“I’m heading back to my room for a minute,” she told the group. “Go ahead and start without me.”
She strode upstairs and passed through the lounge, then continued to her open doorway and waited there for Doran’s next signal. The ship’s quarters were connected to the lounge by one short hallway, making her easy to spot by anyone who moved to the far end of the room. So she stayed put until she heard Doran challenge the crew to a poker game and then for the noise of bodies settling into chairs before she tiptoed into Cassia and Kane’s chamber.
The room carried traces of Cassia’s floral scent, so subtle that Solara wouldn’t have noticed it had she not known about the implants. She felt a twinge of guilt for pilfering through Cassia’s things, but not enough to stop her from searching every drawer built into the storage wall.
Beneath a stack of Kane’s shirts, she discovered a small pouch containing twenty fuel chips, which was about two months’ wages for a ship hand. Nothing out of the ordinary. In his sock drawer, she found an assortment of basic possessions: an older-model data tablet with a cracked screen; a few photographs, all of Cassia; assorted souvenirs; a Solar League ID fob bearing the name KANE ARRIC.
There was no evidence of a reward, nor of an electronic credit account. He didn’t even own a laser blade, which explained why he kept using Cassia’s. A peek beneath the bottom cot didn’t reveal anything but dust balls, and if there were any hidden panels in the room, Solara couldn’t find them. It wasn’t until she swept a hand under the bottom mattress that she discovered something interesting.
For the second time in her life, she touched gold. But this necklace made Demarkus’s choker look like costume jewelry. At the end of a thick, sturdy chain dangled a palm-sized amulet with a faceted blue stone at its center. Even in near darkness, the stone captured the glow from the exit lighting and sprayed prisms over her sleeve. Peering closer, she admired the intricate design work that adorned the piece in an interwoven circle of flowering vines. That kind of artistry proved it hadn’t come off an assembly line. She turned it over and noticed the other side was damaged by light scratches, but not badly enough to conceal the name carved there in bold script.
Princess Cassia Adelaide Rose
Solara dropped the necklace and had to perform a feat of acrobatics to keep it from hitting the floor. Blinking hard, she read the text two more times in case her eyes had deceived her.
They hadn’t. Cassia was royalty.
But from which planet? Dozens of colonies were classified as monarchies, either by active reign or as symbolic figureheads of a democracy. As long as Solar Territory laws were obeyed and taxes rendered, the League didn’t care how the colonies governed themselves. Narrowing down Cassia’s home world would take time and research.
The bigger question was why any girl would trade a life of royalty for a career as a ship hand—in the company of fugitives, no less—or why Cassia hadn’t returned to that life once she’d discovered the Daeva were tracking the ship. Something terrible must’ve happened at home if she felt compelled to stay here. And how did Kane fit into the puzzle? He seemed to belong to the same race, but judging by his possessions, he was a man of simple tastes, not royalty. Solara had found no trace of reward money in his room, and she was beginning to think that wealth didn’t matter to him anyway.
She tucked the necklace back into its place beneath the mattress while chewing the inside of her cheek. Had she misjudged Kane? Or did he have a different motive for wanting Doran off the ship?
Not surprisingly, Doran’s first reaction to the news was to gloat.
“Told you she was important,” he said, kicking off his boots at the foot of the bed. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it over one shoulder, then dropped his pants. “Looks like I was right.”
Solara whirled to face the other direction, but it was too late. The image of Doran in his shorts had burned itself into her retinas. For some reason, she’d pictured them sleeping fully clothed when she’d agreed to share the bed. “Whatever. You didn’t know she was a princess.”
“Not exactly, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Well, this will surprise you,” she said, staring at the door and seeing the hard planes of Doran’s abs instead. “I checked the outgoing transmissions, and there’s nothing there. I even rebooted the system. Nobody’s made a call since last week.”
“Huh. Maybe we were wrong about Kane.”
“I was thinking,” she said. “There’s one possibility we overlooked. The Enforcers might’ve found your ship through the tracking system. That would explain why they showed up right after you powered on the navigator.”
“But to do that, they had to know exactly which ship they were looking for. My dad didn’t even tell me that information.”