Chapter
One
Skye
“Move!”
My head pounded as I squinted into the blaring light, and my feet were sluggish as I was half-pulled and half-pushed down a metal ramp. Dust kicked up around my boots as I touched land. The parched, cracked earth that was nothing like the icy ground on Lexxona.
My legs wobbled as I shuffled forward, chains jangling and cruel hands yanking me up by the elbow before I sank. As much as I wanted to fight back, as much as my instinct was to jerk away and spit out some kind of insult to those who were manhandling me, my brain swirled in a murky haze and my lips refused to work.
Chains hung from my wrists, the iron biting into my flesh and making it impossible for me to lift my arms. I winced from the pain, trying desperately to focus and figure out where I was and what was happening.
I sucked in a breath, and my throat was instantly choked with dust and humidity so thick it was already slicking my skin. Trickles of sweat gathered at the nape of my neck under my hair and slid down my spine, an unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation.
After a lifetime on a frozen planet, this punishing heat was an assault. As much as I’d often complained about the constant ice and cold, I suddenly missed the bite of the crisp air. This air was ripe with warm bodies and tanned leather and dust.
As figures slowly swam into focus, I realized I was following someone. A very large someone who was also chained.
Memories drifted up from the darkness, as slow and muddled as my movements. I’d been on Lexxona, and I’d been tied up. No, I’d been untied. I’d been saved by a Vandar in a leather kilt and a heavy fur that he’d worn open, as if the cold barely registered. That much I remembered. And his eyes. His eyes had been dark and intense as he inspected me for injuries. I’d been staring into his eyes when we’d been attacked.
I closed my eyes for a beat as I thought back to him being struck from behind as the Zagrath fighters had swarmed us. They’d been waiting. It had been a trap, and I’d been the bait.
Gritting my teeth at the indignity of getting captured after spending so long flying under the enemy’s radar, I tried to think of where I’d gone wrong. How had I been such a successful rebel on Lexxona for so long, only for our operationto be hobbled and me to be taken as soon as the Vandar got involved?
“Fucking raiders,” I muttered to myself.
I huffed out a hot breath and kept my head low as we shuffled through a crowded city that was nothing like my home world. Instead of shops huddled together behind heavy doors to keep out the cold, the market was out in the open. Stalls sprawled across dust-smeared paving stones, with baskets and bushels of wares taking shelter under flimsy, faded awnings.
The scents of the foods weren’t familiar, and neither was the look of them—shocking pink fruits spiked with green barbs and scaly purple pelts that glimmered iridescent in the sun. Where were we?
I had no clue how long I’d been on the spaceship I’d been shoved off, and since I was now certain my heavy head and thick tongue was because of being drugged, I could have been unconscious for hours or even days. There was no way to tell where this planet was or how far it was from Lexxona. All I knew for certain was that it wasn’t Lexxona, and it was the kind of place where shackled prisoners didn’t warrant a second look.
I glanced up as I was led through a doorway and caught sight of flags. My stomach lurched. Red Imperial flags.
So, wherever we were, it was controlled by the Zagrath. The very fuckers I’d been working to undermine for as long as they’d been coming to my planet. Despite the heat, icy fear made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
Did they know about me? Did they know about our femalerebel group on Lexxona? Panic seized me, making my heart race. Had they taken more of my friends?
I craned my neck, but there were only masked Zagrath guards behind me. A sigh of relief escaped my lips. They had gotten no one else but me. Well, aside from the Vandar in front of me.
I allowed myself to be led down narrow hallways with ceilings that seemed to get lower and lower as the surrounding air got cooler. We were being led somewhere underground, which couldn’t be good. I tugged at the chains encasing my wrists, but they barely budged. There would be no escaping until I was at least free from the shackles.
When we stopped, I peered around the hunched Vandar at the barred door the Zagrath were opening. There was no mistaking that the room beyond was a cell, and one with nothing but a rusty bench attached to the stone wall.
Before I could plan a way to not get tossed into the cell, the Vandar in front of me was unchained and shoved inside. My chains fell to the ground moments before I was also pushed inside, and my limbs remained slow to react. I stumbled forward, only catching myself by slamming into the Vandar who’d turned around.
He caught me by the shoulders, his firm grip keeping me upright even as he swayed. He stared down as I stared up, and recognition slammed into me.
“You.” I couldn’t keep the annoyance from my voice. “You’re the Vandar who grabbed me when we tried to rescue Jasmine.”
His hands dropped from my shoulders, and he rubbed his wrists. “I’m also the Vandar who saved you.”
Saved me? I fought the urge to laugh out loud. I’d never gotten caught before the Vandar had tried to save me.
Behind us, the cell door slammed, and the lock clicked, as the Zagrath stomped out and left us alone.
I swung my gaze around the shadow-drenched round room, a single grate high on one wall allowing meager scraps of light. “You call this saved?”
