“You expect me to believe that? You sold Dali!”
“I would’ve done much worse to free myself from that horrid place,” Iliana hissed. Fury contorted her features, but with visible effort, she reeled her emotions back in. They vanished behind a troubled mask. “I’m trying to do right by our people. In a few minutes, neither one of us will be able to protect them. I’m not authorized to make this call, but I thought I’d give you a chance to stop what’s coming.”
Alarms wailed. The catwalk rocked under Kalie’s feet as thunderous blasts burst from the cannons beneath.
What’s coming?she tried to ask, but no sound came out.
“Carik is doing all of this to kill you. He’ll slaughter everyone in your fleet, if that’s what it takes. Or you could turn yourself in. Give him what he wants, and he’ll spare your friends.”
Zane scoffed. “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
“We have the upper hand,” Julian added. “How’s Carik going to kill us? With a crumbling destroyer?”
Kalie’s blood pounded in her ears. Words warbled around her—Julian said her name, and Zane touched her arm—but she was paralyzed. Her wide eyes shifted from the onyx destroyer to the swirling mass of blues and greens looming beyond it.
“This is a trap.” The words scraped against her dry throat. “Carik’s sending backup.”
Iliana’s grim smile confirmed it.
Zane swore. “We need to go. Now.”
“Officers,” Nadar barked, “prepare to fall back!”
“You can’t be serious!” Rage flashed across Julian’s face. “We risked everything to fight, and you’re going to abandon us to Carik? We have people down there, families. What kind of cowards are you?”
Zane went rigid. His face closed off, leaving a mask of quiet fury, and his fingers curled into tight fists. He wasn’t looking at Julian. He was looking at something beyond them, with glassy, distant eyes. He had to be back on Oppall, seeing it again, living it again. Julian needed to shut up, but she couldn’t find her voice to chide him.
The ship rocked as Mira stepped in front of him. She stumbled, but kept her balance and narrowed her eyes at Iliana. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Zane’s distant look vanished, and Kalie curled her fingers around his wrist.
A visible tremor ran through Iliana, and as she stared at Mira, hurt and rage warped her face into an ugly thing. She quickly regained her composure, but the pain of betrayal lurked in her ice-blue eyes. “That voice… so it is true. He broke hours ago, told me everything, but I didn’t want to believe…”
Mira shrugged. “Nothing personal. Just business.”
Kalie’s pulse hammered in her ears. A vicious tremor heaved through the floor, nearly taking her legs out, but she clung to the rail. “Who?”
Blinding light flashed, and she threw her arms up to shield herself. When the light vanished and spots cleared from her vision, a maelstrom of rubble swirled where an Aquisian cruiser had been moments before. Kalie blinked. In that second, the space of a heartbeat…
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. So many deaths. So many more would come.
“Sir, the jump’s calculated! Should we go?”
Julian was roaring, and Zane gestured madly. Mira lurched between them and Nadar.
She needed to say something, needed to give an order—stay or go, go or stay—but she didn’t turn away from Iliana’s shimmering holo. Dread churned in her stomach and slowed her racing pulse. “Who?”
Iliana crossed her arms. “My techs are sending you a video. Pull it up. Maybe this’ll make you see reason.”
Kalie tried to order the techs to stop, to bury it, but her throat sealed.
As the video sprang to life in a holoprojection between Iliana and Julian, she gasped.
Two legionnaires and one stocky Dalian—Wright, supplied some small, functioning part of her mind—prowled in a dark cell. A long, lethal whip, stained with glints of carmine, hissed across the stone tiles as Wright dragged it along. Crimson spatter glistened on the rocky walls. A puddle of blood oozed across the floor, swirling with clumps of vomit that made her stomach revolt.
In the center of the dungeon, dangling by his hands from chainsbolted into the ceiling, a shirtless figure with shaggy brown hair spasmed helplessly. Awful, anguished sounds ripped from his throat.
Beside her, Zane was a flurry of motion, raging at Iliana.
