“You’re going to do exactly as I say,” she said, but it came out like the purr of a demon, the croon of a devil’s pet. “You’re going to release the prisoner in Cell 306, and if you object, I will cut you into pieces, little by little, until you do.”
The tattooed man beside her smirked. “What piece will you start with?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” She smiled, but it was all wrong, as if she should have had fangs instead of teeth. Her pale eyes flicked back to the guard, who still stood frozen in front of Valen’s cell. “You have ten seconds to unlock the door. Do it now, before I change my mind.”
The guard turned, fumbling with his remaining hand. He dropped the keys, then cried out as he sank to his knees and tried to grab them. His fingers scraped his dismembered hand, and with a gasp of pain, he slumped to one side, unconscious.
“Disturbing,” the tattooed man said with a chuckle. “Did you really have to cut off his hand?”
The young woman didn’t answer. She stepped forward, silent and light as a ghost, and scooped the keys up off the stones.
Valen stumbled backward, suddenly unwilling to leave this place.
Unwilling to believe this was reality. That she was really, truly here, bringing light to him in the darkness of Lunamere.
The lock clicked open.
The door swung forward silently, its hinges well-used from his frequent visits to the torture chambers.
The tattooed man stayed in the hallway, holding the door. But the young woman stepped into the cell, those strange, glowing blue cuffs illuminating her face. Valen had painted that face many times in years past. He’d thought her beautiful once; an angel with fair hair and even fairer features who’d given his sister joy. A girl he’d been desperate to understand.
But when the accident happened, he knew he’d been wrong.
Androma Racella wasn’t an angel.
She was death incarnate.
“Hello, Valen,” she said now. She held a steady hand out to him, but he scuttled backward like a bug. “We’re here to rescue you.”
He hadn’t used his voice for weeks, and not for anything more than to scream through the pain. He opened his cracked, bleeding lips, was ready to tell her the words he’d imagined saying, after all these years.
Then a blaring screech exploded from the walls.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
* * *
ANDROMA
THE ALARM SPLIT the silence like a knife.
“Damn it all!” Dex shouted, though Andi could barely hear his voice above the alarm. “We’re too late!”
She turned back to face Valen, her mind racing.
One more floor down, and they’d find Soyina waiting for them, along with the promise of escape. They had to go. Now.
“Valen,” Andi said, rushing to his side. “Come on. We’re getting you out of here.”
Valen’s eyes slammed shut. He fell to his knees, shaking his head, murmuring, “No, no, no,” as he scrambled away, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
How in the hell were they supposed to get him out of here like this? He was a bleeding, shattered mess, hardly able to stand, let alone run down a flight of stairs while being chased by guards.
“Help me get him up!” Andi shouted to Dex.
Valen howled and skittered back even farther, leaving another fresh smear of blood on the stones. He tried to stand, but his legs shook with the effort. His arms were covered in bruises and lashes, and they were far too thin.
It was a wonder he was still alive. Andi tried to tamp down the wave of horror she felt at seeing him in this state. They didn’t have time for this. Somewhere in the distance, shouts rang out, and blue lights danced on the walls outside Valen’s open cell door as guards came closer.
She peered out the cell door. In the mouth of the stairwell, a guard appeared. Then another behind him, followed by two more.
She hadn’t expected things to go this way. But she knew this was the only part of the mission that counted, the part that would earn her and Dex and her crew their pardoned names and a shipload of Krevs.
Andi looked down at Valen and frowned.
He was a shadow of the person she’d once known, but he was still a Cortas—a living fragment of Kalee. Andi hadn’t been able to keep her friend alive, but she’d be damned if anything happened to Valen under her watch.
“I’m sorry about this,” she said.
Then she brought the solid base of a short-whip down over Valen’s head.
He crumpled in a heap.
Dex stared, openmouthed, from behind him. “That’s your plan?”
“Take an arm,” Andi commanded.
Soon the two of them stood in the mouth of the cell, Valen’s unconscious body hanging between them.
“You remember all those sword-fighting lessons you gave me on Tenebris?” Andi asked. “The ones where we fought single-handed?”
“Oh, love.” Dex lifted a dark brow. “How could I ever forget?”
Valen’s head lolled against her cheek, and she nearly gagged at his rotten scent.
“One more thing, Dex?” Andi asked, shoving Valen’s head the other way. Dex met her eyes as she doused the light on her cuffs. “Don’t call me ‘love.’”
She gripped her short-whip tight, imagining it was one of her swords, already seeing the way she’d slice it through tendons like a blade carving through raw meat. In her mind, she was a Spectre again. She imagined Kalee in Valen’s place.
No one would harm her charge.
“Steady,” Dex whispered. “Silent.”
They waited for a breath of a second, allowing the guards to get closer, the light from their weapons brightening with each stomp of their boots.
“Now,” Andi said.
Together, she and Dex stepped out of the cell, carrying Valen Cortas between them.
Six guards stood just around the corner, weapons raised, looking ready for a fight.
*
They sprang, their two bodies moving in one single motion, Valen still between them.
Dex on the left, Andi on the right. They moved so fast the world around them seemed to pause.
Andi’s whip flashed in a glorious arc, striking the guard closest to her just as he moved to action. The end of her whip curled around his, snaking like electric fingertips intertwining, and Andi yanked backward. The guard’s whip soared past them, then exploded with a shower of sparks against the cell door beyond.
“Cover me,” Andi growled.
Dex attacked as Andi rose, using the counterweight of both boys, and swung her foot into the weaponless guard’s jaw. A crack sounded as bones shattered beneath her boot.
“Down!” Dex shouted.
A short-whip soared past the space where Valen’s head had just been. It severed the end of Andi’s braid, the scent of burned hair wafting into her nostrils.
She rose, snarling, as a lock of her hair tumbled to the floor.
These Lunamere bastards were going to die.
*
The world moved in flashes as darkness and light fought and intertwined. The guards before them were like ghosts that appeared and then flickered out as the whips and gauntlets cracked from blue to black and back again.
With each patch of darkness, Dex and Andi moved forward. Valen’s body was like dead weight against their shoulders.
“Take them out!” a guard screamed.
Passing Valen to Andi, Dex dropped to the floor, leg extended as it rammed into the guard’s legs and sent him sprawling.