Page 44 of Veiled Vixen

“What kind of details?”

“He was after a girl,” I say. “Brigit is her name.”

“A princess?” Luck asks.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “An Akeelian girl, Luck.”

He makes a face.

“I know,” I say. “There’s no such thing. But… there is. And she’s one of them.”

I stop then. Trying to figure out if I should tell Luck now or later who the girls are. What they are.

“What was that place?” Luck asks. “The station. What was it called?”

“OK, so here’s where it all goes sideways. So bear with me.”

“I’m listening.”

“The station was Angel Station.” Luck opens his mouth to protest, but I put up a hand. “Just let me talk. Let me tell the story and then you can ask questions. OK? Because there’s a lot to unpack here.”

He leans back against the wall behind him, folds his arms across his chest, and shrugs. “Fine. Talk.”

So I do. I tell him about how Tray lied to me. About how I dragged the truth out of him and agreed to help him find Brigit. “But,” I say, “I only did it because we were in this time warp inside the spin node, Luck. No time was passing out here. And then we found her, and Tray wanted to go inside to explain that he’s going to set her free now, but I… I wanted to go in too. Just to see if it was real, you know. I was still very suspicious of him. And then he got lost trying to come in after me because Brigit had broken the world inside the virtual, and it took forever for him to find us—in our time, at least. Only a couple hours on the outside. But inside it had been years in virtual time. And so when Tray finally arrived, Brigit and I were friends.”

Luck raises an eyebrow. “Friends?”

“I didn’t touch her,” I say, holding up my hands. “I swear to the sun. At least, not before Tray…”

“Tray what?”

“Well… he was very happy to see her. And she was very happy to see him. So they… you know. And I just did my thing. But then…” I sigh. “Yeah. We… um… we were all together.”

“Inside the virtual.”

I nod. “But then… you know… the only thing waiting for us out here was war. So Tray was all… ‘Time is so different. We could stay here for a while.’”

“So you stayed. With them.”

I nod.

“And then what?” He is pissed. He’s just holding it in.

“And then…” I sigh and look around the ship, picturing our perfect virtual world. “I had been keeping track of time. Because I knew Tray wouldn’t. And we realized that four days had gone by in the real—”

“Four. Fucking. Days?” Luck growls. “That’s like—”

“That’s thousands of years in virtual time.”

“How is that possible?”

I shrug with my hands. “I don’t know, Luck. Well, I kinda do. It was a trap. She was a trap. Tray was a trap. To get me to Veila. And then we came out of the virtual, and…” I skip the part where Tray and I had sex alone as we were waiting for Brigit to thaw out. Because this is not the time to explain that. “And then Veila was there and Tray was spitting out the coordinates for the rendezvous point for Booty, and… and then Veila… I don’t know. I don’t really remember anything after that. Vague recollection of torture. Possibly some sex?”

“Possibly?”

“It’s pretty foggy. And then I remember being put into a cryopod. I think Tray made some kind of deal to get me out of there. I kinda remember that. But…” I shake my head. “Something must’ve happened. Because I woke up here. And Veila was the one who did that.”

Luck is silent for a few moments. Then he throws his head back and laughs.