“Bartanz.” I bite the word. “He tried to take me. Maybe it’s him?”
“Shh.” Tilda glances around at the empty hangar. “Accusations against a high commander aren’t taken lightly.”
“He’s the one who broke protocol.” I hold up a finger like a sassier Nancy Drew. “He tried to steal me away. Maybe he was going to give me tothem.”
Master Daviti blinks all three eyes. “Best keep those guesses to yourself, cadet.”
“We’ll discuss it more later.” Ceredes’s stern voice sends a pleasant thrill through me. “Pillow talk.”
“If she can stay awake long enough.” Jeren laughs.
I smack his arm, and he grunts.
“Sorry.” I keep forgetting I have Hulk strength thanks to Ceredes.
“I can take all you have to dish out.” Jeren licks his lips.
Meow.
“Enough rattle tattle. Let’s get in the air.” Master Daviti turns and takes quick, if wobbly, steps toward his rusty ship.
“Let’s do this.” Ceredes holds his hands out, fist on palm.
“I’m ready.” Jeren does the same.
“You really did pay attention, huh?” I admire their form.
“Fine. Let’s get it over with. You two go first. I’ll play winner.” Kyte sighs. “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”
13
Jeren
She shifts beside me, her body warm and soft. The term starts tomorrow, all the other cadets back in the dorms. But the school feels different. On edge.
Everyone knows about the circle. We’ve been keeping to ourselves, but that hasn’t stopped the whispers and the stares. Lana seems to be dealing with it better than the rest of us. She says she’s used to it from her time back home, which I hate to believe. But it’s true. She took a lot of shit from her classmates for being different, a loner, a dreamer.
A sparkle of red brightens around us, then fades. Her power is barely leashed, the serum Onin injected already gone from her system. When she dreams, her subconscious manifests sometimes. Vivid colors, barriers, even small bolts of energy, but never images. I have to follow her inner thoughts to see what she’s dreaming about, and it’s always easier if I’m asleep, too.
I close my eyes and try to drift off, but I can’t. Long moments I simply breathe and try not to react to the light show that explodes around the room. For the past week we’ve trained every day, all day. Flying, barriers, sparring, regeneration, energy bursts, virudivan power, Sentient abilities—everything the instructors can throw at us. She’s met every challenge with her Alphas by her side.
The ever-watchful eye of the council has been on us the entire time. I’d be a fool to think otherwise. But no word has come from them, not a whisper of direction or purpose. But there are other whispers, ones about attacks at the edges of fleet territory, of people ripped from their homes and forced into slavery, fed to the Sentient hordes, or worse, turned into cyborg soldiers. All these worries and more swirl and swirl as Lana’s lights dance overhead.
She’s worn out, but her power still hums, a constant beacon. I fear that others sense it, too, that it calls across the galaxies to the Sentients who want to steal her from us.
I sigh quietly. If I’m being honest, I’m tired, too. But still I lie awake. Still, I think about her. Worry for her. Love her.
She snuggles closer to me, her thigh over mine, her breast pressed to my arm. “You can’t sleep.”
I didn’t realize she’d awoken. “Sorry.”
Do you remember on the flotilla?” Her voice is so quiet, like the touch of a feather, the whisper of dawn. “When your mom would give you those frigid baths?”
I smile in the dark. “Yes.”
“And you would be so cold your teeth chattered, but you enjoyed every second of it because it was the only time you ever got to play in water?”
My throat constricts at the memory of my mother. “Yes.”
