“What is she?” the coldblood named Kiel asked, stepping closer to inspect me.
“Unknown species; I never thought to ask,” Navan said. “A weak, feeble little race, way off in the Severn Quarter. I could have wiped them all out with my bare hands—they break so easily, not much use to anyone. Couldn’t resist stealing this one away, though. I mean, could you?” I felt a little sick, hearing Navan speak like that about me, despite knowing he had to.
It seemed to please Kiel and the other guards, who laughed raucously. The guard holding me even brushed his hand across the curve of my neck, making me shudder. I was already shivering from the cold, but that creature’s touch added to it.
“How does she taste?” the guard asked.
Navan shrugged. “Not too good. Still, she’s a fun thing to have around.”
Another splinter of vile laughter echoed down the hallway. All I could do was stand there and listen, helpless to stand up for myself.
“Well, you’d both better come in here then,” Kiel said, and the two guards roughly shoved us both into the room, which seemed to be hewn from the cave itself.
Inside, there was a desk and two chairs and not much else, save for the rack of weapons that hung from the ceiling. The walls dripped, and the bitter cold began to seep into my bones, my body going into spasms. Navan flashed me a look of apology, but I didn’t respond, not wanting to give myself away.
“Do you think you could have some blankets brought? My slave isn’t used to the cold,” Navan said.
“What do you think this is, a hotel?” Kiel replied.
“She’ll die if you don’t, and I’m not finished with her yet,” Navan retorted.
Kiel sighed. “Fine,” he muttered, poking his head back out of the interrogation room to ask a passing guard to bring blankets.
In that brief second of time, Navan reached over and took my hand in his, lifting it to his lips for one daring kiss. It was a bold move that could have gotten us into a lot of trouble, but the small act warmed me. It steeled me against what was to come, knowing I had Navan by my side in all of this.
“You sure you’re an Idrax?” Kiel asked, turning back to the room.
Navan smiled coldly. “Last time I checked.”
Kiel pulled a face. “I’ve never known an Idrax to show sympathy to anyone, let alone a feeble specimen like this… however pretty it might be,” he sneered. I sucked in a breath at the suspicion burning in Kiel’s eyes. Clearly, the queen had told him not to trust Navan, despite his high status.
“Can we just get on with this?” Navan said tersely.
Kiel’s mood shifted in an instant. Grabbing a golden blade from the rack of weapons, he stormed toward Navan and shoved him into one of the chairs, resting the sharp edge against his neck. I started forward, but a look from Navan held me back. The blade crackled and pulsed, Navan’s eyes going wide as a bolt flew from the weapon and into his skin. His fingers curled over the armrests of the chair.
“Who are you?” Kiel demanded.
“Navan Idrax,” Navan replied, his voice thick with pain.
A second bolt flashed from the blade. “Why are you here?” Kiel asked.
“I have information… information about the rebels… I need to tell the queen.”
“Who are the people on your ship?”
“Rebels who have… come over to my side. I… convinced them to join me. They… wish to tell the… queen everything. They… want to… tell her… where the rebel base… is.”
“What happened to Jethro and Ianthan Plexus?” Kiel ventured, sending another bolt through Navan’s skin.
“They… betrayed the… crown!” he yelled, forcing the story from his lips. “They… wanted to… tell Queen Brisha… all of Queen Gianne’s… secrets. They wanted… to mount a… rebellion. They wanted… to get the… rebels to… fight for Queen Brisha. I… stopped them.”
“Are you sure you aren’t the traitor?” Kiel asked, reaching up to the rack of weapons for a strange, claw-like device.
“I’m sure!” Navan grated out.
“Are you positive about that?” Kiel smirked coldly before fixing the device into a slot in Navan’s chair and adjusting it so that it was against Navan’s chest, the sharp edges touching his flesh. The center whirred, a white glow emanating outward. Navan roared, his fangs flashing as he struggled to break free of the device.
“I am… no traitor!” he hissed, and every jolt he took, I felt. I could hardly bear to look at him.
Kiel grimaced. “We shall see,” he said, before mercifully leaving the room. Though, somehow, I didn’t get the sense that he was convinced by Navan’s tale.
Watching the door intently, I could hardly believe he had gone, but here we were, Navan and I, alone again. I ran over to him, but Navan forcibly raised a hand to stop me. As my skin brushed his, I felt a bristle of electricity snap between our bodies.
“It… will… hurt you,” he said, his chest heaving with the exertion of fighting against the device that Kiel had left in place. The glow had ebbed slightly, but I could see it was still causing him pain.
“Dammit, I want to get this thing off you!” I said, but he raised his hand again, pushing me away.
“No. Just… stand back,” he snapped. I staggered back, obeying his request even though it went against my every instinct. He then drew in a deep breath as if to calm himself, his eyes settling on me. “Just keep it together,” he said in a softer voice. “The queen is about to arrive.”
Chapter Seventeen
Barely a minute later, the door opened again and three coldbloods entered.
The first was a thin-framed, wizened coldblood with half a wing hanging from his shoulder-blade and milky eyes that barely seemed to see anything. The second breezed in behind him, her elegant, ruby-tipped wings tucked neatly behind her back. I recognized the vivid copper hair and almost-silver gaze in an instant. Queen Gianne had come to interrogate Navan herself.
My heart beat faster as she stopped in front of him. “Navan Idrax,” she announced, her intense gaze flashing to me. “And what are you?” Her nose wrinkled, as though she’d smelled something unpleasant.
“My… slave… Your Highness,” Navan replied, still straining against the pain from the torture device.
Queen Gianne turned to Kiel. “Turn that thing off,” she ordered.
Kiel jumped to action, pressing a button on the device, and Navan immediately relaxed. “Now then, that’s better, isn’t it?” she said silkily, taking the seat opposite Navan.
“You are too kind, Your Highness,” Navan replied, getting his breath back.
She laughed, the sound strangely pleasant. “Now, everyone keeps telling me you’ve got a hell of a story, and I for one am dying to hear it,” she said, her eyes fixed on his, to the point where it began to make me feel uncomfortable.
With a heavy sigh, Navan told his story again, including Jethro and Ianthan’s betrayal, and how he discovered the rebel outpost.
All the while, I watched the shifting expressions on Queen Gianne’s face. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. One moment, there was a smile upon her lips. The next, a bitter scowl. Although, it didn’t always fit with the story. No, her expressions were on a journey entirely separate from the words Navan was speaking. However, throughout it all, there was fascination in her eyes, and she didn’t speak until Navan was finished recounting his tale.
When he was done, the wizened old coldblood who had entered the interrogation room with the queen leaned down to whisper something in her ear. It was the first time I had seen him move or speak since they arrived. In fact, I had almost forgotten he was there, he blended so well into the background.
Queen Gianne nodded at whatever the wizened coldblood had said to her. “Thank you, Aurelius,” she said softly, before turning to Navan. “And thank you, Navan Idrax,” she said, standing with a bone-grating scrape of the chair. Without saying another word, she walked toward the door, Kiel hurrying after her, a confused look on his pugna
cious face. This Aurelius guy didn’t move a muscle, standing like a statue.
“Your Highness, what shall I do with him?” Kiel called after her, prompting her to pause on the threshold of the room, turning to look over her shoulder with a dramatic swish of her long copper locks.
“Alas, I hate to see such potential go to waste,” she sighed, her silver eyes widening. “But, on this occasion, it must be done. Despite promising beginnings, enviable rank, and a father whom I would trust with my life, it would appear the apple has fallen woefully far from the tree... I can tolerate many things, Navan Idrax, but I can’t tolerate lies. You’ve left me with no choice, as much as it pains me to see you destroyed—to have such a specimen as yourself put down, no better than an icehound. Such a shame.”
Shock seized my muscles, and before I could even react, Kiel drew parallel to Navan with supernatural speed. He pressed the tip of a blade to Navan’s temple, the sharp point nestling just to the side of his slate eyes. I cried out and jolted forward to try to stop him, but one sharp blow from Kiel sent me sprawling to the floor like a ragdoll.
His weapon thrummed with energy, like the rest of the Vysanthean weapons seemed to. Placing his palm on the butt of the knife, Kiel braced his shoulders, ready to push the blade through the skin and bone of Navan’s temple.
Panic hit me like a tidal wave as I realized that would be it. As soon as the blade pushed through his skull, I would lose Navan, and I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out my life would be ended soon after that. How long could I possibly last, alone on this planet, where even butterflies wanted to kill you? This couldn’t be happening. I wasn’t ready to die. There were still a thousand and one things I had to do, most important of which was protecting the human race. What would happen to Earth if Navan and I were killed? What would happen to Angie, Lauren, Jean, Roger…
My brain froze as Kiel drew his hand back, preparing for the killing blow—but just as he was about to drive his weapon down, Queen Gianne raised her hand and called out, her voice splintering through the tense atmosphere.
“Wait!” she said. Kiel brought his hand up short, his whole arm shaking with the exertion it took to stop himself, mid-momentum.
As I watched her walk over to Navan, I thought my lungs might burst out of my chest. In the chaos, I had forgotten how to breathe, my cheeks reddening, my eyes bulging. Relief crashed over me, the adrenaline leaving my system in one hurried rush, leaving me trembling. He was safe… for now.
Queen Gianne approached Navan, examining him with a birdlike curiosity, her striking eyes looking over him as though he were an exhibit in a museum. Her head tilted this way and that upon her slender neck, her long fingers tapping at the dark red pillow of her bottom lip. It wasn’t an appropriate time to go to Navan, I knew, and so I held back, once again going against every instinct I had. Instead, I focused on Queen Gianne, despising her and loving her in equal measure, for halting Navan’s execution.
“Looks like you’ve passed my little test, Navan,” she chirped, her voice oddly cheerful. “I had to see if you were telling the truth. Nothing brings honesty out of a coldblood like a near-death experience, but it would seem there was no other tale to come trickling out of you.”
“Perhaps you ought to question him again, Your Highness, just to be sure?” the half-winged advisor, Aurelius, said quietly, his raspy voice barely making it across to where the queen stood.
She shook her head, visibly irritated by his question. “Not now, Aurelius. Navan Idrax has proven himself worthy today, and that is all there is to it. If I feel like interrogating him again, one day in the future, then I will.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.” Aurelius nodded, backing off.
“Besides,” Queen Gianne said, with a smile, “I think Navan might prove very useful in our fight against the rebels, given what he knows about them and their outpost. Plus, he must be very charming, to have persuaded so many to his way of thinking…” She stroked a fingertip down the side of his cheekbone, and I flinched at the contact, wanting to smack her hand away.
“I will tell you all I can, Your Highness,” Navan replied, his face giving nothing away.
“Yes, perhaps I will make you my advisor on the subject,” she said, a strange smile curving up the corners of her lips. Nearby, Aurelius shook his head. Clearly, he wasn’t into the idea of Navan stepping into his shoes. “Oh, and I do hope you know where the main rebel base is, somewhere in that pretty little head of yours, considering the fate of your comrades is still uncertain. I may not keep them around long enough to gather anything useful,” she added, tapping Navan’s temple precisely where the blade had been about to pierce.
“They are your loyal servants, Your Highness,” Navan assured her, a pleading note in his voice. I understood why. If any of the Asterope crew were killed, Orion’s suspicions would likely be aroused, and that would signal pain and suffering, if not certain death, for me. I didn’t know how exactly Orion would know if something had gone wrong—whether he was relying solely on one of our teammates reporting back to him, or he had some other trick up his sleeve—but I was sure he had his ways, and I wasn’t about to underestimate him.
“At this moment in time, I can only offer freedom to the pair of you. Take it or leave it,” she retorted. “I will decide on your comrades at my leisure.”
“Please, Your Highness, take my word that they are as loyal to you as any of your most-trusted citizens. They are as loyal to you as my father—I would ask that you reconsider. There is so much they can tell you.”
“You will have to tell it to me, if I decide to do away with them,” Queen Gianne replied tersely. “Now, do you want your freedom or not? I don’t have all day.”
Navan glanced at me, our eyes meeting. I wanted him to refuse her offer—one for all, all for one—but I wasn’t really sure we had a choice. Testing the queen’s patience didn’t seem like a good idea, given that Navan was still sitting in a torture chair, and from the resigned expression on his face, he seemed to think so too.
“We accept your generosity, Your Highness,” he murmured.
“Then go, before I change my mind,” she said crisply. “Aurelius, be a dear and help Navan out of his chair—then show them to one of our nicest state rooms,” she called out. The wizened old man acquiesced, then followed us out into the hallway.
For a moment, the paranoid half of me thought it was a trap, but as we entered the corridor, there was nobody to shove us around or arrest us again. There was only Aurelius behind us, ready to take us to the room that Queen Gianne had promised.
Chapter Eighteen
From the rock-hewn labyrinth of the cave’s underbelly, Aurelius ushered us onto a bullet train that was waiting on a platform, the carriages empty.
As I sat beside Navan, the engine thrumming to life beneath us, my mind drifted toward thoughts of Queen Gianne—was she interrogating the rest of our group right at this very moment, coming to her “conclusions” about their loyalty? What if it was bad news?
The negativity was forced out of my mind a moment later as the bullet train took off, racing through a network of tunnels so fast that everything beyond the small windows was a blur. I could feel the skin of my cheeks pulling backward, as though I were on a rollercoaster, my body being knocked from side to side and pushed back against my seat as the bullet train zipped around corners and zig-zagged through tricky terrain.
It slowed as we approached an imposing building that was cut into the side of another mountain. Lights glowed in the windows that had been carved into the rock, the radiance oddly comforting to my human eyes amid all the icy gloom that surrounded us.
We came to a standstill at another platform, where a few weary-looking coldbloods stood waiting, faces lit up in surprise at the sight of Aurelius in the front carriage. Apparently, he was something of a celebrity in these parts—no doubt because of his association with Queen Gianne.
Aurelius pushed Navan and me through the small crowd and into what looked like a servi
ce corridor, tucked away behind the banal structure of a ticket office. He hurried us down it, bringing us to an elevator at the very end. When he pressed the top button, the elevator instantly whizzed upward, my knees feeling even weaker beneath the pressure that swarmed in around me, threatening to crush me. Everything was more extreme here, I was beginning to realize—no wonder the coldbloods had tougher skin, and muscles as hard as concrete.
At least here, in this mountain, it was warmer. I had stopped shivering once we’d stepped off the bullet train, but I could feel gusts of icy wind blowing in through the thin gaps in the elevator doors, making me think we were shooting up the outside of the mountain structure.
When the doors pinged open, we had arrived at a circular foyer, with several rooms leading off from the central space. Aurelius led us up to one of the doors and unlocked it, before gesturing for us to head inside.
“You will be locked in, for now. Queen Gianne will decide if you will be permitted a key,” Aurelius explained curtly, evidently displeased at being the errand boy. “Should you require anything, please call the concierge on the comm device in your room.” With that, he closed the door, locking it before he left.
“I don’t think he likes you, Navan,” I teased halfheartedly. “Thinks you’re in the running for his job.”
Navan grimaced. “Don’t remind me. Feels like I end up following in my father’s footsteps, even if I do everything I can to go in the opposite direction.”
“Literally in the opposite direction!” I said, wanting to get a smile to break the stern surface of Navan’s face. It felt like we both needed a moment of levity after everything we’d just been through. “I saw that map of yours—you can’t get any farther away from here than Earth.”
A small smile played on his lips. “How do you think I ended up there?”
“I can see it now,” I said, closing my eyes and pretending there was a giant map in front of me. “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo!”