I exhaled slowly as I strapped myself in, allowing myself a moment of relief. I’d gotten away without having to make awkward goodbyes, without having to explain my sudden departure or defend my decision to handle this situation alone.
I regretted not talking to Tivek before leaving, but I wasn’t sure what I would have said to him, anyway. Learning that my brother was a Shadow operative had shaken me more than I wanted to admit. Was I supposed to pretend I didn’t know when all I wanted to do was apologize for being a condescending ass? But how could I admit to knowing his true identity without revealing how I knew? No, I needed more time to sort myself when it came to my brother.
But I didn’t regret avoiding Sasha. That goodbye would have been impossible. She would have insisted on coming with me, which would have been a disaster.
The boarding ramp sealed with a soft hiss as I ran through the final pre-flight checks, my hands moving across the controls from muscle memory. Then I lifted off from the tarmac smoothly, watching the academy shrink beneath me as I climbed through Drex’s atmosphere. The black stone towers and courtyards that had seemed so imposing from ground level looked almost delicate from this height, like a child’s toy castle set against the desolate beauty of the planet’s stormy sea and black mountains.
Once I cleared the upper atmosphere, I set a jump course for Earth and began calculating the trajectory that would get me there. The route wasn’t complicated, but it would requiremultiple jumps, and I couldn’t take too many in rapid succession without risking jump sickness or worse.
I initiated the first jump, bracing myself for the familiar but unpleasant sensation of being sucked through hyperspace. The universe seemed to both lengthen and flatten around me. Then came the feeling of being sucked forward, stretched and compressed simultaneously, before the jump drive deposited my ship in another sector of space.
I took a moment to catch my breath and run sensor sweeps of the surrounding area, making sure I hadn’t materialized inside an asteroid field or too close to another ship’s flight path. The beauty of space travel was that most of the galaxy was empty, but the terror was that the parts that weren’t empty could be treacherous.
Satisfied that my position was clear, I began calculations for the next jump. With luck, I’d be in Earth’s solar system within?—
“So where are we going?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as a familiar voice came from directly beside me. My head whipped around to find Sasha dropping into the co-pilot’s seat as if she belonged there, her dark hair slightly mussed and her expression carefully neutral.
How the hell had she gotten aboard? When had she gotten aboard? I’d been so focused on a quick getaway that I hadn’t even checked the ship’s interior before departure. She must have been hiding in the cargo bay or in one of the storage spaces.
“Grek.”
“That’s not an answer,” she said pleasantly, though I could see the steel beneath her calm facade. “Try again.”
Chapter
Fifteen
Sasha
“What thegrekare you doing here?” he finally managed, his voice tight.
“What the hell are you doing going rogue?” I shot back, settling more firmly into the seat and crossing my arms. The co-pilot’s chair was cool against my back, and the subtle vibration of the ship’s engines hummed through my bones, but I kept my attention focused on his face.
“I’m heading back to my Inferno Force ship,” he said, but there was something in his expression that told me he knew I wasn’t buying it.
“Liar.” The word came out flat and certain. “There’s no way you suddenly had to leave after what we found last night. So I want to know why you thought you could cut me out ofmyplan.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working as he stared out at the blackness of space. The silence stretched between us, filled only with the soft hum of life support systems and the distant whir of the jump drive slowing.
Finally, he exhaled sharply and turned to face me. “I was going to Earth to find out who was behind you being left to rot. And I was going alone because you’re too emotional to handle this objectively.”
I clenched the armrests of my seat so hard I was surprised the material didn’t crack beneath my fingers. Every instinct screamed at me to argue, to tell him I wasn’t overly emotional, that I was perfectly capable of handling the investigation with professional detachment.
But that would only prove his point, wouldn’t it? Besides, he was right, and I hated he was right.
I was boiling over with rage and hurt and a need for vengeance that consumed everything else. This wasn’t the cool, focused determination I’d learned to channel during my military training. This was something raw and primal that made my hands shake and my vision blur. As a pilot, I’d always prided myself on being calm under pressure, on making rational decisions even when the situation was falling apart around me.
But months in that Kronock prison had changed something fundamental within me. The betrayal, the isolation, and the constant fear had left me volatile. I knew this about myself, could analyze it with clinical detachment, but that didn’t mean I could change it.
“Why aren’t you angrier?” I asked, the question coming out more vulnerable than I’d intended. “You were in that prison too. You were abandoned just as much as I was.”
His expression softened slightly, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet. “Because my people did not betray me.”
The words stole the breath from my lungs and made my chest constrict with pain. He was right, of course. The Drexian military had mounted an unauthorized rescue mission to save both of us. Admiral Zoran had risked his career and disgrace to bring us home. His people hadn’t left him, but mine had written me off. Not only that, they’d declared me an acceptable loss and forbidden any attempt to recover me.
The difference was stark and brutal, and it explained everything about why this felt so personal, why I couldn’t approach it with the professional distance he was capable of maintaining.
