He was a human being. A man who had lived and breathed and loved and hated, a man she’d killed in cold blood. She’d done it because he would have done the same to her. Because if she hadn’t, she would have died.
As they danced, she forced herself to look at every detail of his face. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the way his skin was tanned, as if he’d recently spent time outdoors beneath the blazing sun. A soldier training for a mission he knew was soon to come.
He couldn’t have known he would die by the hand of the Bloody Baroness on board the Marauder as his borrowed commander, a bounty hunter with eyes that pierced, urged him to take his enemy down.
Tears streaked down Andi’s cheeks, pulling her from the vision she’d created so clearly in her mind. The music grew louder, silencing her tears. She closed her eyes and forced herself back into her mind. She owed this to the dead. This pain, this dance, this time where she gave herself fully to their memory.
The next corpse stepped onto the stage.
This one was a woman, a guard she’d silenced in Lunamere. As they joined hands and spun in time with the sorrowful strings, Andi saw that the woman was young. She had tired eyes in a thin face. As if she hadn’t slept, hadn’t had a full meal, in days.
“I’m so sorry,” Andi said to her.
The woman simply danced, on and on, until her form faded like mist.
Another of the dead took her place.
They danced, cold palms pressed to Andi’s warm ones. Bodies intertwining like vines that twisted together and then came apart.
Andi danced until she’d remembered them all. Every last person she’d killed, every beating heart she’d stopped too soon. It didn’t matter that they were her enemies. It didn’t matter that in those final moments, Andi had allowed herself to make a choice.
To cross the line she’d drawn for herself. Deal out death to another, or die.
She danced in her mind until her tears had run dry. She danced until the audience was nearly empty. Until the lights of the stage had begun to grow dim, as if the stars overhead were falling into a restful sleep.
Only a single form remained in the audience now. Andi turned to face her as the figure stood. She was dressed in a shimmering blue gown that swirled around her ankles like fragments of cloud. It had always been her favorite, had made her smile and feel, for a time, like a queen.
Her pale hair, matted to her skull on one side, had turned red from fresh blood. Her eyes were closed as she stood at the base of the stage, unmoving.
Every time, no matter the dance, no matter how many deaths Andi had to remember, this girl appeared.
“Kalee,” Andi said. “Wake up.”
The girl did not move, did not open her eyes.
Andi tried to reach her, but the stage had morphed into something smaller, the space tightening, the walls closing in until she was seated in the captain’s chair of a transport ship, fire blazing, smoke clouding her lungs.
“WAKE UP!” Andi screamed.
The transport creaked. Groaned, as the fire licked closer and closer.
Heat had begun to bloom across Andi’s wrists. Pain that throbbed and screamed and begged for her attention, but she could not give it.
Because Kalee was dead.
Tears pooled in Andi’s vision, and she reached out a final time, desperate to save her charge.
Something touched her from behind.
She slipped from the vision like water through fingertips, and turned around to see him standing there, bathed in the starlight that glowed through the glass wall of Andi’s quarters.
“You promised me a conversation,” Dex said. She could scarcely hear him over the music still playing. Over the echo of her own screams, still haunting her from her vision.
Wet tears still streaming down her cheeks, Andi nodded.
Dex sat beside her on the floor of her quarters. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said. He knew her routine. She had done it since the very first night they’d shared together. Different places, different times, but the motions were always the same.
Wrapped up in the music, they sat until the song ended. Silence swept over them, thick and uncomfortable and still, but familiar. Like a long-unseen friend returning home.
“Go ahead, Dex,” Andi said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
* * *
ANDROMA
“DANCING WITH THE dead again?” Dex asked.
“Some habits aren’t meant to change,” Andi said.
She turned to face him. Alone in her private quarters, his presence felt too large. Too real, after all they’d just shared in Lunamere. Old memories of the two of them, once lovers who had shared this very room, began to take shape.
I love you, Androma, Dex had said. He’d picked her up, carried her to the small cot in the corner of the room. In between kisses, he’d looked at her like she was sunlight in the darkness.
Three days later, he’d sold her to the Patrolmen for her crimes.
Andi silenced her mind. She would not allow the memories in. Not now, when she already felt so weak.
Dex had showered, finally, the dried blood and vomit washed away, the collar of his shirt open to reveal the scar she’d once given him. The bruise from Soyina’s stun shot had darkened on his forehead. Even now, the one on her chest throbbed.
“I still can’t believe she shot us,” Dex said, noticing Andi’s stare. He placed a hand to his bruise and winced. He swallowed and looked at her directly. “When...when I saw you in that pile of bodies, Andi...”
“I promised you five minutes,” Andi said, cutting him off. “You said you wanted to talk about the past. Let’s talk about it.”
His lips parted slightly. Then he closed them and looked away, hesitating before he spoke.
“I’ve run through this conversation in my mind a million times. And now that we’re actually together, I’m not sure where to begin.”
“How about this?” Andi asked. The weakness from her dancing visions, the pain of facing her ghosts, suddenly faded. Acid took its place. “You betrayed me,” she said. She got to her feet, suddenly unable to sit still. “You knew I was facing a death sentence back on Arcardius. You left me in the hands of those who would give me that death, all for a few Krevs!”
The words were out.
She’d told the girls about the horrific fate Dex had left her to, but never, in the years they’d spent apart, had she imagined seeing him alive and saying it to his face.
It was so absurd, and he was so silent that she threw her head back and laughed. He flinched as if she’d hit him. “Oh, Dextro,” Andi said, stepping closer to him as he got to his feet. “Don’t tell me you thought, just because we managed to do a job together without killing each other, that I’d forgiven you? Let me remind you that this job wasn’t my choice. I took it only because you forced me to, by teaming up with that devil of a man!”