He smiled up at Ember, who was apparently determined to make their son an orphan, as she kept joining him for his suicide runs. “Little bit. Usually with Quin. Lil never had much taste for it.”
“I can see why,” Xander groused. “Not my idea of fun.”
Ryn snorted at him as he continued to dig down. “Stop whining. This isn’t so bad. Besides, you never know when the skills will come in handy.”
“Like now.” Bastien returned to chiseling.
“Exactly.”
By the time they reached the bottom, they were exhausted and covered in dirt and grime.
Grimacing, Bastien scratched at his neck and adjusted the light on his helmet. “I’d stay upwind of me if I were you,” he warned Ember.
With a gentle tsk, she kissed his cheek. “Your smell doesn’t offend me.”
He grinned at that. Until he caught a sound off to his left. They drew blasters.
It stopped.
“Quin? That you?”
No one answered.
Bastien walked closer to where the noise had originated. His heart pounding, he tried to peer into the darkness. “We should have brought an Andarion.”
Ryn snorted. “We’d have had to blast to get the opening large enough for their body mass.”
That was true, but they didn’t need a lot of light to see.
“Quin?” Bastien tried again. “You here?”
A whistle rent the air. One he was all too familiar with.
This time, Bastien ducked and twisted out of the way as the paralytic dart shot toward him. It landed harmlessly in the wall.
He lunged at the shooter.
It was a tiny woman. Hissing, she sank her teeth into his hand so hard, she let blood.
Bastien cursed.
“Let her go!”
His heart stopped at that deep, dark voice. A voice he’d never thought to hear again. “Quin?”
Turning his head, he expected to find his ever elegant, impeccably groomed brother. But the man there bore little resemblance to the Kirovarian heir. Dressed in rags, Quin looked worse than Bastien had on Oksana. His brown hair was long and shaggy—and his grimy face had been painted with symbols.
Bastien’s jaw went slack. “It’s Bastien, theren. I mean you no harm.” He let go of the woman, who scrambled to Quin’s side.
It was only then that Bastien saw she was in the beginning stages of a pregnancy.
Quin still had his blaster trained on Bastien. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to get you free.” Bastien held his hands out so that his brother wouldn’t mistake his intentions.
“No! You’re here to kill me.”
When he went to shoot, Ember disarmed him. She flipped Quin to the ground while Ryn and Xander covered the woman. “Don’t you dare harm him. Not after everything he’s gone through to get to you!”
“Ember?” Quin scowled up at her.
“Yeah.” She jerked her chin toward Bastien. “Your theren was convicted for your murder. You want to explain how it is you’re alive and breathing?”
Rage and pain mixed in his eyes with such force it was tangible. A tic started in his jaw. “Barnabas,” he growled. “I woke up down here, alone. He told me that Bastien was on my throne.”
Bastien opened his coveralls to show his Ravin mark. “Here’s a big fucking surprise. He lied.”
That drained the anger out of Quin. “You were really convicted?”
“Yeah. For killing all of you. I’ve been hunted for almost a decade. Thank you for that. You bastard! All you had to do was climb up out of here and you could have told someone the truth!”
“Told who? They’d have killed me.”
Bastien scoffed bitterly. “You could have tried, theren. Did you?”
“To what end? Everyone but you was dead.”
When Bastien lifted his blaster to shoot him for that statement, Ember disarmed him. “Stop it! Remember how upset you were when you thought him dead?”
“Yeah, well, I got over it. Now I remember why I couldn’t stand him when he was alive.”
Sighing, she shook her head. “We never could leave the two of you alone in a room. I swear.” But with that determined glint in her eye that made Bastien’s gut tighten, she turned on Quin. “You’re both coming with us. We will exonerate your brother, and then if you want to return to live down here, feel free. First, we kill Barnabas and restore Bastien’s freedom. Then I don’t give a shit what you do.”
Bastien wrapped his arm around her and kissed her head. “My baby.”
She elbowed him hard. “Don’t call me baby.”
Coughing, he wheezed from the blow. “Okay … forgot how much you hated that. Will never forget again.”
“Good. Now, let’s get out of here.”
The woman gestured at Quin.
He shook his head. “He’s my brother I told you about.”
She gestured again and Quin laughed.
“Yeah, something like that.” Sobering, he faced them. “Bastien, this is my wife, Myrna. She was a political activist Barnabas threw down here to die … after he cut her tongue out.”
Bastien winced. “I’m so sorry.”
She gestured at him. While he recognized some of the signs she used, most were her own concoctions.