“Damn,” Dex said with a whistle as they walked past family portraits and extravagant Arcardian landscapes rich with color, some of which Andi recognized as Valen’s work. “Valen grew up in style.” He glanced at Andi. “I can see why you befriended his sister in the first place.”
“No one befriended Kalee Cortas,” Andi said as they passed by a painted portrait of the entire Cortas family. Andi dropped her gaze as they walked on, not wanting to see her old friend’s smile. Not wanting to look into Kalee’s eyes and remember the last moment she’d seen them alight with life. “Kalee chose the people she wished to let into her life. I was honored that she allowed me to be assigned to her.”
“Honored?” Dex asked, raising a bruised brow. “Or damned?”
“I’ll let you know after we talk to the general,” Andi said.
Light streamed in through windows that stretched from floor to ceiling and were draped with elegant satin the color of honey. Even though she knew this place, had spent countless nights wandering these halls, Andi felt wrong here, as out of place as her work boots, coated in the evidence of the past as she tracked invisible stains across the ornate rugs that lined the hallway.
They passed several servants at work, dusting and shining the bright orb-lights on the walls and washing the windows.
The servants openly stared at Andi as they passed, not bothering to be discreet. If Andi was in their position, she would probably be doing the same thing. Who wouldn’t, when the traitorous Spectre they’d thought long gone had returned, still alive and well.
Let them stare, Andi thought. Let them look.
She glared at them, pleased to find their attention suddenly move elsewhere as Alfie rounded a corner and they left the workers behind.
They passed many closed doors and vacant hallways, Dex whistling, Alfie’s gears whirring with each step.
“You remember it all, don’t you?” Dex asked.
“Every little bit,” Andi said. “Even the hidden escape tunnels that the general installed. He loved to put them in closets, bathrooms, under the bars...”
She trailed off as they stopped before the sweeping grand staircase in the center of the estate.
This was where she’d last seen Valen. Before everything changed. Where he’d tried to stop her and Kalee, knowing how foolish their plans were.
They’d gone on anyway, leaving him behind.
“Andi,” Dex said. She glanced back up to where he and Alfie stood waiting a few steps ahead.
“I’m coming,” she replied, feeling like a ghost of her old self as she followed them upward, thinking of another time, a different person heading up the stairs in Dex’s place.
The stairway stopped on the next landing, where they took a left, walked down a red-carpeted hallway and finally stopped before a locked oak door.
“General Cortas is just inside,” Alfie said, waving his hand at the door. “His head Spectre will be out in just a moment to retrieve you. When you finish the job, General Cortas will send over your Krevs.”
“We already finished the job,” Dex said.
“General Cortas will decide that upon his inspection of Valen,” Alfie answered.
There was something strange in his normally overpleasant voice that Andi couldn’t quite place.
She nearly asked him if he was alright, knowing Alfie was capable of far more complex thinking than she’d originally guessed. He’d saved the crew’s life, after all, with his launcher. And he’d even remembered to bring Gilly’s hellish creature, a sign that Alfie had some understanding of feelings and attachments.
“Alfie, are you sure everything’s—”
The click of the door opening behind her made her stop.
“I’m sorry for the delay,” a man’s voice said. It was kind, but in more of a diplomatic way than truly sincere.
It was also disconcertingly familiar.
She turned slowly, as if in a dream.
Andi knew the man standing before her—better than most. She remembered the pale white-blond of his hair, the moon-gray of his eyes and the way he stood tall and strong—the very same habit he’d imprinted upon his daughter from a young age.
For a moment, her heart leaped with joy.
Then it seized when she saw the deep blue uniform he was wearing. The gloves with the Arcardius symbol that Andi had once worn, too, and then Alfie’s words came back to her. His head Spectre will be out in just a moment.
It took everything in her to speak as the truth struck her.
“Dad?”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
* * *
ANDROMA
ANDI WAS A SURVIVOR, and always had been.
She’d survived the crash and the death of Kalee, the trial that had branded her with a traitor’s fate. The weeks spent on the run across the galaxy afterward, the months beyond that when Dex had found her. She’d lived through twelve hours a day of training with Dex to hone the skills her father and the Academy had given her, gradually turning into the killer that she was now. She’d sustained cuts and lashes and muscles so sore she’d worried they had snapped, that she would never be able to raise a hand or stand on her own again.
Twelve months later, she’d endured the shattering aftermath of a broken heart from Dex.
And in the past week alone, she’d made it inside Lunamere and escaped with her life, then survived the attack on Adhira. She’d stolen a Xen Pterran warship, battled with a New Vedan giant and lived to tell the tale.
And you almost kissed the man you thought you hated, a voice chided in her head.
But this...her father, as General Cortas’s head Spectre?
This might actually kill her.
He stood behind the general’s chair now, his face impassive as he stared ahead, hands folded before him.
She knew those hands nearly as well as her own. They were the hands that had held her when she’d cried. The hands that had been placed over her own, warm and strong, and taught her how to steer a starship. To block a punch and deliver plenty of her own. Those hands had once pointed into the swirling sky as her father whispered, Someday, Androma, you’ll be up there, following your dreams.
They were also the hands that had never been raised to support her at Kalee’s trial—they had never even flexed a finger when the opportunity came.
Andi wanted to tear those hands from his wrists—almost as much as she wanted to feel them cradling her face now, the way they always had when she was a child.
Before.
Everything was always before.
Andi wanted to scream. She wanted to yank her father into the corner of the room, throw him to his knees in front of her and demand that he explain himself.
And yet she couldn’t. Because she knew—Godstars, she could feel it—that if she made any wrong move in front of the general’s watching, demon eyes, he’d destroy her and her crew. He’d take her straight to the execution chamber and finish what he’d planned to do years ago. Her crew, loyal as they were, would go down swinging in her name. And then they would all be dead. Just like Kalee.