The final step in the plan.
From her vantage point, Andi’s pale hair and metal cheeks, visible now as she stepped forward, were like beacons in the chaos. Smoke curled around her feet like dancing wraiths.
You still have time to stop this plan, Lira’s mind hissed at her. You can’t trust Soyina. You can’t trust Dex.
But then Dex was speaking, his voice like a gunshot amid all the groans and moans.
“It’s about time you showed up.”
The guards lined up in front of him and Andi. Too many rifles aimed at their chests, their heads, their necks. Kill shots, all of them.
Help your captain, that little voice begged Lira. You can’t let this happen.
A single figure stepped through the smoke, and the guards fanned out to make space. Lira watched, teeth clenched, as the warden of Lunamere surveyed the scene.
“Seeing as you’re the only people left standing in this room right now, I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to answer it truthfully.” She puffed herself up, the red-and-gold sash on her chest shining even in the smoky room. “Were you the perpetrators of this attack?”
Dex tilted his head and flashed her his best smile. “Guilty as charged.”
The warden stepped forward.
And slammed her fist into Dex’s face.
His head turned sideways, and he toppled against an overturned table with a sickening crash.
“You’ve just destroyed thousands’ worth of assets for me,” the warden growled. She looked to her guards. “Detain and scan them. I want to know who these bastards are and what the hell they’re doing in my pub.”
Lira watched it all with a sickness in her gut.
Dex rose and turned back around, his mouth spreading into a bloody smile. “Well, well, Warden. The rumors about your strength are true. I’d love to take you on a date sometime. Perhaps to the Unified Systems, where I can show you a planet truly worth your time.”
The warden’s fists clenched. “Gag him.”
“Do you have any Griss on you? Not the cheap kind you serve here,” Dex said, riling her up further. “I’m positively parched.”
“What is the meaning of this?” the warden demanded, looking to Andi. “Explain yourselves.”
Andi smiled at her like a predator. “Screw you. And screw Xen Ptera.”
A guard marched toward Andi, gun outstretched. He was about to cuff her when Andi leaped to her feet, whirling so fast that she’d grabbed his gun and used it to shoot out his kneecap before the guard could even scream in surprise.
“Detain them!” the warden howled. “Now!”
The rest of the guards converged on her and Dex.
Through the chaos, a single word filtered into Lira’s vision from Andi’s channel.
Run.
Lira shook her head. This couldn’t be the best plan...this couldn’t be the only way. It was happening too fast.
Run.
“Come on,” Gilly said. “It’s time to go.”
But Lira was frozen.
“Lira,” Breck whispered. “We have the command.”
Gilly’s small hand wrapped around Lira’s. She began to pull, gently at first, then insistently as Dex screamed curses and Andi began to shout about damning the queen of Xen Ptera. Once they had them on the ground, bound in cuffs, half of the guards began to move about the room. One of them uncovered the shell of a Spark.
“Right here, Warden. Looks homemade.”
“I want every single person in this pub checked. Identified. Backgrounds. Do it now.”
Unless they left now, the guards would soon discover the rest of the girls.
Run.
The message was there in bright red, hovering before Lira’s eyes.
Lira hated herself for what she was about to do, hated the command Andi had given.
But she allowed Gilly to lead her into the shadows. She stood patiently as Breck silently disabled the single, unsuspecting guard by the hole they’d strategically blown in the back wall. A quick exit point.
Gilly slipped into the darkness. Breck squeezed in after her.
But Lira stopped and looked over her shoulder one last time, her gut begging her not to go. Never, in all of their missions, had they abandoned their captain.
Even now, the warden of Lunamere was standing over Andi like a predator ready to spring.
“You will rot in hell for this,” she said.
Not happening, Lira’s mind screamed. This is not happening.
It went against every fiber of her being.
But it was an order—all part of the plan—and Lira could not disobey.
It was with great pain that she left her captain behind, a prisoner, and went to secure sweet freedom back on the waiting ship.
Chapter Twenty-Two
* * *
ANDROMA
THE MOONS ABOVE Arcardius hung like two glowing eyes, their mingling light creating a purple hue in the sky.
They stared down onto Averia, the floating green-and-purple mountain that housed the Cortas estate. In daylight, Averia looked like an oil painting rendered by a master’s hand. The rolling green hills, the blue streams flocked on either side by flora in deep reds and yellows and oranges. Then there was the estate itself, all angles and solid lines, like a sprawling white bird with its wings spread across the grounds.
At night, however, all of Averia was bathed in blue.
The moonlight winked down onto the estate, peeking into the windows on the fifth floor, illuminating two girls as they tiptoed their way through the halls, careful not to wake the house.
“It’s just one little ride,” Kalee whispered as Andi followed her best friend and charge past an open doorway that looked like a dark, gaping mouth. “We’ll be back before he even knows we’re gone.”
“You’re crazy, Kalls. It’s not going to happen.”
Over a year had passed since Andi had been sworn in as Kalee’s Spectre. Until that moment, her life had been so confusing, utterly without direction. Andi was a soldier without a cause, living in the shadows of her mother’s perfect Arcardian image, her father’s constant urge to train harder. To swing faster. To be a better soldier.
Andi loved her planet, dearly, but she was too young to be drafted for anything. Too angry to make friends. She wouldn’t graduate for another three years, and no matter how hard she trained to make her father proud, or danced to become the graceful daughter her mother wished her to be, it couldn’t fill the void.
Andi loved fighting, and dancing. But she’d needed something to call her own.