With that bold statement, he turned and strode out the door while I choked on my own dry throat and my heart pounded like the drums of war.
Chapter 2
SHADE
I walked across the crowded restaurant toward a shell-shocked Tess. Her pale face reflected the stiff, cold panic echoing in my chest. Could Nightchasers say no to missions, or was the rebellion like the Dark Watch—you took your orders and shut up?
When I reached her side, I held out my hand. Tess slipped her fingers into mine. “Time to go.”
She gave a jerky nod as I drew her up, her blue eyes huge and haunted. From day one, everything about her had struck me as younger than her twenty-six years—her faint freckles, her heart-shaped face, her stubborn hope that justice still existed—except for those eyes. They’d seen too much to stay innocent.
The restaurant staff threw us confused looks as we left. My almost-too-friendly waitress narrowed her eyes at me over the top of her menu tablet, and the women still sitting at the table next to mine glared at Tess.
A quick pause at the door revealed no obvious danger outside the restaurant. Jax and Fiona were already on their way back to theEndeavor. Their presence had been a precaution, just in case the meeting with Ahern turned into something we weren’t expecting. We headed out a little behind them.
The moment we hit the street, sunlight beat down on us from two stars, one redder than the other. Tess squinted and angled her face away from the heat. Not me. I liked it. Air as thick and heavy as the inside of a steam sauna clung to my skin, making perspiration pop out and bead along my hairline. The sweltering humidity reminded me of the full-blown summer I’d left behind for the Dark, although Albion City rarely got this hot.
My nostrils flared on a breath that smelled of baked pavement and mild pollution. The atmosphere back home was better. It didn’t leave this chalky aftertaste.
Images of Albion 5 flashed through my head, so vivid and intense I could almost reach out and touch them. A hollow feeling spread through me, and I bit down hard, stopping it. Missing a place I could never return to didn’t help me any more than thinking about my dead parents, or regretting the questionable choices I’d made over the last ten years—all for nothing.
My docking towers were gone. I’d lost them, and now there was no buying them back. I’d wanted Tess safe and hopefully with me more than I’d wanted the urban empire my family had built from the ground up. People were more important than buildings. The sorry state of the whole fucking galaxy was more important than buildings. Once I figured that out, there was no going back. Now, I was a rebel, an outlaw. The only thing I truly had left was universal currency, and sometimes, when Tess looked at me with wary eyes that couldn’t quite let go of the past, I wished I didn’t even have that.
She glanced at me, no smile on her lips.
“Relax, starshine. We’re almost done.” The empty words left a bad taste in my mouth.
“Almost done?” Tess let out a soft snort, keeping her voice low. Her gaze cut to mine, bright blue and sharp. “This is the easy part. How can we possibly do what he asked?”
I squeezed her hand. “One thing at a time.” We had to take care of Bridgebane and the blood exchange first. “We’ll figure it out.”
HerYeah, rightexpression told me I could shove my platitudes up my ass. At least her annoyance was better than her wide-eyed trust and misplaced faith in me that had torn me up day and night on Albion 5.
Tess remained on edge, gripping my hand harder than she probably realized. Our palms sweated. Our fingers stuck. But I’d take any contact that bound us together. I’d had her underneath me last night. She’d been on top this morning. She was trusting me with her body again, but I couldn’t tell if her head and her heart were really following.
I looked over at the woman who’d turned my life upside down in the best way possible. The worried crinkle between her eyebrows was deeper than usual. I increased the pressure on her fingers, hoping the weight of my hand would show her she wasn’t in this alone—unless she chose to be. So far, I’d been lucky. She’d kept me around despite my bounty-hunting past and decade-long ties to the Dark Watch.
I scanned the neighborhood as we walked, my eyes peeled for danger and my ears cocked for the sound of a military patrol. We’d paid for a platform on a docking tower near the meeting point with Ahern, trying to avoid using the crowded, tubelike shuttles racing all over the place. The multilevel network ran both above and below ground and was huge and complex. A twenty-minute walk through the grid-patterned city center had seemed easier, but now I was thinking it might’ve been a mistake. The walk to the restaurant had already seemed strangely quiet, and from what we were seeing again now, Koralight Crowners didn’t stay on the streets. They either went inside or got in a tube, funneling toward the frequent shuttle stops at a quick pace.
We’d only had a few daylight hours to observe the city, and things had looked different from two hundred and fifty-two levels up. If I’d had more time to prepare, I would’ve known the people here didn’t go anywhere on foot; they took the damn shuttles. The fact that Tess and I had just walked by two stops was already suspicious.
Seeing a cross street that looked mainly residential, I guided us off the main avenue toward a neighborhood I hoped had fewer obvious transportation hubs.
While they’d been acting as lookouts and watching over us, Jax and Fiona had instinctively headed inside, rotating between the several shops and large food emporium in the area around the restaurant. I increasingly understood their urge to take cover as we made our way back to theEndeavor. Outside just didn’t feel right.
They hadn’t checked in for a few minutes, which meant they were on track to get back to the ship soon. We’d all gone mostly silent after Ahern dropped his bomb, blasting to smithereens what little safety we thought we’d gained after passing off the enhancers to the rebel leaders in the Fold.
The Fold. I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around that place. Untraceable except for a big, dark gravity field. Constantly moving around the Outer Zones. Expanding to fit whatever was inside it—right now, an entire rebel base. It hurt like hell going in and just as badly on the way out. Somehow, it knew friend from foe. Unfortunately, the Overseer’s serum made any enhanced soldier able to cross the barrier without suffering from the aneurysm that usually took out enemies on their way into the rebel stronghold.
They’d have to find it first, though. As far as I could tell, the Fold was the best-kept secret in the galaxy. Being inexplicable probably helped. If you weren’t born there or brought there, the human mind just wouldn’t conjure up an alternate pocket in space like that.
I lifted Tess’s hand and brushed my lips against her knuckles. It was only partly an excuse to talk into my piece-of-shit wristband. I kissed her every chance I got.
“Coms still on?” I asked quietly. The silence was eerie when we were supposed to be connected.
Two masculine voices immediately answered with “Check.” Jax and Merrick.
“Fungi!” Fiona said, her tone enthusiastic but hushed.
