Not simply a look of relief because they were escaping? Now that she couldn’t call up the memory on her cube, she couldn’t be sure.
Time slowed. It was the final stretch. She pushed and shoved her way forward. Blood thundered in her ears, and it almost drowned out the children behind her, jeering, calling her names. So close now that she could almost, almost reach out a hand to touch him . . .
She froze.
At that second, Tai Reyanna, bending over a toddler to murmur a blessing to him, looked up and saw her. And Rhiannon nearly died. She nearly turned to liquid and melted into the ground, because she knew—she knew—that Tai Reyanna had seen right past the mark on her face, had seen and known exactly who she was.
Tai Reyanna’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Seotra, puzzled, began to turn in Rhee’s direction.
Now.
And then, just as she reached for her knife, a hood fell over her face, and two arms encircled her so tightly the air left her body in a rush. Rhee inhaled the raw fiber of wool as she opened her mouth to scream and found that there was no air in her lungs.
TEN
ALYOSHA
DERKATZ, Aly decided, was the armpit of the universe.
And after three days on the run from the UniForce and staying offline, hopscotching with Vin between the shadiest of intergalactic safe houses, he could say he was the definitive expert on the topic. Kalu had just declared martial law across all their planets and airspace—which meant that border restrictions were tighter than Regent Seotra’s you-know-what. Just getting out of the core territories had taken balls of steel.
When stopping to refuel, they’d stuck to sad little asteroids that didn’t bother scanning anyone coming or going.
Here on the Outer Belt, they could move more freely. In theory. And Aly knew why: Nobody wanted to come this far to patrol a pile of sand-dust settlements, and the patrols that did come left as soon as possible.
A dwarf planet, Derkatz was a distant planetary oxygen pit stop infamous for its black market. So far, however, Aly and Vincent hadn’t had any luck finding oxygen. Or to get technical, they hadn’t had any luck buying it in any form. They’d just been chucked out of their third greenhouse by an enraged Derkatzian merchant who vowed to bite off Alyosha’s mouth and eat it, the kind of threat that would be common only in the Outer Belt.
As soon as they were outside, Aly pulled his goggles back onto his forehead and pawed his face mask off. He squinted toward the darkening horizon. Grains of sand whipped into his eyes.
“Pretty slick back there,” he said.
“Don’t even start.” Vin shook the sand out of his hair.
“No, for real. I’m impressed.” Aly slipped into his Kalusian accent and made a show of straightening out the front of his jumpsuit. It was the same as Vin’s and the same as every other humanoid on this rock, since it was the only thing that did a halfway decent job of keeping the sand out of your junk. It had a utility loop on the hip, where Vin had hung Aly’s hammer just to taunt him. “Tell me, Vincent, what’s your secret negotiation technique? To piss off literally every carbon-based life-form in the known universe?”
“Ten thousand is a rip-off and you know it.”
“We were negotiating. He would’ve gone lower if—”
“If what, Aly? If you stepped in and tickled his balls? I had it in there until you started talking. Maybe if you weren’t always trying to get people to like you—”
“Oh, so it’s like that?” Anger knifed its way up Aly’s spine. “So I was the one who screwed it up back there?”
“Calm down. I didn’t mean it like that.” Vin raised his palms in surrender. That was his game. Vin never meant it like that. “You’re supposed to be lying low, remember? You’re one flimsy particle mask and some murky-ass goggles away from being recognized as the universe’s most wanted murderer.”
But deep down, he wondered if it was possible the robodroids had swarmed because he’d found the royal escape pod. What if they’d arrived because someone heard Aly broadcasting his distress signal, and not because Vin had sent out a call? But he’d used his cube to send out the signal, and cube communications were supposed to be secure. Foolproof. Unhackable. And if that was the case, then Vin might be right—what if Seotra and his lackeys really could drop in and pay an unexpected visit to anyone’s cube? The question was too messed up to contemplate.
All he knew was that he had somehow become the fall guy. The UniForce had even raised the price on his head—claiming not only that he’d murdered the Princess but that he’d also kidnapped his beloved costar, Vincent Limam, for the probable purposes of extortion and negotiation.
Which was funny, because Aly would for sure negotiate to kick Vin to the other side of the universe right about now.