Aeon slowly rose to his feet. His fingers twitched at his side.
He lifted his head, tilting his chin up, and presented Dagnu with a defiant snarl. Defiance strummed through Aeon’s body, pride quivered through his muscles. All things saru couldn’t own for long.
Don’t. I didn’t speak the warning. There was little point. He wasn’t the first to occupy that cell, and he wouldn’t be the last.
The fae’s lips twitched knowingly.
I turned my face away.
Aeon would return broken—if he came back at all.
A sudden sound jolted me awake. I blinked, clearing the fog of ancient memories or dreams or both. Why was everything blue? Blue walls, blue cushions. Hulia’s. I must have fallen asleep on her couch. I leaned forward and wished I’d stayed that way, stayed dreaming. Aches radiated through my battered body. That’s what happened when you narrowly survived a warfae’s attack—three times.
The apartment door flung open and Hulia burst in. “You have to go. Now!”
I was on my feet, my hand on my whip, all dregs of sleep vanished. They’ve found me. I flung a glance at her window.
“Not out the window, they’ll be watching it.” She scooped up my coat and shoved it into my arms. “Do the illusion thing you do with the coat and go out the front. It’s the only way.”
“Who’s here?”
“The law.” Her eyes saddened. “Merry’s dead.”
“Merry?” How had they found my source? Merry was careful. But surveillance watched her like it watched everyone. And now Larsen knew me. Nobody was safe.
Hulia frowned and worry pulled at her mouth. “Someone… someone wanted to send a message, Kesh. It wasn’t pretty.”
A crashing noise erupted outside the door. I threw on my coat and searched the inventory for a disguise while Hulia lingered by the doorway. “Quickly, Kesh.”
A disguise they wouldn’t look twice at. Something they would expect to see in The Boot. I jabbed at the scantily clad version of something one of Hulia’s ladies might wear and let my coat spill the illusion over me.
“Marshals…” Hulia drawled. Her door sprung open, and in stomped four heavily armed marshals. Three men, one woman.
I leaned against Hulia’s counter, fighting down panic, and arched an eyebrow. “Looking for something?” They ignored me and set about opening storage units, hoping to find the elusive messenger stuffed in a cupboard. The search didn’t take long. Hulia’s place wasn’t much bigger than mine.
The marshals filed past me, heading for Hulia.
“Like I told yah, she’s not here.” Hulia rolled her eyes. “Probably halfway to Nyron by now.”
“You left downstairs in a hurry. Why?” The lead marshal drew up face to face with Hulia. He was taller, broader and likely felt he had every right to be here.
Hulia shrugged. “Needed to pee.”
The backhand came out of nowhere and hit Hulia’s cheek with a vicious crack. She stumbled against the wall.
I’d crossed the floor in three strides before realizing that getting involved would risk my illusion failing.
The female marshal stepped in front of me. “Are you going to make this difficult?” she asked, eyes cold.
Another crack sounded. Rage fizzed in my veins and warmed my chest. My heart thudded hard. I glared back at the woman, knowing exactly what she saw looking back at me. Hulia and I were two nobodies living in the unmonitored sinks where nobody gave a damn what happened, and the law would do whatever they wanted, claiming the reprobates had attacked them first.
My disguise would hold so long as I didn’t touch anyone and didn’t charge the whip with magic. The second I did, the illusion would fall away just like it had in Larsen’s suite.
“We know she came in here,” the marshal beating on Hulia growled.
I couldn’t see past the woman sizing me up for a fight, but the smell of rich, coppery blood told me all I needed to know. The two remaining marshals stood somewhere close behind me. I was outnumbered. Outgunned.
“You’re going to tell us exactly where she went.” The bully hoisted Hulia off the floor by her hair. Her right eye had already swollen shut, and blood marked her chin.
“Don’t,” Hulia muttered, but it wasn’t meant for the marshal. And the dream was so close that I heard myself say the same word to someone else, so very long ago. Don’t. But he had anyway, and no good had come from it. But that wasn’t me.
I punched Miss Marshal in the face, snapping her head back, and whirled, freeing my whip in a blur of movement. The illusion collapsed. Magic tingled up my arm, burning hot and free. I flicked the whip, charging it up, and cracked it across the face of one marshal. He screamed as his skin unzipped and magic cauterized the wound. The other marshal fumbled for his pistol. I kicked him in the chest, lassoed the whip around his neck and yanked. Spluttering, he fell to his knees and clawed at the whip’s coils.
An arm hooked around my neck and pulled me backward against an armored chest. “There you are,” the bully purred in my ear. “I knew if I rattled the cage you’d fall out.”
I slammed my head back, hitting something hard with enough force for his grip to weaken. I’d lost my stiletto trying to blind Larsen, but I wasn’t without other weapons. Reaching into one of my coat’s many pockets, I pulled out a handful of silver balls and threw them into the air. The balls hung suspended there, frozen in a blink—reading the scene, assessing for threats—and then turning into tiny airborne razors, they struck, zipping past my face to sink into the marshal’s. He howled, shoved free from me and waved at the air, trying to shoo off the metal menaces.
I grabbed Hulia’s arm and pulled her out the door. “Is there another way out?”
She nodded, wiped the blood from her lips and darted down the hallway ahead of me. We jumped down the steps and ran around narrow corners until Hulia stopped at a hatch. She flung it open and a waft of dry, metal-tasting air billowed upward.
The chute would take me beneath the sinks’ streets, where all the waste from the gulley went.
I touched her face. “I’m sorry.”
Her smile was fragile and wet with blood, but it held. “What are friends for if not beating up lawmen every now and then?”
Friends. I hadn’t had one in so long. And now I was leaving her in a whole heap of trouble. “Tell them I forced you to hide me.”
She nodded. “Make it worth it.”
Shouts rattled down the hallway.
I stepped into the hole and fell.
Chapter 6
Shuttles came and went from Calicto at regular intervals, ferrying mineworkers to and from the planet’s nine moons, rich in silica and tungsten. I boarded a cramped and noisy shuttle that looked as though it had been bouncing between planets for a few hundred years. Stains dirtied the seats, and a fine layer of machine dust came away on my hands as I grabbed the rails and made my way to the back.
All I had to do was hitch a ride on a freighter heading for outer Halow. Away from Calicto, the fae probably wouldn’t follow and I’d have space to breathe, heal and figure out how to get Sota back.