Val found his footing again, rubbing his throat, which was now red, and turned his blaster on me. He said hoarsely, “I’m sorry, Arie. It was her fault.”
I caught a sob in my throat, pushed it back down.Her fault?“B-but you are the o-one with the weapon,” I stuttered, gulping down another sob, refusing to give him the sight of me coming unraveled. “Youshot her.”
He motioned to his men to take the other droid up. Entoo was screaming, ramming into every shin theycould, but the men managed to immobilize them. “See if that droid knows anything about the criminal. He has something the First Order wants—”
“A lightsaber,” I interrupted, and I relished his look of surprise. I curled my fingers into fists. I wasn’t useless. I wasn’t just a bird trapped in a cage. “Do you really think I don’t know what comes on and off that ship? You keep underestimating me.”
Thatmust have done it, whittled so far down it cracked his composure. He snapped, “Wewillget that weapon—with orwithoutyou alive. Unlike your droid, I’ll let you choose.”
The words that left his mouth seemed to surprise him, too. Veebee’s powder had worked. And this was how he really felt. It was sobering and solidified something that had been soft in me. Her last words were fresh in my memory—
Your brother will never destroy me.
He also would never threaten me. He would never point a blaster at me. He loved me. But while his face was familiar, a foreign malice had settled in his cold gaze. It was something I hadn’t been able to put a name to until just now. Hatred. The brother who had left three years ago was gone, buried somewhere deep beneath that cruel-cut uniform. I wondered if, this past week, I’d seen the real him at all.
I wondered if that brother of mine was even still alive.
“You won’t find it,” I finally told him, which was the truth.
He gritted his teeth. “That’s not what I want to hear. He’s going to be angry. He’s going tokillyou, Ardent.”
I inclined my head. “Whois?”
Suddenly, there was a flash of silver above us as another ship came out of hyperspace, and in the night sky a ship of darkness and dread appeared, all angles and corners. It wasn’t a ship I’d ever seen before, and I had seen so many in spaceports across the galaxy.
Not a single one of them had made me feel as terrified as I did then.
“Him,” Val whispered.
Above us, a terrible capital ship loomed.
One of the soldiers—Spectacles; I was so disappointed in him—said, “General Hux has arrived, sir.”
Val’s face pinched. He massaged the bridge of his nose, and I noticed that the palm of his hand where he had touched me glittered like fine sand. “Itriedto protect you. It’s all my fault what happens next. I mean—it’s n—not….” He touched his mouth with his fingers.
Confusion flickered across his brow.
I smirked. “You’re truthful for once.”
He shot an imploring look down at me, but I just said, “Maybe your conscience is catching up to you.”
His eyes widened.
From the imposing ship came a command shuttle, and it shot straight toward us, kicking up wind and leaves and dust as it descended. My throat stung. The dirt in the air made my eyes water as the command shuttle landed a hundred meters away.
Over the roar of its engines, Val snarled at his men, “Bring out the captain and crew!”
His men jumped at the chance to do just that—gleefully, in fact. I wondered, at first, how five men could have commandeered an entire ship from under my father, but it turned out to have been rather easy in the end.
All Val had to do was threaten my life, and the entire crew folded like a bad sabacc hand.
The men brought my family out and lined them up like prisoners in front of a firing squad. They stood, handcuffed together, looking worse than I’d ever seen them. Kotti and the seasonal crew members were dragged out in their pajamas. Daaric was missing his eye patch, Maeve was missing her front right tooth, and Telly was missing altogether. My heart began to squeeze with panic, and then I saw my dad. He went slowly, clutching a wound on his side.
A scream tore out of my throat. I lurched toward him, but Val grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me back. He shoved his blaster into my side.
“He’sfine,” Val snapped. “He got into a bit of trouble when trying to warn you.”
When I had called theStarfarernear Geonosis, when Dad had told me to run. My knees felt weak with the horror of it. Val would do this?Val?
