“You won’t get away!” Aurelius roared, giving chase. I was grateful for the narrow corridors, which were preventing him from opening out his wings.
At an intersection, Mort shoved the gurney so it zipped along under its own steam. He whirled around and slid a blinking disc across a brightly colored panel set in the wall off to the side. A siren blared and lights flashed, a blast door descending with an almighty thud. It was enough to slow Aurelius down, and seemed to be isolated to this intersection only, but it wouldn’t keep the rebel coldblood at bay for long.
“Emergency override!” Mort whooped, flashing me a grin as he grasped the handles of the gurney again and heaved it onward, toward the escape pods.
“Do you really know where these pods are?” Navan asked, sounding worried. It was the same question I’d wanted to ask, but my voice had yet to come back. I’d had enough of being frozen now. I wanted the rest of me to hurry up and get back to normal, before it ended up killing us. I felt helpless, being pushed while Navan and Mort ran for their lives, dragging me along with them.
Mort nodded. “You bet your sweet ass I do. I’ve done about twenty practice runs of this route. I had to tell some guards I was ‘jogging’ when they caught me last night. Can you believe it? Me, jogging?” He cackled to himself, though he was doing a decent job of jogging right now.
We turned a sharp corner way too fast, and my body shifted toward the far side of the gurney, unable to stay centered. I fought with my numb hands, trying to get them to hold the gurney edges, but my body was still too stiff to move properly, nothing cooperating the way it was supposed to. I could barely get my thumb to wiggle, let alone my whole hand to grip. The gurney tipped, sending me crashing to the floor in an ungainly heap.
“Riley!” Navan yelped, skidding to a halt as he hurried back up the corridor to help me.
“Sorry about that,” Mort muttered, helping Navan get me back on the gurney.
Navan clutched Nova with one arm as he lifted me up with the other. My gaze connected with Nova’s, her cute face making my heart ache. She’d stopped crying, even without the sweetblood, and was smiling down at me for some inexplicable baby reason, reaching out her chubby little arms for me. I wanted to reach back for her, but my arms wouldn’t function. It felt like they’d gone to sleep, though the pins-and-needles of their reawakening was prickling its way through my nervous system.
I wanted to tell Mort and Navan to take Nova and run, while they still had the chance, but my mouth was barely working. I could open it partway, but no sounds were willing to come out. Meanwhile, they were struggling to get me back onto the gurney, which kept tipping and wobbling every time they tried to put me back on. Clearly, there was something the matter with it that had nothing to do with Mort taking a corner too fast. I tried to make a comment about always getting the shopping cart with the wonky wheel, desperate to force my voice into working again, but only a mumble came out.
“This is useless. Here, you take her,” Navan said, handing Nova to Mort. He dipped and picked me up in a bridal carry, throwing my arms around his neck since I couldn’t do it for myself. “All right, shifter, lead the way to these pods.”
“This way, grayskin.”
Hurtling down endless corridors, we arrived at a long, straight stretch of hallway that led directly to ten large glass portholes fixed into the wall. On closer inspection, I saw that they were doors opening onto the escape pods. Glancing over Navan’s shoulder and peering up the adjoining corridor, I saw a figure round the corner at the very far end. Aurelius was catching up with us, and he wasn’t alone.
“He’s gaining,” I whispered. Immediately, Navan and Mort shot forward, sprinting for the pods. We didn’t have any weapons with us, nor did any of us have the elixir running in our veins. Navan had fought him before and won, but now Aurelius was immortal, able to heal instantly—the playing field wasn’t level anymore.
Still, I was determined to do whatever it took to protect Nova. I would do anything to save her, even if we had to go with one of Mort’s previously outlandish ideas and send her out into space on a rapid trajectory, Moses-style, with a coded beacon attached so someone would easily find her—someone who wasn’t Ezra or Aurelius.
“Put me down,” I said. Navan set me down on the ground but held tight to me as I willed my body to regain feeling, urging it to stand on its own two feet. Satisfied that I wasn’t going to collapse, Navan moved his arm away, letting me lean against the wall for support.
Meanwhile, Mort slid his blinking device over the panel of the escape pod, the doorway opening with agonizing slowness. In the distance, Aurelius’s footsteps were getting closer, the percussion of boots on the metal walkway prompting my heart to thunder in my chest, beating out its own frantic rhythm.
“These freaking overrides,” Mort muttered, his tone nervous.
“What’s the matter?” Navan ducked down to assist, while Mort handed Nova up to me. I took her gratefully, leaning in to smell the indescribably delicious scent of her tufty hair. Right now, she was the only thing in the universe worth saving. In that moment, believing it to be true, I knew I’d become a real mother, willing to give everything for the life of my daughter.
“There are too many security overrides on the outer panel,” Mort explained rapidly as Aurelius and his soldiers came around the corner, moving with menacing stealth. “There’s no way we can safely detach the pod from the station before One-Winged Willy gets here.”
“I can help with the overrides. I’ve worked with this kind before. They should be easy enough,” Navan said.
“Easy, yes, but we’ve run out of time, and they all need to be reprogrammed from the outside.” Mort sighed. “There’s an instant-release lever, but we’d never be able to push it down and get into the pod in time, before it detached.”
“Forget the overrides out here. We can just bypass them from the interior.”
I nodded. “Navan’s right, we can bypass them. Come on, we’ve got to try everything. Nova needs us to get this pod out of here,” I urged him through gritted teeth, clutching Nova tighter. I wasn’t giving her up. Not now, not ever.
“Okay, well, I guess we’ll have to buy ourselves some time by barricading ourselves in and getting to work on the overrides from the inside, then. You sure you can bypass the controls and override them from inside?” Mort asked.
Navan nodded.
“Good, well, let’s get on with it, then!” He threw the bag of sweetblood and the emergency device into the pod, before ushering Navan, Nova, and me in after them, flashing a glance up the corridor to Aurelius and his men, who’d just broken into a run.
Turning back toward us, he lingered on the threshold of the pod, a sad smile on his face. “Tell her all about Uncle Mort, would you? And… make me out to be a better person than I was, okay?”
Stepping back, he slammed the door of the escape pod shut and yanked down hard on the instant-release lever. Through the circular window, he grinned back at us, pressing his fleshy palm to the glass as machinery hissed, the pod detaching. As the docking locks released, he shuffled back a few steps and saluted, tears falling from his eyes. Nova had fallen silent, her gaze fixated on the shifter in the window.
The twisting metal iris that covered the circular gap from which the pod retracted, sealing it from the inhospitable vacuum of outer space, began to slowly close on the image of Aurelius striding up behind Mort, his evil hands reaching out. Mort kept his eyes on us, his hand still raised in a salute. A resigned expression fell across his face, as though he knew it was fruitless to fight back. Tears filled my eyes, my gaze holding his—I wouldn’t let him be alone in his final moments. I wanted him to know how much we cared. Nova raised her little hand, her face contorting in a cry of distress that pierced through to the very depths of my soul. Somehow, she knew.
The last thing I saw was Aurelius gripping Mort’s throat until the knuckles turned white, the shifter’s arm falling limp at his side… before the iris closed on our dear friend.
r />
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Will they come for us?” I whispered, staring listlessly at the porthole door.
Navan shook his head. “From what Mort was telling me this morning, these pods are shrouded in a stealth cloak. They can’t be picked up on scanners unless you trigger the distress beacon, which we haven’t, and won’t until we want to be found. They won’t follow us. They’ll be too busy to waste their time and effort.”
Tears trickled down my cheeks. “I don’t think I ever want us to be found.”
“I know, my love, I know,” he said, moving over to where I sat, tucked away at the back of the pod, unable to take my eyes off the window where Mort had been standing. Just hearing Navan say his name reopened the very fresh wound all over again.
“Aurelius… he killed Mort,” I gasped, struggling for breath. “Mort gave his life for Nova. The most selfish, stubborn, rude, generous, wonderful shifter in the universe gave his life for her, so she could make it out of there.”
Navan smiled sadly, pulling me closer. “I think Nova has changed all of us.”
I nestled into Navan’s chest, still clutching Nova to my side, and sobbed into his shirt. “I just didn’t want him to die… I know we had our issues, but… I didn’t want him to die. He was supposed to come with us. He was supposed to see her grow up and live her life. He was supposed to teach her all the rude words, and say inappropriate things, so I could tell him off for doing it… I can see it all, up here in my head, but I… I know it’s never going to happen now.” I hiccupped, wiping my tears on Navan. “How can that be? How can I see something so vividly, and know it’s never going to be a reality?” I thought of the frightening visions I’d had but reasoned they didn’t count. Nothing that revolved around Ezra mattered to me.
“All we can do is make sure she doesn’t forget him,” Navan said softly, smoothing back my hair. “All we can do is tell her stories of him, to keep his memory alive. Not only for her, but for us, too.”
Letting the tears flow, comforted by the hum of the pod engines, Navan’s strong arms around me, and Nova’s snuffling, I cuddled closer to my husband and tried to think of better days to come. We’d escaped the space station and were moving far away from the volatile landscape of Vysanthe and its imminent war. To be honest, I wasn’t sure where we went from here. Did we go back to Earth and protect it from future alien hordes? Did we help the queens out of their predicament? Did we try to rid the universe of this immortal army we’d unwillingly created? Somehow, I felt dutybound to the latter, even though it was the most impossible.
“I’m just going to put her to bed,” I said, shuffling away from Navan’s embrace to carry Nova over to one of the alcoves in the far wall. Grabbing some blankets, I stuffed them in first, laying her down on top of the soft fabric and tucking another around her. Leaning in, I kissed her plump, rosy cheek, watching her for a moment as she drifted away into the land of nod. My eyes still itched from the tears, my heart in tatters, but there she was, my beacon of hope, sleeping through all the terror and fear and sadness without a care in the world. What I wouldn’t have given to be her, in that moment.
As I turned back to Navan, my stomach sank. He was staring out of the window, a look of horror on his face. “What… What is it?” I followed the direction of his gaze and understood. The pod was creeping toward Vysanthe’s orbit, edging through the atmosphere, moving closer to the planet’s surface instead of away from it. It was traveling at speed, flecks of burning dust dancing off the outer shell. “Why are we headed back toward the planet?” My throat constricted, my lungs tightening with fear.
Navan shook his head, jumping to action. “I don’t know. I’m going to see if I can turn us around.” He hurried over to the control panel, taking the emergency device that Mort had thrown into the pod and swiping it over the scanner. It bleeped reluctantly, a tired, drained sound. Panic was etched on Navan’s face as he worked, making me more nervous by the second.
“Can you do anything?”
“I think there’s a problem with the structural integrity. It can still function, but it can’t handle the outside pressure—there are safeguards in place for when this kind of thing happens. I could try to override them, but the pod might break apart,” he replied. “It’s programmed to seek out the closest planet if there’s a problem, but it should stop descending once we’re properly inside Vysanthe’s atmosphere.”
I stared at him, aghast. “So we’re stuck here?”
“I’ll land us somewhere safe, get the hull fixed, and get us back in the air. I promised I’d get you both out of this, and I meant it,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion.
“Here we are again,” I whispered, wandering over to the porthole door and staring down at the world below. We were getting closer to the surface with every minute that passed, and soon it was easy to make out familiar buildings, and the wreckage of Brisha’s Northern territories. It looked like Mort had been right about Ezra launching the first strike; there were rebel ships in the air everywhere, though they couldn’t pick us up on their scanners. Warships fired down on what remained of Brisha’s side, black smoke pluming upward, fires crackling as they consumed everything in sight.
Above what was left of Nessun, a cluster of fighters surged forward, their blasters pounding down upon the beautiful alchemy lab that Bashrik had built for Brisha. The glass and crystal shattered in an instant. To be honest, I was surprised it was still standing after the last onslaught, though perhaps Gianne had seen the merit of keeping it in one piece. Ezra had no such qualms about crushing the lab to smithereens, the gunships firing and firing until there was nothing left but a shimmering dust, ablaze with licking flames.
Suddenly, the pod curved upward, as Navan was gaining some control over the engines. It soared higher, giving us a better view of the landscape, the border between North and South coming into view. Navan was taking us far away from the fighting, to find a quiet spot where we could fix our pod and get the hell out of here, but something made me pause.
“Stop,” I said, gazing through the glass.
“What’s the matter?”
I squinted into the distance. There was something odd happening high above the border—fiercely bright, blinding lights shone in a steady pattern, blinking off and on, traveling miles across the landscape. They were shining from Gianne’s side, aimed directly at the palace of Nessun. If I could see them from where we were, so far from the border, I was certain Brisha could too. It was a light pattern we’d used ourselves, when we’d first landed on Brisha’s turf a lifetime ago—the we-come-in-peace-don’t-shoot-at-us pattern.
“There—do you see that?” I wasn’t sure if it was my mind playing tricks on me.
Navan wandered over to where I stood, leaving the pod hovering in the air. “No way…”
“What?”
“It’s an invitation. Gianne is inviting Brisha to take refuge on her side of Vysanthe,” he explained in disbelief, his eyes wide.
“A trick?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. She doesn’t stand to gain anything from losing her sister right now. For once, they need each other, and I’m guessing they’ve realized they’re going to have to work together to fight the rebels off. They might not know about the successful elixir yet, but they will.”
A few moments later, a small fleet of Brisha’s ships emerged from the desolation of Nessun, zooming toward the border and breezing through it to join Gianne in the South. It really did look like they were uniting against the rebels, fighting for a common cause. It wouldn’t last if they won, I supposed, but winning seemed very unlikely. After all, it was the two sisters versus the rebels now—the war that all of this had been leading to—but only one side had an immortal army.
We landed on a sheet of thick ice, Navan setting the pod down in the shadow of a nearby mountain. We were far enough away from the battle, but I could still hear the vibrations of the blasters rippling beneath the earth. Clearly, they weren’t content to l
eave the North alone until they’d razed every scrap of the main city to the ground. Maybe they’d move on, destroying every town and village in sight, or maybe they’d get bored and tail both sisters back over the border into the South. Only time would tell, but I hoped we’d be long gone by then.
I stayed in the pod while Navan took a small toolbox and headed outside into the bitter cold to fix whatever was wrong with the hull of the pod. Standing next to Nova, who was sleeping soundly, I thought of every tiny step that had brought us to this point. We’d tried to keep the queens from discovering Earth and the rebels. We’d tried to stop all three factions from discovering the secret to the immortality elixir. And yet here we were, listening to the distant boom of the war we’d, in a roundabout way, tried to prevent.
Who was going to win this one? Ezra and Aurelius would likely be ruling Vysanthe in no time, with their factions splitting along the way, just as Gianne’s and Brisha’s had. There couldn’t be two people in charge—history had proven that. And, with both Ezra and Aurelius being immortal, there was no point in secretly hoping that the two of them might destroy each other.
“All fixed. It was a bit of faulty wiring,” Navan said, stepping back into the warmth of the pod and closing the door. “I ran some diagnostics, and we’re good to go.”
“You sure we’re not going to break apart in space?” I smiled, attempting levity and failing miserably.
“I wouldn’t take this pod out there if I thought there was any chance of that,” he assured me, coming over and kissing me gently on the lips. It felt like coming home, having his arms around me.
I sighed, nuzzling his neck. “Take us someplace safe.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me again.
Two minutes later, we were back in the air, the pod hurtling toward Vysanthe’s atmosphere and the vastness of space that lay beyond. Behind us, I could make out the flash and bang of artillery, but I turned my gaze forward instead. We were leaving Vysanthe once again, and I wondered if this might be the very last time. Would I ever see this icy, bitter, cruel world again? I really freaking hoped not, though a shiver of doubt crept through my bones. I might not see the planet again, but would I see the immortal coldbloods, once they’d tired of their eternal utopia? With Ezra and Aurelius in charge, it seemed upsettingly likely.