‘We’re not, actually,” Cleo announced.“All you have to do is tell us where you’ve hidden them and we’ll let you leave Titan.Alive.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
They must, to make an offer like that.She knew very well what was waiting for her as soon as she exited Titan’s air space.
Belladonna and whatever small armada they controlled would launch a missile to destroy her ship.Forget making it to her next destination; she’d be dead before she got even a day out from the station.
“Sometimes,” Cleo admitted.
“Do you really hate me this much?”Gus demanded with a look at Mars.
It had been a long time since the forty-three held the power to hurt her, but she’d be lying if she said this didn’t sting.
Cleo and Mars seemed to have forgotten just who it was who’d opened their cages that fateful night so long ago.Not to mention who’d risked their life to distract Esara long enough for someone to get the ship codes needed for escape.
Ryan and Pallas may have done the heavy lifting, but Gus had risked just as much.
And this was their thanks.
“Hate?”Cleo’s voice held the faint echo of surprise as she shook her head.“No.I’m not capable of such things anymore.You know that.You were there the night the capacity for emotion was stripped from me.”
Gus’s hood hid her tiny flinch.The part she’d played in Cleo’s transformation was something that would always haunt her.Perhaps more than anything else she’d witnessed at Esara’s side.
She sometimes still had nightmares about what the Osiri had done to Cleo.He’d taken a sweet, timid girl and turned her into an emotionless machine who drained the life from those around her by her simple presence.
Cleo had eventually gotten better about controlling that aspect of her ability, but she’d never returned to the girl she’d once been.
And, for that, Gus would always be sorry.
“The forty-three don’t hold grudges for what happened in the camps,” Gus forced herself to say.
That was their rule.One of the first they made upon escape.A way of breaking with the past to forge a new future.
“Did I say anything about blame?”Cleo asked.
Oddly enough, she hadn’t.
“Your answer, Hermit,” Cleo demanded.“Will you turn over the male and the child?”
“You know I won’t.”
Gus had never deceived herself into believing she was the honorable sort.Her morals had always been questionable, and her sense of right and wrong almost nonexistent.She’d never be the sort to jump onto a burning skiff to rescue a pair of children or put herself between a monster and its intended victim.
Her desire to live was too strong and her sense of empathy too weak.
But even she had lines she wouldn’t cross.Handing Caius and Anandra over wasn’t going to happen.
Not because it was right.But because it wouldn’t matter one way or another.Cleo wasn’t going to let her go.She could see it in the other woman’s emotionless eyes.Cleo had decided Gus was dead weight to be cut.Nothing on her end would change that, so she might as well not try.
Cleo inclined her head with a slow blink of her eyes.“We do.”
Then why—
“You’re bait,” Cleo announced, her lips curving in an unnatural smile.
With a jolt, Gus’s gaze darted to the tree line.Just in time to watch Caius push into view, his face an impassive mask as he met her eyes.
“No,” Gus whispered, her stomach dropping.
