Page 41 of Veiled Vixen

“You’re pregnant, Nyleena. You should be somewhere safe.”

“Am I in danger?” she asks, looking around innocently.

“From me? No. But… you know, you should be careful.”

“We’re in the docking bay, Valor. Lady Luck is literally our headquarters. I’m as safe as I can be. But I do appreciate your concern.” She squints her eyes. “If that’s what it was.”

“What else would it be?”

“I dunno. Fishing for information?”

“For who?”

“Veila? You know. Your soulmate?”

“Look, she’s moved on, OK? She’s not even interested in me. She’s fucking pregnant too, did you guys know that?”

Nyleena frowns. “That’s not possible. She’s not even silver.”

“Well, she is. She put herself inside a medial scanner and showed me a live feed of the babies under the guidance of the Cyborg Master. So… I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Why are you down here?”

“To see Luck. Why else? For fuck’s sake. He’s my partner. He’s been my partner for as long as I can remember.”

She squints her eyes at me. “Hmm. Well, he wasn’t your partner when you left. That was Tray. See, this is why we’re confused.”

“Tray is…” But I don’t have a good response to that. Because Tray and I have lived lifetimes together in the virtual. We spent more time together than I ever did with Luck. Why did I ever ask to go inside that stupid virtual? It fucked everything up. “Tray is different.”

“Different how?”

“I’m not discussing it with you, Nyleena. It’s fucking personal, OK? If Luck wants to know the whole story, he can come hear it from me himself.”

“Well, I have a problem with that.”

“Why?” I say, pressing two fingers up to my temple. In addition to my tight chest and painful breathing, my head is now pounding.

“Because he trusted Crux and Serpint and they turned on him.”

For several seconds that sentence makes absolutely no sense. I cannot even fathom a scenario where what Nyleena just said is possible. “What do you mean, turned on him?”

“You saw the station on your way down.”

“OK. Yeah. It was dark and shit’s fucked up. People are fighting more than usual. But that was part of the plan.”

“You know what wasn’t part of the plan, Valor?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“Being gone six weeks. Six. Fucking. Weeks. This isn’t our plan anymore. Do you understand that? Those people out there? This is all real to them. Ninety-five hundred deaths in the past two weeks alone.”

“What? Veila did this?”

“Veila?” Nyleena huffs. “Veila isn’t in charge of this war. We are. Me, and Luck, and Crux, and Jimmy, and Serpint, and Lyra, and Delphi. We did this, Valor.”

She is very obviously pissed off at this point. Her face is flushed red. Her little ferocious fists are balled up, and her spine is straight and rigid.

“It was part of the plan.”