And when Tano growled back at Axel, looking—dare I say—jealous? Marisia slammed an overhead storage bin closed so hard something cracked, then strappedherself furiously into her seat to prepare for entry into Kravax’s atmosphere.
After a rough landing that made my teeth clatter, Reya led Sai while Marisia more or less dragged me out of the shuttle. The gravity on Kravax was heavy, at least twice what we simulated on theIgnisar, and Sai and I stumbled through a grueling hike through a dense forest to a small clearing bordered by a towering cliff. And in that small clearing, carved into that towering cliff, they led us into…a cave. An actual cave. I sighed. Some planets just couldn’t help but live up to their stereotypes.
“Sit,” Marisia ordered after shoving me inside the dank, dark, inhospitable space that wasn’t much bigger than the shuttle that had brought us here. The ground was hard and cold where Sai and I huddled together, shivering until Tano lit a fire.
“You’ll be here for a while,” he said, scowling at me in the firelight. “So get comfortable.”
“If I may,” I interjected, lowering my voice. “I’m assuming this is a hostage for ransom arrangement and not somewe’re hungry and you look appetizingsituation?”
It was almost funny, watching someone as intimidating as he was grumble with such long-suffering annoyance. “Despite what you offworlders believe, we are not cannibals. Behave, and you will make it back to your ship unharmed.” He stood, wiped his hands on his camouflage pants, and left us to warm ourselves by the fire—Sai in his pajamas, me in my silk jumpsuit, both of us bound in mag-cuffs.
Once we were alone, I looked Sai over. “Are you all right?”
“I think so. Or, no, obviously,” he clarified, holding up his cuffed wrists. “But you know what I mean. Are you all right?”
“I’m better than if I’d decided to wear a dress to the party, so there’s that at least.” I scanned the cave, looking for anything I could use as a weapon. Then abandoned the search when I remembered I wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with a weapon, even if I found one. I wasn’t a fighter. I was only good at one thing. And if we stood any chance of getting off this planet in one piece, I needed to play to my strengths.
“What do you think they want with us?” Sai asked.
Pressing my shoulder against his, trying to give him some warmth, I said, “I’m not sure. My best guess is it has something to do with your mother. I think they’re using us to get something from her. And once they get whatever that is, they’ll let us go.”
“Will whatever they want hurt my moms?” Sai asked, his chin wobbling even though he was clearly trying to fight it.
“No, Sai,” I told him, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. “Nobody is going to get hurt.”
Pushing his bare little toes through the dirt, he said, “You’re lying to me. I can tell. But thanks for trying to make me feel better.”
I would have said more, tried harder to soothe him, but boots crunching across the cave floor pulled our heads up.
“Well, how does it feel to beourspecial guests now?” Axel asked, striding over to the fire, squatting to warm his hands over the flames.
“Your hospitality is unparalleled,” I said flatly. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel scared. It was only that I knew I’d be orders of magnitude more terrified if I hadn’t come, if I was still stuck on the ship wondering where they’d taken Sai, wondering if he was all right. Things, I was certain, his moms were wondering at that precise moment, all thanks to the asshole grinning smugly at me.
Axel scoffed, brushing his thick black bangs off his pale forehead. “Did you know that one of the most difficult things we had to learn in order to convince the worlds that we were a kinder, gentler breed of Kravaxians was sarcasm? Sarcasm is not a valid form of communication on Kravax. We find it pathetic, weak, dishonest. But above all other types of expression, sarcasm sets offworlders most at ease. Why do you think that is?”
“We bore easily?” I suggested.
Keeping his head down, Sai stared at the fire like it was the tether that would keep him from floating off into space. Which may have been accurate. Even with the small fire, it was still too cold in the cave for our climate-controlled sensitivities. Aside from being safe in his arms, at that moment, while my toes throbbed from the cold, I’d never wanted anything so badly as I wanted Freddie’s wool socks.
When Tano shouted some guttural Kravaxian something or other outside, Axel grumbled, “What now?” He stood, pointed a finger at us. “Stay put, you two.”
“Darling”—I raised my cuffed hands as far as I could—“where would we possibly go?”
Once Axel was out of earshot, Sai asked, “Do you think they jumped with us?”
“Who?”
“Morgath and Rax? Maybe Captain Jones? I’m sure they were out there in cloaked shuttles or something.”
I blinked at him. “How did you know that?”
“It makes sense,” he said with a shrug. “They wouldn’t have just let us go. So they probably followed us, right?”
Squinting at the FFKs through the cavemouth, trying to make out their shapes in the darkness, I said, “Isn’t it impossible to follow a ship through a jump if you don’t know where it’s going?”
“It used to be,” he said. And when I turned to face him, his eyes shone. “But there’s a new thing that makes it possible. Morgath told me.”
“Morgath told you that? When?”
