It was the first time she’d truly been able to stop and look at him, to study the way his features had changed in some places and stayed the same in others.
His hair was shorn near the scalp, but she recognized the dark mahogany color he’d had years ago. His cheeks were shallow, the bones protruding at sharp angles. And his lips, once full, were colorless and empty.
“It’s a wonder he’s not dead,” Dex said.
Andi found herself unable to respond. Staring at him was like staring at her past. But saving Valen—her one chance at redemption—hadn’t changed the emptiness she still felt inside.
The void was still there.
Seeing Valen had simply opened it up, and now it threatened to suck her back in.
“How long have we been out?” Andi asked.
Dex shrugged. “Not sure. I woke up and then I saw you and...”
She couldn’t forget the haunted look in his eyes when he woke her.
Soyina’s voice echoed in her mind. We didn’t, you know. Your comrade wanted to whine like a baby about his feelings for you.
But Dex wasn’t allowed to have feelings. He wasn’t allowed to look at Andi the way he had a few moments ago, wasn’t allowed to hold her face as if he were cradling the world in his hands.
Andi dismissed those thoughts. He’d been shocked. He’d thought his partner was dead. Of course he’d been concerned.
“Lira’s probably wearing a hole in the floorboards of my ship with her pacing.”
Dex raised a single brow. “My ship.”
She didn’t argue this time, knowing in her heart that she’d already won the fight long ago. With effort, Andi tore her eyes away from Valen. The job wasn’t done. She wouldn’t relax until they were back on her ship, reunited with her crew and had Valen taken to the med bay, where Alfie could get to work on healing him.
Plus, the smell was starting to get worse.
Asking for Dex’s help wasn’t one of her favorite things, especially after he’d just seen her lose control upon waking. But she knew he was the only way they’d be getting out of this damned transport before it emptied them out into the Junkyard.
“Dex.” She said his name like a sigh, hating the way it felt so familiar on her tongue.
They were too close together. Too alone, despite the corpses and Valen’s unconscious form beside them.
“Androma,” Dex replied, inclining his head.
“Do you remember the night you bypassed the locks on my door in your old Junker ship?”
“How could I ever forget?” Dex’s eyes glittered like stardust. “Your nightgown was—”
“Not a point of discussion right now,” Andi hissed, cutting him off. There was the old familiar annoyance. She sighed. “Can you do it again? To that door?”
He glanced past her shoulder, his eyes sparkling with a different sort of mischief as he nodded.
“Good,” Andi said. She looked down at her boots and began to remove their laces. They were strong and sturdy, luckily not frayed from the fight in Lunamere. “Then do it now.” She coiled the bootlaces around her fists, then pulled them taut. The strands sang with a satisfying twang.
“Are you going to kill me with your shoelaces, Baroness?” Dex asked.
Andi looked at Valen’s sleeping form, begging the Godstars to keep him breathing until they got him to the safety of the Marauder.
“No,” she said as she began to crawl back across the bodies. “But I am going to take care of the pilot once you get us through that door. And then you are going to fly us back to my ship.”
“Not you?” He raised a brow at her. “After all the fear you’ve instilled in others, you’re still too afraid to fly a—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Andi spat out.
“Does your crew know?”
Andi was silent, and he smiled like he knew her secret.
Like he’d very much enjoy keeping it for himself.
*
Five minutes later, Andi sat in the copilot’s seat, a fresh corpse tossed in the pile behind the open door. Another tally, another face to haunt her. Dex took the throttle and angled the transport toward home—the glass starship that sat waiting like a gem in the starlit sky.
Chapter Thirty-Four
* * *
DEX
DEX’S SENSES WERE being wrongfully assaulted.
The mystery of the missing AI had finally been solved, leaving an unhinged waste bay door in its place, and now the scent of unmentionable things had begun to swim its way through every deck of the ship, rivaling the smell of the corpses. To add insult to injury, Andi’s crew of she-devils hadn’t stopped following her around since they’d nearly crash-landed in the Marauder’s small docking tunnel.
Their voices were like gunshots to his head.
The little fire-haired gunner had wanted to know if the blood on Andi belonged to her or some “now-ball-less bastard,” to which the giantess had responded, Of course it’s not hers, Gil. And don’t say bastard. Say prick. Are you hungry, Andi? All of which was followed by the Adhiran pilot circling Andi like a bird of prey, pecking at her cuts and bruises, then throwing icy glares in Dex’s direction, as if he had been the one to give them to her.
“This,” Dex said as he sat in the med bay, letting the AI fawn over his own cuts and bruises, “is my own personal version of hell.”
“You may experience some pain,” Alfie said, tugging a little too hard on a fresh line of stitches on Dex’s brow, only adding to the already planets-wide list of things he wanted to drink himself into forgetting tonight.
Andi glowered at him from the table next to his, then resumed whispering to her crew. She’d refused Alfie’s help and given Dex a dismissive wave of her hand as thanks for helping her haul Valen’s body into the med bay.
And hadn’t said a word to him since.
It was so purely Androma to be as cold as a Soleran day, and that ounce of normalcy took a bit of the tension from Dex’s shoulders as he quickly thanked Alfie for his stitches, then slid down from the table.
“I’m going to check in with the general,” Dex announced.
Alfie turned back to Valen, who still lay unconscious on the table in the center of the med bay, eyes closed and bruises deepening in the bright white light. The crew didn’t even lift their heads to acknowledge Dex, save for the littlest one, who quickly lifted two fingers in his direction, a Tenebran signal for him to go screw himself.
He sighed, working his sore jaw back and forth as he headed for the exit. The cool metal doors slid open, then closed shut behind him.
Silence. It was so immediate, Dex almost wept with relief. For years, he’d been on his own, doing things his way. Keeping every reward for himself. Working with a crew, especially Androma’s, was almost more than Dex could take sometimes.