I’m damned impressed, actually. You’re wishing I hadn’t come over to say hello, aren’t you?”

“Take a drink of your beer.” That would be a suitable punishment.

“Right.” Talon complied and winced. “Look. I didn’t do it to bring anything up, okay?”

“It’s a little late for that.” The screams would be echoing in his head all night.

“Breathe.”

“Working on it.” Cade downed his scotch in one gulp, feeling the burning in his throat and welcoming it. “Goddammit. Why the hell don’t they warn you before you sign on?”

“They think they don’t need to. They do a psych test.” And the evasion was there, lingering in his voice.

Cade felt a wash of fury.

“I didn’t pass, did I?” Cade rounded on Talon.

“You passed.” But there had been an infinitesimal hesitation.

“Fucking hell. You tell me the truth. Right now.”

“You were out of range…on a few things.” Talon looked him dead in the eyes. “But you were good. You know how good. So we made an exception.”

“Jesus, Talon…” Always forgot to use the last name. One of the only things he couldn’t do right in the military. That and keep sleeping well after killing people, apparently. “You know there’s no room for error in the Dragons. Why’d you…” And then his voice trailed off, and he asked the question he’d been meaning to ask for two years. “How? How do you do it?”

Talon didn’t answer, just pushed the beer over. His eyes were following Cade’s jaw, the dark brown beard obsessively neat over a sharp jawline, the strong brows, the eyes that were too brown to be green and too green to be brown.

“You look well,” he said at last. “You’re not drinking. I mean…not badly.”

“You just gave me a beer.”

“You were right, I regretted ordering it. Williams, what’re you doing here?”

“I told you, I—”

“You lost your job. But isn’t there anyone? A woman, maybe?”

“A woman.” Cade gave a strangled laugh. “What sort of woman…” His voice trailed off, and Talon didn’t interrupt him. The question wasn’t what sort of woman would want him—the richer ones would fall all over themselves for a Dragon, even a former Dragon. The question was what kind of woman he could ever trust.

Once, he’d seen himself settling down with a wife, a family. Children to tell about his exploits, a wife who would worry until he reassured her with a kiss that he was home and safe. He would retire into something safe and boring because a safe, boring career was its own reward, and he’d come home each night to a woman he adored.

He’d given up on that dream without even realizing it—and right now, it was so far away that he couldn’t imagine how he would ever get it back. And from Talon’s silence, he understood because he’d come to realize the same thing.

They sat in silence for a moment.

“But why freeze to death?” Talon asked softly. He sighed, hung his head for a moment. “ Forget everything else. You know we’d have you back in a second, no questions asked.”

“No questions asked because you know all my secrets. You’ve been running my name through the search for two years, right?”

“Does it matter? I’ve kept them off your damned case. They go after people, you know. Offer them money, offer them rank. Anything they want. We don’t like to lose Dragons. I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to ask. Come on, Williams. Come back.”

“No.”

“We need you.”

“Like hell.”

“Listen to me.” Talon leaned close. His voice was urgent. “I need you. All right?”

“You? Why, are you in love with me?”

To his surprise, when Talon looked over, his eyes were haunted. He was beyond jokes, that look said. The warmth of the past few minutes was gone, and urgency was all that remained. “I’m surrounded, Williams. I don’t know who to trust.”

“What?” At that, Cade looked over at him. A Dragon squad was fanatically, mythically loyal to their leader. There was nothing, it was said, that could break the oaths they made while they stayed in the unit. It was part of why he’d walked away, the knowledge that he couldn’t follow orders anymore. That Talon was here, now, with the signet of the Dragon and asking Cade’s help was…

It was a ploy. It had to be.

“You’re lying to me.”

“I swear to you I’m not. Listen to me. I need your help taking someone out.”

“I said no.” But Cade was wavering, and Talon knew it—the man could sense weakness like a bloodhound.

“You don’t want to fight. You don’t want to kill. I get that.” Talon’s voice was soft, persuasive, and even though Cade knew every trick he was using, the tricks still worked. “No one wants to kill.”

The moment was broken.

“A Dragon wants to kill, doesn’t he? Get set loose on the enemy and just…” The beer glass shattered in Cade’s hand and he brushed the remains off the other side of the bar. His hand was bleeding. “You made me feel bad for slave traders! For drug lords. For—”

“I need your help.” Talon’s voice was desperate. “If this guy gets away, millions are going to die, do you understand me? Williams, you never wavered. Not once. You knew what was right and you stuck to it.”

“I wavered.” Screams echoed in his head. “Once. And I pay for it every day, and it will never be enough.”

“And you left. You questioned me right there on that ship, do you remember? You want to know why I took you even after your psych test, Williams? It’s that. That’s what a Dragon was meant to be. Justice isn’t soft; justice isn’t kind. Justice is fucking brutal. But you were the only one who never lost his way. Maybe…” Talon’s voice broke. “Maybe you were right. On that mission.”

“Maybe?” Cade could hardly speak for bitterness.

“Okay. You were right.”

“That’s why I walked away,” Cade said quietly. “Because ‘right’ won’t bring them back.” He put his money down on the bar and left. The cold air hit him as he opened the door and he steeled himself. It was going to be a long, long night. At least he didn’t have anywhere to sleep—he couldn’t have if he tried.

“Cade.”

His first name, and the first sign of genuine desperation that he’d seen. He turned.

“I have something else for you if you want it.” Talon gestured back toward the lights of the city.

“What is it?” Cade didn’t move.

“Come with me. I’ll tell you, buy you a meal. You want to walk away, you can.”

The cold was already seeping into his shoes, the skin on his feet burning. Cade wavered. He took one more step away.

He was so tired. So tired of running. So cold. So hungry.

He gave a heartfelt curse under his breath. Then he turned around and followed Talon back to the glitter and wealth of New Arizona City.

5

“Oh, come on, don’t look so sad.” Samara’s voice was teasing as it echoed out of the speakers. The camera couldn’t catch anything beyond the familiar outline of her face, but Aryn could see that she was smiling—that broad, face-cracking smile Aryn hadn’t seen in two years.

You’re not telling me everything, Aryn wanted to say. I’m sad because I know it’s much worse than you’ll admit.

By mutual agreement, they did not talk about the resistance. It wasn’t safe, not with the Warlord’s monitoring. If his lackeys could ID Samara, she and her family were as good as dead.

Not to mention, Aryn had never told Ellian about her past in the resistance. She had never been brave enough.

But Samara looked drained, exhausted by fear, and Aryn was afraid and ashamed. She had spent too much time trying not to think about Ymir, and now she felt … like shit, frankly. Samara had been working herself to death in the mines, working with the resistance, and Aryn was sitting here in a dress that cost enough to feed a family on Ymir for a year.

“Please smile,” Samara said now, and so Aryn did.

She always smiled, whether happy or sad, excited or exhausted. Over the past two years, she had learned to smile all the time, no matter how overwhelmed she was, or how out of place she felt. Now, surrounded by softly-lit opulence in the form of marble, crystal, hand-piled carpets, and diamonds around her neck, speaking to a woman who’d just completed an 18-hour shift in a mine, she felt even more out of place than she did at charity events and society dinners.

“How are things with you?” Samara asked her softly, when Aryn said nothing.

I can’t stop thinking about home. She could taste the words in her mouth, but they faded quickly away. She had learned not to say anything she wished to say, not to sing the old songs she loved, not to do anything that might remind people of where she came from. And when she couldn’t say what she wanted, see who she wanted, do anything outside this penthouse…she was beginning to wonder if she even existed at all.

It didn’t even cross her mind to say that aloud. That was the sort of thing one never said—not to Ellian, who had given her everything, and not to Samara, who had nothing at all. How petty and selfish would she think Aryn was if she heard these complaints?

So she only said, with a practiced little shrug, “Everything’s very normal.”

Even this was strange to talk about. In a fit of boredom, she’d redecorated the penthouse suite in the latest and most fashionable style, spending whole days pondering the layout of each room—except Ellian’s study, of course. She’d gone to almost a dozen charity dinners in the past month because it was the Season in New Arizona.

But she couldn’t imagine trying to explain the concept of a charity dinner to Samara, or the idea of changing every piece of furniture in the penthouse because black was out and gold was in.

And she didn’t want to admit that although she’d sworn this life would never truly change her, that in her heart she would always be the miner girl from Ymir, she’d agonized over the renovations, terrified of what the other society couples might think. More, she didn’t want to remember picking out fabric samples and opulent silhouettes, because all she could think of from that memory was the yawning emptiness of the moment, and the terrified cry of her own mind: is this all there will ever be?

Once, she had fought for something. She had been a terrible soldier, she didn’t argue with that. But she had been there. She’d been working toward something better.

Now, she was just another rich wife.

“You look sad again,” Samara said quietly.

“I’m not sad,” Aryn said automatically. “Sorry.” She apologized a lot now, too. She felt her lips curve up in a smile like she was a little doll; she couldn’t seem to feel her body much these days. It went through its own motions, and she walked around the penthouse as if she was behind a pane of glass, servants not looking her in the eyes, and no friends to speak to. “I was just…thinking.”

“Thinking of Ellian?”

There was hope in Samara’s voice, and the tone was like a knife between the ribs. Of course Samara hoped. Aryn had lived out the fairytale. She was the deserving maiden from every story, whose purity and honor and kindness won the heart of the prince. She must surely be in love. She must be happy. Why wouldn’t she be happy? She had everything anyone could want.

“Ellian’s been very busy,” Aryn said. It was the sort of automatic evasion she’d begun to use in every conversation she had. For one thing, it was true—something had recently come up that had Ellian working late into the night, snappish and stressed. So she didn’t have to lie when she said he was working all the time.

She sucked at lying.

For another thing, if she looked sad and told people that Ellian was busy, they drew their own conclusions. No one thought to ask her if his absence was both a curse and a blessing. It sank her into silence as deep and dark as space, where there was nothing to distract her from her own thoughts—but at the same time it saved her from his scrutiny. Better, perhaps, that he was away so often now—she knew she could not hide her discontent from him for long.

She looked back, peering closely as she saw Samara’s head tilt. The woman was looking up at the ceiling, and a moment later the faint wail of air raid sirens came down the line.

“I have to go,” Samara said urgently.

“Samara—”

“It’s all right,” the woman assured her. “We’re all right. I just need to break satellite contact. I’ll be back in touch, Aryn. And—”

The line cut and Aryn pushed herself back from the desk so fast the chair overturned, opening her mouth in a cry that never came. One mustn’t cry out, not in a penthouse. That was what brought servants to see what was wrong, and servants told Ellian, and Ellian asked questions. The train of thought was so automatic now that Aryn did not even need to follow it. She needed to be calm. The satellite connection had been cut. That was all. Someone in the bunker had turned on the signal blocker and…

And the further she got from Ymir, the more horrifying it seemed. How had her life there ever seemed normal? Even a child could see that things were not right. Hired soldiers in the streets, people missing in the mornings.

She should be there. The thought made her stop in a swirl of satin skirts, hand grasping around the diamond necklace. She had the funds. She could wait, leave when Ellian was away, be gone before anyone noticed—

“Aryn?”

“Ellian.” She whirled, her cheeks flamed. Could he see the plans in her head? Ellian had made his career by reading the subtle cues that let him bargain so effectively.

But he couldn’t read minds, she told herself firmly.

“What’s wrong?” He crossed the room, arms open, and she tried not to flinch away.

My friends are dying.

“It’s nothing,” she said reflexively, as she always did, letting her head rest on his shoulder, forcing herself to relax into his arms. As always, the touch was unexpectedly calming. All these days of marble and satin and no one to speak to and no one to see… Aryn felt herself lean into his arms at the touch of flesh on flesh, and squeezed her eyes shut. She could not stop herself from yearning for Ellian’s touch, even when she knew it wasn’t his touch she wanted.

It was all she would ever have. That was the choice she’d made.

“The servants tell me you’ve been troubled,” he said simply. It was a command—or rather, an expectation. Ellian’s voice was mild. He did not give orders; he simply expected the world to conform to his desires.

Courage.

For two weeks, she had been working up her courage to say this. She rehearsed every night in front of her mirror, and when she went downstairs to have dinner with Ellian, her nerve failed her.

But people were dying. She could not stay silent any longer.

“It’s Ymir,” Aryn said at last, biting her lip.

“Darling, I know I promised you that you could stay in touch with your friend, but if those calls are upsetting you—”

“I want to.” Her voice came out stronger than she intended it, and when Ellian drew back, his eyebrows raised, she shook her head and smiled. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Of course. I feel…”

Guilty.

“My dearest, that life was never for you.” Ellian smiled and stepped back, taking her hands in his. “Look at you. You are perfection. You need not cling to that place out of guilt.”

“What did you say?” Fear shot through her. He could see the guilt. He knew. Her breath caught in her chest.

“Don’t try to hide it, Aryn.” He stepped forward, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear; if he noticed that she was shaking with the effort of staying still, he said nothing. “I, too, lived in poverty in my youth. You feel guilty that you have things others do not.”

Relief hit her so quickly that her knees nearly buckled. She managed a smile and a nod.

“Oh, yes.” That guilt. That guilt she could admit to.

“Aryn, you need not feel guilty. I did, for many years.” He smiled, a confident flash of teeth. “But I learned it was their anger and nothing more. It is the way of the world that some rise and the reasonable people do not resent them for it. I made sure to reward those who understood.”

His sister Mara, she knew, had been one of those—before she apologized and said all of the right things, behaved in all of the right ways, for Ellian to be magnanimous about taking care of her.

Ellian liked to be magnanimous.

He smiled at her now. “You, above all, deserved to rise.”

“Thank you.” She smiled back automatically. By now, she did everything Ellian expected of her, automatically.

He turned away, looking out into the glittering lights of the city, and she clenched her hands.

Things are worse there than I knew. The Warlord is trying to kill them all.

“There was…something I wanted to talk to you about.” She wrapped her fingers together. Her palms were sweaty.

“Oh?” He turned back to look at her. “What is it?”

“Things are…they’re very bad on Ymir.”

“Ah, Aryn. That is how it has always been.” He smiled at her. “Do not trouble yourself with it.”

“They’re worse than they were when I left,” she insisted. She tried not to waver at Ellian’s look of surprise. She never contradicted him. “The Warlord has started bombing the districts.”

Was it her imagination, or did she see a touch of evasiveness in his eyes? Was it her imagination, or did he not look surprised at this new information?

But all he said was, “You must be grateful that your parents are in the city now.”

“I am,” Aryn hastened to assure him. “Always. Every day.” That had been one of his gifts to her: a new house for her parents, warm and dry, away from the mines. He’d offered the same to her sister, though Nura was too proud to take it; Aryn still pleaded with her, but Nura no longer returned her messages. She had not even spoken to Aryn, once she learned her sister was leaving. “But all of the rest of them are still in danger.”

“Aryn, I keep telling you that thinking of this will only cause you pain.” His voice held a note of warning now, and he had turned back to his collection of ties.

“Couldn’t you talk to him?” The words came out too loud, too sudden, but she’d done it. Pride and fear twisted in her chest.

Ellian turned slowly.

“What?” He was too surprised to have an opinion yet, and Aryn, with courage she’d never known she had, pressed her advantage.

“The Warlord. You could talk to him. You know him, don’t you? That’s how you got the house for my parents. And I’m so grateful, Ellian, I am, and I would never ask this if it weren’t important, but it is. He’s bombing the districts and the people are in terrible danger—”

“Aryn, you know as well as I do that he’s bombing the villages because that’s where the resistance is.”

She tried to keep her face as expressionless as she could. He mustn’t suspect her past. He could never suspect it. Here on New Arizona, where traders flocked from all over human occupied space to buy anything and everything, freedom fighters were not welcome. They caused trouble.

The resistance is right, she wanted to cry. He doesn’t have any right to that planet. He seized it, and everyone is too afraid to try to stop him. You know it isn’t right, Ellian, you know that.

“It’s cruel,” she said quietly, instead. “Children live there, Ellian. Children like Josef.” His nephew, his sister Mara’s child, held a special place in Ellian’s heart. Though they had settled into a comfortable life on the inner planets, Ellian often spoke of bringing them to New Arizona when Josef was old enough to start learning to run a business. One day, if he showed the talent for it, the child might be Ellian’s protégé. “There are criminals in this city, too, Ellian, and you’d never want him to suffer only because he was near them.” Her voice, to her shock, was steady.

Ellian stared at her, and she stared back, heart pounding. Had she gone too far? She could never read him. The moment stretched so long that she began to wonder what to say, if there was anything she could say, if he was going to—

And then he smiled, and her heart unclenched.

“Aryn, you are the most honorable woman I have ever met.” He came to take her lightly by the shoulders, kiss her on each cheek. “It is what I have always loved about you. I will do what I can, of course. I simply….” he hesitated.

“What?”

“I know that you think highly of my abilities to persuade….” he began carefully.

“I do,” Aryn said eagerly. “You could persuade anyone of anything.” How often had she wished for Ellian to speak to the men he dealt with and ask them to treat their workers more kindly? How often had she wished that Ellian had as much care for the powerless as he had intelligence and cunning?

“Sweetheart.” He took her hands in his again. “I only want you to be realistic. You know how long the Warlord has been in power. I can speak to him, of course. I simply do not know how much I can do to change his mind.”

“Anything,” Aryn whispered. “Anything you can do, Ellian, please.”

“Of course, my love.” He kissed her on the lips. “And so now it is my turn to ask a favor of you.”

“Oh?” Aryn blinked. When had he last asked something of her as if she might not grant it?

He took a moment, and his face was unguarded, as it so rarely was. It looked as though his heart ached.

And then his careful smile was back.

“You know I worry about you, my love. You know that those who trade here are not always good men. We’ve spoken of this before, and you tell me that you don’t need a bodyguard, but it is time. For my own peace of mind, my love, if nothing else. Tell me you will allow it.”

“Of course,” Aryn heard herself say. It was the correct response.

Now it was Ellian’s turn to blink.

“’Of course?’” he repeated, almost comically. This had been Aryn’s one defiance for the past two years. Every time he spoke to her of it, she insisted that she did not need a bodyguard, that it was a frivolous expense.

She had never told him her real reason for saying no. She had so little time when she was truly alone, and not being watched. She could not give that up—or so she had thought.

Right now, though, she was too giddy with relief over her small victory to care. It was more than a fair trade, some part of her said.

And then all of it vanished: the panic of speaking her mind, the relief of having him not be angry with her when she did. It faded away and she remembered where she was and who she was, and the part of her that had become a society wife found the correct words and the correct smile.

“Yes,” she said. She nodded. She had the sensation of floating—she could not feel herself at all. Was she still smiling? “It is important to you, my love. I don’t wish to scare you.”

“Good,” he said, after a pause. He was smiling, although she thought he looked oddly sad. “That’s good. I’ll have someone for you to meet this evening, then. A contact—a friend of a friend, someone in the military—says he’s found the perfect candidate. Professional, competent, very quiet. You’ll hardly notice him.”

“Mm.” Aryn drew away to sit at her vanity, pretending to look over her jewelry for the night. In the wake of her adrenaline rush, she could feel her legs shaking. She found another smile for Ellian. “I’ll leave it all up to you. I’m sure you know best.”

Whatever courage she had possessed, whatever fire had made her come alive, sank away again and all there was left was cold—and her own pale reflection in the mirror.

6

“So, what exactly are we doing?” Loki followed the motions as Jester showed him how to make the knot on a tie. He’d gone with Talon and Sphinx today to get fitted for dress clothes but part of him had still not expected the clothing to arrive—or himself to wear it. He’d never worn anything like this. His eyes widened at the sight of himself in a crisp black suit, with its white shirt and black tie. Red cufflinks winked at his wrists.

At some point, you’ll need to pick your own way to wear the red, Talon had dropped, off-handedly. Whatever you want.

A Dragon, one of the most legendary Dragons, giving him a nickname and telling him to do whatever he wanted—as if he were an equal, not a farm boy. It still made Loki’s stomach flip over when he thought about it.

Thinking about any of this made his stomach flip over, frankly.

“Boss is being pretty tight-lipped about this one,” Tersi said. He looked over with a shrug, and Loki again felt a sense of shock that Tersi didn’t look at him like an imposter, like an unwelcome guest. He was private, and he liked to insist on alone time in their shared bunk, which Loki still didn’t really understand, but he was nice. He shrugged. “I just got told we all had to dress up. Well, ‘cept Aegis and Nyx.”

“Why not them?”

“We always leave two on board in case we need a pickup, or air support, or whatever. Aegis doesn’t do manners and Nyx doesn’t wear dresses. So.” He gave Loki a meaningful look.

There was a ripple of laughter at the dress comment, and Loki wondered if he’d be able to get the story out of anyone—there clearly was one.

“I don’t blame her,” a female voice said from behind him. “Dresses are terrible. I had to put my sidearm on the inside of my leg, and I’ve only got one knife.”

Loki looked up before turning, and caught sight of Tersi’s face. The man was completely transfixed.

When he looked over his shoulder, he saw Sphinx there, struggling to get earrings into place on her earlobes. Loki had been there while she was fitted for the dress, so it wasn’t so much of a surprise, but he had to admit she looked absolutely beautiful. The dress was a few shades darker than her flyaway golden hair, making her brown eyes glow. Not to mention, the way it clung to her figure was impressive—though less impressive than the fact that she’d still found ways to hide weapons under it.

Those brown eyes, dressed up with eyeshadow in reddish browns and bronzes, were locked on Tersi. Loki looked between the two of them….

And abruptly realized why Tersi was so insistent on his alone time in the bunk.

“Loki, man—your tie’s crooked.”

Loki looked over at Jester, then over into a mirror, and frowned as he ran his fingers over the tie knot. He opened his mouth to say it wasn’t crooked in the least, and then realized he was the only person standing between Tersi and Sphinx. He beat a hasty retreat, going to stand with Jester as the other Dragon made a show of readjusting Loki’s tie. He caught Loki’s eyes with a meaningful grin.

Loki looked around himself. Sure enough, every other Dragon on deck was suddenly engaged in heartfelt conversation, or overcome with the sudden need to clean their weapons. Tersi and Sphinx were still staring at one another, almost shyly, in a little oasis of calm.

Loki looked down at his tie and found himself smiling. He had come here expecting to be tested and pushed—and he had been. Hell, he had bruises from sparring that probably weren’t going to be gone for weeks, and he went to bed at night with his head spinning from tutoring in languages, knife skills, different weapons specifications….

He hadn’t expected the way the team looked out for one another. He stared at his face in the mirror and blinked rapidly to keep the sheen of tears away.

He hadn’t expected that he would ever find another home.

* * *

“Talon.” Nyx leaned in the doorway. “Lesedi on the comms for you.”

“She can’t possibly have found something already.” But Talon was already in motion, hurrying out the door with his tie in hand. The truth was, if anyone could find out Ellian’s plans in such short order, it would be Lesedi.

He settled down in front of the screen with a smile. “Lesedi.”

She looked him up and down and gave a faint frown.

“What? What’s wrong with my suit?”

“It’s not a tutu, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

Behind them, Nyx gave a snort of amusement. She didn’t look at all embarrassed when Talon shot her a glare, just sat in a nearby chair and returned to her paperwork.

“So what did you find?”

“Well, it was the strangest thing. You see, I helped you get that message through to Ymir, encoded in another message packet, yes?”

“Sure.” Talon waved a hand. Whatever wizardry Tersi and Lesedi had done together, he appreciated it without understanding it. He saw Nyx look up with a similarly blank, hopeful expression, and the two of them grinned at each other.

“Mmm, well.” Lesedi looked incredibly pleased with herself.

“Lesedi. I have to get back to the city, get Cade fitted for a suit without him spooking and running off, and then go to a party. I don’t have much time.” Talon glared at her.

“Savoring the moment. Well, not so much the moment as my own cleverness.” Lesedi flashed a smile at him. “I recognized some of the addresses and byways, and I went back to look, and guess what message we piggybacked on? Oh, don’t guess, that could take all day. And you’ll never get it, I promise. Your contact on Ymir is a woman named Samara, apparently.”

“Which you know because….”

“Because someone else sent her a message.”

“Someone else was in contact with her first?” Talon frowned. “We should join forces.”

“It’s not resistance business—yet—but that may, indeed, be a very good option. And you could. Fairly easily. Because the person who’s contacting her … is Ellian Pallas’s wife.”

Talon stopped dead in the act of looping the tie around his neck, and Nyx’s head jerked up. She looked at him.

“Isn’t she the one Cade is—”

“Yes.” Talon looked over at her.

“So we’d have a contact in Ellian’s house who….”

“Yes.” He stared down at the floor, his mind racing. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Is Pallas in on it?”

“I don’t think so.” Lesedi’s voice was measured. “I’m sending you the message, and a video transmission I intercepted later. Pallas seems to have promised his wife that she could keep contacting her friends on Ymir, so he gave her a way to do so. Whether the Warlord knows or not….” She looked deeply uncertain.

“I’m guessing not.” Talon stared into the middle distance. “He’s got a lockdown on the planet, right? He doesn’t allow transmissions on or off. If he breaks that, even for a woman who can’t exactly run around doing whatever she wants … no, it’s a bad precedent. He wouldn’t allow it. So how’s Pallas doing it without him knowing, then?”

There was a long silence.

“Defense satellites,” Nyx said suddenly. She looked over at the two of them. “He provides the Warlord with weapons. I’d bet he got him the satellites, too. They’re probably armed, but they’d be able to transmit data just fine. So he knows the frequencies they operate at. He wanted to make Aryn happy….”

“He’s not that kind of guy,” Talon said, at the same time Lesedi opined,

“Ellian Pallas is hardly a touchy-feely kind of man.”

“Uh-huh.” Nyx gave them both a look. “The odds he got her out of there because they’re really in love are, what, zero? He got her out because he wanted her and she went along with it because she didn’t want to die in a mine. But—but—I’ll bet you he wanted her to love him. Like, really love him.” She spread her hands at the two skeptical stares. “Fine, don’t believe me. I still think I’m right. He gave Aryn that way to contact her friend because he wanted to be the generous husband and he knows she can’t do anything to seriously disrupt … any of it.”

“And yet, the woman she’s contacting is part of the resistance.” Talon gave her a look.

“Which suggests Aryn may also have been part of it,” Lesedi chimed in.

“Oh, I know.” Nyx gave a smile that wasn’t exactly kind. “And now we have a former-resistance-soldier wife who wants to be in contact with a current-resistance-soldier friend … with one of our guys as a bodyguard, inside the house of a man who supplies weapons to Ymir. We basically have an open line to the resistance, and quite possibly a way to find out what the other side is planning.”

“Go back a moment.” Talon felt a grin starting on his face. He looked at Nyx, and then back to Lesedi. “I was wondering if I could turn Ellian, bribe him to get weapons we bought to Ymir, but that was entirely the wrong angle.” His grin widened. “The right question was, could I get him to help me without knowing that was what he was doing? And with Cade in place and Aryn being who she is … we might actually have a shot at that.”

* * *

There was a knock at his study door and Ellian looked up.

“Come in.”

Christian Cordev eased the door open and slipped inside with a respectful nod. At 24, he was young enough that Ellian had worried he would be impulsive and unreliable, but the young man had a good head on his shoulders. He was deferential, clearly ambitious but did not want Ellian’s place.

Ellian could always smell those. He used them, occasionally, until they outlived their usefulness, and then he disposed of them.

Christian, however, simply wanted to rise. He followed orders and received his rewards. He was happy with that life. He did not like the uncertainty of finding clients and watching deals fall through—especially not in this line of business.

That made him perfect for tonight’s task.

He sat, with a pleasant expression on his face. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“There is apparently an attempt to make a weapons deal in the city tonight.” Ellian toyed with a silver pen.

Other lackeys would protest that no one would dare do so, that Ellian was too feared for anyone to risk such a terrible thing. Christian, however, thought seriously about this. He did not suggest that Ellian’s intel was flawed. When he looked up, it was with an expression of calculation that he did not bother to hide.

“Are they desperate, or are they stupid?”

Ellian smiled. “I have the same question. No one seems to know anything about the identity of either the buyers or the sellers. You will find out for me.” He saw the half-second of worry in Christian’s eyes and smiled. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to figure this out from scratch. We have a location—a party. You will go and determine who is there to make the deal. Then you will learn the rest of the details from them. I give you complete freedom. Use whatever resources you need.”

Christian’s quiet satisfaction was evident, and he betrayed no signs of unease or worry. He nodded to Ellian. “I will present a full report in the morning.”

“Bring me the information whenever you have it,” Ellian corrected him. “I’ll wait up.”

A weapons deal with new dealers was almost certainly someone stupid.

But Ellian hadn’t managed to survive this long by relying on ‘almost certainly.’ He had survived this long by being careful—and assassinating anyone who had ideas of taking him out.

7

New security initiative. Title: Blackout. Believed to be against resistance. New officer assigned to Io District, India Quince. Surveillance installed on communications routers at secondary guard headquarters will allow us to monitor official communications and give you advance warning of strikes.

I have included schematics for a device that can be installed, parts should be on hand. Will let you know when I have a stable connection.

Move soon.

Samara scrolled down to the schematics and frowned. That was priority one.

“Stefan.” She beckoned him over. “Make a list of these parts and find me someone who could build me this. Maybe Nura.”

Stefan took out a grimy pad of paper and began noting down the items. “Nura hasn’t been around much.”

“Then get me someone else.” Samara heard her voice rise and sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t … you know what to do. Get her if you can, though, she’s got a good touch with electronics.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Stefan gave her an apologetic look. “I’m sorry I mentioned Aryn to her. And … showed her the email.”

“So am I, but there’s no sense crying about it.” Samara shook her head. “If she’s going to storm off, I’d rather she do it now than in the middle of a battle.”

Stefan nodded. “Anything else?”

“Maybe by the time you get back. Although….” Samara checked her watch. “Your shift is soon. Go straight there after talking to Nura, I’ll do what I need to here.”

She looked around herself wearily as he left. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed that the shifts had gotten harder lately. The guards were more brutal, and the quotas kept creeping up. Some people weren’t meeting them anymore, and there were families who had nothing at all without the wages they used to buy food at the commissary.

Samara’s lips tightened. The commissary was a farce just like everything else on this planet. The wages were imaginary, they never truly existed, there was never a coin or a bill in anyone’s hand. They were just there nominally so that the Warlord could say they weren’t slaves—as if it fooled anyone.

And there was no way to feed anyone on the wages they made in the mines. The prices of grain and protein blocks couldn’t possibly be as high everywhere else as they were on Ymir. All citizens were in debt to the commissary, which was a pointless cruelty on top of everything else, just another way for them to hound people.

There wasn’t anything to buy but food and clothes. There wasn’t medicine, not really. There weren’t even goods like plates or sheets. People were making do with what had been on the planet when the Warlord arrived, and it hadn’t been an affluent place.

Thinking about it right now was pointless. The only thing there was to do, really, was figure out what was going on with India Quince—whoever she was.

Samara sighed. Specifics might be important, but they might not. Whenever a new officer was assigned to a district, a crackdown followed. The only thing they could hope for was to figure out what this one was planning, and get in the way.

They needed to survive until Talon Rift and his fighters could come. Samara’s lips shaped the name like a prayer.

They needed to survive. She would do anything to make sure Io District was safe while they waited. Like hell were they going to die just when people were coming to save them.

* * *

India Quince settled into the chair behind her desk and gave a grim smile as she looked around the room. It was ugly as sin, this place: shoddily built, the windows grimy, and vents stuck half-closed so that it would be too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.

But that didn’t matter in the slightest. What mattered was that this was her first war room. The old table, rickety and covered in stains she’d rather not know about, was going to have her map of Io District with her markers moving over it and her red Xs over targets.

What mattered was that from here, she was going to prove herself. She was going to go beyond the drudgery of the mercenaries who just phoned it in. She was going to show the Warlord what she was worth.

“Sergeant Quince?” A man with gleaming black hair opened the door. His uniform was not well cleaned, and India felt her lip curl at the sight of the wrinkles and staining on the edges.

“Yes?”

“We wanted to welcome you to Io District.” He gave her a bright smile. “I’m Jeremy Sandon, assistant to Captain Eddis. We’ve been instructed to give you any and all resources you require, so let me know if—”

“Why did the captain not come to greet me?” India stood up, letting her fingertips trail on the desk.

“Well, he—he’s very busy, Sergeant.” Sandon was stuttering slightly. “He’s presently meeting with his patrol leaders to….” His voice trailed off in the face of her stare, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Is there something you’d like to discuss with him?”

“I would like this initiative to be shown the respect it deserves.” India stared him down. “I am here to root out the resistance cells and eliminate them.”

There was barely a flicker on Sandon’s face, but she saw it. “Do you have something to say?” He shook his head, but she did not budge. “Go on. I insist.”

“It’s just, ah….” He cleared his throat. “The resistance cannot be eliminated, ma’am. I commend your ambition, but it is best to be realistic.”

“The resistance has not been eliminated,” India clarified, her voice crisp. “That does not mean it cannot be done. The measures taken so far have clearly been insufficient.”

“Ma’am, I assure you, we have followed the Warlord’s orders fully.” Now there was a touch of anger in the younger man’s voice.

“Then you won’t object to me doing the same,” India said simply. She let her gaze rake over him, and felt only contempt. In this world, there were predators and there were prey, and this man was prey. It was good that he was not on the streets, responsible for enacting justice—but he should not even be wearing the uniform. He should be back in Kell District with the rest of the noncombatants.

He swallowed again. “And what did the Warlord order?”

India smiled. She leaned over the table, planting her hands. “He said to do … whatever it takes.”

He said nothing. He was frozen, watching her.

“So, for a start….” India straightened up again. “Bring me dossiers on every suspected resistance fighter and their family members.”

“Their—their family members, ma’am? I don’t think we have dossiers on them. There would be too many.”

“Then get people in the streets and make them,” India snapped.

“But why their families?”

“Mr. Sandon, are you unaware of the Warlord’s edict? The life of a resistance fighter is forfeit—as are the lives of their family members. Whatever they may know—and whatever information their family may choose to give us in the hopes of freeing them—is ours for the taking.”

“But, Sergeant Quince—”

“The dossiers, Mr. Sandon.” India went behind the desk and sat. “Promptly. And send a patrol leader. No, two. I’ll be forming my own squad for surveillance.”

8

“This is ridiculous.” Cade looked himself up and down in the mirror as a tailor fussed around him, pinning up the hems of his pants.

“Relax, you look fine.” Talon leaned against the doorway. “You’ve kept yourself in shape. That’s good.”

“Not that kind of ridiculous.” Cade gave him a look. “You’re spending how much on this suit?”

Talon waved a hand negligently.

“Well, I care,” Cade muttered. “I’m going to pay you back for this,”

“Consider it back pay,” Talon said, wisely abandoning the plan to make it a gift. “You’re owed it as a veteran, you know.”

“And you know why I haven’t taken it.” Cade tried to keep from studying himself in the mirror. He didn’t want to enjoy this suit.

“Yes. Because you’re a stubborn bastard, displaying the calling card of all stubborn bastards: screwing yourself over in a way no one will notice. Do you think anyone’s pulling out your file in the Veterans’ Benefits office saying, ‘hmmm, I wonder why Williams hasn’t submitted his paperwork’? No. They aren’t. Meanwhile, you were prepared to freeze on the streets.

“Face it, Williams, if you don’t want to be a Dragon, right now that means being a bodyguard, and that means presenting as if you can be part of polite society.” Talon’s snort said what he thought of that last bit.

Cade gave him a quelling look and jabbed a finger at the tailor. Her spiky blonde hair was very much the fashion these days, but the vibrancy of her tattoos and hair seemed to be matched by calm professionalism; he caught himself forgetting she was here. Apparently, Talon had as well. One might be known to be in the Dragons—enough people knew to look for the obvious signs—but one never, ever admitted it.

“What, Miranda? She works for Intelligence. How do you think I get half my intel on New Arizona?” Talon raised his eyebrows.

Miranda looked up at Cade. She looked, for all her tattoos and piercings, like she couldn’t keep a secret or tell a lie if her life depended on it, and Cade was sure that those full, rose-colored lips and innocent eyes had spurred more than their fair share of illicit confidences. Now, as if sensing Cade’s thoughts, she smiled sheepishly.

He tried to smile back, but could hardly summon a twitch of his lips. This was what he had hated most in Intelligence: the veiled smiles, the poisoned daggers, the lies that spiraled and layered without end.

In his heart, Cade was a soldier, not an Intelligence operative. He wanted a target. He wanted to trust that the target was bad. He wanted to use his expertise to eliminate the target and protect his men. And that wasn’t a Dragon’s task. What Talon had excelled in was the use of secrets and lies—and the twists and turns of it had made Cade uncomfortable.

You can’t charge in headfirst to take out a drug lord, Williams.

Cade looked away.

“This will be different,” Talon promised.

Cade inwardly cursed the man’s ability to read anyone, anytime. He shot him a look.

“It’ll be a nice, easy job.” Talon pushed himself up and began to pace in a slow circle around the podium, hands in his pockets. “The woman hardly leaves her penthouse.”

“Tell me about her.” He might as well know what he was getting into.

“Her name is Aryn Beranek. She’s originally from Ymir.” Talon paused significantly until Cade processed this. Their eyes met in the mirror.

“How’d she get to New Arizona?” Idle curiosity, nothing more. In his brief time, he’d seen people smuggle themselves in a hundred inventive ways, and sell themselves in a hundred more.

“Her husband brought her. Saw her on Ymir and fell madly in love, apparently. Quick courtship. Society found it … romantic.”

Cade raised his eyebrow at the insinuation in Talon’s voice.

“What?” Talon looked at him innocently. “Society finds fairy tales romantic. And if there’s one thing they respect, the society here, it’s clawing your way up in the world. A miner from the Warlord’s pet planet stealing an arms trafficker’s heart? It has a certain admirable quality to it.” Talon’s voice was more bitter than Cade expected.

“Stealing, you say?”

“Well, the man’s worth millions. Billions, probably, at this point.”

“You know to the penny,” Cade said drily.

“Only as of this morning.” Talon picked an imaginary speck of dust off his jacket. “Anything could have happened since then.”

“And you really think this is romantic?”

“I said admirable. Think about it—she could have settled for being someone’s mistress. One of the Warlord’s lackeys.”

“How about the Warlord himself?”

“She’s not his type.” Talon’s tone was suddenly flat, the voice of a man who knows too much and wants to remember none of it.

“Been doing research on the Warlord?”

Talon hesitated.

“Miranda, a moment.” When the woman was gone, Talon looked over at Cade, his face expressionless. “Help me take him down.”

“The Warlord of Ymir?” Cade demanded incredulously. “Are you insane?” And then it dawned on him. “Good God, Rift—was that what you wanted me for?”

Talon did not nod; he did not have to.

“You’re insane.” Cade wanted to laugh a bit hysterically. “You’re actually insane.”

“And you’re tempted.” Talon tried for his usual debonair humor, but his fingers were shaking as he went to button his coat. “I … know things, Williams.”

“What, something worse than enslaving a whole goddamned planet?”

“What about killing them all?” Talon’s spoke lightly, professional interest in his tone, but when Cade looked over, the man’s head was bent, his jaw set.

“No.” Cade shook his head. “I don’t believe it. Christ, who are you getting your information from?”

“You know as well as I do that once a rebellion takes root, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.” Talon did not look over at him. “The Warlord knows it, too. If he’s not planning to do it that way, he should—and even if he’s not, he’ll get there.”

“Who’s going to run his mines if he kills all of them?” Cade tried for a laugh, but he couldn’t manage to make one come out. He believed it, he realized in horror. Talon did not joke about things like this.

But he wanted it to be a joke. His eyes fixed on Talon’s face, waiting for a flicker.

“Slaves,” Talon said simply. He looked over. “Slaves who know what he did to the last set.”

“He’d never get away with it.” Cade’s hands were clenched. “Every ship in the Alliance fleet would be there within a week.”

“Are you sure about that?” Talon looked over at him.

“Of course I’m sure! No one in hell is going to do that and go unpunished. He’ll be caught.”

“No, he won’t.” There was absolute certainty there.

The world shifted under Cade’s feet. He had seen Talon angry, seen him joking, seen him go into missions with feral anticipation. He had never seen the man as he was now, frozen by the same horror that gripped Cade.

“I can tell you all of it,” Talon said softly. “There’s more here than you could imagine, Williams. But I need your word that you’re with me.”

Yes. The word was in his mouth. How could he stand back now, when God knew how many millions hung in the balance? Countless deaths to be averted. Cade and Talon could take the man down together, a quick operation, indisputably good—

This could not be real. There was no way it could be real.

And if he went in now, Cade would be back where he’d started. He would become the man he had spent two years outrunning.

“No.”

“Williams—”

“You know I’m the wrong one to ask.”

“But you’re not.” There was fury in Talon’s voice.

“I said no.”

“You don’t understand how bad this guy is.”

“I understand how the world works!” Cade rounded on him. “There’s always another bad guy, another person too deranged to be taken down by the law and there we go, shooting our way in. And you want me to say it’s all right, don’t you? You want me to believe you that this could possibly be real and go in there with God knows what kind of force—”

“Williams, listen to me.”

“No! When we do that, innocents die. Things go wrong. Can you promise me that no one’s going to get hurt here who shouldn’t?”

Talon looked away, and that was answer enough.

“Rift….”

“Don’t say it.” He did not look back. “It’s my mission. You had every right to get out.”

“Your intel—”

“Is correct.” Talon bit off the words. “It is correct, Williams. I wouldn’t joke about this. Not this.” He looked down at the ground.

“I don’t think you’re joking.” I think you’ve spent so long in the shadows that you’d believe anything of anyone. He didn’t say that. “But, Talon, everyone? It can’t be done. They would fight back, they would…” His voice trailed off. Talon’s eyes were haunted.

“It can be done,” Talon said quietly. “He doesn’t have the weapon yet, but he will. It’s only a matter of time.”

“It’s not—”

“You don’t have to say anything. It’s my mission.”

“Right.” But it didn’t feel right. Cade looked back at the mirror. Talon kept staring at the far wall.

Then: “…Did you say this woman’s husband is an arms trafficker?”

“I was hoping you hadn’t noticed that.”

“I’m out.” Everything about this was turning into a nightmare, Talon’s words draping even this in a strange clarity. He had to get out.

He went to step off the podium and found his way blocked by Talon.

“No! No. Listen to me. There haven’t been any attempts on her life—or his, actually. In fact…” A faint frown crossed Talon’s face. “I’m not entirely sure why he wants a bodyguard. But he does.”

“A big deal is going to put her at risk?” Cade guessed.

“Unlikely,” Talon said, after appearing to consider it. He met Cade’s eyes again. “To all accounts, he’s head over heels for this woman—and keeping the shadier dealings to a minimum. And she’s not out running through the bad parts of town, she just stays in the penthouse and goes to charity dinners.”

“I’m going to be bored out of my mind,” Cade informed him.

“You know what’s also boring? Freezing to death.” Talon’s mouth twitched in his customary humor. Whatever had happened before, whatever he believed about Ymir, it had sunk beneath the surface without a trace, and Cade knew he would never hear another word about it.

He wished that didn’t make quite such a twist of guilt in his gut. It wasn’t real, he told himself. And so he tried to return Talon’s humor.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“No. Williams, I let you walk out because it was the right thing to do. I’m not going to let you starve now.”

What it was, Cade couldn’t say. Was it a flicker in the man’s eyes? The way he held his shoulders? Whatever it was, he didn’t doubt his instincts for a second. He might not have Talon’s talents for subterfuge, but even a Dragon couldn’t fool another Dragon.

“There’s more to this.”

“Yes,” Talon admitted, after a pause.

“What is it?” Cade bit off the words.

There was a pause.

“Take it or leave it,” Talon said finally.

It took all of Cade’s self-control not to put his fist through the mirrors.

“I’ve spent too long staying away from all of this just to—”

“Take it or leave it, Williams.” And when Cade said nothing, Talon’s voice dropped. “You know it’s not supposed to end for you in some slum on New Arizona, freezing to death at 26. So help me, God, if you won’t take this job, I will have you carted out of here and locked in a hotel room until I can come back to see if you’re more compliant.”

Which would be charity. And Talon knew he did not take charity.

Goddammit.

“Fine. I’ll meet with the arms trafficker.” Cade put as much acid as he could into the words. “And I will decide whether or not to take the job.”

“Just tell the taxi driver whether or not to go to the hotel on the way back, it’ll be easier that way.” Talon, when the mood took him, had a deadpan to put all others to shame. “Now go get a cab.”

“My hems aren’t done.”

“They’re pinned, it’s good enough. Go.”

Cade grimaced as he folded into the little car outside. He could do space missions without a flicker, but something about cars flying around in a gravity well just seemed wrong to him. He clutched at his hand rest as the car took off, entering the ferry lane to climb up the side of the Diamond Tower. Even the interior of the ferry lane had been kept polished.

These people had too much money.

Deposited at the correct penthouse, Cade strode to the door and was greeted without a flicker.

“Mr. Williams, Mr. Pallas will meet you in the room on the left.”

“Thank you.”

Cade made his way into the room. For a moment, he noticed none of the finery: his eyes swept to the corners, up to the ceilings, noted the shadows and the alcoves—anything and anywhere there might be a weapon or an assailant. When his eyes at last came to rest on the textures and colors of the room, he barely suppressed a whistle. Someone had gotten marble—actual marble for the floors and Vorekan sapphires for the chandeliers, glittering their strange blue-green. Wall sconces lit the room softly with golden light, and in the corner…

Her. He knew instantly who it was. She was turned away, watching the city from the floor-to-ceiling windows, clad in a blue gown set off perfectly by the chandelier. From the elegantly piled hair to the diamond necklace, there was no doubt in Cade’s mind that this was the trophy wife, the admirably ambitious young woman Talon had described.

She was also sad. In the faint curve of her shoulders, the downward tilt of her head, Cade saw someone who was completely, utterly alone—someone terrified, sliding into the same silent oblivion he felt as the world passed him by without a flicker of recognition. Unexpectedly, he felt a deep swell of sympathy.

“Aryn Beranek?” he asked.

She turned, and the illusion hung for a moment. A pale oval of a face, jaw slightly too sharp, her full lips pale, a nose with the slightest tip-tilt to the end of it. Blue-grey eyes were set deep below brows with a sharp peak to them. Everything about her was just the tiniest bit wrong for her station: face too angular, mouth too wide, brows too full, nose not quite straight. She looked lost, a woman who had wandered into a fairy tale and had no idea what to do with the jewels and the silk, and he could see nothing but the plea in her eyes, beyond words.

The transformation began slowly, her shoulders dropping back, neck lengthening, chin rising fractionally. Her chest swelled with a deep breath, small breasts pressing against the décolletage of her blue gown, a smile beginning on her lips.

Desire hit him like a blow. In that moment, she was perfect, a woman of warmth and love and honor, above all, honor—how he knew, he could not say. She was a woman with no ability to lie, or cheat, or steal. A woman he wanted to protect against the ravages of a world that knew all too well how to destroy people like that. He wanted to feel her nestle her head against his shoulder, he wanted her in his arms—

And then the smile came to her mouth, and the illusion shattered. It was a perfect curve of those beautiful lips, set off by a coquettish tilt of her shoulders, and it was entirely false. It did not for a moment touch her eyes, and Cade fought the urge to walk away, out of that house, and never look back. She was false woman, pretending at innocence and sadness.

Aryn Beranek was everything he had feared.

9

Clark Wheeler was potbellied and far too loud for India’s liking, but she had to admit after a few hours in the man’s company that he knew his stuff. Without stopping to think, he’d marked down the most dangerous streets, his guesses of where there were hideouts, and the houses of known resistance fighters.

When asked why he hadn’t yet killed them, he snorted.

“Eddis. The man doesn’t want us ‘making enemies.’” He gave her a look.

“And what do you think, Officer Wheeler?” She linked her hands behind her back and watched him.

He swallowed, suddenly aware that he was on the spot.

Suddenly realizing there was a predator in the room, and she would not go easy on him like that fool, Eddis.

But he drew himself up—good, she couldn’t stand sloppiness—and his lip curled slightly as he answered her. “They’re rats,” he told her. “They got jobs, they got food. People all over don’t have stuff like that. But they’re building bombs, they’re blowing up police who are just there to do their jobs. They complain, all the damned time. And we aren’t here to make friends, we’re here to keep the peace. So I think the same thing you do—I think Eddis is an idiot.”

“You presume, Wheeler.” She made her voice a whip crack, and put her palms flat on the desk as she sat. She studied him, noting the sudden pallor when she spoke, and the way he was holding himself still to wait for her orders.

When she said nothing, he swallowed. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Mmm.” India looked around herself. The dossiers were still not ready and Eddis was presiding over the case of a bread thief who claimed he wasn’t guilty.

In other words, wasting his time instead of helping quash the resistance. It was something she would not hesitate to note in her report when this was all over. For now, she at least had Wheeler. He might be a suck-up, a man who hadn’t had the strength of will to do what he knew he should when his captain gave the wrong orders….

But that was why India was here. Most people in the world, after all, were followers. They needed a leader who was willing to do what was necessary.

“Tell your team to get ready,” she told Wheeler. “I’ll be seeing the entire district over the next few days. We will start now.”

* * *

Samara melted into the shadow of a doorway, trying to look, above all, as if she were waiting for someone. She tried not to let her fingers drift to where the knife was concealed against her lower back. She couldn’t draw attention to it—to anything about herself. Who knew what guards might be watching the video feeds?

They were moving up the street in what Jacinta had always called a “leapfrog” pattern, for reasons Samara couldn’t entirely understand. It was apparently based on a game that was modeled after something frogs might or might not have done.

Also, Samara had no idea what a frog looked like.

Regardless, the pattern was sound. Moving in multiple groups kept them from standing out in the crowd, and checking in with one another regularly made it easier to tell within seconds if something had gone wrong.

Stefan moved into position and, after a pause, the rear group began to move forward. The walked together, occasionally looking up, trying to appear for all the world as if they were just off-shift miners coming back from the commissary.

The guard tower was dead ahead, a building Samara avoided if she could help it. Off-shift guards slept one night in Kell District, and one night in the barracks, to provide immediate backup in case there was a riot. Together, the on-shift and off-shift guards had more manpower than the resistance, and so generally, the resistance avoided the epicenter of the guards’ territory.

What they were doing now was both unusual and perhaps suicidally bold.

Stefan and Samara had stayed up far into the night, considering their options, and only one plan made sense: someone had to draw the guards’ attention, or the camera that watched over the communications relays would never turn away to allow them to place the device. This left the question of what type of distraction would be enough to turn the camera for, but not something that would get them beaten to death in the street, and Stefan had decided to pretend to be sick.

What if they decide to just let you die?

They’ll at least want to watch, right? He had smiled, but it wasn’t really funny that the guards would want to watch someone die for entertainment value, and neither of them laughed.

Nura swung her bag, loaded with potatoes and flour and the tiny, delicate device in its little box, over her shoulder as she walked into position, and Stefan nodded to Samara before he lurched out into the street.

Samara had to give it to him, the man acted his ass off. He staggered. He fell to his hands and knees and looked like he was going to vomit. He grabbed at Nura, who made a show of peering at his face and then yanking herself away and hurrying off, as if she’d seen something contagious and worrying. He clutched at his heart as he staggered up, letting his back twist and arch like he was in agony.

And the camera began to turn.

Nura kept hurrying, tossing looks over her shoulder, ostensibly at Stefan but checking for Samara’s signal.

Samara kept watching, waiting. Her eyes were locked on the camera, assessing the angles….

And then she heard the sound of a police truck and the familiar, terrifying order: “Checkpoints instituted. Open your bags and prepare for inspection.”

* * *

Io District was truly one of the most miserable places India had ever seen. Everything was the same grey color, down to the dust that seemed to be everywhere. It collected in doorways, coated the slats of the shutters, and lay in a fine, greyish-brown pall over the street signs.

It was also, quite clearly, the site of more than a few battles. There were bullet-holes in the plaster of the buildings, and India saw more than a few shattered windows and broken cobblestones.

Wheeler saw her looking, and pointed up ahead. “You should see Street 7. Resistance blew a hole in it the last time the Dragons came. Didn’t take any of ‘em out, of course.” He gave a grin.

India did not smile. It was an insult to the mercenaries that the Warlord brought in Dragons. They should be the ones tasked with taking out resistance leaders. It didn’t matter that the resistance leaders were canny, hiding amidst the citizens. It didn’t matter that—

That the mercenaries hadn’t proved themselves. They had failed to take down the resistance. If India were to be fair—and she was always fair, she prided herself on that—she understood that the Warlord had had good reason to bring in the Dragons. In fact, he’d been generous to allow the mercenaries to keep working in the districts, given how consistently they had failed to suppress the resistance.

That ended now. They were going to finish this. More to the point, she was going to finish this—she was determined that Io District would be the first to be entirely rid of resistance fighters.

She was smiling grimly when she saw the disturbance up ahead. A man was staggering along, probably sick with drink—they ran illegal distilleries, she knew all about that—and grabbing for a passing woman to help him. India looked over at Wheeler, who was watching the scene with his lip curled. When he looked over at her, she nodded ahead at the two citizens.

“It’s a public disturbance, Officer.”

“I … it happens all the time, ma’am.”

“A lot of things ‘happen all the time’ that will no longer be tolerated.” India almost spat the words. “This district will be running smoothly by the time I am done.”

“But Captain Eddis is in charge of—”

“Captain Eddis,” India said, her voice deathly soft, “has failed at his duty. Would you agree, Officer Wheeler?”

He swallowed, but nodded. “I would.”

“So what are you going to do about this?” India nodded her head at the two citizens.

He cleared his throat, but switched on the sirens and put his loudspeaker up to his mouth. “Checkpoints instituted. Open your bags and prepare for inspection.”

There was a pause while everyone on the street froze.

And then the drunk man turned on the truck, gave a yell, and ran at them with his arms waving.

India felt her eyes go wide. It was like something out of a film: the zombie chasing the heroes. The man’s eyes were wide and manic, and he was yelling the whole time he ran. She looked at Wheeler, who was also dumbstruck, and then over to the other people on the street.

All of whom had vanished.

Rage burst through her. A set-up. This had been a set-up. He was making a diversion. She yanked open her door and was out of the car before it had even come to a stop, rifle up.

“Stop right there.” Her voice echoed off the walls.

He didn’t even pause. He changed his path to run right for her, yelling. He was daring her to shoot him, she could see it in his eyes.

Did he think she was an idiot? India stood her ground and, as he got close enough, whipped the butt of her gun around to knock him in the jaw and then turn it and slam it forward again into his chest. He went down in the dirt, dazed, and she knelt down to grab a handful of his hair.

“What’s your name?”

“Ste—” He was trying to catch his breath. “Stefan.”

“Stefan.” India smiled and wrenched him up, her smile widening when he yelled in pain. Good. She wanted all his little friends to hear it. She pitched her voice to carry. “You and I are going to be spending a lot of time together, Stefan. You’re going to tell me everything about what just happened.”

* * *

Samara watched in horror as Stefan swung around toward the source of the siren. He met her eyes for one moment, and then he charged. He was yelling, waving his arms, making the biggest scene she had ever seen.

Nura disappeared between two buildings in a flick of grey coveralls, taking the device with her.

Nura could not be found. And that meant creating even more distractions. As one of the guards came out of the truck and hit Stefan with the butt of her gun, Samara launched herself out of the doorway and ran, right down the middle of the street. She saw the other resistance fighters disappearing out of the corner of her eye. They all had their paths and their safe points, practices she had drilled them on relentlessly.

There were words echoing behind her and she heard more sirens go, gates opening in the guard barracks.

The guards had seen her—now she had to disappear. Samara skidded as she changed directions and sprinted into an alleyway. She hurdled over a set of old barrels, trying not to tip them over and spill the precious rainwater inside. Puddles left slime on her boots and rats scurried away from her as she ran, leapt, and scrambled up the wooden fence at the other end.

The boards, rough and grey with age, creaked, and splinters broke off in her fingers. Samara gritted her teeth and forced herself not to yell. She tumbled over the top of the fence, lost her grip, and landed hard on the concrete below.

Pain. So much pain. She stuffed her hand in her mouth to muffle her cries and hauled herself, whimpering, into the shadow of a pile of trash.

A door opened without warning and hands yanked her inside. A woman with grey streaks in her hair looked out at the street and closed the door quietly. She half-dragged Samara across the floor and shoved her into a closet.

Samara felt tears stinging in her eyes. This woman wasn’t in the resistance, as far as she knew, but she’d risked herself and her family to help a resistance fighter.

She would repay the debt … if she ever could. Because as barked orders and screams sounded from outside, Samara knew that the first thing she had to do with this unexpected stroke of good luck was find out what had happened to Stefan. If he was dead….

God, it was cruel to hope he was dead, but she did. She hoped.

Because if he wasn’t dead, that meant they’d realized he was part of something bigger—and they had him down in one of the cells that people spoke of in whispers.

And if they had him there, there was nothing more important than getting him back. Stefan knew almost everything about their plans, and no one alive could stand the things the guards did to get information out of people. He would crack … and the resistance would be finished.

10

“Aryn Beranek?”

Aryn froze. She had thought she was alone. Dinner came and went, and she had not had the courage to ask Ellian when he would speak to the Warlord. She told herself that she should have courage, but part of her knew the answer—I must choose my time, my darling—and she knew that her face would betray her impatience, and that would displease Ellian.

Before the meal was half over, she wanted to scream at the monotony of it: to know what she would say, and what he would say—and around and around through the years until her beauty faded and he lost interest in her.

And why, instead of fear, did she feel a stab of anticipation whenever she thought of that?

She fled long before she should have. Let Ellian think she was sulking because of the bodyguard. Perhaps she was. She did not want someone entering rooms silently. Watching her. Reporting back to Ellian. He would hire a guard far more loyal to him than to her, she knew that.

When had she become so cynical? When she looked out at the city, she could imagine, just for a few minutes, that she was the woman who had come here two years ago from Ymir: hopeful, and trying desperately to be in love. She could imagine that this was indeed a city of limitless possibility.

The sound of her name jerked her back to reality. The voice was smooth as velvet and yet fiery, burning across her skin like whiskey, sliding down her spine so that she shivered. She savored it, feeling it like a caress and biting her lip. Who was this man? She turned her head slowly, not wanting to shatter the illusion, and tried not to let her mouth drop open.

Her first thought was that he could not possibly be real—but if any man in the world could match that voice, this was him. Tall and elegant in his suit, he was well muscled, standing confidently. A faint lightening of the skin showed that he’d just shaved off a beard, and she found herself wondering what he would look like with it. His brows were heavy, his brown eyes almond-shaped. A dimple in his chin gave his face softness it desperately needed. There was something sad in his eyes and she felt her lips part, felt a smile begin. This man, she could trust. She knew it instinctively.

And then she remembered where she was. She remembered who she was. This would be one of Ellian’s business associates, a man who would be only too pleased to take any sign of weakness, play her against Ellian—awaken the man’s vengeful instincts with no care for what would happen to Aryn when the dust settled. He was a liar, just like all the other smiling, well-dressed men she had met in this city. He was looking for an advantage over her husband, and he was hoping to prey on the lonely wife.

Her smile was her armor. She raised her chin and let her mouth curve. Her eyes were cold—a warning. She would not be an ally of his, the smile said. She would be charming and gracious and beautiful, as any society wife should be, but she would not be his pawn.

It would be easier to mean that, however, if she didn’t keep remembering the honeyed slide of that voice over her skin. Why was she wondering whether his hands might be able to stir the same deep heat within her? Aryn did not respond like this to male beauty. She certainly did not wonder what it might feel like to have lips trailing down over her throat—

“Aryn?” Ellian’s voice. She hadn’t heard him come into the room. She had been so fixated on this strange new man that she had not even noticed the movement behind him. Now her husband was staring at her, his eyes taking in her flushed cheeks and the pulse beating wildly at her throat.

“My love,” she said reflexively. She did not spare a single glance for the man as she went to her husband’s side. Her eyes were fixed on him, a different smile on her face now. Let this man see the difference—and mark it.

She knew better than to play Ellian false.

“I see you two have met.” Ellian’s voice was expressionless.

“I’m afraid not,” She looked over at him, then at the newcomer. “Do you do business with my husband, Mister…”

“Williams.” That velvety voice was suddenly flat. She could hear dislike, an icy warning. “And no.”

Ellian looked between them.

“My dear, this is Cade Williams. He’s the bodyguard I mentioned to you.”

The bodyguard? The bodyguard. Aryn felt her eyes widen.

“Oh?” she managed. It was the only thing she could think of to say. This was the man who was going to be at her side day in and day out—and the thought of his quiet presence nearby, when she swore she could feel the heat of him in the air, made her tremble.

“Mr. Williams, you come highly recommended.” Ellian’s voice was smooth, his eyes ever so slightly narrowed as he looked at the bodyguard.

The man’s eyes lingered too long on Aryn before he responded, his lip slightly curled. When he looked over at Ellian, however, his face was blank.

“Talon Rift is an old friend.” Again that voice. Even when he tried to strip it of emotion, it made Aryn shiver. “I hope he has not oversold my abilities.”

“In my experience, a man who wishes to oversell uses flashy words. Mr. Rift used none.” Ellian almost looked as if he was sizing the man up. “He used one word repeatedly, however. ‘Best.’ Apparently, Mr. Williams, your skills are unmatched. Tell me, where have you served?”

“Various places. The Verait System.” The man might be staring at Ellian, but Aryn was suddenly sure that he was studying her instead, his eyes tracking her movements. She kept her smile fixed on her face and looked over into Ellian’s face in the way she’d practiced in the mirror. The adoring wife. Part of the story Ellian loved so much.

“That would have been your training camp, yes?” Ellian did not like this man, that much was apparent—to Aryn, at least. “Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Williams. I am not unfamiliar with the Dragons. Indeed, I am pleased to have you here. One could hardly do better for a bodyguard than one of the Alliance’s most elite soldiers.”

A Dragon. Aryn’s blood froze. She wanted to jerk her arm out of Ellian’s and run, but those damned instincts kept her rooted in place, smiling even as her world turned on its head. She could not have a Dragon around her. No. Not after Ymir. Everyone knew the Warlord had Dragons working for him, and this man would see her past at once. He would tell his friends, and they would go to the Warlord and her parents would be on the street or worse—

She forced herself to breathe. She ran through everything she might say to Ellian and knew that none of it would persuade him. He knew the facts as well as she did, surely. If he had decided he liked this man, then it would not matter at all that the Dragons had been corrupted and lent their service not to the Alliance, but to the man who openly defied its justice. Ellian, not Aryn, would choose her bodyguard. She could hear his words now: Aryn, one could hardly do better…

Still, she noted with a surge of hope that this man did not look pleased by Ellian’s assessment.

“And did Talon tell you that I haven’t served with the Corps in two years?” The man’s brows raised fractionally.

“Really? He did not, as it happens, mention that.” Ellian pondered him, gaze traveling over the soldier’s face, and seemed to come to some decision. “Mr. Williams, please come with me. There are things we should … discuss.” His gaze fell on Aryn.

She shivered, leaning up to kiss his cheek, and uncurled her arm from his. She tried to keep her face flat. He was displeased, and that was good. If Ellian also did not like this man….

“Mr. Williams.” She gave a nod, her eyes fixed on the floor. She could not afford to have desire show in her face when she looked at him.

Ellian led the way and the bodyguard followed—only to linger in the doorway. His presence called to her until she could not help but look up at him. His eyes were traveling over her as if she were some puzzle he might figure out. When she opened her mouth to speak, she did not know what she would say. What was there to say when she could not look at him without imagining—

She closed her mouth and turned away.

No. Ellian disliked this man, and so he would soon be gone. And that, as far as Aryn was concerned, was a very good thing.

She made her way confidently across the foyer and into the car waiting outside. Tonight was a charity dinner, an event that made her want to grit her teeth and scream with boredom.

But tonight, she finally had something to think about while she sat and smiled graciously at the speaker. Tonight, she could think about Ymir. About how to help them and get them what they needed. Samara said not to trust Ellian—well, Aryn would find another way.

She had to. She was done turning her back on her past.

She smiled as she sat back in her seat. It was good that Ellian didn’t like the bodyguard. It would be much easier to do all of this without someone lurking around her all the time.

Even if the thought of that did make her heart beat a little too fast. Aryn cleared her throat, stared out the window of the car, and thought resolutely of nothing until she didn’t see those piercing eyes in her head anymore.

11

He hated her. He could hardly see straight, he hated her so much. As Cade turned away to follow Ellian Pallas, all he could feel for the man was pity—and all he could feel for Aryn Beranek was contempt. Those fake adoring smiles were pathetic, and the way she had looked at Cade… Servants, clearly, got none of this woman’s false warmth, and it occurred to him that they might even be luckier in that sense than her poor sod of a husband.

So why couldn’t he stop wondering what it would feel like to pin her up against the wall and kiss her, feel her melt under his mouth, feel her hands against his chest and hear a little moan as he pressed against her? The thought made him grit his teeth with frustration. He could imagine all too well how it would feel to—

He should leave. Three cold showers might be enough. Standing in the snow would be even better, but Talon had promised to imprison him in a hotel, so the showers would have to do. He groaned softly and promised himself he would leave the conversation quickly. His regrets should be enough; this man already seemed to dislike him.

Those thoughts vanished when the door to the study clicked closed behind them and Ellian rounded on Cade.

“Let us be honest with one another, Mr. Williams.”

Alarm bells went off in Cade’s head. Ellian’s eyes were narrowed, and his face was expressionless in a way Cade recognized all too well. This was the look of a man who knew the underworld. Ellian Pallas was an arms trafficker, he remembered too late, and Cade had been so consumed with thoughts of the delicate trophy wife that he hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to the real threat.

Was it a play? No, he did not think so. But he remembered the flat tone Ellian had used in the other room as he summoned his wife to his side. There was a threat there, and there was one here, too. Had he, too, felt the heat arcing between Cade and his wife? Cade knew enough, at least, to lie about that. No amount of honor and promises could convince a man that a Dragon was no rival—and even a Dragon did not have enough confidence to tempt the wrath of an arms trafficker.

Ellian let the silence hang, knowing what Cade was wondering.

“Very well,” Cade said eventually. “Speak plainly, then.” In his pockets, his hands had made fists.

“We are both men of the world, are we not?” Ellian went to a sideboard, almost ostentatiously turning his back on Cade. I do not fear you, the gesture said.

“You might say that.” He watched his host pour two glasses of brandy, every movement studied. The glasses were picked without Ellian looking at them, and he poured from the crystal bottle with practiced elegance. When Ellian returned, Cade took one of the glasses at random and did not drink. He met Ellian’s eyes. “Perhaps you should speak more plainly.”

To his surprise, Ellian smiled at last. It was a bitter smile, but he toasted and downed his brandy in a gulp.

Damn. There was no polite way for Cade to refuse to drink now. He raised his own glass and took a sip, rolling it across his tongue as if savoring. He tasted no bitterness, saw no residue on the top of the liquid, and swallowed reluctantly.

It was good. Of course it was good. From the carpets to the hardwood desk—and the wife, Cade thought bitterly—Ellian clearly bought only the best.

“I like you, Williams.” Ellian settled onto one of the couches and gestured for Cade to join him. When Cade had chosen a seat, Ellian leaned forward, still holding the empty tumbler. “We understand one another, I think. We have both seen all this world has to offer—both in luxury and in pain.”

Cade felt his eyebrows rise before he could stop them.

“And as you said I should speak more plainly, let me say it in the most basic terms.” Ellian smiled. “You and I, Mr. Williams, are both very bad men. We have both done very bad things. I do not think it is presuming too much to say that.”

Cade looked down into his drink. How to respond to that?

“You do not need to say anything,” Ellian assured him, eerily perceptive. “You were a Dragon. Anyone with even the most tangential affiliation to the world of war knows what the Dragons do. I know some of the ones you have destroyed—and I know there is no way you could have done so honorably.”

Cade took a gulp of the brandy.

“I should go.”

“No, I think not. I need you, Mr. Williams, don’t you see? I need a man who understands the worst the world can offer.”

“Why?” Cade asked harshly. “If you have yourself, why do you need another one? As a confidant?” He looked up, knowing his bitterness showed too clearly. “I don’t want to remember,” he said simply.

“Then you are, indeed, exactly what I require.” Ellian settled back. “Why? Yes, always people ask me why. Think, Mr. Williams. You and I have done terrible things. We know what darkness lies in the world. Aryn … does not.”

Cade’s eyebrows shot up, and Ellian laughed.

“You disbelieve me? Perhaps because she’s from Ymir?” He smiled. “Believe me, she was sheltered from the worst of the Warlord’s excesses. You have met her. You have seen her hope, her purity. There are those who call me a fool—yes, to my face—for falling in love with her so quickly. But try to understand. Seeing a woman like that on Ymir, I could no more have left her than I could have snuffed out a star. Leaving such innocence there to be corrupted and destroyed would be a crime.”

The poor bastard even had friends who told him what this temptress was, and he could not see. Cade wanted to sink his face into his hands.

“Mr. Williams.” Ellian’s voice was smooth, deep. “Help me protect my wife. You do not want to use your skills to harm, and I can understand that. It is clear that you are a man of honor. Use your skills, then, to protect. Protect Aryn. She is my everything.”

Cade looked up. Ellian’s dark eyes seemed to draw him in. Was this truly an arms trafficker? A man who dealt with the very worst the world had to offer? A distant voice in Cade’s head told him that Ellian was not trustworthy. Why, after all, had he been on Ymir to begin with?

And something tickled in his mind—a pattern, the remnants of his Dragon training coming to the fore. He ignored it. He was not that man. He would not spend the rest of his life jumping at shadows.

“You hesitate.” The voice was so kind, so understanding. “Perhaps it is me you do not wish to deal with. And you would be right not to—I will not lie. But surely you can see that Aryn is innocent of my business. Sometimes I think she suspects….”

“You do?” Something in the man’s tone caught Cade’s interest.

“She is no fool, my wife. And she is kind at heart.” Ellian’s face was inscrutable. “Sometimes I do not know why she remains.”

Your money.

But it was beyond Cade to say that—and he realized with a sinking feeling that it was beyond him to walk away, either. Ellian Pallas, for all that he was likely a murderer, was in some ways no more than a man who had loved unwisely. And Aryn, even if she was everything Cade feared, still did not deserve to be used as leverage against her husband. With a shiver, Cade remembered the things he had seen as a Dragon. No one deserved that sort of death.

Talon had known that where Cade could walk away from an offer to rejoin the Dragons, he could not walk away from someone who stood before him and begged for his help. This was not the Major asking Cade to kill brutally—it was a man asking to know that his wife was safe.

“All right.”

“What?” Ellian raised an eyebrow, looking over.

“I’ll do it.” Cade finished his brandy in a gulp; he needed it. “I’ll take the job.”

“Excellent.” Ellian smiled. “Mr. Williams, I think you will be exactly what I need.”

The smile did not reach his eyes.

12

After receiving Ellian’s orders about the party, Christian had spent the morning reviewing the resources he had at his disposal and formulating his plan accordingly. Now he looked over the group of soldiers and felt a grim satisfaction. He had observed over the years that many mercenaries were brash—overconfident and unwilling to listen to orders. He had considered trying to avoid using them altogether, and then he’d had a thought.

He had asked Kell Corporation, the only group Ellian ever used for security, for 40 of their oldest mercenaries, and who had also been on the payroll at least ten years.

Now he was staring at a room of men who would blend easily into a party for New Arizona’s elite, with the customary touch of grey in their hair, and a world-weary disposition. They weren’t brash, and they had nothing to prove.

What was more, when Christian had arranged for some of the maids to go serve refreshments, the men had looked over without an urgency. They would take what was offered, the looks said, but wouldn’t go crazy chasing any specific woman—which, in a party full of the richest and most influential people in the city, was absolutely essential.

Moreover, every single one of them had taken the time to read the mission brief, something Christian had never seen in a group of mercenaries before.

He smiled to himself. The mission was going well already. He had a set of experienced soldiers who weren’t going to jump at any little complication—or chase after a pretty face.

When he emerged into the room, they fell silent fairly quickly.

“Good evening.” Christian looked over them. He had met a few of them, leaders for the ten-man squads into which Kell Corporation arranged their soldiers. “I see that all of you have read the mission brief again, and I understand that your squad leaders have briefed you on the details already.”

Heads nodded, including the four squad leaders.

“Good.” Christian decided to go for flattery. “As our opponents are unknown to us, I requested the most experienced mercenaries your corporation could provide. We do not need a newsworthy shoot-out—we need you to identify the targets and move on them quietly. Maneuver them into position. Take them out with a minimum of fuss. Bring their bodies here.” In the crowd, he sought out the face of Killian Brooker, the most senior of the squad leaders, and nodded for him to come up. “Sergeant Brooker will brief you on the specifics.”

* * *

Killian Brooker had served with the Kell Corporation since he was 16, when he had forged his enlistment papers and joined in with the squad being sent to Osiris. Now he looked back with a mental wince at the boy he’d been: overconfident and severely underprepared. At the time, however, he’d thought of himself as worldly, a real man.

That boy would not recognize the man who stood before the soldiers today. Killian was smarter now. He’d spent years learning when to engage … and when not to. He had learned to arrange fights so that the odds were never fair. He’d seen other soldiers come and go, and he’d learned the hard way that glory was for the brave, and bravery was stupid.

He’d also learned that people who talked about having a good cause not only never had any money, but also never wanted to set up the fight the smart way. They wanted to be ‘honorable.’

And honor, like glory, was for the stupid.

He didn’t like people like this soft man, with their suits and their affectations, but he liked their money and he knew better than to think he could change the world all on his own. He took their money and he did their dirty work, and if it troubled his sleep, he went and found some alcohol and some company to distract him until the guilt faded away.

Now when he stared out over the group of soldiers, he felt only a sense of relief that he wasn’t going to have to corral any of the younger, stupider team members. Maybe this fop in the suit had some good ideas.

“You’ve all read the mission brief,” he said, “so this won’t take long. No weapons are allowed in the building and they have incredibly stringent security protocols for the main room in particular. This means we’ll have to stash weapons at some of the exits and coordinate how to guide our targets there. We’ll model this on Divide and Conquer.” It was one of the first lessons mercenaries at Kell learned, and, simple as it was, it was effective. There was a reason the phrase was a cliche. “Any questions?”

Heads shook, and Killian gave a smile. It was a good squad. No theatrics, no glory-seeking morons.

This was going to be nice and easy.

* * *

“All right.” Talon spread out a map on the war table and waited while the team members at the edges weighted it down. He pointed at the left side of the map.“This is the main floor of the building where the party is held. People will enter two floors below—” he tapped at the far right side of the map “—and be herded through these checkpoints.” He tapped three times on the first floor and twice on the second. “Tersi?”

“Four of the checkpoints are effectively silent.” Tersi slid schematics across the table. “No one wants to have a good party ruined by security measures, after all. So no one patting people down or other such ‘indignities,’ just some automated measures with feeds into the security office. These are embedded in the walls and scan for weapons, poisons, and signs of illness.”

“…Illness?” Stabby, one of the younger members of the team, frowned around the table.

Talon saw Loki give him a grateful look. He was learning the ropes impressively fast, and the team was privately taking high bets on how many he’d take out in their first fight—but he was still self-conscious about how inexperienced he was.

Talon knew better than to give him a speech about how everyone started off inexperienced. Being singled out would only make things worse, and in any case, going through a few fights was the only way to get that worry out of someone’s system. He, himself, had no worries about Loki—especially when the kid was so ready to learn.

“Get a sick person in there like a walking bomb, and you could take out half of the elite in the city,” Aegis said gruffly. He considered. “Not a bad idea, really. They’re scum, the lot of them.”

“Biological weapons can be tailored to be highly contagious and, as far as the subject is concerned, symptom free.” Talon grimaced. “It’s been used a few times on Osiris. People here like to think they’re above that sort of thing. They’re lucky their security teams don’t.” He shrugged. “Go on, Tersi.”

“Thanks to one of our latest updates—and Miranda’s help—our weapons should be invisible to this technology.”

“‘Should be?’” Aegis was not convinced.

“The lining in our suits is designed to confuse scanners, Miranda has sewn noise bombs in over the places where weapons will be stowed, and the buttons—and Sphinx’s hairpin—” Tersi studiously did not look at Sphinx in her golden dress “—hold a program that the scanners will recognize so that they won’t set off alarms. In short, the automated systems won’t set anything off and, unless the security guards know to look very closely at us specifically, they aren’t going to see anything out of the ordinary.”

“And if they are looking very closely?” Aegis asked ominously.

“If they are, and the system refreshes at exactly the right time, they will see a momentary, and very faint, distortion caused by the overlay image. Odds are that it won’t even happen once, and they’re vanishingly small that it would happen twice. However, if that happens….” Tersi nodded to Nyx.

“If that happens and you are stopped, normal protocols apply for the rest of team—no acknowledgement, no altered paths, nothing.” Nyx looked at all of them in turn. “Let them be taken away, and if it’s you, go with them without a fight. We all have identification that will trace back to a rather eccentric billionaire who’s known to have some over-the-top security methods.”

“Who?” Loki asked, before he could stop himself.

“James Recardo Arico IV,” Talon said blandly. Snickers sounded from around the table. “Ridiculously wealthy. He’s got a castle out in the mountains, he’s rarely seen in public, and he stockpiles weird stuff.”

Loki looked around at all of the people laughing, and his eyes narrowed in thought. Then he gave Talon a look. “He doesn’t exist, does he?”

Stabby gave a guffaw, and Sphinx clapped Loki on the shoulder. “Hey, he’s learning!”

“He is.” Talon gave a pleased nod. “You are correct. Arico is our front on New Arizona. He sends his security to a lot of parties to scout things out, but rarely decides to go, he gets a lot of raw materials that would be too noteworthy to buy otherwise, and … well, I’ll show you the files later if you want to see them. Suffice to say, he has sufficient pull with the police department and his eccentricity gets us out of a lot of jams. Everyone wants a piece of that fortune, so no one ever calls him on anything.”

Loki gave a snort and shook his head.

“If you get caught,” Nyx continued, “once the police let you out, go wait at one of the black points here.” She indicated four areas around the building. “Pallas’s men have marked these exits as their stash points for weapons. Now, we’ll be doing what we can to get those out of there, but we won’t necessarily be able to.”

“Our intelligence suggests that there will be forty mercenaries on premise, along with this man and his two bodyguards.” Talon put a picture down on the table. “Christian Cordev. He works for Ellian Pallas and he’s been tasked with finding the source of the weapons deal we’re trying to put together tonight. We need him distracted while I speak with our contact. Is that understood?”

Everyone nodded.

“Right.” Talon smiled at them. “You all look very sharp. We’ll be heading out in an hour.”

“Boss, the party has already started.” Nyx looked at her watch.

“You don’t go to parties,” Talon told her with a wicked grin, “so you don’t know this, but no one worth talking to arrives at a party when it starts. If you were willing to wear dresses, you would know these things.”

The look she gave him promised painful retribution during their next sparring session.

Or possibly now. He should probably go. “I’m going into the city.” Talon buttoned his coat and smiled around the table. “I’ll give Nyx the signal for when you should all follow me.”

He did not look at her as he left, but he knew she was watching, and that Tersi was running routines, as well, to see who tried to follow Talon. Without knowing if someone was reporting to Soras, Talon had not yet told the crew in general about Cade’s involvement.

Layers within layers, and backups for his backups.

Talon had no illusions. The Warlord might not know what he was doing on New Arizona, but he had the resources and intuition to figure it out if he got enough clues to form a picture. He worked in the shadows, and he didn’t fight fair.

Unluckily for him, Talon didn’t fight fair, either.

13

She was clearly going crazy.

Aryn paced around her stateroom, not even sparing a glance for the gorgeous view of the city outside. New Arizona was at its finest in the winter, so cold that it was impossible to get from place to place without shivering violently—and, high society being what it was, winter had thus been designated The Season. While it made no sense to Aryn, she normally appreciated the drifting snow and glittering lights that graced the long nights.

Not now. In the past several hours, she’d picked a fight with Ellian and proceeded to have remarkably inappropriate fantasies about a man she’d just met. Nothing she had done could drive them from her mind. Running, kickboxing, and even archery had failed to soothe her, meditation proceeded to empty everything from her mind except the fantasies themselves, and she’d realized within moments that a bath was a terrible mistake.

So she was pacing. She was pacing and she was not thinking about that man. She definitely had not spent the entire charity dinner thinking about him, and she was most certainly not thinking about him coming through the door behind her, and about how her heart would leap when she heard his footsteps. He would be staring at her, his eyes burning as they had when he first saw her, when he thought….

What had he thought?

No. She was not thinking about this. Not at all.

She went to the mirror and stared at her face determinedly. If she were going crazy, wouldn’t she be able to see it? She frowned at her reflection, and then, hearing footsteps coming down the hall, she shoved down the leap of anticipation—it was not Mr. Williams, Ellian disliked Mr. Williams—she turned with a smile on her face for her husband.

“My dear.” He paused at the door, looking her over. “You look very beautiful tonight.”

“Thank you.” Aryn smiled and went to him, laying her hands on his chest as she kissed him. She should try to be a good wife, shouldn’t she? To do the little things that showed Ellian she loved him. If she let her eyes drift closed, she could imagine…

No. That was the insanity again.

“How are you this evening?” A banal question. Anything to keep from asking about Mr. Williams.

“It has been … a trying day.” To her surprise, a shadow flitted across Ellian’s face.

“What happened?”

For a moment, she thought he would confide in her. She could see turmoil beneath the surface, the look of distaste he sometimes wore after particularly bad meetings. There was something new there, as well. She frowned. Ellian looked … unsettled. Yes. Unsettled. It was an emotion she had never seen in him. He opened his mouth to speak and she watched him, waiting. Worried.

Then his face closed off.

“It is not important.”

A single glance told her how unwelcome any argument would be.

“Of course,” Aryn said simply. She stepped away.

“Mr. Williams just left.”

“Oh?” Aryn tossed a smile over her shoulder and went to pour them both drinks. She felt like celebrating. Good riddance to the Dragon, and God willing, in a few days she would have forgotten him.

“He’s agreed to take the job.”

She froze momentarily, ice flooding her veins. Heat followed, unstoppable, at the thought of this man standing at her shoulder, watching her, eyes burning….

“I see.” She finished pouring the drinks, briefly considered downing hers in one gulp, and brought one to him.

“What is it?” Ellian frowned at her.

“I … well, I didn’t think you liked him very much.” Aryn gave a shrug and took a sip of the sweet liqueur, savoring the burn as it slid down her throat. “I must have been wrong.”

Ellian watched her for a moment.

“No, you’re very observant.”

“Then why hire him?” It was an honest question, even if she was far too curious about this man. And as flattery never hurt, she added, “There must be thousands of bodyguards on New Arizona that are desperate to work for you.”

“He was the best man for the job,” Ellian said, and there were layers of meaning in his voice that she could not decode. He looked closely at her as he drank. “What do you think of him?”

This, she had been ready for.

“Darling, you know I know nothing about soldiers.” Aryn gave him a smile. But before she could control herself, the panic rose up again. She could not do this. She simply couldn’t. “But I was thinking, I really don’t need—”

“Not this again, Aryn.” He sounded angry, but beyond that, she heard something else she could not place.

“Oh, but my love, what are you afraid of?” She went to him and reached out to lay a hand on his arm. “No one’s ever tried to hurt me, have they? And I don’t see why they should in any case—surely your wealth shouldn’t make anyone so angry as all that.”

It was the wrong thing to say, but it was also something she couldn’t stop herself from asking every once in a while. Why, exactly, did Ellian insist so often that people would hurt Aryn for what he did? Two years since moving here, she still did not have an answer. Ellian traded in supplies, didn’t he? Food and basic goods?

He didn’t like to talk about it, so she never truly let herself ask. Not really. She just made references every so often.

And every time, his face went stony.

“I have told you that such things are not for you to worry about.”

Aryn nodded as if she were chastened, and looked down so that he could not see her eyes flash. Something about Ellian put her on edge today, and she could not say why.

No, she decided after a moment. She was on edge today. Ellian was as he always was. She blinked at her own foolishness and took a sip of her drink.

“What is it?” Ellian’s voice was one part curious, one part warning. “Why argue again about this once it has been settled, Aryn?”

“It’s nothing. Only foolishness.” She tried to find words. “The same foolishness as before.”

“Really.” His voice was skeptical. “Do you not like Mr. Williams?”

“I worried because you did not like him at first.” The right answer came automatically. “I know you make your living by knowing who to trust. It’s hard to … well, I just don’t understand what changed.”

He softened slightly.

“This man can be trusted, Aryn. He won’t let anything happen to you—I’m sure of it.”

Aryn nodded jerkily. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. There was something in Ellian’s eyes….

And then it was gone.

She forced a smile. “If you trust him, then I trust him.” To be loyal to you. But she did not say that.

“Excellent.” He settled onto one of the sofas by the window. “Come join me.”

“Do you not have to work?” She settled in beside him, his arm around her shoulders and her bare feet tucked up. It was rare, lately, that Ellian could spend an evening with her.

“I should be working,” he admitted.

“You’ve been working so hard lately. Perhaps you’ve earned a rest.” She reached up to run her fingers through his hair and pulled her fingers back when he moved his head away slightly.

“Results earn a person rest,” he said flatly. “Not work.”

Aryn nodded so that he could see. This was the Ellian she knew—indeed, the one she had once hoped she could love. Irritable and snappish, he was nonetheless a man who held himself to the very highest standards and expected the same of others. He was not a pampered rich man, nothing like the Warlord’s lackeys on Ymir who became lazy and cruel, taking men and women as it pleased them and using them for toys.

No, Ellian had built his business from the ground up, and he worked as hard as anyone she’d ever met.

They sat in silence, the snow drifting and the lights glittering, and Aryn felt herself, at long last, begin to return to normal. Ellian’s presence at her side brought her back to the early days, when they would spend their evenings together and he would ask her to share her dreams for the future.

She always blushed and stammered when he asked her that. Someone from Ymir had only one dream, and it was not one she could admit to Ellian, who dealt with the Warlord—everyone needs supplies, Aryn—and any other dreams she might have had over the years were so far out of reach that she had never entertained them. To study science? To paint? To sing? She could not think of anything she enjoyed, no matter how he coaxed her.

She asked him to tell her his dreams, in those days: where he’d come from, how he built his empire. But he was reticent then, and he was still reticent now. She saw little signs that he was beginning to trust her more and more each year, each month—sometimes even each day. But that had been hard-fought. He said he liked to protect her from the way the world worked, and she had never been able to convince him that she knew. She saw. She had grown up on Ymir.

And now a bodyguard….

Awareness returned in a jolt and Aryn took a deep breath to steady herself, draining her drink.

“What are you thinking?”

She looked over, frowning. She did not know what to say to that. Ellian rarely asked such things.

“I was thinking about when I first came here.”

“You didn’t know how to work the showers,” he said, smiling.

“I did so!” Both the laugh and the blush came automatically.

“Because you learned on the ship, coming from Ymir.”

“Oh, hush.”

He smiled over at her, and for a moment it was as it had been at the start: hope palpable between them. The sense that they might build any life they chose, that his love for her was unshakable and her loyalty to him might become tenderness in time. She set down her glass and reached out to lay a hand on his chest.

“Ellian….”

“What is it?” His voice was low.

“I know you’ve been troubled lately.” She took a deep breath. “And I want you to know you can tell me anything.”

“Why would you say that?” His face closed off abruptly; under her fingers, it was as if she felt his chest go from living flesh to stone.

Aryn drew back, confused.

“I only meant….” Her voice trailed off, and with his eyes flat, she knew she must say something. But what? How had she offended him? “Ellian, you try to protect me. You always try to protect me. But I’m your wife. I don’t want you to suffer in silence because you feel you have no one to confide in.”

The words had sounded perfectly acceptable in her head—even in the still air, she could not hear anything wrong with them. And yet Ellian’s nostrils flared and she could see a muscle working in his jaw, his teeth clenched.

“I have work to do.”

He set down his glass and was gone, Aryn staring after him, biting her lip.

What had she done wrong?

* * *

Ellian strode through the hallway, feeling himself shake, wanting to lean against the wall to recover.

He did not. He never showed weakness. He’d been told in his youth, by a laughing businessman, that it was no use pretending to be ice at home because servants knew everything. He said they were used to it, that money kept them loyal and he’d simply made the practice of telling them when someone tried to bribe them, and paying them that and half again the amount for their silence.

But Ellian could not stand the idea of the servants laughing behind their hands at him. He never indulged in displays of fury. He was quiet and cold when he disciplined servants. He never screamed at Aryn. He never allowed strong emotion to show, and he was not about to start now.

Just like he was not about to start confiding in Aryn.

Not yet, at any rate. He looked back toward her room and had the vivid, unpleasant memory of her staring at the bodyguard. It had been plain to see what she thought of Mr. Williams, and, despite the man’s dislike, what he thought of her.

Ellian wanted to pick up the nearest vase of flowers and throw it across the room in a rage. He did not, just as he had not confided in her tonight, or killed the bodyguard for the way he looked at Aryn.

No, he would wait. He would watch. If Aryn was trustworthy, he would know.

If she was not … he would discard her. He swallowed at the thought of not seeing her in the mornings, not dining with her at night. He would miss her.

And that was weakness. His hand clenched in his pocket and he forced himself to keep walking toward his study, never breaking his stride. He had already become too attached to her. The fact that he was even giving her a chance to prove herself, was a sign of his weakness. He should drop her back on Ymir, give his compliments to the Warlord, and find a vapid new wife whose only concerns were jewelry and society dinners, who avoided him because she disliked him and only wanted his money.

Who wouldn’t try to be kind and draw him in.

Do it tonight, his mind told him. He could have Aryn back on a ship to Ymir within minutes. She could hardly protest.

But he couldn’t do it. Not now. Not yet. Ellian stepped into his study and forced himself to close the door without slamming it.

He would let her prove herself. That was fair. He would punish her only if she failed him.

But for now, while her loyalty was unclear, he would not sit with her and take the risk of falling further into this useless infatuation. He would sit here, alone, and wait for Christian’s report.

14

When Cade slammed his way back into the hotel room, he didn’t even startle at the sight of Talon lounging in one of the chairs. Another suit adorned the man’s tall frame, and Cade leaned over to frown at it as he tore his own suit off. Talon’s, he noted, seemed to have been made to de-emphasize muscles and stature—and it was impossible to tell at a glance if the man was armed.

With a Dragon, however, the answer to that question was always yes. It was the one habit Cade never lost.

“So you didn’t get the job?” Talon asked as Cade stripped off his clothes and pulled on his usual sweater and work pants.

“No. I got it.” Cade looked around the spacious room, wanting to prowl, to fight. “You’re paying for all this, right?”

“In a manner of speaking.” The corner of Talon’s mouth twitched as he watched Cade wrench open the minibar and pull out several little bottles of liquor. “So what are you drinking?”

“I have no idea.” Cade threw himself into one of the chairs and looked down at his hands. “Scotch. Apparently.”

“I wouldn’t worry. It’s probably better than the scotch in that bar. Well … statistically speaking, it would be hard to be worse.”

Cade, having just downed one of the tiny bottles as fast as fluid dynamics would allow, nodded and opened another.

“So.” Talon leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes held wariness and humor in equal measure. “You got the job.”

“I’m not happy about it,” Cade warned him.

Talon snorted. “I could tell that from the way you opened the door. What is it?”

“It’s….” Cade sank his head down, rubbing over the back of his neck. The alcohol wasn’t kicking in fast enough. He could still see that woman’s face in his head. Every quirk of her mouth and curve of her body was still etched in his mind.

“Williams?” Talon’s voice was genuinely worried.

“Let’s just say I never thought I’d feel bad for an arms trafficker.” Cade looked up to meet Talon’s eyes.

“This should be good.” Talon settled back in his chair, smiling now. “Tell me.”

“Well, I can see why he fell in love with her—why even a man like that would end up head over heels.”

“Oh?” For the first time, wariness appeared in Talon’s eyes.

“She’s the best actress I’ve ever seen. Which can’t be a coincidence, because she’s getting the best payout of any actress in history. You should see the penthouse, Talon. The chandelier is sapphires. The chandelier.”

“And Aryn?”

“Has this….” Cade felt his lip curl. “You see her, and you want to comfort her. But she’s cold all the way through. There’s nothing in her eyes when she smiles.”

“That’s interesting.”

“What is?” Something in Talon’s voice had caught Cade’s ear. “What do you know?”

“Nyx said—well, never mind. The long and short of it is that I would have bet that Ellian loved her.” Talon was frowning now. “And he’s not the sort of man to fall for an empty smile.”

“That’s the thing. He’s not.” Cade felt his eyes narrow, as if he could peer into the past by squinting. “He’s not one to fall for anything. He is not a nice man.”

When he looked up, it was to find Talon’s face impressively expressionless.

“What do you know?” Cade was instantly on alert.

“He’s an arms trafficker, Williams, what do you think I know?”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Cade said softly, putting a faint threat into each word.

But Talon had been the one who taught him that trick, and his eyes only flashed with appreciation, not fear.

“What I can tell you is that this job will be easy. No one’s after him.”

“That’s the thing.” Cade leaned forward urgently. “Someone should be. In his line of work? Didn’t you think the lack of problems was … strange?”

“Honestly? No. The number of people operating in this sector is small, and they’re careful not to get on one another’s turf. Ellian follows their rules to a T. Unless he pisses off a client, I’d say he’s fine—and he’s too careful to do that.”

Cade sat back, frowning.

“What is it?”

“He doesn’t see it.” Cade answered without thinking first. Talon had a way of speaking, his voice very low, so that he managed to pull the words out of you without disturbing your train of thought. “He has people who tell him to his face that he’s being a fool over her, and he doesn’t see it.”

“And who does it hurt?” Talon asked practically, his voice more normal now. He raised his eyebrows when Cade looked over. “To hear you tell it, she’s happy with the money, and he’s happy to have her. What’s the problem?”

“She’s….” Cade turned away. “It’s nothing.”

“Williams.”

“I hate her,” Cade said flatly.

“You just met her today.” Talon snorted. “What did she do, kill a kitten while you were there?”

“There’s no trusting her! She’s hiding—well, she could be hiding anything. For all we know, she’s a drug dealer. Slave trader.”

“Unlikely. She makes very few calls, and those are to one friend from home. Non-romantic.”

“You tapped her calls?” Cade asked wearily.

“I wouldn’t have gotten you this job if I thought it was a bad deal.”

“Still, that’s an impressive amount of due diligence.” Cade let the disbelief come through clearly in his voice.

Talon sighed.

“Frankly? I was as worried as you were. Something here doesn’t add up.” His eyes flicked to Cade. “If you turn around and walk away now, you’d have my backing on it.”

But the man was clearly praying that Cade wouldn’t. And after three evasions, Cade knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Talon would never say why.

“You don’t have to worry.” He managed a tight smile. “I need the money. I’ve got to get ten thousand credits—”

“No, you don’t.”

“What?”

“I took care of that.”

“Ten thousand credits? And you just ‘took care of it’?”

“Well, it was slightly more complicated than that. Let’s just say certain people were reminded of favors they owe us.”

“I’m not a Dragon anymore!”

“So pay me back.” At last, Talon’s eyes flashed. “Whatever you need to do. But goddammit, Williams, I am not going to let you burn to death in acid snow. Your life is worth more than that.” He took a deep breath, and his voice softened slightly. “Can’t you accept that we might want to help you? There wasn’t one of us who didn’t understand why you walked after that mission.”

“Don’t talk about it.”

“I’m sorry.” The apology was genuine. “Williams, all I’m saying is that this is a fresh start. I don’t want to trap you. That’s why I got the debt taken care of. It wasn’t to….” He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “It was the opposite of a trap. I mean that. I wanted this to be your choice. If you want to walk away now, you can.”

It was kind—kind enough to bring a lump to Cade’s throat. He looked away.

The thing was….

“I can’t.” His voice was soft. He took in the velvet blue night, the deep hue of the sky highlighting the warm interior of the room. He hated New Arizona with a passion—pretty to look at, deadly if you weren’t careful to insulate yourself from it. “Ellian pointed out that she doesn’t deserve to die for what he is. And he’s right.” Talon said nothing at all to that, and Cade felt his eyes narrow as he looked back. “What?”

“You just said you hate her. That she could be up to anything.”

“She just wants money; that’s what this is. And even if she was running around on him with every one of his rivals, she wouldn’t deserve…. Well, if someone did come after her for his work, you know what would happen to her. He’s right to worry.”

“She’s making her own choices,” Talon reminded him.

“She doesn’t know,” Cade said softly. “He said she doesn’t know what he does for a living.”

Talon whistled through his teeth. “Now, there’s something I hadn’t considered. Especially given….”

“Given what?”

“Nothing. Look. Stay if you want. Keep your eyes open. But whatever the hell you do, Williams, keep hating that woman.”

“What?” Cade had tipped his head back and closed his eyes; now he looked up suddenly. His head spun slightly, the alcohol burning in his blood. “Why?”

“First, remember that I wouldn’t have offered you this unless I thought you were right for it. I wouldn’t have recommended almost anyone else, actually. You’re right that a woman like that is trouble, whether she means to be or not.”

It was Cade’s turn to snort.

“Just hear me out.” Talon’s voice was soft, and his eyes were worried. “A woman who can ensnare someone like Ellian Pallas has something special. And Cade, it’s true that Ellian plays by the rules in his line of business—but one of those rules is that when someone takes what’s yours, you make them pay. Publicly. Painfully. So it’s good that you don’t like her. Ellian’s a vengeful bastard.”

“Noted.” Cade lifted one of the bottles in his direction. Warmth suffused him. He even felt a certain humor about his hatred for Aryn. “I don’t like the bitch. ‘S good. World is full of beautiful women.”

Talon stood, his mouth twitching.

“Indeed. I have to go. You stay here and drink. But not too much—the tailor will be back in the morning, and I need you to be able to stand upright.”

“Roger.” Cade picked up another bottle and looked up at him. “Why in hell are you dressed like that?”

“The Dragons are going to a party.”

“Were you invited to this party?”

“Yes.”

“By the host?”

Talon only smiled, and let himself out of the room, leaving Cade to contemplate the bottle in his hand. It was tequila; probably not a good idea. In any case, the drink had already stolen the edge from his dislike of Aryn Beranek. He raised the still-closed bottle in a mock toast.

Surely he could appreciate her gamesmanship, if nothing else. There could be no harm in that.

15

“Programs are up and running in their system and Aegis is putting a call in for them to look for someone in the main room, so there’ll be less eyes on the security screens.” Nyx’s voice fed into their earpieces.

“Excellent, thank you, Nyx.” Talon checked his weapons and adjusted his cuffs. “Ready check.”

The repetitions of ‘ready’ came back one after another over the comms, and it didn’t escape Talon’s notice that there were only 12 instead of 13. Even with Loki, they were still one person short.

He’d brought Mars and Camorra’s bodies back to Seneca. He could hardly do anything less, given that he was passing their death off as a tragic mystery. It hadn’t been as hard as he wanted it to be to grieve for them. They were kids, hardly past 25. He’d trained them, for God’s sake.

And they had betrayed him, and he had killed them, and he would do the same again. He felt his jaw tighten and he sat back in his seat, trying to find something to distract himself.

He didn’t have to look very far. Across from him, Tersi was looking halfway between annoyed at the world and annoyed at himself, and Talon knew very well why. He’d wanted a striking couple to catch eyes when they entered, and it hadn’t been hard to determine that Sphinx and Loki together would catch the most eyes: her a riot of golds, from her hair to her dress, and Loki, who was—it had to be said—devastatingly handsome. When he stepped out into the hallway from his bunk, warm brown skin glowing against the white of his shirt, eyebrows had shot up all around the group.

It made sense to have Loki accompany Sphinx. With the security guards looking at them on the feeds, there would be less chance of them noticing the faint distortion on the feeds. And with all heads turning in the ballroom, there would be less eyes following Talon.

Tersi, however, did not like it, and Talon had a plan for that. He adjusted his tie, picked a speck of imaginary dust off his sleeve, and looking up with the blankest expression he could manage.

“By the way, we’ll need someone to listen out on the dance floor. Loki doesn’t dance, apparently, but you do, right?”

It was hard not to laugh when he saw just how instantaneously he had Tersi’s full attention. It was even harder when the man said, trying to be casual about it, “Yeah, I can dance.”

“Excellent. Well, we’ll have you take Sphinx out on the floor, then. And it works doubly well—if there are still too many eyes on me, I’ll just have the three of you manufacture a fight. You and Sphinx storm out and just take a cab back or something”

“Right,” Tersi managed, and Talon had the sense that it was going to be a very roundabout cab ride back.

“Good, well.” Talon switched his comm channel back on. “Sphinx and Loki, you’re up. Knock ‘em dead.”

* * *

It had been two hours, and the party was, as far as Christian could determine, just a party. Not one person was doing anything that could be construed as a negotiation, and the steady stream of normal, reasonable people was giving way to the sort that entered late to make a statement.

He was beginning to think Ellian’s intel had been wrong, though he was certainly not looking forward to that conversation.

He made his way over to the bar, from where he had a good view both of the dance floor and the entrance, and ordered plain water. People tended to be impressed by a man with a full glass of vodka, and, even better, they usually tried to catch up.

He saw them the moment they entered. Everyone saw them: the woman with her golden hair barely held back, glinting in the light, wearing a clinging gold dress that showed off an impressively toned body, and a man whose half-smile hinted that he knew just how handsome he was.

People Christian had never seen before. People who were expected, apparently, but—given the murmurs—unknown.

Jackpot. Christian forced himself to sit still as the couple made their way around the edge of the dance floor, and found his eyes locked on them. His pulse was beginning to pound, and he could feel the first stirring of desire. Those lips, those eyes.

As if sensing his gaze, the woman looked up at him and gave a smile that was shy at first. As they came to the bar for a drink, she leaned on it in a way that showed off every curve, and the long stretch of her back. She turned her head.

“Hello.”

“Hello.” Christian forced himself to be civil to her. “You should really talk to Sam, you know.” He nodded to the bartender behind him. “He makes the best drinks.”

“The best? Well, then I’ll have to have one. Or a few.” Her laugh grated on his nerves, and she brushed past him as she made her way down to the end of the bar.

Finally.

Knowing he shouldn’t do this, but beyond himself to hold back, Christian went to lean on the bar next to the man. The way the suit clung to his shoulders, tapered to his hips….

“Buy you a drink?” Christian murmured.

* * *

“Oh, shit.” Nyx’s voice was dumbstruck. “I did not see that coming.”

“What am I?” Sphinx sounded plaintive. “Chopped liver?”

“You gave it a good run,” Nyx rejoined. “If he liked ladies, that would have worked. Trust me.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t, and now the farm boy—”

“Guys. Guys.” Tersi sounded pleased, but still alert. “I hate to interrupt your discussion, here, but the kid isn’t exactly dropping the ball.”

Talon looked over, and his jaw dropped as he saw Loki leaning in, smiling as he clinked a glass with Ellian’s aide….

And flirting like he’d been born to do it, with a ready ease that told Talon this wasn’t the first time Loki had flirted with a man.

“Oh, shit,” Nyx said again. “Second surprise of the night goes to one Mr. Liam Morel. God of chaos, indeed.”

* * *

“Unstoppable team,” Stabby murmured down the line. “If she doesn’t get ‘em, Loki will. I say we always send them in together.”

“It’s just good sense, really,” Tersi chimed in.

Even Sphinx, despite her wounded pride, was laughing.

Loki’s mouth twitched at the commentary coming through his earpiece. It was hard not to laugh at the jokes, but mostly, he was relieved.

Victoria had assured him that no one in the Corps was going to care if he were gay, but most people, in his experience, just assumed everyone they met was straight. And how did you mention it to people? There was never a really good conversational opening.

Especially when he’d recently developed a highly inconvenient crush that was making day-to-day life on the ship a bit of a trial. He resolutely kept his eyes from drifting. Seeing Talon in a suit had been like torture. Loki had kept his eyes focused on the war table almost the entire meeting, and he was still trying to look anywhere but at his commander.

In any case, as a way to tell the team, this worked as well as anything, he supposed, and the team’s good humor about it made it clear that Victoria had been right.

He focused on Christian and let his eyes slide over the man’s features and body. The good thing about flirting was that you got to look your target over in detail for weapons, and pretend it was a move. Convenient, that.

The man wasn’t his type, even if you left out the part about working for an arms trafficker, but Loki was never in a million years going to let on that that was the case. He took a sip of the port he’d ordered and made a small, pleased sound, holding his chin up as he swallowed; he could feel Christian’s eyes on him, on his mouth, on his throat.

“All right, enough chatter.” Damn, even Talon’s voice made him shiver. Loki allowed himself to do so, knowing that his target would think it was him Loki wanted. “Spread out. Keep an eye out for mercs, keep ‘em off me, and let Loki do his thing.”

* * *

It was an amusing surprise, but Talon had no time to dwell on it. He could see his contact waiting on the other side of the room, a man with tanned skin and salt-and-pepper hair.

He meandered through the crowd in a roundabout path, aware that there were eyes on him—more than a few society ladies, if truth be told, bored and looking for a diversion. He wandered closer and closer until Nyx said, in his ear, “Clear, boss.”

Talon leaned up against one of the columns near the man. “Good evening.”

“Major.” The man did not look over.

“I don’t believe I gave you my rank.”

“And it would be truly stupid of me to agree to meet you for this purpose, and not have done my research.” The man’s voice was dry. “Satomi Kreuger, after all, was not a stupid woman, and she’s dead now.”

“Do you know who they sent for her?” Talon had Lesedi searching for the information, but even she hadn’t been able to find it—even though she’d found the man who had apparently tried to kill her.

“No. She just disappeared.” The man paused. “I almost didn’t come tonight. But from what I know of you, your interest in this deal is genuine. My only question is … does a Dragon truly intend to fight alongside the Ymiri resistance?”

“Do you want the feel-good answer, or the truth?” Talon folded his arms. He could see his team still weaving in front of the identified mercenaries, keeping their eyes away from this corner, occasionally speaking together in a display intended to draw the gaze of those watching: huddled shoulders, furtive glances.

“The truth, please.” His contact’s voice said he already knew it.

“No,” Talon said. “I don’t intend them to be anything more than a distraction. But I need the entirety of his forces not to converge on the palace while I take him out, and that means I need them in the streets. Arming the resistance….” He took a deep breath. “It means they have a chance to be more than cannon fodder. It means the fight lasts long enough for us to take him out.”

There was a pause. “Thank you for your honesty,” the man said finally. “Though I have to wonder if you’re telling them the same.”

“They know,” Talon said simply. “We don’t have to speak of it. They know their odds.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m giving them the best chance they have,” Talon said. “It’s the resistance fighters, or everyone on that planet. I’ll wrap it up as fast as I can, but I need these people to have a fighting chance.”

“You mean, you need the mercenaries not to be able to mow through them like grass.” The man didn’t sound pleased, but he also didn’t sound surprised. “I’ll help you if I can.”

“If you can?”

“We’ll need to do this in cash, and the price is now three times what it was.”

“Are you kidding me?” Unseen in the crook of his arm, Talon’s hand flexed, and then clenched into a fist. “If you think this is a good chance for a profit, you are sadly mistaken.”

“Three times the price will still almost certainly put me at a loss. You have to know whose turf you’re on.”

“Pallas.”

“Just so. And he’s no fool. He knows there’s a deal going down. He’s offered twice market value for any weapon anyone will sell him. It took me considerable time to find someone who would even agree to hold the weapons for a few days.”

There was a pause while Talon tried to control his temper.

“Looks like he’s telling the truth,” Aegis said in his ear. “Prices are up all across the board.”

“And the cash?” Talon asked.

“Pallas has links to the banks here. There’s no way we can transfer money without him knowing about it—and if it’s in a bank, you’ll need to find some other money. They’ll have you dead within minutes if you take it out.”

“I think you’re underestimating me.”

“I think you’re underestimating Pallas,” the man snapped back. “And I am certainly not putting myself on the map for this one. If you want my help, we do this in cash.”

Talon forced himself to stay still rather than giving in to the urge either to break the column or let loose with some very inventive swearing, including a monologue on Ellian Pallas’s parentage.

“I’ll set up another meeting in a few days,” he said finally. “We’ll have the cash.”

“Remember, any bank—”

“I know.” Talon bit the words off. He pushed himself up and forged his way into the crowd. “All right, everyone move out. Loki, give him a fake number. Sphinx, feel free to punch whoever it is who’s trying to put his tongue in your ear. Tersi, refrain from killing him.”

* * *

“Hey.” An elbow caught Loki in the ribs. He looked over, and then hurriedly away, as Talon fell in beside him. “Good job.”

“Very good job,” Jim agreed. He fell in on the other side and smiled over at Loki, then shot a look back at Sphinx. “Who’s a farm boy now, eh?”

“That makes no sense.” But Sphinx was laughing. “And I gotta give it to you, man, apparently the farmers on … what planet was it? Fine, don’t tell me. You’re good at flirting, anyway.”

“We had bars, you know.” Loki grinned at her, only vaguely nettled.

“No. You’re sure?”

“With desperate people looking to get laid, and everything. The whole nine.”

“And you, breaking a bunch of hearts.” Tersi clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, that’s another thing to add to our arsenal.”

“It’s going to open some doors,” Talon agreed. “As long as Loki doesn’t object.”

Loki gave a shrug. “If they all buy me top-shelf liquor, it’s not a big deal. If you think I’m going to flirt for rail drinks, though….”

There was a round of laughter as they came out into the street.

A very empty street, that suddenly had fifteen well-armed men in it.

“Evening.” One of them gave an unpleasant look at Loki. “You might have distracted the boss, but you didn’t distract us. So, why don’t we all have a little chat, Mister….”

“Behind you,” Talon said.

“Mister … what?” The mercenary team looked at them.

Loki tried not to give a snort.

“He means,” Sphinx said, pulling her skirt up and yanking her gun out, “that you should really look behind you before you try to corner people.”

The man had only managed to turn half the way around before a shot took him in the forehead and he fell heavily to the pavement.

“Good evening,” Jester’s voice said out of the darkness.

16

There was a moment of stunned silence while the mercs looked at their leader, lying on the pavement. Tersi marked the way they were spread, head turning, and caught sight of Sphinx working her feet carefully side to side. He frowned, and then realized what she was going for as the heels slid off and, with a shiver, the sole of the shoe flattened.

The Alliance labs really did do good work. Now that he looked, he could see a hem where her skirt would tear away and leave her able to move freely.

Presumably, while he did his best not to look at her bare legs. He caught her eyes and she smiled at him. He could still hear her low voice as she’d brushed past him on the way out: don’t worry, I’ll wear it later tonight, too.

As far as Tersi was concerned, that meant that these mercs were standing between him and a very good night. Poor bastards.

Unfortunately, they were still too dumb to realize what they were dealing with. Fourteen heads swiveled back and one of them smiled coldly.

“That was a mistake, muffin. Now we get to kill you.”

“I guess this concludes the talking portion of the evening,” Talon murmured.

Tersi was still laughing as he pulled the side of his suit jacket up, yanked the pistol out of its holster, and shot the dude in the face. It was only a split second later that four others fell, and a quick glance—he did, after all, write the team’s performance reviews—showed that it had been Jim, Sphinx, Loki, and Talon who had shot.

They had a saying in the Dragons: the difference between a professional and an amateur was that the professional started the fight. Talon had done well to pick up that kid, even if he did look infuriatingly good with Sphinx.

The remaining ten mercs had the good sense to scatter toward the edges of the alley, but unfortunately for them, the dragons had had the same idea. Gomer and Jim peeled off to Tersi’s left, Jim giving a whoop as he tackled one of the men onto the ground, and Jester and Vampire appearing out of the darkness on the other side.

“Loki, Sphinx, left. Tersi, you’re with me.” Talon’s voice was pitched over the sound of gunfire, and Tersi followed him down the center of the alley, leaving the chaos of the fight behind them. It was 3 against 5 for both sets of Dragons, but he didn’t have a doubt in the world that they would have it wrapped up in short order with only minor scratches to show for it.

Still…. He turned as he ran, whipping his suit coat off and throwing it toward Sphinx. The cloth sewn into the lining didn’t just confuse security systems, it functioned as pretty respectable bullet-proofing—something her dress simply didn’t cover enough skin to do. She grinned as she caught it, and whirled around to lash out at one of the men with her elbow, immediately back to business.

He was falling in love. Tersi turned, still moving, and fell in with Talon again, who shot him a wicked grin.

“You know, don’t you?” Son of a bitch. They thought they’d been so careful.

Talon started laughing as he whipped his arms down for a moment to release the knives held along his forearms. They slid out to flip in his fingers. “Everyone knows, man.”

“You could have said you knew,” Tersi muttered. “You covering, or am I?” They were coming up on the mouth of the alley, and he knew that Talon had brought them here to head off the second wave of mercs.

“There are ten coming from both directions,” Nyx’s voice said in their ears. “I’d take the ones on the right first, actually.”

“I’ll cover.” Talon dropped behind Tersi for a moment, and headed for the right side of the alley. “Just think, the sooner you get through them, the sooner we get back to the ship and you and Sphinx get some alone time.”

Tersi launched himself out into the middle of the group, hearing Nyx’s laughter as they went down in a heap. “Oh, I know,” he called over to Talon as he picked one up and landed a series of punches down the man’s front. The man went down in a heap and Tersi grabbed his gun as he fell, shooting two of the ones still on their feet before taking out the one on the ground.

At his side, a man launched himself up, only to spin and fall as Talon’s shot caught him in the shoulder. Tersi’s foot came down with crushing force on the man’s chest piece, and Talon’s warning shout kept him down as four shots took out the other two on that side.

Another shout, Sphinx’s voice, and she and Gomer came out of nowhere to launch themselves into the fray, feet and fists lashing out until all that was left was silence and the four of them standing panting in the middle of the road.

“Guys.” It was Jim’s voice. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

Tersi turned along with the rest, and his jaw dropped.

“Son of a….” Sphinx muttered.

Tersi had sparred with Loki a few times, and he’d counted himself lucky to get out with all his bones unbroken. Only now, however, did he realize just how lucky he’d been. Either Loki had been holding back, or he’d learned to tap into something deeper than what sparring brought out in him.

Now Tersi understood why Talon had nicknamed the kid Loki. On the mats inside the Ariane, he was pure grace and speed. Here, in the dark, he was pure chaos. What was happening wasn’t pretty and there was, Tersi was sure, no way in hell to teach it, but when the dust settled, there were ten bodies on the ground and Loki standing alone in the middle.

“New team rule,” Talon said quietly. “No one piss off Loki.”

“Agreed,” came all fourteen voices over the comms.

Loki was smiling tentatively. “Was that good?”

“Yeah, kid.” Nyx sounded like she was smiling. “Yeah, that was pretty damned good. Hope you’re still up for some cardio, though, there are about forty police cars headed your way.”

“Run,” Talon said succinctly, and the Dragons scattered into the night.

* * *

“Goddammit.” Christian stared around himself at the bodies on the ground.

“I’ll have you know it was your date who did a good chunk of this.” At his side, Killian Brooker was white with fury. “You might have told me what we were up against. If you had, anyone could have told you we needed more than 40 men.”

Christian looked over at him. “Why? What was this?”

Killian looked for a moment like he very much wanted to kill the man. He leaned in and snarled the words. “Those were Dragons.”

“The Dragons are moving weapons to Ymir?”

“I don’t fucking care what they’re doing!” The mercenary’s shout echoed off the walls of the alley. His hand was gripping Christian’s arm with bruising force, “I don’t give a damn. What I care about is the fact that there are 35 bodies here and if we’d known what we were up against, some of them might still be alive!”

Christian felt ice in his veins. Dragons. The people moving the weapons were Dragons, and he….

“So we’ll use more next time.” He looked up at Brooker and felt only contempt for the emotion he saw in the man’s face. “What? Don’t tell me you didn’t realize combat was dangerous.”

“I realize that the best way to set up a fight is to stack the odds—” Brooker began.

Christian yanked his arm out of the other man’s grip. “I don’t think you understand why you were hired. If you want a nice, easy life, go work at a desk. You’re mercenaries. You’re trained to fight people who are trying to kill you.”

“Dragons are something else entirely.”

“I don’t give a damn.” Christian looked around him. “Every man here failed. That’s why they’re dead. Next time, we’re not going to fail. So get your head out of your ass and tell me what you need to take them out, and don't bother me with the funeral arrangements.”

Brooker was white with fury, but he knew better than to kill a client, and Christian felt a thrill of satisfaction as the man swallowed and stepped back.

“Anything else?” His voice was ugly, and it twisted when he saw the expectant expression on Christian’s face. “Sir.”

“You know,” Christian said silkily. “There is one more thing. The one who took down so many of your men. You’re free to do anything you like to him when you catch him—provided you then deliver him to me alive.”

17

Two hours before curfew, and Samara took her time picking over rations in the black market that had sprung up around the barracks. The Kell mercenaries liked to sell some of their more varied and abundant rations for exorbitant prices—only some of which were money.

Samara looked away from where a smiling guard was whispering a request in the ear of a citizen. She had seen the same thing hundreds of times, often without any sort of bargain offered. The Warlord’s pets had free rein to do whatever they liked to the citizens.

Normally she forced herself to look away and forget, but she knew today, if she saw it, she was liable to do something stupid. She’d been keyed up all day, only pretending to be calm, and now she was waiting for her opening.

She looked up as she heard the loudspeakers telling everyone to get out of the way. Over the course of the day, people would be arrested for petty little disobediences—as often as not, there wasn’t even a crime listed—and held in the little jails around the district. In the late afternoon, they would be moved to the holding cells in the barracks. Right now they were being moved, stumbling along the road with their faces blank and terrified.

Samara waited until the shopkeepers were scrambling to get their merchandise out of view—the market was technically banned—and then, in the chaos, as the guards made a show of pretending to look things over and keep the peace, she ducked into the center of the knot of prisoners.

One or two of them gave her shocked looks, but they huddled around her to form a protective wall. She was crazy, their looks said, but they weren’t going to rat her out to the guards.

It was a few minutes before the guards declared that the shops were all in order, and Samara saw more than a few of them collecting their own earnings in the process. They were hardly going to shut down the shops they themselves supplied. She ground her teeth and told herself that when this was all over, she would make sure every single one of them paid for what they had done.

The prisoners were yanked into motion again, and despite her plans, despite knowing she had to do this—she had to get Stefan back—Samara felt the bottom of her stomach drop out as the heavy barracks doors swung open….

And shut behind them with a terrifying finality.

* * *

“What do you mean, he hasn’t talked?” India stared at the young guard, her braided hair pinned neatly to her head, and looked over her uniform. No dirt, no water … no blood. “What have you been doing, throwing him a tea party?”

“Ma’am—” The guard’s voice trailed off in a squeak at the look on India’s face.

“Were you trained in interrogation?”

“I … no, ma’am.”

“So, what exactly were you doing to our guest?” India stood up and made her way around the desk, straightening her uniform. The girl stood petrified.

India waited.

“I, um.” The girl looked down at her feet and seemed to give a little prayer. She laced her hands behind her back. “I told him that—”

“Look at me when you’re talking to me.”

The girl’s head jerked up. “I told him that it was clear he was part of the resistance, and that if he were to be charged with that, his family’s life would be forfeit.”

India sighed. The girl’s instincts weren’t wrong, but she lacked finesse.

And breaking someone’s spirit required, above all, finesse.

“Come with me.” She noted the name on the girl’s uniform. “Bismarck. What’s your first name?”

“Sara.” The girl looked over. She was walking half a step behind India, very properly.

Perhaps this district wasn’t entirely a lost cause.

The guards at the holding cells noted India’s name and uniform and stood aside without being ordered. She liked that. Clearly, someone had told them not to do anything stupid. Was it too much to hope that the someone in question had been Captain Eddis?

Probably.

The man they had caught was in the very last cell. He could hear the other prisoners, but he was far from them, held apart. India wondered if that had been good instincts again on the part of Bismarck, or just lucky coincidence.

India squatted down and peered at the man through the bars. Sandy hair fell into his eyes, and he had the lean body of someone who worked too hard and ate too little. He was leaning against the back wall, bruises blooming all over his torso. They’d been made haphazardly, by someone who plainly knew that torture involved hurting people, but who’d had no plan beyond that.

Good Lord, these people were incompetent.

“Stefan.” India made her voice sweet. She smiled when his head jerked up. “Do you know who I am?”

He stared at her, plainly wanting to answer out of politeness, and holding himself back when he remembered who and what she was. He looked down again.

Which meant he was almost certainly part of the resistance. If not yet, then he would be soon. Anyone with sense would be groveling right now. This man was clearly disobedient by nature.

“I’m Sergeant Quince,” India told him. “I have been tasked, personally, by the Warlord himself, with ridding Io District of the resistance.”

He did not look up, but his body went tense.

“Yes,” India said simply. “Which means you and I are allies now, Stefan.”

Now he did look up, as if he thought she were crazy—and then, when her smile did not slip, as if he knew the shape of what was coming.

“I very much want you to tell me everything about your fellow soldiers in the resistance,” India said, her voice still sweet and soft. “And you want to live, don’t you, Stefan? You want your family to live—your little brother, your father, your mother, that sweet cousin of yours.”

The look in his eyes changed. It was cold and deep, as ugly as anything she had ever seen. It promised death.

“You’re in a cell, Stefan,” India told him. “You can’t reach me. You can’t save them with a gun. But you could save them so much more easily than that. Just a few words, not even an hour of your time, Stefan, and they could be safe forever.” She might even keep that promise, when all was said and done. She might send that family to the capital, and see if an easy life might tempt away a few more spies and defectors. Let the word get out.

It was a thought.

“It would be so easy, Stefan. So easy to save them. Because you’ve condemned them, you know. Your choices are the reason they’ll have to die.” He was crying. How pathetic. “Stefan, you and I aren’t so very different. We were both born here on Ymir.”

He looked up at her, and he snarled. His lip curled, and he made a growling sound, like an animal. India’s contempt must have been plain in her face, but he didn’t back down.

“We are nothing alike. I want justice. I want peace. You want—”

“Justice, and peace.” India smiled. “What has the Warlord truly taken from you, Stefan? Had you been born here without his guardianship, you would have been a miner, in any case. Instead of quotas from the Warlord, you would have had the quotas handed to you by the mine owners. Instead of rations bought at the commissary, you would have bought them from … who? Does it matter? Do you think you would have lived a life of luxury on this little backwater planet?”

He said nothing.

“The Warlord took nothing from you,” India told him. “Only from others like himself. And you want to tear apart the districts with violence and revolution, while I? I simply want things to be quiet. Peaceful.”

“You cannot cage people and expect them to be happy with scraps,” Stefan told her. “If we were free to leave, if we could expect more from life—” He broke off when an arc of light leapt across the cell from India’s taser and shocked him into a scream.

“Wrong,” India said quietly. “When you say the wrong things, it will hurt and you will only condemn your family to death. When you say the right things, your family will be spared, and there will be no more pain. So, let me ask again—”

“Excuse me. Sergeant Quince?” The voice was new.

India gave a sigh and looked up at the ceiling for a moment before turning her head. “Yes? Who are you?”

“Eddis, ma’am.” The new officer bobbed her head. Close-cropped brown hair lay over a remarkably clean face, and she even wore her gloves. It would be impressive … if she hadn’t interrupted an interrogation that was going well.

“Captain Eddis is—”

“Oh, I’m just a Petty Officer. My name’s Emily.” The woman smiled, blushed, and then swallowed at the look on India’s face. “Captain Eddis is my uncle. I’m not looking for any special treatment, ma’am—”

“Good.” India stood up. “Because you will get none from me. Results are what get my approval, do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The girl looked eager to please. “My uncle says he’d like to see you, ma’am.”

“Now?”

“Er. Yes, ma’am.”

“Better late than never, I suppose.” India stood. “You will guard the cell with Officer Bismarck until I return.” She looked into the cell at the prisoner. He had his head turned away, and his shoulders were shaking. “Stefan, you have some time to think. Use it well.”

She left, her boots clicking on the concrete.

A niece. Eddis had a niece. Perhaps he could be convinced to be more cooperative if she were to hint that his niece could be moved up in the ranks. After all, the girl seemed bright and well-mannered—India wouldn’t even have to do much.

Yes. She would find a way to suggest it.

* * *

Samara watched the woman walk away and felt her hands flex and clench. It would be so, so easy to pull out the gun and shoot her in the head. She’d heard enough to know who this woman was—she must be running Operation Blackout. She was dangerous.

And Stefan, tortured into telling everything, would be even more dangerous, no matter whose hands he was in. She told herself that, and hoped it wasn’t just her affection for him talking.

She looked over at the other officer, who was staring at her curiously. Blonde hair and pink cheeks. Pretty, even a little innocent looking. For a moment, Samara felt bad about what was going to happen next.

Then she remembered that if this girl were a miner, she’d be some officer’s mistress by now, willing or not. And instead, she was serving the Warlord—by choice. There was no way to serve here, to stand outside the cell of a tortured prisoner, and not know what you were doing.

That made it easier. Samara stuck out her hand, smiling. She could see Stefan out of the corner of her eye, looking away to hide the expression on his face.

“Hi,” Samara said. “I’m Emily Eddis.” She smiled shyly. “I suppose you knew that already, what with me telling Sergeant Quince.”

“Sara Bismarck.” The other girl hesitated, then reached out to shake Samara’s hand. “I didn’t know Captain Eddis had any fam—”

She died easily, without a sound, Samara’s knife embedded in her neck, blue eyes widening in horror. She had enough time to know what was happening, but no more; her face went slack and she crumpled to the ground while Samara grabbed the keycard from her belt and swiped it on the cell.

The door clicked open and she hauled Bismarck’s body inside, as quickly as she could. The woman was short and fairly slim, but her uniform would just have to do. Samara crawled over to Stefan and unlocked the cuffs, taking his hands and squeezing them.

“Tell me you can walk. We need to get out of here.”

“How did you—”

“No time. Help me.” She began stripping Bismarck’s body, cursing the heavy limbs, trying not to look at the wound on her neck. She hadn’t ever killed anyone before, and she could feel bile rising in her throat. She kept it down by force of will, but she knew when this was over—

Don’t think about it.

They managed to get the uniform onto Stefan, too-short pants hidden inside the boots, the coat a bit too tight, but not—Samara hoped—so much so that someone would notice if they looked quickly. Apparently, no one else wore the gloves, even though she’d found them with the uniforms. She considered taking hers off to shove them into her pocket, but was afraid people would see the distinctive black grime around her nails. There was no washing that off. It was already a risk for Stefan.

“Are you ready?”

“I don’t know.” He was shaking. “If they catch us—”

“Don’t think about it. Are you ready?” She held his eyes.

He shuddered and then nodded jerkily.

“Good. Come on.” She led him down the hallway at a brisk walk. She’d picked her time very carefully, and any minute now….

Out in the streets, the buzzer blared: ten minutes until shift change. Within a minute, maybe less, the streets would be full of miners hurrying toward the lifts.

At the small set of chairs where the guards were lounging, she stopped for a moment. “Do you know where Quince went?”

They shrugged.

“Dammit,” Samara muttered. “Well, tell her the Captain wants to see her, will you?”

“Tell her yourself,” one of them said. Her dark hair was cropped short, like Samara’s. She shook her head. “She scares the shit out of me.”

There was a murmur of agreement and Samara only shrugged. “They’re all the same, aren’t they?”

The guards laughed at that.

“Tell her if you’ve got the balls, then,” Samara said, and she gave a little wave before leading Stefan up the stairs.

“Why did you stop?”

“Because now we have uniforms and a few guards who know our face,” Samara whispered back. “We could use these again if we need to. Plus, now they’re not suspicious.”

“I suppose. But, how do we—” He broke off, putting his head down as another couple of guards pushed past them.

But they didn’t look. It was so beyond the realm of reason that the resistance would do something like this, that it never occurred to them to look closely at anyone in the halls of the jail. Samara pushed ahead, her heart hammering double-time, and strode out into the courtyard, toward one of the small doors flanking the big gate.

Samara pushed the door open, hearing the alarm sound and a shout behind her, and then she pushed Stefan out the door and slammed it, dragging him into the crush of people so that they were lost in the crowd.

* * *

“Captain.” India opened the door to Eddis’s study without knocking.

He looked up, and she saw him suppress a look of annoyance. “What can I help you with, Sergeant?”

India paused. “Your niece said you wanted to see me.”

“My niece?”

This was getting tiresome. India summoned up the memory of the young woman. “Emily. She’s a credit to you—well put together, very polite.”

Captain Eddis blinked at her. “My niece’s name is Fiorella, and she is two years old.” He misinterpreted India’s look. “My brother is younger than I am, and his wife is far younger than him.”

“But she said—”

India broke off. Now was not the time for useless platitudes, for plaintive little sayings. Right now….

Her chest felt hollow.

“Sir?” A guard slid into the room behind India and saluted. “Two guards have just left, unauthorized, but everyone seems to be accounted for. Except—”

“Officer Bismarck,” India said.

The guard looked over at her, wide-eyed. “Yes, ma’am. How did you—”

“You’ll find her body in the farthest holding cell.” Fury was heating her blood, even as fear caught her. “And retrieve all video you can find of those two ‘guards.’ They’re resistance fighters, both of them. One of them is Stefan Novotny—find me the other’s name. The woman.”

“Sergeant Quince, my officers have their own duties.” Eddis was impressively calm about the murder.

India rounded on him. “And I have been given express leave to use any and all resources.” She stared the man down.

“Of course,” was all Eddis said, mildly. But as he settled back in his chair with a faint smile, his face said, now you see. Now you realize you’re outmatched.

It was nothing she could reprimand him for, nothing she could write up in a report. But as India turned away, she swore to herself that he would pay for this.

Just as soon as she had the resistance fighters back.

18

Aryn sat very still, staring down to where she clenched her hands in her lap. Uncurling them would reveal pretty half-moon crescents of white on her skin, a common sight lately. The past two days had been a misery of pacing and fruitless efforts to divert her attention.

Samara had not been in contact. Not even a message. Aryn wavered between the desire to move, to be anywhere but here, spending hours in the pool or on the mats of the gym, and the fear of missing a message from Samara. She had resorted at last to leaving the room in the hopes that somehow Samara would be more likely to call if she did.

It never worked.

“Ma’am?” The servant’s soft voice interrupted the whirl of her thoughts.

Aryn closed her eyes briefly.

“Yes, Emala?” She smiled as she turned.

“The stylists are here.” The maid gestured down to the entryway. “For the charity event tonight. Should I tell them to come up?”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.”

“Ma’am…are you well?” The maid looked genuinely worried.

“Yes, thank you.” Aryn smiled at her. The words were automatic, borne of long practice.

“Yes, ma’am.” Emala smiled but did not look convinced. “I’ll be back.”

Aryn paced to the windows and looked out, studying—for a moment—the faint reflection of her face outlined against the glittering skyscrapers of New Arizona’s financial district. She shouldn’t be here. They needed her at home.

And she had done everything she could. As the stylists walked into the room behind her, Aryn shoved away her fear, her resentment, her swallowed-down words. She had done all she could. Why could she not let it go?

Because all she could do was not enough. But that thought would drive her mad.

She went to the bed, watching them lay out the gowns for her to look at. She kept back the scream that she did not care at all, that none of this mattered. She could not say such a thing to strangers. So she stood still while she chose, and the stylists fluttered around her, rubbing color into her cheeks and outlining her lips.

She had just chosen a gown of deep, glittering blue—her favorite color—from the assortment when a suited man opened the door to her dressing room and strode inside. Aryn was on her feet in a moment, heart pounding, a line of makeup jagged across her cheek from where she’d disturbed the stylist. For a moment, she saw only height and muscle, and she knew that Ellian had been right to want a bodyguard for her. She was going to die.

When she saw who it was, she let out a breath and raised her chin.

“Mr. Williams.” Her heart was still skittering with fear, and she wiped at her cheek. She was suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was in a nightgown and a short robe, one eye perfectly made up and the other bare of any adornment. It didn’t help, of course, that his eyes were roaming over her as if he would not only examine every line and muscle, but also peer into her head and see her secrets as well.

“Ms. Beranek.” He ducked his head at her.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m your bodyguard.” Something had flashed in his eyes at the question.

“No. Why are you here? In my dressing room?” Out of the corner of her eye, Aryn saw the stylist trying desperately to melt into the wall and failing.

It took everything she had to stand her ground as the man stepped forward, his grey-green eyes boring into hers. Half of her wanted to run, flee straight back into the depths of the dressing room—though what good that would do, she did not know. There was no accounting for instinct. The other half of her, for some reason, wanted to step closer. She had, at the very least, the good sense to know that neither option would be good. She raised her chin again.

“Well?” she managed.

“I’m your bodyguard,” he repeated. Each word was carefully enunciated. He might have been one of Ellian’s business partners, for all that he behaved like a servant.

“Do you think I need saving? Did you think my stylist was going to assassinate me?” The stylist gave a strangled sort of noise, and Aryn shot her an annoyed look. “Oh, for God’s sake, he’s not going to kill you.”

A muffled snort caught her ear, but when she looked back, the man’s face was straight once more.

“Ms. Beranek, are you aware of what a bodyguard does?”

“Well aware.”

“Then you are aware that I will need to be at your side until I can determine where you might be safe.”

“I’m in my own house!”

“As you often are, I understand. Almost always, no? And yet your husband hired me to be with you all day, every day.”

The thought was thrilling.

Terrifying. She meant terrifying. Her nervous system was just confused.

“Well, then.” She smiled as graciously as she could. “Welcome to my dressing room.”

“Thank you.” She thought she saw amusement in his eyes, but it was gone a moment later.

“Yasmin, you may continue.” Aryn sat back down.

It took at least five minutes for the woman to calm down, during which she managed to smear Aryn’s eyeliner twice. Aryn sat still, her posture belying the fact that her pulse still had not stopped beating double time. Every time she caught a glimpse of the man’s shape in the mirror, her stomach twisted.

As she was selecting jewelry, she noticed that he was beginning to fidget, look away and then back.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Williams?”

Whatever retort he wanted to give, he swallowed it, only shaking his head. Still, when Aryn sent the stylist away, he was visibly relieved.

“Thank you for explaining that I wouldn’t kill her.” His voice was expressionless.

She shot him a look, but there was no way to gauge if he had been joking.

“She wouldn’t be worried about you if you didn’t loom, you know,” she said simply. She waited, and when he said nothing, she wrapped her robe a little tighter and tried to find something else to talk about. “Today, I’ll be going to a charity lunch at—”

“I know. Ellian gave me your schedule.”

“I see.” Aryn swallowed, looked down.

“That’s why I came early.” When she looked up, it was to see him studying her. “We have things to go over before we leave.”

“Things like what?”

“Some basic self-defense moves, but more signals. Ways for me to know if you’re in trouble without alerting people nearby.”

“Why would I need to do that?”

He blinked at her. Then, apparently realizing she was sincere, he chose his words carefully.

“Many people who are abducted are warned not to alert anyone.”

“Why would they—”

“Because they’re being abducted at gunpoint, and they do not want to be shot.”

Her eyes went wide.

“If that happens,” he said quickly, “you will have ways to alert me and mark your path so that I can find you.”

She could not think of anything to say.

“Very well,” he said in a moment. “The first thing I’m going to teach you is a specific way to clear your throat.” He demonstrated. “It echoes against the back of the throat this way.” He demonstrated again. “You try.”

She cleared her throat once, twice. She was feeling foolish. On the third try, she did it passably.

“Good. Again.” He paused to listen. “Again. Again.”

“What is this for?”

“Clearing the throat is a common panic response. Unlike a whistle, for instance, it does not seem to be communication.”

“And if we’re out in public somewhere, with all the noise—you would hear this?”

“Yes,” he said, so assuredly that she found she believed him. “It’s…how I was trained to communicate.” He seemed about to say something else, but evidently thought better of it.

“I forgot you were a Dragon.” She swallowed and looked away. She had begun to relax in his presence, a slow shift she had not even noticed until the comfort was abruptly gone again.

“Why do you say that?” His voice was suddenly alert.

“No reason.” Her voice was flat.

She had thought a dozen times of going to Ellian and pleading her case, asking him not to use a Dragon—but she knew he would tell her that she was being foolish. Maybe he didn’t know the truth about them, she realized. And she would have no way to convince him of what she’d seen on Ymir, of the elite soldiers in red and black picking off her friends as Samara dragged her away. Aryn had never made much of a soldier, but even those with skill had stood no chance against the Warlord’s pet Dragons. That was when she realized that no one was coming to save them on Ymir. Even the Alliance was in bed with the Warlord.

Ellian would tell her that those weren’t Dragons, but Aryn had seen the glints at boots and ears and in the face point. A Dragon always wore red, everyone knew that.

Had this man been there? She turned away.

“Ms. Beranek.”

“What’s the next thing you wanted to show me?” she asked, her voice as neutral as she could make it.

“This.”

She jumped when he took her hand. He selected the middle finger of her right hand and drew her back close to him. His hand was rough on hers, the heat of his body radiating in the air. He showed her an ink capsule, and pressed it under the fingernail, giving an involuntary empathetic wince when she gasped at the prick of pain.

“Watch,” he said quietly. “You can use it almost as a crayon, to mark the edges of things you pass by. Or you can press on the pad of the finger, like this, to spray ink.” He paused awkwardly. “Does it still hurt?”

“No,” Aryn managed. “No, it doesn’t.” She looked up into his eyes, and at the jolt of awareness, drew her hand away as if she was being burned, turning away so he could not see her face.

“Are you all right, Ms. Beranek?”

“Perfectly fine.” It was better, she reminded herself, if they did not enjoy one another’s company. It would be better if she were not taken in by his false concern, his attempts to gain Ellian’s favor by protecting her. She had learned at least a part of how the world worked, after all. Everyone was out for something—and no matter the subtle humor in this man’s eyes, the awareness she felt in his presence, it was better if she remembered that she just didn’t know what he wanted yet.

“Ms. Beranek?” There was something in his voice that she could not name, and she swallowed reflexively, turning back with her practiced smile.

“What was the next thing you wanted to show me?”

19

“I’m sorry, but surely you understand that without any collateral….” The broker spread his fingers elegantly, shrugging instead of saying the rest of his sentence.

Talon ground his teeth. He’d dressed up for this. He’d made himself perfectly presentable, he’d spoken politely, and…

And he couldn’t use his name, the fact that he was a Dragon, or literally anything else to help him. He wondered how many people had strolled into this banker’s office and promised, promised, that they’d have the money to pay back a loan next week, they just needed an exorbitant amount right now.

He couldn’t blame the man. It would be bad business for him to give Talon the loan, knowing just what he knew right now.

Talon had to admit that even if the man knew the full facts, it might not be a good bet. Hello, would you like to lend me money so I can go to war with the head of Alliance Intelligence?

“Thank you for your time.” Talon held up a hand when the man opened his mouth to speak. “And no one will hear from me what sort of business you’re running here.” It had taken all of Lesedi’s contacts to find a broker who wasn’t on the grid, and Talon felt a sick sense of failure that he hadn’t been able to make it all work.

He refused to drag Lesedi’s name into this. All he could hope was that by pre-emptively offering to keep the man’s secret, he’d bought enough goodwill that no one would mention him, either.

He stood and nodded to Loki and Jester to follow him out of the office. They didn’t leave through the lobby, all gleaming marble, pretending to be a higher-class establishment than it truly was. They left through the back hallways, instead, out the door into an alleyway with no cameras.

Talon stood for a moment, arms crossed, Loki and Jester silent at his shoulders.

The truth was, he was tired. He’d never been cut off from Alliance resources before. He’d never thought he would have to look over his shoulder, watch his own crew for signs of betrayal.

All that was left was exhaustion and rage, and he couldn’t stop now. If he failed, he knew with certainty that the resistance on Ymir would fail as well. Never had his mission been more urgent, and never had he had less to work with.

“What do we do?” Loki asked finally.

Talon looked over at him and wanted to say he didn’t know, he didn’t have a plan. He looked up at the sky, sleek cabs running overhead to the glittering towers. So much money here, and none of it in his hands.

“We’ve been thinking about it all wrong,” he said finally. “We’ve been thinking about what we don’t have, treating money like it’s something scarce. We’re in New Arizona. We’re moving with the elite. The amount of money we need isn’t a fraction of what most spend on their wardrobe every year. We’ll find it.”

In fact, a plan was already taking shape in his head.

* * *

Christian paused outside the door to Ellian’s office. He was very aware of the stares of the man’s two bodyguards, both full of contempt for anyone who wasn’t over 6” and brawny.

Christian gave them the same look back. They were idiots, people who thought every problem could be solved with a gun or a fist. When the dust settled, he’d be the one still standing. He’d grow old in a penthouse apartment while they scraped together the money for rent after paying their gambling debts.

Of course, his ideal scenario depended more than a little bit on him convincing Ellian not to kill him right here, today. He’d given a terse, vague update the night before, and Ellian had demanded a full accounting in the morning. Christian had dragged his other tasks out as long as he could, but there was no putting it off any longer.

When he pushed his way into the room, Ellian was waiting for him, one eyebrow slightly raised, as if he had seen Christian come to the door and hesitate.

He probably had.

“I want you to research this man,” Ellian said, before Christian could say anything. He held out a folder and waited for Christian to flip it open. “Cade Williams.”

The man in the photo had full lips, a cleft chin, and green eyes, and stubble on his chin. A bit rough for Christian’s taste—he still could not stop thinking about the man he’d met the night before—and not, at a cursory scan of the details, at all remarkable.

Until he read down past the list of busboy and delivery jobs, to the title of Dragon. Christian looked up, frowning.

“I’ve hired him to be Aryn’s bodyguard,” Ellian said off-handedly. “There’s something about him, but so far I haven’t discovered what it is. I want you to find any weakness—any compromising details.”

“But….” Christian stared at the pile. This was the man’s bank records, his job history, his family. He could hardly think what else to research. Hell, there was a tab devoted to what sort of foods he ate. “I don’t have the time. I’m working on the weapons deal.”

“Are you?” Ellian asked blandly. “Because I hear last night you got 35 mercenaries killed, and I can only imagine that was some personal event. Nothing to do with my business, certainly. Nothing that would reflect on me.”

Christian went still. Ellian was always this way, and Christian always forgot. The man was charming to a fault, and then he struck like a snake without even changing the tone of his voice. It was terrifying.

“Sir.” He cleared his throat. “I—”

There was the sound of a phone ringing, and Ellian turned his head lazily to look at it. You’re so insignificant that I won’t even pay attention while you plead for your life.

Any shreds of self control vanished. Christian’s palms were clammy. “Sir, I will do better. I have leads. I will make sure—”

“Yes, I’m sure you will.” But oddly, there wasn’t any silk in Ellian’s tone, or any threat. His attention was wholly focused on the screen. “Go.”

It wasn’t an angry dismissal, just cursory, and Christian seized his opportunity. He had to fight not to let the door bang shut behind him while he left, and only the watchful gaze of the guards stopped him from running away like a child.

Only in his own office did he allow himself to sink down into a chair and pass a hand over his brow. He was shaking.

Whatever it was that had saved him, he gave a silent prayer of thanks.

* * *

The Warlord didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Have you stopped the weapons deal?”

“No.” Ellian spoke the word simply.

The Warlord fought down a wave of anger. He liked this about Ellian, he reminded himself. Other trading partners bowed and scraped. They spoke of “problems” and “complications” as if they were natural disasters, totally beyond any sort of control. Sometimes, in desperation, they lied. Ellian never resorted to nonsense like that.

“We’ll need more mercenaries,” he said. He sounded annoyed. “They underestimated what they were dealing with.” He must have sensed the Warlord’s quizzical look, because he added, “Apparently, there are Dragons involved.”

Surely Rift couldn’t be stupid enough to get involved on his own. Could he? The Warlord frowned behind the mask.

Still, Ellian should know.

“The commander’s name is Talon Rift,” he said simply. There was a sudden stillness in Ellian’s face. “You know of him?”

Ellian cleared his throat. “I … yes. He’s not unknown on New Arizona.”

“I expect it will serve both our purposes to eliminate him, then.” The Warlord smiled. “I’ll trust you to take care of it.”

He reached out, and ended the call.

* * *

On the other end of the line, Ellian let out a breath and tried not to slump forward with fear. The Warlord could not know that he’d dealt with Talon Rift. Even an unknowing mistake would be punished.

He had to be calm. He had to look at the facts.

Talon Rift was after the Warlord. Talon Rift was the one who was planning to arm the Ymiri resistance.

He took a moment to consider how stupid it was to try to take on the Warlord with a single Dragon team, and found that the only emotion he could summon, in point of fact, was a strange sort of admiration.

Even when Dragons did stupid things, they did them spectacularly.

Ellian looked out toward the corridor. Would Rift call off the mission to keep Cade Williams alive? He’d arranged for the man’s employ two years after Williams had left the force. That said something. Ellian could simply send a note telling Rift to back off….

And, likely as not, wind up with a hole in the side of his penthouse and a very painful death. To think that way was to take on the Dragons in combat, and he very much did not want to do that.

No, if he was going to win this fight, he’d have to win it the way he always did: with business. Let Rift find that there was nowhere in this city to buy so much as a single gun. Let him learn that no one would lend him money to do so.

Still….

Ellian opened a channel to Christian. “Cordev.”

“Yes, sir?”

“However many mercenaries you’re planning to take on the next stage of the operation … double it.”

Ellian closed the channel and stood, buttoning his jacket. He’d keep an even closer eye on Williams, now that he knew the sort of man Talon Rift was. If he were smart, he would hire another bodyguard

But he’d seen the way Aryn behaved when the bodyguard was around: the faint awareness, as if she could feel the man’s heat—

Ellian’s chest tightened, and he swallowed. He was not a fool, no matter how much they thought he was. He was not a fool, and right now, he reminded himself, it was absolutely necessary that Aryn be tempted by Cade Williams.

20

One of the things Cade had learned in the Corps was that you could tell a lot about a person from how they ate, and the first thing he noticed about Aryn and Ellian was that they had both grown up poor. No matter how good their manners, both of them ate quickly, not evaluating their food for flavor or texture before starting in. Aryn ate any fruits or vegetables first, meat second, and grains last; sweets other than chocolate, she did not seem to care for. For her, then, it was what she considered luxurious that drove her. Ellian made a point of eating one bite of everything in succession, as if to remind himself that he did not still subsist on rice or sorghum, as many might.

Many people would claim to have come from poverty, but few in Ellian’s station truly had. It was interesting, Cade thought, that their mannerisms gave them away so clearly. Interesting as well that he now realized he had been looking for lies in both of them.

Mostly, however, Cade observed the minutiae to avoid focusing on the whole. It had been four agonizing days since he began this job, and every night, he considered tapping on the door of Ellian’s office and quitting. In the wildest fantasies, if that was what they were, he even said the truth: I can’t stop thinking about your wife.

But even a fool knew that was the best way to wind up dead in an alleyway somewhere and so Cade, therefore, contented himself with working out until he was weak with exhaustion. He’d kept himself fit no matter what the job, doing pushups and pull-ups in his spare moments. A Dragon learned quickly that the ones who trained harder were the ones who had the edge in combat; Talon liked to say that it was what separated them from their enemies, and Cade knew it was true. Even gone, even swearing that he would never fight again, he hadn’t been able to lose the habit. It was a very different thing, indeed, to work out to escape….

Hatred. He was going with hatred.

What unsettled him the most was that he was beginning to doubt his own perceptions. At times, he almost thought Aryn was sincere. The faint flashes of sadness in her eyes, the edge of desperation in her self-control, all of it pointed to a woman who was—

Hiding something. She was hiding something. And that something was that she did not love her husband. Cade reminded himself of the fact at least ten times daily. He had seen enough of her false smiles, seen her close her research tabs abruptly when he walked into the room, that he knew not to trust her.

So why did he want to, so badly? Why did he want to hold her hands in his, look into those shadowed eyes, and promise her that whatever was saddening her, he would help? Why could he not stop thinking about taking her in his arms, about wiping a tear away from her cheek, about coaxing a true smile from those lips?

Because she was the best actress money could buy, that was why. And money had bought her. So Cade stood at her shoulder through every interminable minute of seeing her primped and dressed for her appointments, tried not to watch as she swam and ran and fenced, and did anything he could to ignore the fact that the very smell of her made him half-crazed.

Thinking about it didn’t help.

He let his eyes unfocus slightly, seeing the scene as Dragon would. It was best to watch that way. Ellian, after all, should be as interesting to him as Aryn. Cade kept wanting to ask Talon how he knew the man.

The sudden tense silence in the room told him that he’d missed something important.

“We’ve spoken about this,” Ellian said warningly, and Cade’s attention snapped back to Aryn. What had she said? A quick glance showed the tension between them, and Cade felt a spark of interest. Was she pushing Ellian in order to dizzy him with emotions? If so, now she would retreat.

But she did not. Though she had gone white in the face, she put down her fork and stood her ground.

“They’re running out of time,” she said quietly. “He’s getting crueler, year by year. You may not want to hear it, but it’s true. It isn’t stopping.”

“Nor will it,” Ellian snapped, “until—” He took a deep, slow breath. “Mr. Williams.” His gaze never wavered from Aryn. “Leave us.”

“No.” The protective instinct flared to life so suddenly that Cade had no opportunity to stop himself from speaking.

At this, at last, Ellian looked at him.

“I beg your pardon?” His voice was soft. Too soft.

Cade resisted the urge to swallow. He could see Aryn staring at him, her mouth open, but he could not look at her. It would be too big a signal, and if there was hope in her eyes—

“No, I beg your pardon.” He ducked his head to Ellian. “I’m afraid I’ve been fending off what I’m sure were well-meaning attempts by society ladies to bring your wife to unsafe locations. I spoke automatically. Forgive me.”

Ellian watched him for a beat, eyes searching Cade’s face.

“It’s no trouble,” he said finally. His voice was mild. “You may go.”

The urge to say no again was so strong that Cade only barely held it in check. This time, however, he had been ready, his jaw clenched tightly to prevent any word from escaping. He nodded once and went to the door.

Unwisely, he looked back. Aryn was staring at him, and the plea in her eyes was unmistakable.

Don’t leave me. She was terrified.

“Mr. Williams?” Ellian’s voice.

“Of course.” Cade let himself out of the door without a second look and leaned against it, shaking. What had just happened? What had he seen?

And why in hell had he left her?

“Sir?”

The voice made him jump, and he swore softly. The man standing behind him was one of Ellian’s menservants, as clean-shaven and unremarkable as any of them. Michael, Cade thought. Or perhaps this one was Matthew. All of them seemed to have names starting with M. It must be hell for bookkeeping. This one was handing out a silver tray with a flute of something to drink.

“Would you like a refreshment?”

“Yes. Thank you.” But Cade paused before taking the flute. “You don’t have to treat me like this, you know.”

“Like what, sir?”

“Like…” Cade gestured back into the dining room, his stomach twisting at the thought of what was going on in there. Every room in this place was soundproofed, and his instincts raged for him to haul the door open and get Aryn out. “Like one of them.”

To his surprise, the servant smiled.

“We’re glad you’re here,” he said simply.

Cade blinked, unsure of how to respond to this. He took a sip of the water instead; Ellian had given strict orders that Cade was not to drink anything other than water or stimulants while guarding Aryn.

Aryn, who was alone with Ellian. Cade cast another look over his shoulder.

“You’re very much like her,” the servant said.

“What?” Cade looked back sharply, and the man’s face turned wary. “What did you say?”

“I said, you and Aryn are very alike.” The man smiled. “We are glad she has you to watch her. She…” His voice dropped, low enough that Cade knew he was trying not to be heard on Ellian’s surveillance systems. “She needs someone kind,” the man said, almost defiantly.

“Why?” Cade asked.

“Because she’s alone,” the servant said softly. “And she’s afraid.”

“Of what?”

The servant didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

“She’s…” Cade felt his voice trail off. The litany was beginning in his head again. She’s here for his money. If she doesn’t want it, she can leave.

“She’s very kind,” the servant told him.

“No.”

“She is.” The man did not back down. “They say you can take the measure of someone by how they treat people of a lower station, and she’s kind to us. Ask Emala if you don’t believe me.” He opened his mouth to say something more, but Cade shook his head suddenly, urgently. The faint tremor in the floor had caught his attention, and when he waved his hand, the servant almost ran.

A moment later, the door opened to reveal Ellian.

“Mr. Williams, would you accompany my wife back to her rooms?”

Cade nodded, and a moment later, found Aryn half in his arms as Ellian guided her out the door and shut it behind her.

She almost did not seem to notice Cade at all. Her face was still pale, and tension vibrated through her body. In the end, he guided her with his hand in the small of her back, stooping slightly to stay close to her smaller frame. There was no heat between them now, nothing but her unseeing eyes; she moved like an automaton. When they reached her rooms, her hand went out automatically to the door handle.

“Aryn.” It was a plea. He was genuinely afraid for her.

The sound of her name caught her attention and color came back to her face in a rush. Her lips parted, life came back to her eyes. She stared at him, looked to where his hand was still holding her.

He did not know what to say. More than anything, he wanted to tell her that he had not wanted to go, had not wanted to leave her.

But he could not. It was crossing a line—never mind that he didn’t know what line that was.

“Good night,” he said quietly.

She did not respond. Her grey eyes filled with tears, and then, horribly, she smiled, her face as perfectly pretty as it had been that first day.

“Good night, Mr. Williams.” And she was gone.

Cade leaned against her closed door and tipped his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. He stayed for what felt like hours, hoping. Hoping. But she did not open the door, and he did not have the courage to open it himself. At last, slowly, he made his way back down the hallway to his own rooms.

21

She waited, her hand on the doorknob. It would take so little effort to press the handle down, go out into the hall. She could come up with something, tell Cade that she heard a strange noise. He would be there with her in a moment, someone to distract her from her own thoughts.

And when, exactly, had he become Cade instead of Mr. Williams?

Too quickly. And he was gone now, of course, as Ellian had ordered him to be. He had brought her back to her rooms and left her, just as he left her at the dinner table. She took her hand off the doorknob and backed away from the door, swallowing her tears. What had she expected? That Cade would protect her from Ellian, from the very man who’d employed him?

And protect her from what? She turned to look in the mirror. There was not a bruise on her, not the mark of fingers or nails. She was not a complete innocent. She had grown up on Ymir. She knew what cruelty looked like, and she knew there was nothing to fear from Ellian. He would never harm her. He had been angry, that was all. Angry because she questioned him when she should have listened.

She felt very small, she realized. She could feel all of the space above her head, see the vastness of space and the tiny dot of New Arizona, the deep blue sky and the snow falling and a tiny tower, all glass and polished steel, and inside it, her, smaller than the tiny orb of the planet, smaller even than the needle of the skyscraper. She felt her shoulders curving forward and lifted her head with great effort.

If you can’t trust me to keep my word, Aryn…

She had to stop thinking about this. Aryn shrugged out of her evening gown and hung it up, trying to smile at the thought of what Emala would say tomorrow. Why didn’t you call me, ma’am? I’d have helped you, and hung this up.

But she always thought Emala was a little bit pleased to come into the room in the morning and see that there was nothing to tidy up. Once, it had been one of the few genuine moments of warmth in Aryn’s day. She only noticed that one day, her smile to Emala became the same as the one she gave Ellian: the perfect mask. Aryn no longer knew any other smiles.

She was being ridiculous. She had not been harmed, not even hurt. Her husband had not raised his voice to her, even. And she was here, safe and warm, well fed, away from the mines. Her parents were safe in their house in the city, and her sister could have the same if she wanted it. Ellian had saved them all. She sank down at her dressing table, staring at her reflection. Every fact was so simple. Why could she not remember them anymore?

She was so lost in her reverie that at first she did not notice the beep of the incoming message. When she did, she was across the room in seconds, opening the window and pressing a hand over her mouth when she saw Samara.

“You’re alive.” The words came out too high.

“You’re … naked.” Samara raised an eyebrow.

“Oh. I….” Aryn looked around herself and didn’t see anything close to hand. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Samara. “I heard the message. I’ve been so worried. It’s been days, Samara.”

“I know.” Samara’s eyes were shadowed. “I called as soon as I could, I swear. There’s someone new in the district, an officer looking to make a name for herself, and she got Stefan—I got him back, don’t worry—and … Aryn? Are you crying?”

She was, and in a rush that she could neither keep silent nor turn into pretty tears.

“I was so afraid,” Aryn choked out. “After the last call. The air raid sirens. I remember—I remember the bombs falling. When we were little.”

“Shhh.” Samara’s voice sounded fearful. “Aryn, you need to breathe. Breathe, now. I’m here, I’m safe. All of us are safe.” Her voice changed, and there was no malice in it, only hope. “And you’re safe. I know the memories are awful, but you’ll never have to face this again.”

“I’m not—I’m not scared for me.” She tried to take a breath and choked on it. “I left you all.”

“Aryn….”

“I left you to die and saved my own skin!” Aryn bent her head, tears falling onto her bare legs. “Sam, I can’t … I can’t do it anymore.”

“Do what? Aryn, what’s wrong?”

She opened her mouth to respond, and one thought penetrated the haze. Ellian did not tap her calls, she was relatively sure of that—anyone on Ymir had learned the subtle signs that their calls were being monitored—but he might be listening through a device in the room.

“Nothing,” Aryn said quietly. She picked up the computer and carried it with her. “I was just worried, that was all. I should really get dressed, shouldn’t I?”

“Aryn? Aryn!” Samara’s voice was lowered to a fierce whisper. “I can’t see anything, are you still there?”

“I’m still here.” Aryn set the computer down in the dressing room and knelt down. The hallway was curved, and there was no clear line of sight from either the dressing room or the main receiving room. “We have to speak quietly.”

“Aryn, are you in danger?” Samara’s voice was low. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks.” Aryn tried to turn it into a joke, but Samara was having none of it.

“Listen to me, if it’s dangerous, get out.”

“I can’t get out.” The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them. “My parents need that house. Nura could be there, too, if she wanted.”

“You know they would never accept—”

“And there’s no way I’m getting off-planet without him knowing,” Aryn said simply, cutting Samara off.

“Aryn, if you’re in trouble—”

“Listen to me,” Aryn said. Something had snapped inside her, released as she cried—and in the wake of the tears, she felt calmer than she had in months. “You need help. I’ll get you help.”

“What?” Samara looked at her as if she was crazy. “Also, Aryn … you’re still naked.”

“That’s not important.” Shivering, Aryn pulled a robe down at random and draped it around her shoulders. “Ellian is well connected. I will get you the help you need. I’ve asked him and I just…I just haven’t made him see yet.”

“Aryn, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Samara’s voice was suddenly wary.

“Let me help.”

“Listen. I don’t think Ellian is going to help us.”

Had Aryn even considered that to be an option, she might have paid more attention, but she had learned her lesson tonight, along with another, more valuable lesson: that her fear for those on Ymir was stronger than her fear of Ellian.

“Ellian is well connected,” she said, her voice low. “I will get you weapons.”

Samara was staring at her, eyes narrowed.

“You’re going to have Ellian send us weapons,” she said finally. Disbelief radiated through the phone line.

“Of course not,” Aryn said impatiently. “He doesn’t have to know. But someone he works with must know how to get their hands on weapons, mustn’t they? Even he might. I’m sure he has to protect his shipments somehow.”

“Aryn….” Samara’s voice was choked. She turned her face away, but Aryn had seen pity there.

“What’s wrong?”

“Aryn, I need you to listen to me.” Samara seemed to have come to a decision. “Do not do this. You were never meant to be a soldier, love.” There were tears shining in her eyes. “And you said you want to help, but you did help. You got your parents out to safety, and you got you out to safety. Don’t go against Ellian, Aryn, not with this.”

Never in her life had Aryn seen Samara so passionate.

“What’s going on?”

“I can’t say.” Samara looked miserable. “Aryn, please promise me. I need to hear the words.”

“I promise.” When Samara’s face didn’t shift, Aryn sighed. “I promise I won’t use Ellian’s contacts to get you weapons.”

“Thank you.” There was relief there. “Aryn, be safe. Your position there is too precious to waste for some lost cause.”

There was a stricken silence, and Samara hastened to correct herself.

“I didn’t mean that, Aryn. I didn’t.”

“You did.” Aryn stared at her. “You think you’ll never win. Why are you fighting, if you think it’s a lost cause?”

“I have to go.” Samara looked away. “Remember, Aryn. You promised. If you love us, if you love your parents and Nura—don’t do this.”

Aryn nodded. She did not speak as Samara cut the line. As she paced back into the room, hugging the robe around her shoulders, she realized that she knew exactly why Samara was fighting. It was the same reason she had asked Ellian for help: because the right thing to do didn’t always have the best odds of success. That wasn’t why you did it.

She sat down at the mirror and chewed her lip meditatively. She was breaking her promise to Samara, but she could live with that. Surely someone Ellian knew had to know how to get weapons.

She just had to make sure she hid it from Cade.

She opened up her computer, paused for a moment as she thought, and then typed, “how to buy weapons” into the search bar.

* * *

The computer blooped, and Talon let his feet thud down from the desk to peer at the screen. For all his speeches, he’d spent two hours sitting here in the dark, and so far he’d come up not a single plan as to how to find money for—
how to buy weapons

He’d set an alert for the word “weapons” on all of Ellian’s network, along with a whole host of other keywords, and he blinked at this.

There was no fucking way Ellian had built a business without knowing how to buy weapons, so who in the hell was doing the search? Cade? Possible. Or….

Talon gave a tiny noise of satisfaction.

The wife. The wife from Ymir.

That was how he was going to get the money. And—his smile had a lot of teeth—it was going to be so, so much better to know that the money he was using belonged to Ellian Pallas.

22

Cade crossed the entry hall quickly, straightening the cuffs of his dress shirt beneath the suit jacket. He liked that the suit afforded him ease of motion, but he did not like how vulnerable he felt. A fighter should always wear armor.

He came up short. He was not a fighter. He had spent the past two and a half years proving that to himself, walking away from confrontations, letting insults slide, and—more than once—letting himself be beaten into a bloody pulp. Through it all, he clung to the one thing that made sense: never harming another human being again. Even when he took this job, he did so because of Talon’s assurance that there was no danger.

And somewhere along the line, the only principle that mattered to him had disappeared. He was moving with his weight on the balls of his feet, his muscles half-tensed. His eyes were scanning the room. His vow had disappeared.

The moment he realized that, he realized that he did not even need to ask himself how that had happened, or when. As he sat down on his bed last night, staring blankly at the wall and remembering Aryn’s pleading look at the dinner table, her mechanical smile in her bedroom, he understood that he had failed. Even when he hated her, he took this job to protect her—and last night, he hadn’t. Now that he stopped to think about it, he remembered his promise to himself as he was on the edge of sleep: that he wasn’t going to fail again, no matter who he had to defy to keep his word.

That didn’t surprise him. Cade wasn’t a man who accepted failure lightly. What terrified him, however, was that it simply didn’t seem to matter to him anymore whether he hurt anyone in the process or not. He would rather not, all things being equal. But as he searched his heart, he no longer felt any revulsion toward the thought of acting in defense. If anyone hurt Aryn…

“Mr. Williams.”

Like, for instance, the man who had hired him. Cade turned to look at Ellian, trying to keep his face neutral.

“Good morning, Mr. Pallas.”

“Are you inspecting our entryway for danger?” Ellian’s voice suggested that he knew Cade had been lost in thought.

“Trying to remember if I filed an address change.” Cade tried to turn it into a joke.

“I see.” Ellian’s smile, as always, came with cold eyes. “Should such distraction result in harm to my wife, however….”

The urge to lash out was so powerful that Cade saw it unfold in his mind’s eye. He watched his fist hit the side of Ellian’s face and saw the man’s head snap back. How dare this man tell Cade about harm coming to Aryn?

Thankfully, the part of his brain that controlled motor function seemed to realize none of this was a good idea. Cade nodded his head with what he hoped was a self-deprecating smile.

“It won’t happen again, Mr. Pallas.”

“Excellent.” Ellian turned without another word and walked to his study, and Cade knew the man was listening for his footsteps, waiting for him to act on the implied order.

Hurrying down the hallways, as much to leave Ellian’s presence as get to Aryn, Cade paused at her door. Now that he was away from the man he suddenly hated, he was very aware that he would need to speak to the woman he had failed the night before. Taking a deep breath, trying to come up with a way to say he was sorry, he rapped on the door with his knuckles and slid into the room.

“Ms. Beranek?”

Aryn had been at her computer, fingers sliding over the screen and her brow furrowed as she read. As her eyes flicked up to him, he saw panic flit across her face, and she slammed the screen down onto the desk with a movement that was just slightly too quick. She managed her mechanical smile again.

“Mr. Williams. Good morning.” She looked around herself as if searching for something to say, and, as her gaze fixed on a tray of food by the window, gestured. “Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes.” Cade felt instantly adrift in this conversation. “Did you … order this for me?”

She frowned, still lost in thought.

“I think Emala brought it for me.” She shook her head, shrugged, gave him a smile. “But you can have it if you want.”

“You should eat something, too.” He went to the table and picked up the tray, carrying it over to her desk.

“I suppose I should.” She smiled up at him as he set the tray down. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” He perched on the back of the couch as she began to eat, and then realized that was far too familiar. Standing, he paced around the back of the room, stealing glances at her. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, thank you.” She spoke around a mouthful of food.

Something was off. It wasn’t like Aryn to forget to eat, and though she did indeed seem to be in good spirits—a somewhat dizzying change from last night—there were circles under her eyes. Had she been up late?

If so, why? It didn’t seem to have been tears that kept her awake, for she was giving off neither sadness nor the emotional emptiness that came with a storm of crying. And then there had been whatever she was reading, something she didn’t want him to see. A naughty book, perhaps? The corner of his mouth twitched at the idea.

He sobered suddenly. He would have to break her good mood, even if only for a moment. It did not matter if she was happy now—she must know that he would not leave her again. She must know she could tell him what she was afraid of, and he would do his utmost to keep it from happening.

“Ms. Beranek.” He kept his voice low, so low that the voice scanners wouldn’t pick it up, and he saw her mark the difference at once. Her head came up slowly, and she frowned, nodding for him to continue. He drifted slightly closer, trying to keep his face neutral for the cameras. “I regret the events of last night.”

It took her a moment to understand what he was talking about, and that confused him even more. She had been so frightened then—what could possibly have happened between then and now that she would not even remember her fear? He watched her frown, her eyes meeting his almost blankly. Then she remembered. Her face went cold, her gaze wary. Any hint of a smile died from her lips.

“It’s nothing,” she said simply. “It’s not important.”

“It is important.” He was shaking with how much he wanted to go by her side and take her hand. He had to stay here, on the other side of the room. Who knew who might be watching? “I failed you.”

Her lips parted, and for a moment, he thought she might smile. But she looked down at the table instead.

“Mr. Williams, you did exactly as you should have.” There, at last, was the sadness, and it pulled at his heart.

“No.” His answer surprised even him. “I was hired to protect you. You, Aryn.”

The sound of her name startled them both. It came from his lips unbidden, an echo of the night before, and the world shifted around them. Her head jerked up at the sound of it, her grey-blue eyes shining with tears, and she pressed her lips together as she looked away.

“Thank you.” Her voice broke on the words. “But I think you know the type of thing you were hired to protect me from. And it isn’t what happened last night.”

“That doesn’t ma—”

“It does.” She would not look at him. “Thank you, Mr. Williams. But it does matter.”

Why do you stay? The words were on his tongue, and then he looked at her, at the rigid lines of her profile, and he knew that he did not want to hear her answer. Clenching his hands so hard they ached, he went to look out at the city. It was a grey day, warm for winter, with clouds hanging low around the skyscrapers and freezing rain thudding against the windows.

“In fact….” Her voice was tentative, but it gained in strength as she spoke. “I believe I will stay in today. You can feel free to take the day to yourself, Mr. Williams.”

“What?” He looked over at her blankly.

“I will be in my rooms. I will be perfectly safe.” Her chin lifted slightly. “You may go.”

The words hit him like a slap, but when he looked over, he saw no anger in her face. This was not revenge.

Then what was it? He searched for some reason, any reason to stay, and luckily, one came to mind at once.

“We have more self-defense to practice.”

On second thought, it was not lucky that he had remembered this. This was bad. This was very bad. He was disappointed not to get to teach her, and he knew why in an instant: he would have her in his arms, be able to touch her hands, watch the way she curled in her bottom lip when she was concentrating on something. Worse, he knew that his tone said all of that and more. As he met her gaze, something flickered there, an answering hint of heat. Then it was gone, and she looked resolute once more.

“Tomorrow, perhaps.” She was trying for the tones of a society wife, and she achieved her goal admirably. “I have a good deal of reading to do.”

“Oh? On what?”

“Nothing.” Her face closed off entirely. She was biting her lip, wavering, but he knew without even trying that he would get nothing more out of her. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, and after a moment seemed to come to a decision. “I said you may go.”

He turned on his heel and left without another word.

23

The door closed harder than it needed to, and Aryn stared after Cade, fighting the urge to go to him. He should know that it wasn’t his fault, that she believed him, truly and without reserve. If things were different, she would go after him, saying his name in the still of the penthouse, and when he looked around she would lay her hand on his arm—

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. What was happening to her?

What was happening, she told herself firmly when she opened her eyes, was that she was being sensible for once. She was acknowledging the facts that Cade’s first loyalty would be to Ellian. So while he might not tell Ellian that Aryn was hiding something, he would certainly be obliged to tell if he knew the truth. She was protecting him. She was protecting everyone from a very unpleasant situation.

She wondered briefly if she could keep this a secret forever, and decided not to think about that right now. Fact: she could not let her friends die. Therefore, logic said that her friends needed a way to fight back against the Warlord. Satellite-guided missiles would likely be better than guns, but even Aryn knew she couldn’t get missiles without someone asking questions.

Guns, then. She opened up the computer and frowned at the screen again. She had isolated the specific gun to buy, and the correct ammunition, but that left her wondering just how many rebels there presently were on Ymir. Divided into cells for each others’ protection—the Warlord’s interrogations were mentioned with shudders all over human space—the rebels had very little idea who else might be a rebel, and how many there were in total.

Aryn chewed her lip, thinking. The message she had received last night, signed Talon Rift, had laid out for her the problem now facing the resistance. There were people who wanted to get them weapons, he said. People who wanted to help. The resistance wasn’t alone.

They just needed money—in cash, and untraceable. The number blinked at her on the screen.

Running a war was not cheap. She wondered how the Warlord managed it, and then grimaced. It was easy when even the Alliance gave you its own soldiers to help. Casting a look at the door, Aryn frowned slightly. As much as she tried to remind herself of what he was, Cade did not seem like the type of man who would willingly fire on civilians.

Could she have been wrong about what she saw on Ymir, then?

No. She knew what she had seen. Everyone had seen it.

Perhaps that was why he had left the Dragons.

She shook her head. She had work to do, and whatever strange madness had taken over her mind, she could not let it distract her now. Whether Cade was an ally to the resistance was entirely beside the point.

She had exchanged another message with the man, asking how he knew about Ymir, and how he knew about her. He assured her that she was safe, that he would protect her, and she did not know how to tell him that she hardly cared. Last night had shown her how stupid it was to think only of her own safety.

And she was determined to get that money.

But how? Ellian had more money than he knew what to do with, certainly. But while he would give Aryn almost anything she asked for, she imagined that the ‘almost’ didn’t cover fifteen hundred unregistered weapons, or even the necessary cash.

Which meant she had to get the cash some other way. She briefly considered sneaking into the ballroom in the middle of the night and stealing some of the Vorekan sapphires out of the top of the chandelier. Surely no one would notice a few of them missing… But Ellian would also want to know why she wanted a ladder, wouldn’t he?

He would.

She thought, for a single moment, about telling him what she planned to do, and discarded the thought almost immediately. If he were to think she was taking matters into her own hands, not trusting him to follow through on his promise….

Aryn swallowed hard. Her hands were shaking on the desk. She had managed to forget last night, the way his eyes had gone cold and his voice had gone deadly soft. She had been paralyzed, across the table from him and every sense screaming to run, and knowing she had nowhere to run, nowhere to go but back to the mines, and her parents old enough that they couldn’t work for their keep any longer, and everyone knew what happened to the old citizens—

She was not going to let them starve, or be sold, or be executed. She made a promise to herself here, now, gripping the edge of the desk until her fingers went white, that she would do whatever it took to see them free of the Warlord by the time they died. And to keep that promise, she needed Ellian. It was as simple as that.

She would pawn her jewelry. The thought came to her in a flash, and she got up and went into the dressing room, pulling out her necklaces. She needed to rule out any of her favorites, and anything Ellian had given her as a special gift. But that left a good deal of diamonds. Making sure she was hidden from the cameras, Aryn grabbed three necklaces at random and stuffed them into a tiny purse, then went to the comm.

“Mr. Williams?” Her finger held down the button.

She could feel him waiting on the other end of the line. He was staring at the comm, she knew it, and she could sense him deciding what to say. She wondered if he could feel her, too….

No. That was ridiculous. Of course he couldn’t.

“Yes, Ms. Beranek?” He was trying to keep his voice flat, but curiosity spiked through the line. She could just imagine his eyes narrowed. He was tall enough that he would be leaning down to speak into the comm, and even hundreds of yards away, she almost felt as if she could feel his breath on her skin. “Ms. Beranek?” he repeated when she said nothing.

She shook herself out of her daze.

“Yes. Ah, I believe I will go out after all.”

“I’ll call the car around and inform Mr. Pallas. Where will you be going, ma’am?” Having taken refuge in politeness, his voice was expressionless.

“Tell him I’d like to go look at jewelry.” That was unlike her. Ellian would ask questions. She frowned, then hit upon an idea. “There’s a dinner coming up and I want to make an impression. Ask him if there’s any gemstone, in particular, that he would like.”

“Of course, Ms. Beranek.”

The comm link closed and Aryn shrugged a cape on over her gown, making her way to the entry hall just in time to see Cade leave Ellian’s office. His gaze swept over her as if she were a puzzle, and he crossed the hall to the door with no more than a perfunctory nod.

She bit her lip. It was better this way. It was.

It was past rush hour, and they had a quick ride to the shopping district, where hovering platforms kept shoppers above the carpet of acid snow and a shimmering barrier above the streets provided both heat and protection from the sleet. It was pleasant to stroll here at any time of year, but Aryn truly did love winter, when the streets were adorned with pine trees strung with lights. Out here, staring up at the sky, she could pretend that New Arizona was everything she had hoped for.

“Ms. Beranek?” Cade’s voice was soft.

Traitorously, her mind conjured an image of them standing here together, arm in arm, snow falling gently toward their faces, the sting of the cold against their skin and the warmth of each others’ hands….

She shoved the image away.

“Let’s go there.” It was one of the higher end stores, and she knew they did not ask very many questions. She followed him as he pushed a way for her through the crowds of holiday shoppers, and in the shop, she approached the counter with what she hoped was a confident smile.

“Ms. Beranek.” The proprietor, a man with white hair and an engaging smile, had the knack of remembering every face he’d seen in his life. That might be a problem.

“Hello.” Aryn put her purse on the counter and checked to see if Cade was watching her. He was.

He was her bodyguard, what had she expected? Aryn moved the purse slightly out of his field of vision and smiled at the proprietor with what she hoped was a fetching look. She spoke very quietly, hoping Cade could not hear.

“Can you keep a confidence, sir?”

“Of course, Ms. Beranek.”

“Have you heard of Jessrain?” It was the newest fad in New Arizona City, a game with famously complicated rules. Aryn knew of at least three wives and seven husbands who had been beggared, and the proprietor’s smile said he knew of a great deal more.

“I’m familiar with it. Ms. Beranek…”

“I’m sure I need to say no more.” Aryn gave him a rueful smile and pushed the purse toward him. “Could I get an appraisal on these? And please, if there was any way I could make certain—”

“Not a word will pass my lips,” he assured her, and he was gone with the jewels in the next moment.

Aryn jumped as Cade appeared at her side.

“Yes? Can I help you?” She looked up at him with an expression that forbade him to ask questions.

He didn’t take the hint.

“You’ve never gambled in your life.” His voice was absolutely certain.

“How do you know that?”

“You grew up poor.” He did not look over at her. “You never shun food—or at least you didn’t until this morning—you hang up your clothes yourself, and you rarely wear jewelry. You would never gamble.”

Aryn looked down at the counter. If he could see this….

“You don’t know me very well, Mr. Williams.” Her voice came out harder than she expected.

For a moment, she thought he would argue. Then he nodded.

“Of course not.” He stepped back, and Aryn clenched her hands under the cape.

It was better this way. Soon she’d have the cash, and she could purchase the weapons. Her contact had been only too eager to arrange the transaction. She shaped his name in her mouth, silently rolling the syllables over her tongue.

Talon Rift. Where had she heard that name before?

24

Nyx wove through the crowd and tried to keep her lip from curling. It was snowing outside, perfect white flakes drifting down until they were zapped on the forcefield that stretched between the buildings. The pretty snow, to hear people tell it, was the exact reason so many people moved to New Arizona.

At which point, apparently, they moved into luxury apartments, got rid of any clothes that could be considered remotely practical, and strolled around on artificially heated streets while casting only a glance or two up at the snow they so loved.

It was ridiculous. The snow might as well be a mirage, as far as they were concerned, and meanwhile, Nyx was the one that was getting funny looks for wearing sensible black pants and a shirt, with boots.

If she saw one more rich woman laugh elegantly behind her hand, she was going to burn this place down.

As Cade went past, walking a step behind a woman who must be Ellian Pallas’s wife, Nyx contrived to knock something off one of the stupid outdoor carts and crouch down to pick it up, staying conveniently out of his line of sight. He knew that Talon had been here a few days ago, but he likely didn’t know the crew was still here. And Talon was right—the less Cade knew for now, the better. For all his skill in combat, he’d never been very good at lying.

The woman, she saw only a brief glimpse of. She was tiny—or maybe that was only compared to Cade—and she looked absolutely terrified.

But she was doing this. She was married to one of the most ruthless men in known space, and she was still doing this. Nyx had to respect that.

Even if her dress, like everyone else’s, was completely ridiculous. It was sleeveless, for Christ’s sake.

She watched as the pair went into a jewelry store and the woman slid a purse across the counter, murmuring to the proprietor. Cade bent to speak in her ear for a moment, and whatever she said to him, he stepped back as if she’d slapped him.

I’m worried about Williams, Talon had said, offhand. He’s falling for the wife.

He’s not that stupid, Nyx had said back. She hadn’t even looked up from her paperwork.

He was, though. Apparently, he was precisely that stupid. Now she wanted to live up to her reputation amongst the crew as the strict mother hen, and march into that store and thump some sense into him. So help me, Williams, I will turn this ship around.

Instead, she slid into a shop as they came out onto the street, and then slipped out to follow them. It wasn’t long before the woman stopped, staring up at the snow with pure delight on her features—at least someone was paying some attention to it—and then pointed over at one of the little stands selling hot chocolate.

While Cade was nodding, offering her his arm for her to step off the curb, she contrived to drop the packet of cash. She looked over, and her eyes met Nyx’s for a single moment.

She’d known she was being followed. Nyx felt herself smile as Aryn gave a slight nod, and then she started talking, softly enough that Cade had to bend to hear her, gesturing animatedly as they went across the street.

No fool, then, this woman from Ymir. Nyx could see why Cade might get stupid.

Still, he needed to get his shit together or he was going to end up very dead, and the wife with him. Nyx made a mental note to talk to Talon about it, and then, without breaking her stride, she continued in her path, stooping to pick up the packet of cash out of the snow. She activated her comm unit with a flick of her wrist.

“Got it, boss.”

“Good,” Talon’s voice came back. “I’ll tell our contact.”

* * *

“Not possible.” Christian’s hand clenched on the desk. “We’ve watched all the banks. They’re flagging any withdrawals that add to that amount. It hasn’t happened.”

“It’s happening.” The voice that came out of his computer was almost bored.

Do you know what this means? he wanted to scream. He didn’t. He knew the man would only shrug, still bored, still demanding payment.

Information brokers. His lip curled. They behaved as if information didn’t matter at all, even though it was their very business.

“Where is the trade?”

“That, I don’t know.”

“Who’s supplying them?”

“I only know the one putting people in contact, and even they may not know the specifics.” The broker spoke carefully, but without hesitation. Being circumspect was a habit with these people. There were no clues in what they said, only the subtle reminder that if Christian wanted names, he would have to pay for them.

After which, he’d need more information as he researched, which he’d only need to pay the broker for, as well.

“The money is being transferred,” he said tersely, and he cut the call with no pleasantries.

He stood and went to the window. It wasn’t a real window, just a screen showing the sky outside the tower. Ellian would never allow something as indiscreet as a window that looked in on the people doing his business.

Christian sighed. He shouldn’t have hung up. He needed more information. It was no use contracting 300 mercenaries to deal with a Dragon team, if they missed the bastards altogether.

He was just opening up the screen and preparing to swallow his pride when he stopped. He didn’t need to know where the deal was happening, did he? It didn’t matter whose hands the weapons were in when they left New Arizona.

They would have to go through the spaceport.

* * *

Try as she might, Tera could not figure out how the weapons were getting to Ymir. They must be coming from either New Arizona or Osiris—that was where you bought things like that under the table. That’s where the stock was.

But her usual tactic of following the money was getting her nowhere, save to note that a man named Ellian Pallas, a well-known arms dealer, had offered to buy every gun in the city.

And it wasn’t him helping out those resistance fighters. Tera was sure of that. She’d even come close to taking Ellian out once, before her father aborted her mission, telling her it was far too dangerous.

He’s allied with the Warlord.

His surveillance systems are unsurpassed. I won’t risk the world learning about you just so you can take out an arms trafficker who could be replaced in half a day.

She still had regrets about listening to him on that one.

She had woven a net over the computer systems in the city, set to look for cargo crates moving that had no contents listed, or whose contents did not seem to match their posted weight. She was proud of that one. No one would risk giving an incorrect weight to their pilot—the guidance systems relied on such facts to lift off.

Therefore….

She was pacing around the room, trying to figure out where the Warlord’s own money was coming from, when her computer gave a strange noise and she hurried over to look.

She frowned. Someone else was trying to insert themselves into the databases at the spaceport. They were looking for alerts on the same sorts of things, and there was a virtual tripwire set up to offer a reward to spaceport staff for any information leading to illegal weapons trades. The programming led back to….

Ellian Pallas. Tera stared at it for a moment, eyes narrowed in thought.

Then, with a small smile, she went into the system and made a few small tweaks. It wasn’t anything extravagant. Not even something they would notice as they looked at things from their end. As far as they would see, unless they looked at all of their code again, their alerts were still set up.

But nothing would be sent to them, and—God willing—the Warlord would know nothing about the weapons until they appeared on Ymir.

Tera nodded in satisfaction, closed out of the programs carefully, and went to get herself a cup of tea.

* * *

It was the only possible answer. Alina Kuznetsova paced around the captain’s quarters of the Krasniy Oktyabr and turned the problem around every way she could, looking for the answer.

There wasn’t any point to that, of course. It was so simple, and so obvious, that she had missed it until now. Talon Rift had always wanted to take out the Warlord, and now he’d made a proclamation that he wasn’t waiting for Intelligence to recommend an opening. Aleksandr Soras wanted Talon Rift dead. The Warlord of Ymir had defenses that were impressive, but nonetheless should have been breached years ago.

Aleksandr Soras was either in league with the Warlord of Ymir, or he was the Warlord of Ymir.

“Commander?” Her XO appeared in the doorway. Tall and lean compared to Alina’s own compact build, Zeke Grimshaw had been an eminently capable second-in-command. He and Alina shared an outlook on life. Neither of them shrank from doing the best thing for the most people, no matter how unpleasant it was at the time. Zeke carried out her orders to a T and kept the crew in line.

He had also been sending unauthorized transmissions she could not read—to Seneca.

How could you? Alina wanted to say. I trusted you. A crew has to trust one another.

But that was stupid, and she wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to give him an opening. She smiled over her shoulder at him to keep his guard down, even as she tripped the automated defense systems embedded in the doorway.

He went down with a thump and she dragged his body over to a chair and secured him, laying a small device on his skin that would send little jolts of pain through his implants.

When his head jerked up at last, she was sitting on the bed, waiting.

“First question,” Alina said calmly. “How many more spies are there on my team?”

25

“Is he any better?” Arlon’s voice was quiet.

Samara jumped. She hadn’t truly spoken to Arlon in weeks. Since she took over their resistance cell, in the face of his unwillingness to mount any operations at all, he’d been inclined to sulk.

She swallowed, trying to figure out if she should say something about that—what would Jacinta do?—and decided not to. She looked down at Stefan, who was sleeping on one of the cots. She’d been by his side since she got back from the mines after her shift.

“I think he’ll be all right,” she said, after a moment. “They didn’t have him for very long. No broken bones. No internal bleeding, as far as we can tell.”

Arlon nodded. He watched Stefan’s chest rising and falling. “If he were one of the guards, they’d be able to fix him up in a few minutes, like he’d never been hurt at all, and we’re still cleaning wounds with water and binding them up with cloth—and we don’t have enough of either.”

Samara said nothing.

“I’m glad you got him back,” Arlon said finally.

“You’re not….” Samara looked over at him. How to say this? They’d been close, but only ever as it related to their work in the resistance. When they began to disagree on that, there wasn’t anything to hold them together.

“Angry?” Arlon finished for her.

“Yeah.”

“I was furious when I saw the note. I thought to myself it was too big a risk, especially for you, and you shouldn’t even have authorized the mission where he was taken, and I thought, Jacinta wouldn’t have gone for him.” Arlon’s eyes were locked on Stefan, but Samara knew his mind was far away. “And then I thought, it doesn’t matter what Jacinta would do. She’s gone, and you’re in charge. And even if it was a risk to go, you made sure they could only get so much from you—and if I’d been in that cell, I know it would have killed me to know that no one was coming for me.”

Samara looked over at him with a frown. “I’d have gone for you, too, you know.”

“I do. Now.” Arlon shook his head. “But I wouldn’t have guessed it before this. I don’t think Stefan knew, either. I think he thought we were going to leave him there to die, and just change every plan he knew about so he couldn’t rat us out. But you were better than that.”

“Not better,” Samara said quietly. Arlon’s approval made it easier for her to acknowledge the stupidity, somehow. “I should have left him.”

“You did the right thing.” Arlon looked at her. “The Warlord doesn’t give a damn about any of us. We’re just bodies in a mine to him—and bodies that have enough opinions of our own that he still needs the mercenaries. We’re not human to them, either, though. We’re rats to be put down, or we’re toys for them to play with, but we’re not people. Jactina was hard on us because she wanted us to be strong, but we were still just pieces of a puzzle to her. Just tools. You…. You went for Stefan not because it was the smart thing to do, but because you cared.”

Samara bit her lip.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Arlon was staring at her. “That’s not a weakness. You take risks, and it scares the hell out of me. But now I know that when things go wrong, you’re going to be leading the charge to make them right again. I know the lengths you’ll go to, to keep us safe—because you care about us. That, I can follow.” He stood and pulled her up to clasp her arm. “So what do you need from me? What can I do?”

Samara wanted to bury her face in his shoulder and cry, but there was no time for that. She managed a smile.

“We got the device on the comm unit, so we’re in their system, and our sources off-planet are getting a fairly steady stream of information about Blackout. They’re formulating a plan and—what’s that?”

Alarms were sounding outside and Samara ran for the surveillance feeds in the back of the cave. It was one of the things their source had been able to get them: a way to see the streets without leaving the safety of the cave.

Her heart fell as she saw the lines of guards taking up positions in the streets.

“Lockdown,” Arlon said grimly. “And close to a shift change, too. If they don’t lift it before that….”

He looked around, indicating the other resistance fighters in the hideout. A good number of them were here, and their absence in the mines would be noted if they weren’t able to get out of the cave.

And then she understood.

“They won’t lift it,” she said quietly. “They know we must have a hideout somewhere, and they’re shutting the district down so we can’t get to our shift. In a couple of hours … they’ll have a list of names.” She was shaking. “Not all of us.”

But damned close—and almost everyone here had family in the district, none of whom had any good way to run anymore.

“Your allies off-planet.” Arlon was dead white. “They’re coming with weapons, aren’t they?”

“Not soon enough,” Samara whispered.

Not soon enough.

* * *

“I have to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised.” Captain Eddis sat back in his chair with a smile. Behind him, the members of her patrol squad were sitting on benches, awaiting their next orders.

India ground her teeth. The man had been too busy to see her for days, and the minute she screwed up, he was here watching her every move. She knew better than to be snide, though. She gave him a smile.

“What’s your next move?”

Oh, no, she wasn’t going to fall for that. India let her smile become the very sweetest she’d ever given.

“I don’t mean to take up your whole day, Captain.”

“It’s no trouble, really. I—”

“Because I know how busy you’ve been,” India said, marching sweetly onwards. “And I know the normal day to day business of a district has … what was it you said the other day? Ah, yes: ‘hundreds of pieces of paperwork every day.’ You didn’t even have time for a brief meeting. I can’t let you spend any more time on this, not when everything is well in hand.”

He wanted to object, but there was no good way for him to do so. His eyelids flickered, and then he gave a smile and stood. He leaned over her for just a moment as he left, and he made no effort to lower his voice.

“This is a longer game than one operation, Sergeant. I’d be careful about leaving a trail of enemies in your wake.”

She stared coldly after him as he left. He thought that just because he’d survived this long, he knew everything there was to know?

He’d survived this long and he was still living in Kell District, still nothing more than a mercenary. India meant to go farther.

“Let me make one thing quite clear,” she said to the patrol squad. “The security forces in this district have failed miserably at subduing the rebellion. I am the one who is changing that. Should any of you think you can take credit for my work, you will earn yourself a world of hurt. Is that understood?”

There was a pause, and then all of them nodded.

“Ma’am.” It was Officer Wheeler. “Should we be ready to move on that list tonight?”

“Not yet.” India smiled. “There will undoubtedly be a few who will try to get into the hideout, wherever it is—perhaps to bring supplies. We wait. Even if no one is stupid enough to lead us right to them, or none of them are stupid enough to try to sneak out and warn their families, we’ll still have most of them under lock and key. And they’ll starve eventually.”

She considered.

“Nevertheless, the Warlord will want to see results. I’ll go to the capital as soon as we have the list, and present it to him. He should know I’m making progress.” It was a ballsy move, but India had learned over the years that if she didn’t put herself forward, no one else would.

This operation would make her reputation.

* * *

“I’ll go to the capital as soon as we have the list, and present it to him. He should know I’m making progress.”

Lesedi frowned at the screen. If the sergeant were patient, she would wait until the whole thing was wrapped up. This would do little for her reputation.

Unfortunately, it would also be a death knell for the resistance. It was even odds that the Warlord would move on the list without waiting for the sergeant’s plans to come to fruition. He was running scared, his arms dealer buying up every weapon for sale in New Arizona, his systems on lockdown, his guards authorized to hurt whoever they had to hurt, kill whoever they had to kill, to wipe the resistance out.

And on some level, he had to know it wasn’t going to work. It was never going to work.

She shook her head. It was certainly not the time for philosophical questions. Whatever the Warlord’s eventual goals … he could not get that list. She began typing.

Sgt Quince intends to present list of known resistance fighters to Warlord. She must not get out of the district.

26

Aryn was swimming, an event Cade would classify as a unique and innovative form of torture. On a professional level, he was impressed with the craftsmanship of the torment: seemingly innocuous, subtle, and insidious. On a personal level, however, he was beginning to wish that Talon had left him out in the cold to die. Aryn’s body cut through the water cleanly, her strokes perfect, her movements slightly too graceful to be precise. The woman would make a terrible soldier.

Cade had taken to listing her faults to keep himself sane, and so far he had only come up with the fact that she didn’t like peaches—who didn’t like peaches?—that she didn’t look very good in green, and the aforementioned issue of being terrible in the military. Of course, there was also the fact that she might be a consummate liar, and that she was almost certainly hiding something from both him and her husband, but all of that seemed to fade into the background when Aryn was present.

As the days passed and there were no more incidents with Ellian, Cade had expected his protectiveness to wane. But he could hardly be in the same room as Ellian now. He spent dinners in a misery, calming himself as best as he could while his heart raced.

“Cade?” Her voice called him back to reality, and he looked down to see her, swim cap in hand, treading water by the edge of the pool.

“Yes?”

“You’re blocking the ladder,” she said, almost apologetically.

“My apologies.” He backed up.

Without any thought at all, his hand came up to help her as she climbed, and even as he realized what he was doing and moved to pull his hand back, hers came down to rest in it. She flashed him a grateful smile.

He had stopped disbelieving the servants when they told him that Aryn was kind. Eyes open now, he watched her with them. He saw her little smiles. She knew the names of their spouses and children. She kept her room tidy so that Emala would not have to clean as much. Aryn, Cade’s grandmother would have said, had been raised properly. Indeed, Aryn had even begun to thaw toward Cade himself—her smile said as much.

But only begun. As he watched, the warmth died from her face, and she stepped back, swallowing. She would have plunged back into the pool if he had not caught her, and what should have been an amusing moment was instead marked by sudden, unmistakable heat as Cade’s arm curved around her waist and Aryn’s wet hands grabbed at his shoulders. For one moment, their bodies were pressed together—

And then Cade swung her abruptly to the side, hardly caring that he’d picked her up and set her down like a sack of flour, and Aryn turned away without a word to pick up her towel.

They walked back to her rooms in silence, Aryn’s back very straight and Cade trying not to think about how charming she looked when she was resolute about something. This was how it started, he knew. He was not a fool. But Aryn was very clearly untouchable, and even if she could have any man she wanted… Cade’s heart twisted. She deserved better than a killer. He held open the door to her rooms, and she stopped, ducking her head rather than look at him.

“You don’t have to follow me in again, you know.”

The problem with her was that he could never tell whether her factual statements were expressions of hope, or the desire not to be a trouble to anyone. And in any event, Cade reminded himself, it did not matter. He looked down at Aryn with a half smile.

“Mr. Pallas believes there might be a threat,” he said simply.

Aryn only shot him a look.

Why Ellian should insist there was a threat in Aryn’s bedroom, of all places, was a mystery to Cade. He had been over the place seven times in the past day and a half, sending robots down the air vents and pulling each article of clothing out of the drawers and off the hangers while Aryn gathered them up with what seemed to be amusement. Cade had contractors lift the bathtub, remove the counters, and take off the headboard. He had tried anything and everything he could think of, and there was not a single thing he could find that was wrong with the room.

And he might as well not have gone to the trouble at all, because Ellian was still convinced, and he had asked Cade to sleep at the foot of Aryn’s bed. Was the man trying to drive him mad?

As Aryn changed and showered, Cade stood staring out at the city. Aryn had the best view in the penthouse: not the financial district glittering in the foreground, but the faraway haze of the western mountains. They were, Cade knew, remarkably dangerous terrain, but the idea of climbing the side of the mountain with pick-axes appealed to him…and it seemed simpler, somehow, than the struggle to survive in the city.

As he turned, shaking his head, his gaze caught something poking from beneath the couch. His heart seemed to stand still. Kicking the couch over in one fast movement, a roar erupting from his chest, he drew his gun and pointed it at…

A book.

Aryn was at the door of her dressing room, hand at her throat—and, a moment later, her lips pressed shut to hold back a smile. She met Cade’s gaze with impressive aplomb.

“Thank you for acting quickly,” she managed, and she whisked back into the dressing room before a smile could break across her face.

Cade replaced his weapon, resisting the urge to sink his head into his hands. A brief radio call to Ellian assured the man that all was well. He righted the couch, hoping no one would notice he’d knocked one of the arms askew, and sat down to examine the book. His bemusement only grew from there.

“You’re studying interplanetary piloting?” he asked when Aryn came back into the room.

“Yes.” She looked like she was holding something back.

“Because….” he prompted.

To his surprise, she threw up her hands.

“I like it.” She shrugged and sat in one of the chairs nearby, frowning at him. “Emala was telling me about it because her husband is a pilot, and it got me thinking. So I ordered the book.”

“And you like it?” Cade squinted at the equations. He’d been put through a course to learn piloting, as every Dragon was, but even his natural talent in Physics had been put to the test. The calculations needed for a correct jump were surprisingly delicate.

Was this what she had been hiding?

“I know it’s boring.” Aryn let out her breath in a sigh and stared out the window. The sun was beginning to set over the mountains, and her face was lit gold. She pulled her knees up to her chest, lost in thought. “It just all makes sense somehow. I’ve only been in space once, but I loved it.”

He might have quit a hundred times in these first two weeks, but it was these moments that held him, and the growing knowledge that this wasn’t an act. Aryn might be made of false smiles, might not love her husband—a fact Cade was still trying to decide whether or not Ellian knew—but there was a side of her that nothing on New Arizona or Ymir had warped. So when she looked back, Cade smiled.

“This is impressive.” He held up the book. “Truly. Do you know ships sit in port for weeks sometimes for lack of qualified pilots?” He was about to add that they made a fortune, then stopped himself. Clearly, Aryn did not need money.

As he was putting the book back on the table, however, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

“Give me that.” Aryn was on her feet in a moment.

The gesture was involuntary. Cade flipped it over—and sucked in his breath. What lay in his hands were weapons schematics, and not just for anything. For the AK-354. The gun was cheap, durable, and used almost exclusively by the underground.

So it had indeed all been an act. Nothing could have prepared him for the disappointment he felt roiling in his stomach. He had begun to trust her, really trust her.

“Ms. Beranek.” His voice was steady. Cade put the piece of paper down, his hand shaking. “I believe I will take my leave.”

“No.” Her voice was panicked.

“What?” He turned, frowning.

“Don’t…” Her breath came in a jerk. “Please.” She was shaking all through, her eyes wide. “You can’t tell Ellian. Please don’t tell Ellian.”

That brought him up short. He turned.

“I beg your pardon?”

“He doesn’t know,” Aryn whispered. She was trying to keep her voice steady, but tears were forming in her eyes. “I know he hired you. I know you’re his man before you’re mine, but please.”

“I’m not his man.” He had never spoken truer words in his life.

“You have to be.” Her voice was flat. “And I’ve tried not to show you anything you’d have to tell him about. But now that you know, I beg you—Cade, I am begging you not to tell him.”

“So this isn’t….” He couldn’t even begin to process this. “So you’re not working with him?”

She stopped, jolted out of her fear.

“What?”

“You’re telling me you don’t have these because you’re working with Ellian.” He almost spat the words at her. It had all been lies. All of it. Sometimes I think Aryn suspects.

Why would Ellian have bothered to lie to Cade about that? He hadn’t. One look at her face showed that Aryn hadn’t known, hadn’t even suspected.

And now Cade got to be the one who watched her figure it out.

“He traffics in weapons?” she asked finally. Her voice was lost, and Cade felt relief wash over him. She truly hadn’t known what her husband did. She was, in some ways, exactly the woman Ellian thought.

There was one thing, however, that Cade had not counted on.

“So when he was on Ymir….” Aryn was shaking again. She almost looked like she was going to laugh. “He was supplying weapons.” She swallowed hard. “To the Warlord.”

Oh, no. Cade closed his eyes.

And then, in horror, he understood at last.

You bastard. His lips moved on the words, and nothing came out. What was it Talon had said? That the Warlord did not yet have a weapon that could kill his workers—but that he would soon? And how had Cade never thought to ask why Talon would know that Ellian, of all people, was searching for a bodyguard?

You bastard, Talon. You knew I’d find out.

“Cade?” Aryn’s voice was very small. “Tell me it’s not true. It’s not true, is it?”

“Aryn—Ms. Beranek—”

Aryn turned, her hand over her mouth, and then she doubled over and retched on the carpet.

27

“Aryn.” There was pity in Cade’s voice.

She didn’t want his pity. She pushed herself up and ran, slamming the door to the dressing room in his face and sliding down the back of it, her arms wrapped around herself, lips pressed together to keep in the sound.

They had all known. All of them. Samara, Cade, Emala—everyone except Aryn. She hadn’t made a good marriage, gotten herself off Ymir, kept her family safe, traded true love for kindness. Ellian wasn’t a good man.

She might as well have married the Warlord himself.

And everyone else had made sure she did not know what she was doing. In a moment, the litany of anger changed to fury. She did not think, only hauled herself up and ripped open the door, startling when she saw that Cade had not moved. He looked down at her and she felt the flash of heat between them and did not care.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He turned away, running his hands through the short hair and the back of his head. It was an unexpectedly boyish gesture. For the first time she had seen him, he looked unsure of himself.

“I thought you knew.” He did not look back at her. “At first. And then Ellian told me you didn’t, and I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“How could you…” But she remembered now. She had seen his hatred when she gave him her society wife smile. He thought she was knowingly profiting from the deaths of millions. She closed her mouth and looked down, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him look back at her.

“What is it?” he asked her, his voice low.

“No wonder you hated me,” Aryn said softly. She looked up at him.

“Aryn, even within a few days—”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.” She was shivering now.

Purpose came in a rush and she went to the evening gowns, looking for one that would convey suitable seriousness.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to talk to Ellian.”

Cade was at her side so quickly she hardly saw him move. She looked up, moving slightly so that they would not touch; it had taken only a few lessons to make her careful about that.

“That is not a good idea.” Cade looked down into her face.

“I’ve been a fool, but I will not continue to play the part.”

“That is exactly what you will do.” He heard the order come out of his mouth and closed his eyes briefly as if searching for words. “Aryn, your husband gave me to you to keep you safe, and I will do whatever it takes, teach you whatever skills you need, to fulfill that promise.” His lips twitched in an attempt at a smile. “If you doubt me, remember, I nearly shot a book for you a few minutes ago.”

Her laugh came out wild, and something inside Aryn broke. She reached out and took a handful of his shirt, leaning her head against his chest and feeling the tears trickle out of her eyes. It was too much all at once. Tentatively, his arms came around her—not wrapped around her back as she would like, but with his hands resting awkwardly on her shoulders as if he would pat her on the head and tell her not to cry. He was cautious, and utterly at a loss, and Aryn could hear his breath coming shallow. She took a moment before straightening up.

“And you have protected me—even knowing what Ellian was.”

“Because of what Ellian was,” he corrected her. “And I will continue to do so, Aryn. So, now, please, trust me. Just like I would tell you not to walk down a dark alleyway at night, I am telling you not to confront your husband.”

Aryn did not bother to contradict him. She shrugged off her robe, aware of Cade turning away quickly so as not to look at her nakedness, and she pulled a dress on, presenting her back to him and sweeping her hair out of the way.

“I need you to zip this.” There was a pause, and she knew he was considering the fact that she wouldn’t go through the halls half-naked. “If you don’t do it, I’ll call Emala,” she warned him.

He swore softly and slid the zipper up, but he blocked her path.

“What can I say to convince you?”

“Nothing,” Aryn said flatly.

“Trust me on this—”

“But I can’t trust you.” The words came out before she could stop herself, and even seeing the hurt on his face, she couldn’t stop herself. “For two years, I have lived with the man who supplied weapons to the Warlord. Two weeks ago, the day you came to meet me, I asked Ellian to speak to the Warlord and stop him from bombing the outlying villages. Do you understand, Cade? I asked my husband to stop the Warlord from using the very weapons he provided, and he looked me in the eyes and he said that he would. Four days ago, I told my friend, a woman who is living in a bunker, that I would look through Ellian’s contacts to see if I could find anyone he knew who could get weapons for the resistance. And she told me not to, and do you know why?”

He swallowed before answering.

“Because she knew,” he said finally. His voice was quiet.

“Because she knew!” Aryn threw it back in his face. She was keeping her words so low that the scanners couldn’t hear them, but she knew her control was slipping. She was choking on the tears now. “Everyone knew except me! Everyone I knew lied to my face about it.” She turned away, hands over her eyes. “My God, no wonder Nura hates me. She thought I knew, she never realized….” She clenched her hands and took a deep breath, turning back to him. “So now you ask me to trust you, Mr. Williams, and I don’t think I can. I think trusting anyone right now would be the biggest mistake I could make.”

“Yes,” he said savagely. He was at her side in a moment, pressing her up against the wall in the curve of the hallway; he, too, knew where the cameras were. His face hovered close to hers, and his voice was so low that even she could hardly hear it.

Her breath caught in her chest at the feel of him against her, holding her. Awareness flared, and a deep heat, but she could not look away from his eyes.

“Then don’t trust me,” he said, his voice low. “You could, Aryn. But….” He looked away, then back, his jaw clenched. “Don’t trust me. Trust no one. But do you see that if you go to Ellian now, if you confront him with this, then you are trusting him to be kind to you?”

And that, of all things, made sense. Aryn watched him as he drew away and bit her lip.

“Okay. I won’t confront him about this.” She saw Cade’s sigh of relief, and almost regretted what she was about to say next. “But I am going to talk to him.”

“What?” He followed her, a scant step behind as she went to the sink and splashed water on her face, blotting her eyelashes carefully and applying concealer under her eyes. “Are you insane?” His voice was a hiss.

“The very opposite. For the first time in years, I am living in the real world.” Aryn lifted her head.

“What are you going to say?”

“I haven’t decided that yet.”

“I strongly suggest having a plan!”

“Noted, Mr. Williams.” She made her way out of the rooms, walking down the hallway with the blood beating in her ears.

He was right. She should really have a plan. But when she knocked on the door of Ellian’s office, she found that she still had nothing to say.

“Aryn.” He opened the door. “Mr. Williams.”

“Mr. Williams was just going,” Aryn said. She slipped past Ellian into the room.

He stared at her, his eyes faintly narrowed.

So you’re the one who supplied the Warlord with his weapons. She could say it. It would be so damned easy. He knew that she knew something. He must have seen her throw up in the bedroom. He had cameras there, didn’t he?

He did, she decided, but right now she was too angry to be afraid.

“I would like to go to Ymir,” she said.

“What?” He stared at her, his hand still on the doorknob. “Why?”

A very good question. Why did she want to go?

To bring weapons to the resistance movement. She could hardly say that, however.

“I’d like to see my parents.” That was good. Plausible, even.

Ellian blinked, and then put on his concerned face. This conversation was clearly not going how he had expected.

“Are they sick?”

“Not that I know of. But, Ellian—” she could not bring herself to say the words my love “—it has been two years.”

“I thought you said things were very bad there,” he temporized, going to sit on the edge of his desk.

“Not in the city,” Aryn said, shrugging. She paused a moment, trying to keep the edge from her voice. “And you’re known to the Warlord, at least. Couldn’t you come up with some reason to be there?”

Now it was his turn to be blindsided.

“You want me to come with you?”

“Of course.” Aryn managed a little frown. She didn’t, but there was no other good answer—and she’d spent years learning to say the right thing without hesitation. “Are…are you too busy?” She was supposed to look sad here, she knew, even if her heart was leaping with the hope that he might not be able to go.

He considered for a moment, looking at his desk, at her, at the door that separated them from Cade. And then, chillingly, he smiled.

“You know, I believe I am too busy. But you absolutely must take Mr. Williams with you. That is my condition, Aryn.”

Something about this seemed off, but she could not for the life of her think what it was. What did that smile mean?

At least they seemed to baffle one another equally.

Maybe that was the basis of a good marriage. She tried not to start laughing; she was worried she might not be able to stop.

“Very well, then.” She nodded. Tried to think of what came next. “I’ll tell you when I’ve made the arrangements.”

“Thank you.”

They stared at one another, her trying to guess his thoughts, his face saying plainly that he was just as confused as she was. Then she left, him looking after her.

“Good night,” she said, somewhat mechanically, at the door.

“Good night.”

Outside, she looked up at Cade’s face.

“Are you…hurt?”

“No.” She frowned. “We’re going to Ymir.”

He stared at her like she’d gone insane.

“Why?”

Aryn paused, choosing her words carefully.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she said finally. That would have to do. She set off for her bedroom with a sense of dubious victory. If Ellian was going to try to influence events on Ymir, she was going to do as much as she could to undo everything he did. There was a certain poetic justice in that.

Now all she had to do was tell Talon she was leaving tomorrow—and that he could use her ship if he wanted to, to transport the weapons.

28

Private ship leaving tomorrow for Ymir. The message from Aryn was terse—as though she’d begun to pick up Cade’s speech patterns, Talon thought. He smiled as he read. Docking Port 4a. The ship is called Niccolo.

The door slid open behind him. “What’s up, boss?” Nyx stayed where she was, waiting for express permission to enter.

Talon beckoned her forward without turning around and leaned sideways to let her see the screen. She whistled through her teeth. “We can get the weapons delivered there?”

“Better them than us, right? They’re looking for us. Lesedi says there are alerts out for the Ariane.” He looked up at her. “So, tell me. Who do we bring?”

She answered promptly. She’d been thinking about it. “I think we’re in the clear for everyone, if we’re being honest, but if we play it safe? Tersi and Jester. Loki, Aegis, Sphinx, Jim, Stabby, Vampire, and Gomer.”

Talon nodded. He would have added KC to the list, but he’d been fairly close with Mars. Nyx was right not to include him. It was too much of a risk.

“Tell them what’s going on,” he told her. “Put ‘em in pairs so one of them can get the other, if you can’t get to them all.”

“Solid.” She slid towards the door. “Who’s going for Cade?”

“They’re both going.” Talon swiveled in his chair. “Why?”

“You were right when you said he’s gotten stupid over her. Didn’t want to leave him alone here. Someone needs to keep an eye on that boy.”

Talon grinned. “God help your children someday. They’re not going to be able to get away with anything, are they?”

Her voice filtered back along the corridor. “Hell no, they aren’t.”

Talon chuckled as he went back to his maps. If he’d intercepted the correct message, Pallas was planning to have 300 mercenaries in place in the spaceport. The question, of course, was whether or not they’d fire freely around civilians.

It disturbed him that he couldn’t guess the answer to that.

* * *

“Yo.” Nyx leaned in the doorway to Loki’s bunk. “Got a minute?”

“Sure.” He looked up from a book of schematics and shifted back to give her room on the bed when she ducked into the room. He’d already lost the manners they tried to drill into recruits: endless salutes, “sir”s and “ma’am”s peppered liberally into conversation. He was fitting in well.

His eyebrows rose fractionally when she closed the door behind her.

“Here’s the deal.” She didn’t believe in sugarcoating things. “Tomorrow, we’re going on a mission that’s not cleared by the Alliance. Someone high ranking is involved in … something bad. More details later. We’re not taking the whole crew, and this is going to be a dangerous mission.”

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 itself. 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 since 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.

“Cade!” A figure hit him from the side, tiny but fast, and he went over. He caught a glimpse of Aryn, her hands outstretched where she had pushed him, and behind her, a would-be attacker sprawling into the space Cade had occupied a moment before. A serrated blade skittered across the floor as Aryn reached out to help him up. “Are you hurt? Did they get you?”

Behind her, the attacker pushed himself up and grabbed her away, another knife appearing against her throat.

No. Cade’s gun was in his hand, but the man’s eyes met his, and a tiny shake of his head confirmed Cade’s worst fear: this was a trained killer, no green bounty hunter looking for some quick cash. If Cade moved, Aryn would die.

But as he watched, his world narrowed to Aryn’s terrified face, the man turned his head slightly, a gesture Cade recognized. The assassin was listening to something being said into an earpiece, and a moment later, he bent to whisper in Aryn’s ear. A second later she was released and the man shoved her hard in the back. She stumbled forward as something heavy hit Cade on the back of the head.

The world went black.

He came to with Aryn’s arms around him awkwardly and the hard floor of the terminal beneath him. Her face swam into view slowly, her hair falling to curtain them, her eyes filled with tears. Her lips were moving, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying…

“Cade?”

“Hey,” he managed softly.

“Oh, my God.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Can you see me? Can you move?”

He started to push himself up and winced. His head hurt like crazy.

“Don’t.” Her arms were around his torso. “Don’t try to stand yet. Cade…”

“What was that?”

“It sounded electrical.” Her brow furrowed. “You went down like a sack of bricks. Heavy bricks. You’re really big, you know that?”

He managed a weak laugh and regretted it when pain stabbed through his head.

“What … did he say to you?”

She sobered at that.

“He said not to go on the transport—to stay here, where I was safe.”

“What?”

“He said they’d been hired to kill me.” She frowned and bit her lip. “But it got called off.”

“Huh.” He stared up at the ceiling.

“What?” She was looking down at him.

An interesting question, that, and one his sluggish brain wouldn’t provide an answer to just yet. The warning made no sense. Everything about this, including the fact that Cade was still alive, suggested that they had only meant to scare her. Her, and the more he thought about it, him as well.

But he was having trouble thinking about that, because it had just occurred to him that Aryn must have dashed to catch him as he fell, trying to keep his head from hitting the ground. And before that, she had tackled him to get him out of the way of a knife. He looked up at her frown and saw her face soften.

“Are you really all right?” she asked him quietly.

“I think so.”

And then the moment shattered.

“Aryn!” Ellian’s voice was strong, parting the crowd, and Cade saw Aryn’s head jerk up.

Ellian’s two guards came to haul Cade up, and he saw the dislike in their eyes as he straightened and stepped back, pulling at his cuffs. His head was spinning, but he was not about to admit that he needed help—not to these people, not when they looked displeased to have found him with his head cradled in Aryn’s lap.

“My love, they had a knife at your throat,” Ellian was saying. His hands were around Aryn’s arms and he held her close, oblivious to her hunched shoulders.

As Cade watched, forcing himself to stillness, Aryn laid her head on Ellian’s shoulder and the man enfolded her in his arms. He bent his head to whisper and listened for her answer, something so low that Cade could not hear it. The man’s answer, however, was instantaneous.

“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t possibly allow that, my love.”

“But—”

“Aryn.” His tone was sharp. “Do you understand what just happened?”

No. Cade saw the answer on her lips, an echo of his own, and suppressed his smile. Aryn seemed to understand instinctively that this didn’t make any sense.

And Ellian should understand it, too. Cade narrowed his eyes slightly, studying the man’s face. Ellian’s pupils were dilated, his hands clenched where they held Aryn close to him. He was certainly in the grips of emotion, even if Cade knew no more than that.

“I nearly lost you,” Ellian said into Aryn’s hair. “I won’t take that chance again. Here, follow James to the car, my love. I want to have a word with Mr. Williams.”

Aryn’s eyes went to his, and Cade gave a tiny nod, one he hoped Ellian did not see. She left, looked down, shoulders rigid with the effort of not looking back, and Cade looked up into the coldest eyes he ever hoped to see.

“You failed,” Ellian told him, his voice ugly. “I told you Aryn was the most precious thing in the world to me, and you left her alone? You let her go into the crowd without you?”

Any explanation would be useless. Cade bent his head. He should walk away. The chance was there, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he stayed, he would be lost.

But he could not leave her.

“Give me one more chance.”

When he looked up, he saw the faint smile that crossed Ellian’s face. The man held Cade’s eyes for a long moment, and Cade wondered just how much he saw.

“Very well.” Ellian sounded almost pleased. “One more chance, Mr. Williams.”

31

In the cab, Aryn sank back against the seats, shuddering.

She only had a few seconds before Ellian was back, and so she could not think about the press of metal against her neck, the sight of Cade dropping to the floor, the sound of his voice while he ran for her—

Her fingers were shaking so hard that it took her three tries to open the comm unit.

“I have to call it off.” She hoped they were listening. She hoped no one else could hear. “I’ll find—I’ll find you another way. Not today.”

She slumped back against the seat and watched as Ellian strode away from Cade.

But he did not come right to the car. She watched, frowning, as he stopped inside the door and stared up at the sky outside the terminal. His lips weren’t moving, so he wasn’t on a call. What was he doing?

* * *

He was a damned fool. Ellian stared up at the sky and tried to remember how to breathe. He was a fool. Aryn should be dead, that fucking bodyguard should be dead.

All of this should be over, so he could find another woman to distribute his money at charity dinners and laugh politely at his business partners’ jokes. He wouldn’t stop the rumors, and so people would whisper that he’d had his last wife killed, the one he loved more than was wise. He’d killed her.

The next one wouldn’t dream of disobeying him.

And instead … instead, he’d seen the video feed of Aryn with the gun at her back, looking at Cade not just like he was the only one who could save her, but as if, with only a few seconds left in her life, Cade was the one she wanted to see.

He’d seen her shove an armed man out of the way for the man. He’d seen her with the knife at her throat.

And he’d choked. He’d called it off, a few terse words into the comm units, knowing the look Christian would give him when he got home. Stupid, weak—

He’d even been so turned around, so panicked at the thought of her lying dead on the ground, that he’d hissed those words at Cade: you failed, you left her alone. His own plan to kill her, and he was still furious.

But he’d scared her. She wouldn’t do anything like that again, if she even had to start with. Christian might be wrong. And even if he wasn’t, what harm could she really do? He could feel the way it was eating away at him like a poison, corroding the way his mind worked. He was always precise, logical to a fault. And now….

She wouldn’t do it again, he told himself.

With renewed purpose, he brought his comm unit up to his lips. “Take them out. Take them all out. Move on the Niccolo.”

“Yes, sir.” Did he hear reproach in Christian’s voice?

She won’t do anything like this again, Ellian wanted to say, and he tried his hardest to believe it.

But if he believed that, why had he let the bodyguard stay?

His hand clenched, and then he smiled. Hurting Williams, something Ellian already wanted to do, would make an effective demonstration to Aryn.

She would understand how things had to be.

* * *

“She called it off?” Nyx stared at Talon. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Something happened in the terminal.” Talon looked over to where police cars were pulling up and there was an unusually wide, cleared space in the throng of people.

Tersi looked up from where he was shoving one of the carts back into the shadows of the terminal. “Cade?”

“I don’t know.” Talon shook his head. “We have to move.”

“If he’s on our team, we have to go back.” Loki looked horrified.

“Kid—” Aegis began.

“No, he’s right.” Talon jerked his head. “Jim, Gomer, you come with me to … shit.”

The team paused, looking around, and a moment later, the rest of them heard it, too: the sound of too many feet running, with the hollow clunk of body armor and weapons.

“Cover,” Talon barked.

The crew scattered. Nyx was up the gangway of the Niccolo, readying her rifle. Aegis hauled Loki up with him onto the top of the ship. Tersi melted into the shadows behind the crates with Jim.

They came in a rush, surprisingly coordinated for mercenaries. Four abreast, the lines split at each doorway for layers of two to flow around the edges of the room. Riot shields came out, commands were called, and the lines hunkered down.

Two hundred? Four hundred? Talon did a quick scan. Too many, and too many by a large enough margin that the exact numbers didn’t matter.

Alone, in the middle of the courtyard, he was easy pickings for a grenade, or a volley of gunfire, but they weren’t quick enough. He took off with a roar and slammed himself into the row of shields.

They hadn’t braced, the idiots. The line caved and buckled, and he was in the middle of the crowd, flinging mercenaries bodily into one another and lashing out as fast as he dared.

Grab, takedown, shoot.

Grab, takedown, shoot.

Grab, takedown, shoot, steal weapon.

Talon weathered a blow to the back of his head and turned with an elbow strike, taking the man down. He could hear screams as Aegis and Loki dropped into the fray. Talon would have liked to see what Loki was getting up to and Aegis, well….

There was a reason they’d called him Aegis. The way he fought with a shield was a thing of beauty.

There were too many of them, but was it worth it to call in the Ariane? Could they trust—

In a surprisingly coordinated move, eight of the mercenaries grabbed for Talon, wrenching his arms out, anchoring his legs. He yelled, pure fury, but he didn’t have his armor, and he didn’t have his gun.

No killing blow came. In the sudden silence, the crowd parted and a man in a suit strolled onto the launchpad. Christian. Talon marked him, and made a silent vow to kill him painfully. He could have waited to make that vow until he saw what the man was going to do, of course, but it was a pretty safe bet that it was going to be something reprehensible.

“You work for the Warlord of Ymir,” he said, before the other man could get a word out. “Killing me won’t keep the world from knowing that.”

Christian studied him thoughtfully.

“I think you have a rather inflated sense of your own worth. I thought Dragons were never defeated.” He held up a hand, and another set of soldiers rushed into the room. “You won’t win. But I admit I’d very much like to see you try.”

“Same to you,” a new voice called.

Heads swiveled, and Talon’s eyes widened.

Alina Kuznetsova was standing on the ledge of the terminal. The gun she wielded would have been unusually large for anyone, but was ridiculously large on her, and as Talon watched, ten more Dragons came to stand at intervals along the ledge. Their weapons were ready, and their first targets were in their sights.

The mercenaries murmured, and the hands on Talon’s arms loosened fractionally.

“Now, now, gentleman, the way I see it, this can go two ways.” Alina crouched down and stared at them, her voice projecting out of the launchpad speakers. “The first way is that you realize you’ve already been paid and no one could really hold you accountable for not taking on two Dragon teams, so everyone goes home to a nice meal and a happy family. The second way….” She gave a gesture and the Krasniy Oktyabr rose to hover just above the edge of the terminal, guns trained squarely on the the courtyard. “Is that a few of us die killing every last fucking one of you.”

The mercenaries looked at one another, and then back to her. A few of the younger men were arguing, but the man in charge shut them up with a sweep of his hand and a look, gave a single nod to Alina, and spoke a command into his comm unit.

They were gone within seconds….

Leaving behind the crouched figure of the man in the suit. To Talon’s surprise, Loki made his way across the courtyard to offer the man a hand up. A flick of the kid’s fingers turned his comm unit on.

“So.”

The man in the suit looked around himself at the soldiers, then back to Loki. “I will give you—”

Loki cut him off. “One of the mercenaries mentioned your deal with them. About me.”

The man went still as a statue. “I—”

That was as far as he got before Loki’s fist shot out, crushing the man’s windpipe. He was down on the ground, writhing, choking, and Loki only looked down at him with the sort of vague annoyance of someone who thinks they might have dog shit on their shoe.

“I’m not the first one you made that sort of deal for, am I?” he asked the man. He took out his gun. “I could make it clean, you know. Quick. But I don’t think you deserve that.” He walked away, leaving the man lying in the dirt.

At Talon’s side, Alina was watching, tilting her head to the side. “Should we start recruiting on farms, do you think?”

“Perhaps.” Talon watched as a member of Alina’s team emerged from the shadows to give Loki a rough hug.

“Victory,” Alina said, with a nod to the woman. “That’s what I call her. Almost her name, anyway. She and your man were at Selection together.”

Talon smiled slightly. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Soras is out for your blood. I take it you knew that.” She raised a single eyebrow. “And the way I see it, there are a couple of reasons that might be: the bad one, and the really bad one.”

“It’s the really bad one,” Talon said blandly.

“Well, then.” Alina gave a cold smile. “Count us in. That bastard is going to pay.”

32

“And then when they called me…” Ellian drew a shuddering breath. “They said it was a warning, but I was so worried. A warning to me could have meant your death.”

Aryn closed her eyes. She wished he wouldn’t keep saying that. Whatever tenuous self-control she had was rapidly evaporating as Ellian talked, especially now that she finally understood that someone might very well want to hurt her to get back at him.

Someone like Samara. Someone like Aryn, two years ago. Lord, she’d been such a fool. She was supposed to be fighting people like Ellian, not marrying them.

She would make it right, she promised herself. She had a debt, and she would repay it.

“Aryn?”

“Yes?” Aryn looked over at Ellian. She managed a smile. “I’m sorry. I was…thinking.”

“You must rest when you get home.” Ellian’s voice was decisive. “You’ve had a terrible shock, my dear.” He slid closer to her on the seat, his eyes on hers, and cupped the side of her face gently.

She tried not to move. She had not let him touch her in days, finding clever ways to leave dinner early, ducking out of shared parties. She knew she could not get away with it for long—the rumors would start soon if they had not already—but she could hardly bear to be in the same room with him, let alone feel his skin on hers. He let her believe he was the man who had saved her. He was a liar. And he had the deaths of thousands on his hands, if not more.

“I’ll rest.” Aryn nodded jerkily. “I remember it being hard to sleep on the flight here. I’ll stay overnight and leave tomorrow.”

“What?” He drew back, his eyes narrowing. “You aren’t … you aren’t still going, are you?” He looked panicked.

“Of course I’m going,” Aryn said. On the floor of the terminal, Cade’s head cradled in her lap, she had feared for her life—and then, a few moments ago, she had decided that it did not matter. If someone would hurt her for what Ellian was, then they were almost on her side. She would not let those threats, of all things, stop her from doing what must be done.

“Aryn, it is too dangerous.”

“It isn’t,” Aryn said simply. “Whoever it was, if they wanted me dead, I would be dead.”

“But—” He broke off and looked out the window, his face becoming expressionless, as it did when he thought. He did not look at her for a very long time, and they were already climbing the side of the Diamond Tower when he said quietly, “If you wish.”

“Ellian…” He looked halfway between sad and triumphant, and she could not understand it. When he drew her face close for a kiss, there was no way to resist, not without sparking his anger. She held herself very still, letting his lips press against hers. It felt like an eternity before he released her, and she scrambled out of the car as soon as the doors opened, desperate for fresh air.

When she saw Ellian stay seated, she frowned.

“Are you not getting out?”

“I … have somewhere to be.” His eyes flicked between her and Cade, who had already appeared out of the second car to stand silently at her side. “I suspect I shall be gone all day, my dear. Rest. I will be back for dinner. And, my love … be safe. I was so close to losing you forever.”

At her side, Cade very nearly flinched, and Aryn bit back the urge to tell Ellian to be quiet.

“Of course,” she said simply, stepping back as the doors slid closed.

They walked to her rooms in silence, footsteps quiet on the carpets and Cade silent in his misery.

She should be afraid, Aryn realized. Cade was upset. He had been frightened, just as Ellian was—and Aryn suspected, with a wave of something that felt remarkably like hatred, that Ellian must have yelled at the man for his perceived failure. As soon as they were alone, she would tell Cade not to fear. She wasn’t afraid, not as she should be.

What she should tell him was for him to leave. She would be lying, sneaking around on Ymir, and Cade was an honorable man. Not the sort of person she wanted to deceive. She looked over at him as he held open the door, and as soon as they were alone in her rooms, she swung to face him.

“Cade—”

“Don’t.” He shook his head at the sound of his name. He took a pause to steady himself, and when he spoke, his voice was expressionless. “Ms. Beranek, I must beg your leave to resign. I should not even have come back here with you.”

She was going to tell him to go, she reminded herself. This was good. All was as it should be. She could accept his resignation and he would never think to question why she was dismissing him.

But what came out of her mouth was, “Why?” Her voice was very small.

“Because I failed you.” He looked up at her, green eyes burning. “Again, Aryn.”

“You’ve never failed me.”

“I left you once when you were terrified—don’t say you weren’t, Aryn, I know you were. And now, today…what was I thinking, letting you walk away alone?”

Guilt wormed cold inside her, and Aryn looked away. She’d talked him into that, done it on purpose when she knew he was disoriented. She’d been trying to leave a message for her contact not to load the weapons without her there to receive them at the other end of the flight.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said finally. “You have to understand that. None of it was your fault, Ca—Mr. Williams. There were four of them. How could you—”

“I was trained to do impossible things,” he said flatly. “And I’ve let myself get soft. I promised myself I would never…”

“Never what?” She took a step closer, looking up into his eyes.

“It’s not important,” he said at last. “What is important is that I failed. And you deserve someone who will never fail you.”

“You didn’t—”

“I thought they were going to kill you!” The words burst out of him, and he crossed the room to her side in a moment, hands stopping half an inch from her arms. He was shaking all through. “While I watched, Aryn. While I couldn’t do a damned thing to help you. I have never been so afraid in my life.”

“I wasn’t afraid.” The words came out of her without conscious thought.

“What?” He looked at her like he suspected she was trying to make a joke, and he didn’t think much of it.

“I wasn’t.” Aryn looked up into his eyes. “After, when I had time to think—and when the knife was at my throat. But I knew that if anyone could fight them off, it was you, and if you couldn’t do it, no one could.”

Now he did laugh, closing his eyes. His face twisted in pain.

“If anyone could fight them off,” he repeated. “You’re forgetting that you helped.”

“He was going to stab you!”

“And you helped,” he said again. “I’ve never seen a civilian do something like that. Promise me you won’t do that for your next bodyguard.”

“No.”

“No?” he repeated blankly.

“No. I won’t promise. And there won’t be another bodyguard.” Yes, there would. She should tell him to go. Mr. Williams, I have decided I am not in need of your services. I will provide you with an excellent reference if you need. She knew all of those words. She could open her mouth right now and say them.

“Don’t leave me.” Dammit. This was not her day.

“Don’t say that.” He swallowed.

You’re right, I shouldn’t have. “Why not?” Without realizing it, she had stepped even closer. Her hand was on his chest, the heat of his body a scant inch away.

“Because…” His eyes were searching hers as his voice trailed off. Hesitantly, he bent his head toward hers, and she felt herself stand taller, yearning—

They realized what was happening in the same moment. Aryn stepped back, nearly falling, and Cade looked away.

“You can’t go,” she said decisively.

Apparently, she was totally giving up on the idea of firing him.

“No, you can’t go.”

“What?” She frowned.

“To Ymir.” He was resolute. “You can’t go to Ymir. It’s too dangerous.”

“I have to go.”

“Aryn, why?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“I have to see my parents,” she said finally. “I can’t let some vague threat keep me from my family.”

She decided that she would tell him the truth when they were safely on the transport. He deserved the truth, after all. She just wasn’t going to tell him while he still had the chance to stop her from doing this.

33

“Mr. Williams.” The voice crackled over his private comm, and Cade jumped.

At her desk, Aryn looked over, brow furrowed. She watched as Cade reached up to touch the earpiece.

“Mr. Pallas.” He kept his voice neutral.

Aryn froze. Then, subtly enough that she thought Cade wouldn’t see, she slid one of the pieces of paper on her desk under another. What in God’s name was the woman planning? Cade turned away before she could see his frown.

“Would you come to my study, please?” Ellian’s voice was expressionless, but something put ever sense in Cade’s body on high alert.

He knew. Danger thrilled in his blood. Ellian had seen the kiss—the almost kiss, Cade reminded himself. In retrospect, it was a meaningless distinction. An arms trafficker was not going to care whether his wife almost kissed her bodyguard, or whether she pulled herself away at the last moment. Cade had the sinking suspicion that he was about to get shot.

He told himself that even Ellian would not be stupid enough to take on a former Dragon in combat.

“Of course,” he heard himself say. “I’ll be right there.”

“Where are you going?” Aryn’s voice was soft.

“Mr. Pallas would like to see me.”

“But he wasn’t supposed to be here,” Aryn whispered. She opened her mouth to say something and stopped when Cade shook his head warningly.

“I’ll be right back,” he assured her. “I’m sure he only wants to talk about the flight.” And possibly break my kneecaps. But there was always a difference between what people wanted to do, and what they did do. He reminded himself of that, managed what he thought was a smile, and left her there, staring after him.

He had to behave as if this was any other meeting with Ellian. If he allowed himself to believe that he might be killed, that he would not be allowed back into Aryn’s presence…

In the hallway, he shook his head and straightened his shoulders. To his surprise, anger was beating low in his blood. He was a Dragon—once in the Corps, always in the Corps. If Ellian was going to try to do away with Cade…he was going to get more than he’d bargained for.

Or, just possibly, Cade should calm down. If he was honest with himself, and he tried always to be honest with himself, he had been expecting this confrontation for two and a half weeks. They had been careful, he and Aryn, circling warily, never falling prey to a true indiscretion. But they had flirted with the line—and if Ellian had been watching, he would have seen far more than a near kiss by now.

Cade took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Either Ellian wasn’t watching … or what was about to happen was his fault, and he must take responsibility for it. He wondered if Ellian would fight fair, and decided that it was likely he would. Infidelity pricked at a person’s pride; Ellian would want to prove himself. And Cade would need to win, and get back to Aryn’s rooms, and get her to safety.

He allowed a satisfied smile to touch his lips. Ellian should never have hired a Dragon to be Aryn’s bodyguard. How had he not realized that any person would quickly become more loyal to Aryn than to Ellian? Did he not see what had happened with his servants?

At the door to the study, Cade paused. His gun was inside his coat, and his knife was already unfolded inside his pocket, retrieved and cleaned after the fight at the spaceport. He was ready, and he told himself that he would be ready for anything.

“Mr. Pallas,” he said, as he slid in the door.

“Mr. Williams.” Ellian smiled from his desk. “I believe I owe you an apology.”

The man had a knack for setting people off-balance, Cade would give him that.

“What?” he asked.

“I watched the videotape from the spaceport,” Ellian said simply. “You should not have let her go alone, but you did not dispute that.”

“No. It will never happen again.” And, because Aryn would not take his resignation, Cade felt compelled to add, “I understand if you wish to replace me.”

“I do not,” Ellian said simply. “You are … exactly what I wanted, Mr. Williams. Your honor does you credit. And it cannot be denied that you are impressive in a fight.”

He had managed to take down two men before getting hit on the back of the head. Cade bit his tongue on the assertion that this was not precisely impressive. He knew what Ellian meant: the speed of the attack, the brutal efficiency with which he’d dispatched his enemies. All of the things Cade had sworn he would never do again, but which felt as natural to him as breathing. Launching himself into motion had been like releasing the water behind a dam. He had wanted to fight for so long…

He looked down.

“Mr. Williams, in your opinion—is Aryn determined to go to Ymir?” Ellian’s voice was soft.

“Yes,” Cade said. He realized too late that he sounded too certain, knowing more than a servant should, and he tried to find a way to backtrack. “She’s made no move to unpack her things.” He hesitated, and then added, “I don’t think it’s wise to go.”

“I see.” If Ellian thought anything was amiss, his face did not show it. He settled back in his chair. “And why do you think she is so determined to go, even after the attack?”

Something was wrong, but he could not put his finger on it.

“Because she doesn’t understand the danger,” Cade answered truthfully. “She believes that these assassins genuinely did not want to kill her, and so she believes she is safe.”

“And what do you believe, Mr. Williams?”

“That it doesn’t make sense,” Cade murmured. “These men were good. They were fast, well-armed, and they knew their weapons. No professional takes a job like that unless there’s good money in it, and no one paying that much money is going to back out at the last minute.” He pondered.

At the desk, Ellian sat as if carved from stone. “But you would agree she was in danger,” he said at last.

“I can only think so.” Cade looked away. “Perhaps they were surprised by her in some way. Perhaps they didn’t know yet that you had hired me. She hasn’t been out of the house very much since I began to work here. It’s possible they simply didn’t know.”

But who would know she had been going to the spaceport, while not knowing about Cade? The thought kept tumbling over and over in his head.

“You’re very perceptive, Mr. Williams.” Ellian took a deep breath. “And I’m sure that you will not let anything happen to Aryn. If you tell me that she is unaware of the true danger….” He closed his eyes for a moment.

Cade studied him. When he was a Dragon, Ellian would have been one of the Bad Guys, an enemy to be disposed of. Cade would have killed him without much hesitation; he had seen the devastation from the trade Ellian participated in. And if Cade had killed him then, he would never have known the strange weakness that lay in Ellian’s heart, the blind spot this man clearly had for his wife.

Did it matter?

He wondered.

“Mr. Williams.” Ellian’s voice was quiet. “Do not let her be hurt. Do what you must.” His eyes flicked up to meet Cade’s. “I wish to have many more years with Aryn. You may go.”

Cade nodded his head, leaving at once. Outside, he leaned against the wall, fighting to steady himself.

I wish to have many more years with Aryn. Had Ellian seen the flare of possessiveness in Cade’s eyes when he said that? Cade could only pray not. The man was practically throwing them together, and apparently he could not see it. If he knew how much Cade wanted to stride back into Aryn’s rooms, slam the door, take her hands in his, if he could hear the words Cade wanted so desperately to speak…

Cade had to get a hold on himself, or he would do something regrettable. He stood stock still, trying to breathe. Aryn had made her choice, time and again. She was going to remain with Ellian. She was going to go to Ymir, for whatever mysterious purpose—

The necklaces. The money. Cade froze. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. She was trying to fund the rebellion. That had been why she was researching guns. She was trying to see how much money they needed, and she was determined to go so that she could give them the cash.

He should go into her rooms and tell her the truth. He knew that. He should tell her that she didn’t have any idea what she was dealing with, that the resistance was doomed. Every time they thought to go up against the Warlord, the Dragons were told not to. They’d even run missions on Ymir, preparing—Talon had mentioned it once. But they never got beyond taking out a few of the lower henchmen, those who must have supported the Warlord out of hope that they could reach his inner circle. Aryn didn’t have the first clue what it would mean to get tangled up in the rebellion.

And in any case, Talon was on the mission now, a mission Cade had good reason to think was not sanctioned by the top brass. Talon would take care of it. Cade should tell her that.

But he already knew that he wouldn’t stop her. If she wanted to go, he would be at her side. She needed protection now more than she ever had before, and Cade would not leave her. For a moment, he almost thought that his heart was breaking with how much he loved her. She was undoing everything her husband had done.

Outside her door, Cade stopped suddenly. What had he just said to himself?

He closed his eyes. So he loved her.

He loved her.

And the best he could do, apparently, was help her as she walked into a suicidal attempt at rebellion. Swallowing hard, Cade opened the door.

“You’re back.” The relief on her face was heartbreaking.

“Yes.” I love you. He could not say it. “We’ll leave for Ymir tomorrow.”

34

We’re leaving tomorrow. Same time. I’m sorry. Talon stared at the message, frowning.

There was a roar of laughter nearby and he looked up curiously. Nyx was laughing as she pulled a pile of coins toward herself. Hunkered down in a by-the-hour room near the spaceport, the two Dragon teams were sharing some very questionable sandwiches and passing the time with a deck of cards Jim had apparently brought with him to the spaceport.

Alina looked over and caught sight of Talon’s face. One golden brow arched.

“We leave tomorrow,” Talon said. He pitched his voice to her alone, but the rest of the team looked around, as if they’d all been waiting for him to speak.

“Did she say what happened?” Tersi went straight to the point.

“No, but from what I’ve been able to get off the police channels, no one died.” Talon sighed. “And asking about Cade would tip my hand.”

“If he’s alive, he’ll go with her.” Nyx looked up briefly as she dealt another hand.

“Are you sure? If Pallas fired him—”

“That won’t matter. He’ll find a way onto that ship if that’s where she’s going.”

Talon considered and gave a brief nod. “Well, deal me in then. It’s going to be a long night, and I don’t think any of us are going to get much sleep.”

“In a room with one bed? You don’t say.” Alina moved over to make room for him.

“Feel free to take it if you want,” Talon said wickedly.

“Are you kidding? I think I got herpes just looking at it.”

“Everyone, remember to wash Alina’s cards before touching them.” He ducked out of the way of a small, but very sharp, elbow, and grinned up at Loki. “By the way … what are we playing?”

“No one tell him,” Nyx advised.

“Unfair.” But Talon was grinning as he looked around the room.

Two teams. Another shot.

All in all, it was a good day.

* * *

“Dead?” Ellian stared at the mercenary. “You’re telling me you had 450 soldiers and you couldn’t protect one man?”

“We lost quite a few mercenaries as well,” the man said grimly. “Your man wasn’t the only one to die.” His eyes flashed. “If I were him, I would probably not have tried to take a Dragon captive … but he didn’t much like taking advice.”

Ellian stared at him for a long moment. “And your fee—”

“Is non-refundable.” The man smiled. “Overwhelming odds are considered sufficient cause to—”

“There were 20 of them!” Ellian slammed his hand down on the desk.

“And a ship with live guns. What’s your point?”

“Go.” Ellian snarled the word. He looked away until the door closed and he was alone, and then he let his eyes close for a single moment.

Talon Rift. He’d dealt with the man, and now he’d failed to kill him. Not only that—there were more Dragon crews involved.

The incoming call alert only made his heart sink further. He knew who this was.

But he was a merchant, and he had only one buyer. He forced a smile onto his face and accepted the call.

* * *

“I was led to believe I was expecting your ship on Ymir, but now I hear it never left.” Aleksandr Soras, ensconced in his personal study on Ymir, allowed himself a grimace under the mask. He’d left his work on Seneca on short notice, which was always a risk—what if someone followed the ship?

He had thought it worth it, in order to meet with Ellian and secure the weapons.

But the ship had not arrived.

“There was … a disturbance.” Ellian shaped the word carefully, as if it were so inexact as to be a lie. “At the spaceport. The ship will leave tomorrow. Aryn—my wife—would like to visit her parents.”

“You will not be coming?” This was strange.

“I am needed here. I have many things to attend to for you.”

“Such as killing Talon Rift?” Soras felt his pulse quicken. Rift’s team and an armed resistance would make a powerful combination, but if Rift were gone, Soras would not worry nearly so much.

To his surprise, Ellian cleared his throat and looked away.

“What?” Soras snapped the word. “What is it?”

“We laid a trap for him today at the spaceport. He … evaded it.”

The Warlord studied the diagnostics running alongside his screen. None of them could seem to tell if Ellian was telling the truth or not.

“Well, then.” He sat forward with a smile. “What you need to do is very clear, don’t you think?”

Ellian sat silently, but when Soras said nothing, he said finally “What do I need to do?”

“You need to kill Talon Rift,” the Warlord said quietly, “so that you can accompany your lovely wife to Ymir, and bring me the weapons you promised. Otherwise, I will have no choice but to find another armorer. I can’t wait forever, Pallas.”

Ellian swallowed, and Soras knew the time for pleasant tones was over.

“You’re a go-between,” he said, his voice hard. “You’re a merchant. You’re replaceable, Pallas, and unless you want to lose every single thing you hold dear—and I’m not talking about your apartment, I’m talking about your wife, your sister, your nephew—you will do the one thing I asked you to do.”

He ended the call without another word.

* * *

In his office, Ellian sat with raw fury pouring into his chest. He wasn’t afraid, not anymore.

You’re a merchant. You’re replaceable.

How dare he? A grown man, wearing a mask, pretending that he was—

Ellian stopped. A new idea was coming to him.

A very good new idea.

* * *

Our ship leaves tomorrow. Meet us at the spaceport in three days.

Samara gave a wondering laugh. She turned the screen so the others could see it, and smiled until her face ached as cheers went up.

It was happening. They were coming to Ymir.

“I’d like to make a toast,” she said, standing up.

Obediently, the assembled crowd lifted their canteens of water.

“To the Warlord,” Samara said. “These are your last few days on earth, you miserable bastard. Enjoy them.”

Epilogue

The private ship sat sleek and heavy, crouched like a predator on the launch pad, and their breath puffed in tiny clouds before their faces as they stared at it. The sky was leaden above the private terminal, threatening snow, and Aryn could only pray that it held off.

Ellian was reluctant to let her go. The night before, he had come to her rooms and dismissed Cade, only to hold Aryn close to him.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said into her hair. She could smell brandy on his breath; his voice was softer than it normally was.

She tried to hate him, not just for who he was, but for his lies. He had never given any indication that he suspected her past affiliation with the resistance—and yet, he had known better than to tell her what he did for a living. And still, cradled against him, Aryn felt the familiar yearning, and tears came to her eyes. She had wanted to love him, she truly had—and she had tried to do so. When he spoke like this, she could not help but remember how he looked at her, in the beginning.

“Aryn.”

She felt his breath, swallowed. She did not know what to say. When he drew away, it was to put his fingers under her chin, and she looked up reluctantly.

“It scares me,’ he said at last, “how much I love you.” There was no deception in his gaze, and Aryn closed her eyes against tears as he kissed her.

She was going to deceive him. Even if she should want to hurt him, she did not. She knew him too well for that now. Somewhere in her heart, she understood that she would, truly, hurt him when she left—and she was going to. Or he was going to, when he found out what she’d done.

She felt herself shiver. He was going to find out someday, and some part of her wanted to tell him now: that she wasn’t coming back, that she couldn’t stay, that she wouldn’t ever love a man who had done such things.

But Ellian left before she could blurt out the words, and Cade came back to find her with her fingers brushing against her lips, remembering a kiss that had more desperation than she could understand. Ellian’s goodbye had seemed … final.

Perhaps it was just her imagination. Today, Ellian was his normal self, businesslike and reserved. His black eyes darted to and fro, taking in the few people who moved through the private terminal. Watching for assailants, perhaps.

“You don’t need to worry,” Aryn told him in an undertone.

“Hmm?” He looked at her.

“You’ve brought half the house guard.” She managed a smile, gesturing to where a dozen men in suits milled around them. “No one will hurt me here.”

“Ah. Yes.” Ellian curved his lips in an approximation of a smile. Still, his eyes did not stop roaming the terminal.

Aryn swallowed back her fear. She must be calm. She must stop him from looking, lest he see something he shouldn’t: namely, the crates the weapons Talon promised to bring aboard himself. The man had been surprisingly amenable, accepting the change without delay.

He, too, she reminded herself, was an arms trafficker. He must be, to have secured the weapons. Perhaps that was why the name seemed to stick in her head, turning over and over. If he were one of Ellian’s associates, she would have heard of him before. She was glad she had used a pseudonym. She could not afford for him to tell Ellian what she was doing.

And Ellian could not see Talon. If he knew the man…

Something caught the edge of her vision, a small train of luggage carts. Three heavy crates sat half-hidden by the heavy plastic curtains, and Aryn reached out to take Ellian’s hand, turning him away. She needed to be careful. She needed to keep his attention for as long as it took.

“It will be strange to leave. I’ll miss you.” She almost thought she meant it.

“I will miss you as well.” His face was unreadable. “It has been a difficult few months. When you return, Aryn, will we start again, do you think? Can we?”

No. She should tell him the truth.

“I think so,” she lied, smiling up at him. “You have been troubled, Ellian. Has business been so bad?”

He paused before answering, and she tried to hold his gaze. The crates were almost loaded. Only a few more moments….

“I tire of being treated as a merchant is treated,” Ellian said at last. “We have risen so far, you and I. How dare they tell us we are not as good as they are?”

“Who tells you such things?” It was a genuine question, startled out of her. New Arizona was composed of just such people as Ellian, who had pulled themselves from the gutters of a dozen different worlds. No one here, surely, would look down on Ellian.

His stony face, however, assured her that someone had. He paused, considering, then shook his head.

“It need not concern you.”

“Then I shall not be concerned.” Steeling herself, Aryn stood on tip-toe to kiss him as the last crate disappeared into the belly of the ship. “I should board now.”

“At least let me walk you to the ship.” Now, at last, Ellian looked sad.

“Of course.” Aryn tried not to let her questions show on her face. He had never been one for sentimentality before, but now his hand was locked around hers, squeezing her fingers until they ached; when she looked over, he was gazing straight ahead. He did not even seem to see the world before him. At the ramp, he kissed her again, his tongue sliding into her mouth, his fingers tangled in her hair, and she tried to hold herself still. She must not flinch. She closed her eyes against the sight of Cade looking away.

At the top of the ramp, she waved before making her way into the gently curving passageways of the ship. They walked quickly, Cade still painfully silent, his green eyes fixed ahead of him. He had not slept well the night before, she could see—but then, neither had she. She had lain awake for what felt like half the night, wishing she’d had the courage to pull him down for a kiss, a real kiss. What would his lips feel like? What about the faint stubble on his cheeks? She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling her cheeks warm, hoping Cade would not notice and ask what was going on.

Takeoff was quick, and Aryn laughed as her hair floated up around her shoulders before the artificial gravity kicked in. She felt free, more so than she could remember feeling in years. She was wearing pants for the first time in months, and not a speck of makeup, and as the transport banked away, something seemed to release in her chest. She looked over at Cade, and he smiled back at her.

“You like flying?” He looked faintly green, poor man.

“I’m just happy.” As the notification dinged and the artificial gravity switched on, she unhooked from her seat and watched him do the same.

He prowled around the room, lifting the pillows and the mattress. A small cot had been set up for him at the foot of her bed and he examined that. He ran his fingers up the seams in the wall paneling, tapped at the lights, and paced the carpet in a pattern she could make neither head nor tail of. A thorough investigation of the ceiling turned up one loose panel, but nothing behind it. The taps and cupboards in the bathroom were all checked, as was the closet. A few scans from a handheld device, and Cade turned to her with a decisive nod.

“All safe.” His smile died as he saw the look on her face. “What is it?”

She swallowed. She’d promised herself she would tell him the truth and now was the best time. Now, she should come clean. He wouldn’t stop her, would he? He might even know something about Talon. He could tell her what would be best to do when they arrived on Ymir.

She just didn’t want to tell him. She looked around herself, and then—realizing the possibility of listening devices—tapped her ear, a question in her eyes. He shook his head slightly.

“You may speak freely.” He was waiting for something, she realized.

She mentally prepared herself, standing straight, chin up, shoulders back. I’ve bought several crates of weapons and I’m going to give them to the resistance. I’ve bought several crates of weapons and I’m going to give them to the resistance. I’ve…

Instead, as she walked toward him, her hands reached out to take hold of his suit. As if in a dream, she felt his arms slide around her, and he lifted her easily. His body hard against hers, her skin on fire for his touch, Aryn leaned forward and pressed her lips against his.

* * *

Thank you for reading Dragon’s Honor! I’d be incredibly grateful if you would leave a review on Amazon - it’s one of the best ways you can support authors!

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Acknowledgments

One thing you might not know about this series is that I started writing it a few years back, but with only one strand of the story. I put it away for a while, but I couldn’t let it go - and when I came back to it, some beta readers helped me figure out that I needed to be showing a lot more of what had been (until then) behind the scenes!

Speaking of beta readers, a big round of applause for them! A big round of applause, also, for Michael Anderle, who continues to be an amazing resource and support, and who is working with me to create the Barnabas series I’m working on right now.

And, as always, thank you to all of you. I love being able to share these stories with you, and I am always glad to hear from you. You can drop me a line at NatGreyAuthor at gmail dot com!

Read on for the excerpt of Dragon’s Hope, or head back to the “Also by…” section for more reading material!

Sincerely,

Nat

Dragon’s Hope

By Natalie Grey

1

She was in his arms, eyes drifting closed as she kissed him. He had imagined the touch of her mouth for weeks, and now it consumed him, her lips parting under his, her body pressed close. He could smell the soap she used, the scent that had become more intoxicating to him than any liquor.

And yet….

“We can’t do this,” Cade murmured against her mouth.

She shook her head, whether in protest or agreement he had no idea. When he set her down, however, she stood on tiptoe, one arm still around his neck to pull him down. The other palm burned against his chest like a brand. He wanted to sweep her into his arms again and deposit her on the bed, hear her shriek of laughter and feel her fingers fumble at the buttons of his shirt. He could feel, like a pleasant hallucination, how it would be to press her down onto the bed, her legs twining around his. She would reach up to hold his face while she kissed him. She would bite her lip when he pulled away to strip off his jacket—

How he broke away, he did not know. His breath was ragged.

“I—” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He needed to go, that was all. If he stayed….

He needed to leave.

And he might have pulled it off, too, if he hadn’t looked back at her as he strode to the door. She was standing as if in a dream, her fingers up to brush at her lips. He had never seen her look so peaceful—and he had never seen her look so sad, either. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, startlingly blue in this light, and she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“I have to leave.” It was a plea. He hoped she understood.

“Wait.”

His hand shook on the doorknob. He was going to go insane if he didn’t leave now, but her voice froze him.

“I’m … I bought weapons.” The words came out very small. She looked at him as if he was supposed to know what that meant, and when his eyes roamed over her, searching for the distortion of knives or guns under her jacket, she shook her head impatiently. “For the resistance.”

The world seemed to disappear. He could feel his hand on the doorknob, but beyond that there was only a rushing in his ears. He could see nothing. He was not thinking. There was only horror.

“Cade?” Her voice jolted him back to awareness, and he looked over slowly.

She swallowed, but she stood her ground. Her hands were in fists now.

“What did you say?” Cade asked her, hoping against hope that he’d dreamed the past few seconds.

“That was where I used the money I got from pawning my necklaces,” Aryn said simply. “You were right. I don’t gamble.”

It was odd. Usually, solving puzzles pleased him—a mystery solved, part of the world revealed. And he’d solved truly awful puzzles before. Where were the slaves? Where were the drugs? Why was one man on the transport acting strangely? Solving puzzles meant facts, and facts meant he could act.

Except, of course, now. Now, he was filled with a blank sort of horror and a rising fury.

“Cade? Please. Please say something.”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He gritted the words out from beneath clenched teeth. She couldn’t possibly have known that she was getting herself into, but good God, shouldn’t she have had at least the smallest inkling of it? Shouldn’t she have realized, if she thought for even a second, that she was getting in way over her head? That….

But of course she hadn’t thought. She’d acted on impulse, like the pampered little trophy wife she was. She was sheltered from the worst of the Warlord’s excesses, Ellian had said, and clearly it was true. Someone ought to have told her before now, because she was going to learn her lesson very quickly.

And she probably, he thought, wasn’t going to survive it. He felt entirely detached from the situation for a moment. What an unfortunate mistake on her part. She was going to die now.

Then the world snapped back into place. She hadn’t known. This was the anger talking, the anger that always seemed to beat in his blood now, coming in a rush he could neither predict nor resist—only escape from by shoving it away and going cold.

But he preferred that, both the anger and the detachment, because the alternative was the deep, yawning black and the deadening knowledge that he would spend the rest of his life like this, waiting and watching for danger, scanning the faces of the ones who passed him by in the street, even when every last one of them was oblivious, defenseless, no threat at all….

And all the while, the gap between him and the world grew larger, year by year.

Aryn was the one who had made him forget all of that. And now it turned out she was just like the rest of them.

“Cade.” Her hand touched his arm, and he jerked away out of reflex. He sank his face into one hand, rubbing at his forehead.

“Give me a second.”

She hadn’t known. How could she have? And even a day ago, he had felt a swell of pride at her bravery. She was taking meaningless luxury and turning it into help, wasn’t she? She hadn’t curled into a little ball when she found out Ellian’s true nature, or even slunk back to Ymir in disgrace. She had taken the resources at her disposal and she was going to do something meaningful with them. She had only overreached herself. That was all.

The anger came too quickly now. It always did.

“Aryn.” He spoke her name before he looked up, and felt her worry like a blow. “This was well-intentioned, but it will kill you. We need to turn this ship around and go back.”

“No.” The answer was reflexive. “No, we don’t. I won’t do it.”

“If you deliver these weapons to Ymir—”

“They’ll have a fighting chance!” Her voice rang out wildly. “Don’t you see?”

“I do see. And Aryn, I know more about this than….” He looked away. “You don’t understand what you’ve done. You want to help them?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Then go back.” He tried to decide whether or not to tell her, but the words came out before he could make up his mind. “The resistance is doomed,” he told her flatly. “There’s a chance that—well, never mind that.” Now was not the time to tell her about Talon’s involvement. It would only give her false hope. She, Aryn, needed not to be on Ymir right now. “If you do this … you’ll just be one more body.”

And I can’t live with that. Those words, of all of them, stuck in his throat. The only ones she might have understood, and he couldn’t seem to say them.

Her face had gone white, but she didn’t back down. She stared at him with pure fury in her eyes, and her chin lifted.

“Then I’ll be one more body.”

“Aryn!”

“No, you listen! I am not going to sit here for the rest of my life and know that I did nothing. I left them there and ran away with the Warlord’s—” She searched for the word.

“Quartermaster?” Cade supplied.

The look she shot him said she was far from happy for his intervention.

“Aryn, you did. And you said they let you. And do you know why?”

She narrowed her eyes, but curiosity got the better of her.

“Why?”

“Because they love you.” He had never met a single one of these people, and yet he had never known anything with such certainty. “You know what Ellian said to me that first day?” She flinched, but she needed to hear this. “He said he could no more have left you on Ymir than he could have snuffed out a star. Of all the things he told me, Aryn, that one I believe. And I believe that’s why your family let you go. That’s why they lied. You had a way out, and they knew there was no hope for them. No one could know you and not wish you that happiness.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but she did not come to him for comfort. She did not, he saw, want comfort. “They were wrong, then.” She wiped at her eyes. “It wasn’t a kindness to lie to me. It wasn’t their right. I should have known.”

“If you had known….”

“I’d have done something like this sooner,” she said flatly. “Or I suppose I might have stayed with the resistance.”

That shocked him into silence.

“Are you surprised?” she asked him bitterly. “Did the Dragon not figure it out?”

He watched silently, at a loss. There was venom here he could not name, and a flush building in her cheeks. Her hands were clenched.

“You may think it’s a lost cause,” she told him, her voice low and ugly. “And maybe it is. But in this war, you don’t pick your side because of who you think will win. You pick it because it’s right. And if they’re going to die, then I’m going to die with them. I will do anything in my power to make the Warlord pay.” She crossed her arms, satisfaction on her face. “And Talon is going to help me.”

It felt like he’d been doused with ice water.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Talon is going to help me,” she repeated.

And ‘Talon’ was not a common name.

“Talon Rift?” he asked her, and she swallowed. Her nod was fractional. “Is he on the ship with us?”

Another nod.

Dear God, what had he stumbled into?

The click of the door behind him was perfectly timed.

But it would be, of course. Talon would have been listening. Cade was at Aryn’s side before she could react, half-throwing her across the bed to sprawl on the floor as his gun came up, Talon’s head in his sights.

* * *

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