Born of Ice

“No.” She gave him a smile. “You were decent. Most kids wouldn’t be that caring or altruistic.”


“I wouldn’t say it was entirely selfless. There was still a part of me back then that kept waiting for Dad to abandon me, and so I didn’t want to say anything against her in case it made him leave.”

“Except for that one comment about him not being your real father?”

He laughed. “Yeah, that was really harsh. Right before he met Clotilde, I told him he wasn’t my real dad and that I didn’t have to listen to him. That he had no right to tell me what to do.”

She patted him on the arm. “We’ve all said similar things to our parents.”

“Yeah, but he looked so hurt when I did it. Like I’d kneed him in the crotch. I don’t ever want to make him look like that again.”

“I’m sure you won’t. You can see it in his eyes how much you mean to him and how proud he is of you.”

“Thanks. By the way, just so you know, Dad never looked at Clotilde the way he looks at you.”

“Excuse me?”

He opened the box of candy and grabbed a handful of sugared squares. “I’m not stupid, Alix. I’m pretty sure you two have been together. There’s . . . something different about my dad when he looks at you. It’s like he sees you. Not what he wants you to be, but what you really are. He never did that with Clotilde. What he saw in her was a fantasy.”

“That’s not making me feel better.”

He laughed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean fantasy like he wanted to strip her clothes off and ride her around the room. He saw the life he wanted for himself, but she wasn’t the one.”

“And what life is that?”

“He wants what my grandparents have. A partner who will stand at his back while all hell rains down on him.”

“You know, Omari, the sad thing is I think that’s what we all want.”

Too bad it was a myth made up by dreamers and idiots.



Devyn sat alone. He’d made sure he had Vik banned from his room as he worked. What he was doing . . . He wanted no reports going back to his father.

It was time to get down to business, and he wanted no witnesses. What no one knew, and what he’d never admit to, was that he had every one of his father’s skills when it came to hacking.

And he wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on. So, in the solitude of his private chambers, he used the tracing signal the Rits had on the back chip embedded in Alix’s arm to locate the source of it . . .

It wasn’t from Ritadaria. It led back to a transmitter using a subspace frequency that was only a few ticks from them.

The bastard was using it to trace their location.

“That’s all right.” Devyn was going to use it to trace Paden. Narrowing his gaze, he broke through until he was able to grab audio from it.

Great. Paden was having sex. Not what he wanted to listen to.

Turning the volume down, he took advantage of that distraction to breach Paden’s computer. Since his brother was preoccupied, he wouldn’t notice that someone else was poking around his files.

Within a few seconds, he had located Paden’s simple encrypted orders that had come straight from Merjack himself. Get Kell at any cost.

Sickening, really. But what else had he expected after what Alix had told him? It still pained him that the brother he’d never known would hate him and his father so much as to try and destroy them both.

What a fucking bastard. Little did Paden know that if he succeeded, he’d have to contend with Devyn’s mother. May the gods help him then. There would be no mercy for him.

But that was all right. Paden didn’t know just how deadly and determined Devyn was. And those orders gave him the fingerprint he needed to trace the file back to its originator.

Merjack.

He lost track of time as he searched through Merjack’s records. The frustrating part was that everything looked aboveboard.

Everything.

“Come on, you bastard. I know there has to be something . . .”

His link buzzed.

He picked it up and answered without looking at the ID.

“We have a problem, buddy.”

It took him a second to catch the voice over the static. “Sphinx?”

“Yeah. Guess where Taryn is?”

“Some woman’s bed.”

“You wish . . . No. He’s in jail.”

Devyn’s eyebrows shot up at that highly unexpected answer. “What?”

“I think our ship is bugged and someone knew we were coming to help you guys out. It’s a bullshit charge they’re holding Taryn on, but it’s enough to detain us until his father’s admins get here. Meanwhile, Starla’s being detained over a ship malfunction that has her locked down by the authorities who won’t allow her to launch until it’s repaired. Now, one of us having misfortune . . . possible. Both? I don’t think so. This is bad shit, my brother. Bad shit.”

He couldn’t agree more. “Are you guys all right?”