Ria blinked. That wasn’t her name.
“Your old commander in the Strike Wing,” Nik said.
“Yes.” Zayn’s blue gaze burned into Ria’s. “And two years ago, I killed her.”
There was a storm inside him.
Zayn could barely breathe and his insides felt like they were swirling around a black hole. He couldn’t pull his gaze off the woman in front him.
A ghost. His ghost.
He heard the others talking, demanding answers. The woman—goddammit, it was Viktoria—was just staring at him with Vik’s familiar grass-green eyes. “Vik, how the hell are you alive?”
“My name is not Viktoria.” She straightened her shoulders. “I’m Ria Dante.”
“No, Viktoria Anders. My commanding officer, my friend.” And something else, something that had shimmered with a promise they had never acted on. Something he’d regretted every day for two years.
“I’ve never been a commander of anything.” As the woman shook her head, her golden hair whipped around her face. Hair the color of Vik’s but much longer. Vik had kept hers short, andsaid that was best when you had to pull a flight helmet on every day.
“Stop lying to me.” The words burst out of him. He’d been through hell thinking she was dead. Now the possibility that she’d been living all this time was tearing his insides to pieces.
“Let’s talk this through, Z.” Dathan stepped between them.
Zayn’s hands balled into fists. “The Wing was in the Devil’s Nebula. We’d been lured there by a distress call from a merchant ship. It was a ruse. Some nebula scum had decided they wanted the technology from our Talons.” He shuddered. “We were ambushed. They took us prisoner.”
Dathan cursed.
Nik spoke up, shock in his voice. “Why the hell didn’t you ever tell us?”
He’d never wanted to talk about it. “I woke up, beaten and bloody, in a cell in the Assassin’s Guild. Two of my fellow pilots were dead beside me. They’d died in the ambush. Vik and another pilot, Theo, were missing.” Zayn rubbed a hand over his face, his stomach feeling so tight he thought he might be sick.
Unable to stop himself, he looked at the woman again. She was riveted by his story, watching him intently. But she was twisting her hands together.
“I found them.” Zayn’s voice cracked. “They were being tortured for information. They needed security codes to access the main computers of the ships. Theo was dead. They’d—” God, they’d practically turned the man’s body inside out as they’d tortured him. “Vik…”
“Was she dead?” Eos asked quietly.
Zayn shook his head, the memories taking over. “They’d tortured her, raped her repeatedly. There was so much blood. They’d chained her down with laser ropes.” One of the best—and most horrifying—methods of confinement. Laser ropes wereextremely painful and virtually impossible to get off without the correct biometrics.
Eos gasped.
Vik or Ria, whatever the hell her name was, was still staring, and he thought he saw something move through those familiar eyes.
“The Assassin’s Guild kill, they don’t rape and torture,” she said.
“I still have scars from their handiwork.” And nightmares. “They were coming back. I tried everything I could to get her free.” Memories simmered under the surface. It was like being there again, the desperation, the terrible knowledge that he couldn’t free her. “She asked me to kill her.”
Zayn, please. Please kill me. I can’t take anymore.
He closed his eyes. “I shot her. Between the eyes. She died in an instant.”
He’d somehow managed to escape, operating on autopilot and uncaring if he survived. He’d found their hijacked Talons, destroyed them, and hitched a ride off Lucifa on a transport ship.
Then he’d come home.
“This Viktoria—” the woman’s voice was hesitant “—was she Pictori?”
“No.” He frowned. “She was Deltan. Born and raised on the Delta V.”
