Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

Navan’s grip barely let up—if anything, it tightened. “You were my best friend!” I could hear the anguish in Navan’s voice. “I trusted you!” He punched Ianthan in the face again, and I heard a crack that made my stomach turn. Navan raised his fist again but stopped. “How long?” he asked. “How long had you and your father been plotting this? Scheming behind my back?!”

“My father… probably ever since he helped you build that ship. It was one of his motivations for helping you, I am sure, given that you had an Explorer license and he did not. He hoped you’d make a discovery he could take advantage of. But me? I swear, Navan. It was less than a month ago. When you first asked us to come down here for Ronad. I… I felt cornered. Father told Elida to put pressure on me to agree to his plan, and she swore she would leave me if I didn’t go through with it. I-I know these are excuses but, I promise I will make it up to you. I don’t expect you to ever trust me again, but I will do any—”

“You already sent off a sample?” Navan growled, releasing his grip on Ianthan and balling both blood-splattered hands into fists.

“Yes—Riley’s blood,” Ianthan wheezed. “My father did it, early this morning. But that wasn’t part of the plan I agreed to. At least, he didn’t tell me he was going to do that—”

“How far is the pod?” Navan demanded, racing back into the grounded ship, and his expression sent shivers down my spine. He was in his full-on beast mode—his eyes looked like they could burn holes through iron.

“I don’t know. B-But the pod is slow compared to Soraya. We can catch up with it!”

Angie and Lauren reached my side, their faces drained and pale. Lauren looked horrified as she approached Bashrik. I had Angie press my shirt against the wound and I stood up shakily, ignoring the nausea that was still roiling through me. I hurried to the ship after Navan.

I leaned my head inside the smooth steel interior of the sphere, large enough to fit ten people. Jethro was sprawled out on the metallic floor, his head separated from his body.

I turned away, vomit rising in the back of my throat. It was the first time I’d ever laid eyes on a dead body, never mind one as mutilated as this. Though it wasn’t a surprise that Navan had killed him. Coldbloods were brutal, not ones to mess around. Their physical appearance alone was enough to glean that.

I managed to tamp down the bile in my throat and focus on Navan, who was hunched over, examining some kind of complex control board—or what was left of it. I didn’t need to be a mechanic to see that it was wrecked. Dials had been smashed, buttons ripped off, levers mangled beyond recognition. Not to mention the fist marks that had been punched into the walls—and of course, the door was missing. I had learned how to fix cars, thanks to Roger, but this was way above my pay grade.

My breath hitched. “Navan,” I said softly, “how will you go after anything in this?”

He ignored me as he opened up a compartment beneath the control board. The top half of his body disappeared inside it. I heard the crackle of electricity and saw sparks flying, and then the entire ship shuddered, before it sputtered out. He hauled himself out of the compartment a second later and stood up, his eyes blazing.

“They betrayed us,” he said hoarsely, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. I could hear the anger in his voice, but also the disbelief. “And you’re right. This ship won’t take off without major repairs.”

Ianthan approached us tentatively. There were bloody patches where his long blond hair had been torn out, and his face was coated with blood, his nose lopsided—definitely broken.

Navan’s eyes landed on him, and Ianthan stood there like a dog that knew it was about to get kicked.

“So what do you suggest we do now?” Navan demanded of him. “I could fix the door with the tools I have in the cabinets,”—he gestured toward the back of the ship, though I refused to look, not wanting to lay eyes on the corpse again—“but I’m not equipped to fix the control board. You know, I wasn’t planning on being stabbed in the back by my best friend while we were here. That was actually not on the list of things I had expected to have happen.”

Ianthan gazed around the ship and choked back a sob as his eyes fell on his father. He flinched, closing his eyes and covering his face with his hands. It took him several moments to gain enough composure to speak.

“Yes, it’s a mess,” he croaked. “B-But you do have the tools you need back at your main base, right? On its own, the pod will take at least three weeks to reach Vysanthe. Soraya will still have time to catch up with it, even with the delay. Fly to Alaska, grab all your tools, then return to fix the control board. Once it’s fixed, you’ll have access to the pod’s exact coordinates and you can go straight after it.”

I was about to ask what on earth they were talking about regarding Navan’s “main base” and “Alaska,” when the nausea I had been experiencing on-and-off for the past hour increased ten-fold, and I found myself buckling at the knees. I fell backward out of the ship, tumbling to the grass and gripping my head as a searing pain tore through my brain.

“Riley!” I heard my friends cry, and then Angie was there, by my side. Navan, too, was there, kneeling next to me. I was seeing double as he stared at my face, his brows knotted in a frown.

“Are you okay? What happened?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“We didn’t take the Elysium,” Angie said, and Navan’s eyes snapped toward her. “Sorry!” she added quickly, holding up her hands, “but you’re crazy if you think we’d be okay with just forgetting everything we found out! When we went into the house to talk, we found a bowl of vials, which Riley had spotted you drinking from earlier, so we figured that they probably wouldn’t do us much harm, and we could do a switch— but don’t get mad! Because if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have known to come and fetch you when we overheard Jethro and Ianthan plotting—”

“Oh, for Rask’s sake,” Navan said, and I wasn’t sure who Rask was, but the way he said it made it sound like a very bad swear word. His stormy eyes zoned in on me. “What did it taste like—the liquid you drank?”

I opened my lips to respond, my throat feeling painfully parched. “Slightly salty.”

Navan swore again, and his boiling hot hands pressed against my forehead, his thumbs lifting up my eyelids, despite the fact I was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to let them close.

“Oh no,” Angie gasped. “Why are her eyes doing that?!”

“Doing what?” I asked, trying not to panic.

Navan looked at me, his face blurring. “Clouding over.”

My vision continued to blur, as though a blind was being slowly drawn over my eyeballs.

“And what about you two—what did yours taste like?” Navan asked Angie and Lauren, a renewed sense of urgency in his tone.

“Mine didn’t taste salty at all—it was slightly sweet,” Angie replied.