“What happened was a mistake,” Andi said. This time her voice was raw. “What happened was...”
“Why did my father choose you to rescue me? With all the decorated soldiers in the galaxy...” Valen inclined his head toward Dex, who bore the marks of a Tenebran Guardian. “He picked a traitor. A runaway. With all the other options he has available to him on Arcardius, why would he choose his daughter’s murderer to be his son’s savior?”
There it was. Out in the open like a bleeding wound.
“Because,” Andi said, her voice bordering on cold, calculating fury, “I’m the best one for the job. And because your father, as I fully expected him to do, threatened to throw me and my crew into prison if I didn’t agree to the mission. We are the expendable ones in this galaxy—a part of it, but not. He could risk us getting caught.”
That was the truth, Valen knew without question.
“As you should have been in the first place,” he snapped. “And worse.”
Dex’s jaw tensed. The young Adhiran woman placed a hand on the Tenebran’s arm, as if holding him back. Or maybe, judging by the expression on her face, she was holding herself back, too.
Valen glanced away in disbelief.
He remembered the results of Andi’s trial. Death. She’d been in holding for several days, ready for her sentence to be delivered. And then somehow, against all odds, she’d escaped, fading into the night like smoke on the wind.
“It was a mistake,” Andi said again. “If I could take it back—”
Valen gritted his teeth. “Murder isn’t a mistake.”
“If I recall, you were the one who allowed your little sister and her friend to sneak out for a joyride on your father’s brand-new transport,” Andi replied. Her words were soft and casual, but her eyes were on fire.
“Spectre,” Valen said. “Spectre first, and always. You failed her as that.”
“Again,” Andi said, “it was a mistake. I’ve had to live with the cost of it.”
“Kalee didn’t!” Valen screamed. “She didn’t get to live, Androma!”
The world spun around him. He sucked in a breath, intent on staying in control. He would not lose this fight.
She crossed her arms over her chest. Her face was impassive. Infuriating. “What I want to know, Valen, is how the hell you were taken from Arcardius in the first place. The boundary is well protected. Your father’s Spectres work around the clock, and then some. Yet he said you disappeared without a trace.”
“Are you accusing me of something, Androma?”
She simply stared at him, fierce as a lioness.
“I was out walking in the gardens. After Kalee was killed, things were a little tense at the estate, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
She flinched at his words.
“What happened next?” Dex asked, leaning forward, hands resting on his knees. Drawing Valen’s attention away from Andi. “It’s important for us to know, Valen, so we can prevent it from happening again. So we can keep the families of the other system leaders safe.”
Valen swallowed hard, recalling the events of that night.
“A group of masked men came from the trees. I tried to run, but they surrounded me. I called out for help, but nobody was around to listen. And then they shot me with something,” he said, pulling down his tunic to reveal a circular scar just above his collarbone. “The next thing I knew, I was lying in a transport ship, bound in chains.”
He could still remember the fear that had spiked through him in that waking moment. The questions that had no answers until far later.
“We landed on Lunamere sometime later. I got one glimpse of the outside before they took us in. Then I was knocked out again. I woke up with my head shaved, my clothes gone and my cheek pressed to the stones in my cell.”
Frozen to the stones, he thought to himself, by tears I didn’t remember crying.
“I was no longer a name,” Valen continued. The anger had suddenly left his voice, replaced instead by a solemn whisper that made his throat ache. “I was a number. Cell 306. I don’t know if minutes or hours or days passed before they came into my cell. And...then it all started.”
He realized he’d sunk back down onto the couch beside Dex. That he was shivering, despite the warmth of the room. That he was feeling the threat of darkness looming over him, despite the bright beam of moonlight pouring in through the open curtains.
“What started?” Dex asked. “You’re safe here, Valen. You can talk to us.”
But he wasn’t. Not with Andi here.
She was looking at him like she used to. Like he was a question she couldn’t answer.
He looked down at his hands as they clutched his knees. He’d grown so thin. He hadn’t fully realized it until he looked at himself in the mirror today. He’d barely recognized the ghost staring back.
“The beatings,” Valen said. The wounds on his back seemed to squirm in response to his words. “They started slow at first. For every question I didn’t answer, I got a single lash of the whip across my back.”
“What kind of questions?” Dex asked.
Valen sighed. “About my father, mostly. What he did each day, what his schedule was like. Who he spoke to, who came and went from our estate. At first I didn’t answer. I was afraid what they’d do if I did.”
“But eventually...” Dex helped guide him along.
“You have to understand,” Valen said, now looking up. “They knew when I was lying. Maybe they had some sort of system, or perhaps it was just from years of torturing people for answers. They’ve turned pain into an art form. I had to tell them.”
“About what?” Dex pressed.
“I...” Valen paused, growing frustrated as he remembered the interrogations. “None of it made any sense.”
“Can you elaborate? Can you give us any information you may have come across about Queen Nor?”
Valen felt the change in his chest.
Like something suddenly broke, or slipped loose.
He felt the rage unlock inside him. And this time, he didn’t try to control it.
He simply got up and left the group behind as quickly as he could.
Chapter Fifty-Three
* * *
ANDROMA
AFTER VALEN’S ABRUPT departure from their quarters, Andi left her crew to prepare for Revalia while she tracked him down. She knew that being alone with him might not be the best idea, but she had to find him. Make sure he was safe.
He wasn’t in his room. She’d scoured Alara’s fortress, determined to find him. Everywhere she looked, from the many scattered balconies to the mountaintop temple to the steaming, fragrant kitchens deep in the bedrock, she was met with wide-eyed workers with no recollection of seeing Valen.
Even a little rusting sweeper droid, its arms replaced with dusty brooms, had simply turned away when she’d asked it about Valen, wheels squeaking as it disappeared around a corner.
“Thanks for the help,” Andi muttered.
Valen was gone, disappeared without a trace.
Andi’s worries intensified.
It wasn’t that she cared about him, specifically. Clearly, he didn’t care a bit for the likes of her. It was that she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if the general got word she’d lost his son, he’d have her head.