"Captain's a fair man." The lie was so obvious even Stevn seemed to hear it. His gaze darted toward the corridor, checking for witnesses.
"Even small kindnesses don't go unrewarded," Zane continued. "Extra food, better accommodations. Little things that make captivity more bearable. My family values loyalty, even temporary loyalty. We remember our friends."
Stevn chewed his lip, torn between greed and fear. Greed won, but only partially. He returned with an extra protein ration but kept his hands well away from the cuff controls.
"That's all you get," he muttered, tossing the food through the field. "And don't ask for more."
Progress. Not enough, not nearly enough with time bleeding away, but progress. Zane made a show of grateful appreciation, playing the pampered lord pleased by scraps. Inside, the dragon counted hours.
When evening came, it brought Mercy back to him. She moved stiffly, new exhaustion layering over old. But her eyes held something different. Determination. Purpose. And clutched in her burned fingers, a small piece of metal.
She held it up once the field sealed behind her. A broken tool, narrow and sharp. The kind of thing that littered maintenance corridors on old ships.
"I might be able to destroy the mechanism on those." She nodded toward his cuffs. "I read about it once. But if I mess up?—"
"You won't."
"If I do, they'll fry your brain." Her hands trembled slightly, exhaustion or fear or both. "Are you sure about this?"
He was sure about her.
Sure about the fire that had leaped to her command. Sure about the bond singing between them even if she couldn't feel it. Sure that he'd rather die trying to save her than live knowing he'd failed.
"Do it."
She knelt in front of him, taking his hands with a gentleness that surprised him. This close, he could see every detail. The determined set of her jaw. The way she caught her lower lip between her teeth when concentrating. The steady focus that had kept a dying ship running for years through sheer will.
The metal slipped into the lock mechanism. The cuffs immediately responded, sparks dancing across the surface in warning.
"Hold still," she breathed. "The failsafe is right … there."
The cuffs went haywire.
Electricity arced between the metal bands, crawling up his arms in burning lines. His vision whited out as the neural scrambler engaged, drilling into his brain with precision agony. This was it. This was how he died. Not in battle, not protecting his mate, but writhing on the floor while his brain melted.
Then silence.
The cuffs fell away, dead metal clattering against the deck. He sucked in air, blinking away the afterimages burned across his retinas. Alive. Whole. Free.
Mercy stared at him, the broken tool still clutched in her hand. "Did I … are you …"
He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to pull her against him and show her exactly what she meant to him, what she'd always meant even before either of them knew it. But they didn't have a second to spare. Guards would come running. They needed to move.
Later. He'd tell her everything later, when they were safe.
Fire erupted from his palm, and he lobbed it at the control panel on the wall. The energy field died with a sharp crack and the acrid smell of burned circuitry. A localized alarm immediately started wailing, but only for the brig.
"Go, go, go!"
They sprinted through corridors, Mercy tugging him one way or another whenever they reached a branching hallway. His fire cleared the path, quick bursts that dropped pirates before they could draw weapons. Mercy snatched a blaster from the first body, covering his back with a competence that made his dragon purr with approval.
His mate was magnificent.
They encountered surprisingly little resistance. Most of the crew was elsewhere, probably counting their future wealth or maintaining the ship. The few pirates they met died too quickly to raise ship-wide alarms.
They burst into the small hangar that held Horris's own luxury short-range transport. Almost all ships of this size had smaller vessels for space to ground travel. It couldn't bounce between systems, and it wouldn't have an FTL drive, but it was something.
"Can you fly it?" he asked.
