Chapter 7 Lyra #2
Revenge. The word lodges in my throat like a shard of glass. For a moment, I can’t breathe. If he’s guessed even part of it—if he tells Brill—I’m finished. My panic cuts through my irritation, but I school my features in a sarcastic smirk.
“Revenge?” I scoff. “Against you, maybe. Other than that, I don’t have any scores to settle.”
“Tsk. Give me more credit than that, I beg. The fact that you haven’t simply killed Brill is the only thing that’s surprising in the whole mess.” Iathos says with a devious grin. “Tell me, Lyra love, why haven’t you? Unravel this intricate scheme for me, would you?”
Because I’ve tried running. Because I’ve failed so many times. Because killing him wouldn’t be enough—but he doesn’t get to know that. My temper flares and I feel my vellia prickle beneath my skin.
My palms tingle, the familiar charge building beneath my skin. Just a flicker of it would send him running—along with everyone else on this dock. Still, the temptation isn’t easy to ignore.
“You’re full of shit, Iathos, and you better stop trying to rile me up because I’m about to unleash a full blast of vellia on you.
” Finally, his bravado dims a touch. Even the great lover Iathos fears becoming a mindless, rutting beast. “Brill doesn’t give a fuck about me except for what he thinks I can deliver, and I’m not the only thief in his orbit.
So, why don’t you be a good little boy and tell me what, exactly, you’ve been dancing around?
And I’d hurry it up, by the way. This conversation is making me feel… rather flustered.”
“Keep it under control, Lyra,” Iathos warns, but there’s a note of anxiety that fills me with satisfaction. “Brill thinks your father knew the location of the Dark Star.”
The words hit like a plasma blast to the chest. My breath catches. My vision narrows.
Brill knows. How can he know? My father’s journals are my only remaining secret and there’s no way anyone else found them. Iathos watches me closely—too closely—so I school my features in disbelief.
“The Dark Star?” I laugh.
My laugh sounds too high, too forced. My pulse thunders against my ribs, the heat from earlier curdling into dread.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s a fucking myth cooked up by hallucinating colonists in a starvation haze.”
Iathos lifts one shoulder in forced nonchalance. “Regardless, Brill is certain your father knew where to find it, and I promise you, Lyra, love, Brill won’t let you go until you do. Even then”—he eyes my body appraisingly— “I’d bet he’ll find other reasons to keep you. I know I would.”
Sweat beads at my temples, my body going rigid before my brain can catch up. There it is—the trap snapping shut.
Still, I try to deny the veracity of his words.
“Dark Star or not, if I buy my way out of my contract, I’m as good as gone. Brill respects a deal.” Even as I say it, the words taste bitter with desperate hope. Brill doesn’t respect anything but ownership. And right now, he still owns me.
“Mm, true, but Brill isn’t known to give up his treasures without a fight. And you are quite the treasure.”
He trails a finger across my thigh, but the touch repulses me.
“I should gut you like the low-life worm you are and toss you into this sea. I wonder what manner of creature will come up from the depths to nibble at your black heart.”
Iathos tsks again. “Such violence! That’s not the Lyra I remember.” He slides a foot up the swell of my calf beneath the water. “Except in bed.”
True, Iathos and I enjoyed a fair bit of extracurricular intimacy, but now the thought turns my stomach. I pull away, my fingers itching to throttle him.
“What do you want, Iathos?”
“I should think that was obvious, love,” he drawls again.
Unease snakes through me as my suspicions take shape. He’s not here by accident. Brill sent him, which means our ticking clock just sped up.
“No, I mean, why are you here? This can’t be a chance meeting. Did Brill hire you? There’s no way you just happened to be on Amphitreas the day I arrived. Out with it, Iathos!”
Something dark flashes in Iathos’s black eyes and I silently curse myself. Stupid, Lyra! Of course this isn’t a chance meeting.
I start to back away, but Iathos jumps up and latches onto my arm with brute strength and simmering violence. His charm falls away like the mask I knew it was.
“Listen to me, Lyra…” But whatever he’s about to say dies on his lips as a shadow falls over us both.
“Excuse me, am I interrupting something?” Orion approaches us warily, no doubt taking in my anger and Iathos’s grip on my arm.
“Who are you?” Iathos sneers, glancing between Orion and I.
“I’m her owner,” Orion says.
“No, Orion, not owner—patron. And no, Iathos, he’s my partner.”
“Owner?” Iathos repeats, incredulously, sizing up Orion’s massive frame. “Does Brill know?” A laugh bubbles up in his chest. “Owner? Get real. Some dumb tower of meat like you owning Lyra Phoenix.”
Every muscle in me coils, ready to strike. He’s drawing attention. He’s putting everything I’ve worked for in danger. If anyone down this dock hears my name in the same breath as Brill’s, we’re cooked.
His laughter grows louder, until it carries far enough down the dock to draw attention. The last of the crates has been loaded and the cargo has been stowed, and I’ve had just about enough fun for one day. I grit my teeth.
I can feel my freedom slipping between my fingers like sand. I need control—over Iathos, over Orion, over the narrative.
“Orion, go wait in the ship,” I order. “Iathos, you owe me some answers.”
“No,” they both say at once.
Perfect. Two men, one ego contest, and me—the only one with something real to lose. I groan, frustration building to volcanic proportions.
“Lyra, love, I think we need to chat,” Iathos says, tugging at my arm painfully.
I wince. “Orion, go wait in the ship.”
“Hey, take your hands off her!” Orion growls.
“Yeah, Orion,” Iathos pantomimes. “Do as she says and go wait in the ship. This doesn’t concern you!”
That’s it. I’m going to call forth my vellia and get some damn answers from Iathos.
If Orion is too much of a stubborn fool to get out of the blast radius, so be it.
I close my eyes and block out the sounds of the two men arguing, summoning as much desire as I can.
I feel it rise through my blood, finding form beneath my skin.
But before I can let it go, the pressure of Iathos’s hand on my arm is gone, and I hear a large splash.
When my eyes fly open, Orion stands next to me, his arms crossed in front of his chest. Iathos is in the water—quite a fair distance from the dock, and extremely pissed off about it. Stunned, I turn to Orion.
“What the fuck?” I ask. “Did you just…throw him in?”
“Yes,” he replies matter-of-factly. “He seemed to need some cooling off.”
Iathos swears a blue streak and screams at us, side stroking his way back to the dock.
“Well, I don’t really want to be here when he gets back to the dock. He’s probably armed,” I say.
“Probably,” Orion agrees. I see the impish glint in his eyes and his stalwart determination not to smirk, and try to ignore the funny things they do to my insides.
I shake my head. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Good idea,” Orion replies.
As we make our way up the gangplank to the ship’s outer bay, Orion draws a feather-light touch across the angry red mark on my arm, left from Ianthos’s grip.
“Lyra, about earlier…” he begins, but I wave him off.
“It’s fine, Ranger. I know you don’t have any reason to trust me.
But I still want you to know, I don’t use my vellia willy-nilly.
I only use it when I’m really in trouble.
I never, ever use it to manipulate or steal.
I mean, I do those things, but I don’t use my vellia for them, and I just… need you to know that,” I say.
He nods and reaches behind his back, producing a small plant in a pot about the size of my palm.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For earlier. I was a jerk. I know you don’t have much of a reason to trust me, either, but I’m hoping we can at least call a temporary truce. No vellia, no threats of Federal incarceration until this is over. Deal?”
“Deal,” I agree. “So, um, this is…?” I point to the odd specimen in his hand. The plant has black thorns and a gaping, garishly red maw dripping with some kind of clear, viscous fluid. It looks like something that’ll creep into your room and bite you if you don’t water it regularly.
“I’ve been reading your books. Your Earth romances. I understand human women like to receive flowers after they’ve been wronged,” he says.
“This isn’t a flower,” I say slowly, so overwhelmed by a simple, stupid gesture of kindness all I can do is state the obvious. “It’s a carnivorous plant.”
“The options in a port run by pirates are limited,” he replies, chagrined. “But I can get rid of it if you want.”
“No, no! I like it,” I say, offering him a small smile.
I’m dizzy with the effort of trying to remember the last time anyone’s given me anything without an agenda attached.
Brill’s gifts were always more painful than pleasant.
My lovers only ever took. My parents, maybe?
Surely there were birthday presents when I was young, but…
strangely, nothing comes to mind. Pressure builds in my chest, warm and fulfilling—akin to indigestion but…
pleasant. Nice. “‘Thank you’ is what I meant to say. I love it. Apology accepted.”
His expression warms at that and I seal the doors to prepare for takeoff.
Rather than hide in his berth, Orion chooses to sit next to me in the navigator seat. I turn over the engines and engage the thrusters, setting my new little plant in a cupholder on the center console.
“Ada, we’re up and running! Let’s make it a quick trip to Minaris,” I say, trying to muster some enthusiasm for leaving the port city behind, but it’s difficult.