Hotbloods 5: Traitors

Everyone seemed to have questions for us when we returned to Sarrask’s cottage that evening. I answered the onslaught as best I could, but it quickly got to the point where my nerves couldn’t take it anymore. Ronad still couldn’t wrap his head around it, and I didn’t want to hear him say how strong I was being one more time. The truth was, I didn’t feel very strong at all. Although I was trying my best to put on a brave face, it was getting harder by the hour, especially now that everything was set in motion. There was a date and a venue, and it was starting to feel very real.

A storm was brewing, and the clouds were settling on our shoulders. Navan wasn’t dealing with it particularly well either, but neither of us could bring ourselves to discuss it with each other. It was awful—he was the one person I wanted to talk to, to release all of my fears and doubts, but he was the one person I had to keep it from. He already felt badly enough, and I didn’t want to add to it.

I desperately wanted to speak to my friends, knowing they’d be able to talk me down off my mental ledge, but Ronad had been trying all afternoon, and the long-range comms were still down. All I wanted to do was hear Angie’s voice telling me to woman the hell up, and Lauren coming in with the voice of reason, giving me every single explanation as to why all of this was going to be okay. Without my girls, I felt completely alone.

Giving in, I sought refuge in Kaido’s newly set up lab, which had once been Sarrask’s spare room. The bed had been turned on its side, freeing up more space, and every single surface had a tank on it, with a plant inside. I sat quietly in the corner, sinking into a deep, squishy armchair, while Kaido busied himself making sure his plants were okay. We didn’t speak much, which suited me just fine. More to the point, he didn’t ask about the wedding. It wasn’t something that interested him; he was just happy to be around his plants, and so was I. There was something oddly peaceful about the steady glow of them.

My gaze drifted toward the hypnotic pulse of a bulbous shrub, the light drawing me into a strange trance. It was the last thing I remembered seeing before sleep took me. After all, it had been a really long day.

I awoke, disoriented. The room was dim, but I didn’t know if that meant it was still evening or not. Kaido had put blackout blinds across the windows, to nurture his plants, so there was no way of knowing what time of day it was.

As I sat up, I realized someone had tucked a blanket around me and put a pillow under my head. Kaido was nowhere to be seen, but there was a cot set up on the floor at the far side of the room, and the sheets were neatly made.

Rubbing my eyes, I headed down the staircase to the kitchen. As soon as I saw the sunlight streaming in through the windows, I knew it was morning. I’d slept for hours, but I didn’t feel any better because of it. My dreams had been haunted with visions of a girl in a dress standing beside an altar, with Navan standing in front of her. It felt like it might be me, until the last moment, when the veil was lifted, and another woman stood in my place. Sometimes that woman was Seraphina. Sometimes it was Gianne; sometimes it was Brisha. Once, it had even been Orion, but that nightmare was best left forgotten.

“Kaido, you didn’t experiment on me in my sleep, did you?” I asked, blinking into the fierce light. He was flitting around the kitchen, decanting a five-liter canister of lurid yellow liquid into smaller bottles.

“I would never experiment without consent, Riley,” he replied, surprised.

I smiled. “No, of course you wouldn’t.”

“Is everything okay?” Navan asked, appearing in the doorframe of the living room.

I walked up to him and put my arms around his waist, snuggling into him. “I’m just a bit worn out,” I admitted. “Why didn’t you come and wake me?”

“Kaido said you were in the middle of a deep slumber, and that if I woke you, I risked doing permanent damage to your frontal cortex,” he said with a chuckle. “I figured it was best to let you sleep, after… everything.”

“Don’t let me sleep alone tonight,” I murmured, hugging him tighter. “I don’t want to spend another night without you.”

“I promise. Even if waking you will set your whole brain on fire, and you’re tucked up in that janky old armchair of Sarrask’s, I will snuggle in right next to you.” He lifted my chin and kissed me tenderly, his smile moving against my mouth, coaxing a mirrored smile out of me, too.

Kaido tapped Navan on the shoulder. “You really shouldn’t do that in the kitchen. It isn’t hygienic.”

A laugh bubbled up inside me as I clung to Navan’s waist, breaking the kiss and staring up into his eyes. “Thanks, Kaido, we’ll bear that in mind,” I said, still giggling. It was nice to see a smile on Navan’s face, too, as he turned to his brother.

“If you’re not careful, I’ll come upstairs and smooch every single one of your beloved plants,” he teased.

Kaido stared at him in shock. “You wouldn’t.”

“If you don’t let me kiss my girlfriend in peace, I absolutely will.”

Kaido gathered up his vials of lurid yellow liquid and hurried upstairs, casting a horrified look over his shoulder. As soon as he disappeared, Navan burst out laughing. I knew what he’d said had come from a playful place, unlike Sarrask’s perpetual disdain for his differently wired brother.

“I love you,” I murmured.

He grinned. “I love you more.”

After today, there would be three more days until the wedding, but I was determined not to let it get to me. I wouldn’t allow jealousy to drive a wedge between us, and I wouldn’t let him fall into a pit of guilt and despair. We were doing a good deed, for all the right reasons; that was all we had to remember.

“So, where is this darkstar market you were talking about?” I asked, nuzzling into his chest. “Now that we have the code to get in, do you want to go today and pick up something for the Titans? What did you have in mind?”

He laughed. “The darkstar market isn’t a place. It’s an online location in the darkstar network. It’s all digital,” he explained. “People post items from all over the universe, and anonymous bidders vie for what they want.”

“So kind of like Earth’s dark web?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Navan replied, “but bidders can talk to each other, too, through a chat system. You don’t see the person’s face, but you can hear what they’ve got to say. Usually, you don’t want to hear a word that comes out of their mouths.”

I frowned. “Do you go on there a lot?”

“I’ve only looked at it once, when Bashrik was searching for something a few years back.” His cheeks reddened.

“Not Rosita at The Legless Merman?” I gasped.

“Not quite, but I think it might have been something similar.” He grinned sheepishly.

I grimaced. “I guess teenage boys are the same wherever you are in the universe.”

“Bashrik’s shady endeavors aside, I thought we could browse what’s for sale and see if we can find anything to entice the Titans into alliance negotiations,” he said grimly. “If anywhere has something they’ll like, it’s the darkstar market.”

“Sounds… intriguing,” I said, as we sat down at the kitchen table.

The black box device that Ronad had been using to try and contact the others was sitting in the center, where he’d left it. Navan reached for it and flipped up the screen, before delving into the darkstar network. He clicked through file after file. A dialogue box popped up, and Navan typed in the access code Mort had given us.

I peered over his shoulder as the monitor settled on what looked like an ordinary online auction. I couldn’t read the descriptions, but I could see the pictures, although most of the objects were unsurprisingly alien to me.

Each time Navan hovered over an item, the speakers crackled, and a barrage of abuse echoed back at us. We weren’t even involved in the auction, but we could hear the bidders hurling trash talk at one another, a mixture of unusual voices clamoring for attention as they tried to win the item through sheer intimidation.

As Navan hovered across a golden object, which looked like some sort of elaborate candelabra, voices boomed out of the speakers.

“Yeah, yeah, we all know what you’re going to do with a twelve-foot-long, two-foot-wide ceremonial staff, Zeddar22!” one voice barked, cackling.

“Says you, Tinbo441. I want to smelt it down, so what in the name of Arras are you bidding on it for?”

The first voice scoffed. “Sounds like you can shove it up your Arras, Zeddar22!”