I allowed myself a sigh as Skye smiled at me. We might have made a miscalculation, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Thecircle of people who knew about our presence remained small, which meant the chances of being caught were also low.
As Athena looped her arms through ours, keeping one of us on each side, a group of people emerged from the wings with paper bags in hand.
“Breakfast has arrived!” A tiny woman with lavender hair chirped as she held up a bag. Then her smile slipped along with the bag, which landed on the floor with a thunk. “What thetvekis a Vandar raider doing here?”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Skye
Ieyed the woman who appeared not to be human. “You know about the Vandar?”
Her enormous, luminous eyes fluttered iridescent eyelashes at me, the dark pupils horizontal slits instead of circles. “I do. The Vandar liberated my planet when I was a child.”
Kolt took a step closer to her, his expression eager. “Then you are not from this world?”
She slid her gaze to him and smiled. “From Gollun Prime? No. But I ended up coming here after leaving my planet to find more opportunities.”
“And you came to a place controlled by the Zagrath?” I triedto keep surprise out of my voice, but it seemed like bad luck to go from a liberated planet to an Imperial one.
“We weren’t always under Imperial control,” Athena said as she walked gracefully to stand by the tiny female. “Vallia arrived when we were a free city. Kashara used to be a place where the arts flourished.”
“Then the Zagrath arrived,” Kolt said, a dangerous current running beneath his words.
“The Zagrath arrived,” Vallia said. “Everything changed. Suddenly, there were rules about what could be performed and even what could be said.”
“No more political satire,” grumbled Hal.
Athena looped an arm around Vallia’s shoulders. “Nothing that could be considered criticism.”
“All transformative art is criticism!” Hal threw his arms in the air and then deflated.
“But now you’re here.” Vallia tipped her face to meet Kolt’s eyes. “If the Vandar are here, that means the Zagrath don’t stand a chance.”
I watched a multitude of emotions flit across Kolt’s face—sadness, confusion, anger—until he finally settled on regretful. “I am only one Vandar.”
Vallia laughed, the sound high and melodic. “But one Vandar is enough. The things I’ve seen ‘one Vandar’ do.”
I realized that Kolt still didn’t remember enough about himself or his past to know what she was talking about. Tales of the Vandar’s impressive deeds were as fantastical to him as they were to the rest of the crowd that had gathered.
I stepped in. “He is a Vandar, but he can’t do anything to help unless he—or we—can escape from here.”
“You’re the convicts the guards were searching for,” another woman said, no question in her voice.
There was no sense in trying to hide the truth of it anymore. Either these theatre folk would help us or they would turn us in, but my gut told me they wouldn’t lift a finger to help the Zagrath.
“We are,” I said, lifting my chin. “But we aren’t criminals. We were taken as bait. The Empire wants to use us to draw the Vandar horde into a trap so they can be destroyed.”
Vallia drew herself up to her full, but still diminutive, height. “Well, that’s not happening on my watch.” She winked one eye. “And I’m tougher than I look.”
“She is.” Hal said in a voice that said he’d been on the receiving end of her toughness.
Vallia laughed. “You have to learn to land a punch when you’re small.”
Athena smiled and put her hands on her hips. “It’s not happening on my watch either.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the group, along with fervent nodding.
