Page 54 of Veiled Vixen

“You needed him for—?” I nod my head at her belly.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t have Jimmy’s babies. You know that as well as I do.”

“No, you can only have mine.”

“They are not yours.”

“Then whose are they?”

“They’re mine.”

“Genetically engineered?”

“Parts of them are,” she admits.

“OK. Well, I don’t really want to talk about that.”

She looks at me. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Saving people, Veila. That’s what I want to talk about. You should pull your ship off the station, give total authority to Baby to take care of things, and then I can work out some kind of deal with the beacons to get you through the gate or—”

“Through the gate?” She guffaws. “I can’t go through the stupid gate! The Cygnians and Akeelians will kill me immediately when I get to the other side. The only thing keeping me alive at this point is those stupid gates. The Baby let me through and then the beacons shut down to protect themselves. And the gates went with them. That was just luck, I think.” She looks at me. “Not your Luck. Just general luck. Because now they’re broken, or whatever. And that’s actually a good thing.”

“Ah,” I say. “So that’s why you really want to go to Earth. You want to escape.”

“Don’t we all want to escape?”

“I think I can get you through, but I can’t guarantee your safety on the other side. You have to know that. Luck will kill you no matter what. You crossed him and he’s done. And once Luck is done with you, he’s just… done with you. There’s no way back.”

“Well,” she says, getting to her feet and brushing grass off her long gown, “then I guess you should just move on. Because he’s done with you too.”

She starts walking across the park.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Home. I’m tired.”

“What about me?” I ask, getting to my feet and following her. “What am I supposed to tell Luck?”

She spins around and smiles at me. “Can I give you a piece of advice, Valor?”

I throw up my hands. “Why not?”

“Learn to lie. And cheat. All this loyalty and truth-telling will get you nowhere.”

And then she turns on her heel and walks away.