Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
The pounding in Aiden’s head had subsided to a manageable level by the time Mathias led them into the room where Emil was holding Evelyn.
The comforting press of the blaster against his waistband did nothing to negate the anguish he felt at the look that had flashed across her face when she’d seen their bound hands.
Aiden understood that Vinnie’s plan was largely built on one mind fuck after another, but he would never forgive the woman for not letting Evelyn in on it, for not seeing exactly how strong, determined, and brave she was, not believing her capable or willing to go the distance.
So they stood in a row, neat little emotional bombs for Emil to throw at Evelyn’s feet while Vinnie’s plan unfolded around them.
He hadn’t even bothered to try to mask the fury on his face, sure that the emotion he couldn’t conceal if he tried probably just added to the atmosphere Vinnie had intended.
He was seriously contemplating throwing her out an airlock the next time he had the opportunity.
Aiden tried to steady his breathing while he looked around the receiving room.
The walls were papered in a garish floral pattern.
He thought they were maybe supposed to be dahlias, but the artist had taken a very liberal interpretation of the form.
There were plushly upholstered chairs and sofas, ornately carved wooden furniture arranged in conversation areas throughout the space.
A view screen on the wall displayed a security feed of the rest of the palace.
Evelyn was sitting, statue still, on one of the sofas.
The color was draining from her face, but she’d schooled her expression into a blank, vaguely pleasant half smile.
Across from her, a man in a charcoal suit was rising from his chair.
Emil Bellica. He had the look of a man who’d just sucked on a lemon.
He tucked a communicator back into his pocket and turned his back to the new arrivals.
“You’re willing to die for your planet, Your Highness,” he said, the last with a mocking tone that made Aiden want to punch him in the face. “Very noble. Are you willing to let them die for your precious Tanalian values?”
Evelyn rose slowly from her sofa. She smoothed her skirts and tucked a strand of hair that had escaped its tightly woven crown behind her ear.
“I would take my values over yours any day,” she said. While her face was still pale, she was radiating a sad acceptance. Aiden’s heart skipped a beat. If Vinnie thought Evelyn’s death was an acceptable outcome of this little showdown, the airlock would be far too good for her.
Emil grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm. Evelyn cried out. Aiden lurched forward, but Nannette slammed into his side. He stared at her, helpless.
Trust her. Follow her lead.
Aiden put his faith into that sentiment.
He put his faith into the desperate hope that Vinnie wasn’t so cold as to sacrifice Evelyn.
He put his faith into the belief that Evelyn was stronger than she gave herself credit for.
Follow her lead? As if he’d been able to do anything else since the moment she’d woken up in that damn pod.
“Listen here, you sanctimonious bitch,” Emil hissed at Evelyn.
He had maneuvered her arm into a locked position behind her own back, forcing her to face Aiden and the others.
“Sentiment is not going to win the day here. You will continue to Amplify for me. You will announce to the planet that the new queen has struck a deal with the polity of Bauder. Things will continue according to my rule. Or these people will die.”
Evelyn’s face was twisted in anguish. She sniffed. Her free hand grasped at Emil’s arm, and her gaze found Aiden’s. She gave him a sad smile.
“It’s such a shame we never got to go bowling. I’d picked out an outfit and everything. The dress is green.”
For a split second, Aiden wondered if she’d also hit her head in the Senate chamber. But the near-encyclopedic awareness of every interaction he’d had with the woman was pinging around in the back of his mind, and he understood exactly what she wanted him to do. An encore.
The electric zing that Aiden felt when Evelyn unleashed her Amplification surged through his body. The little hairs on his arms stood on end, his body surging with borrowed power.
“My favorite color, dollface,” he said. He winked at her.
The pained look on her face vanished. Aiden knew a cue when he saw one.
He focused his energy and shoved a pulse of power into the guard on the farthest side of the room.
The man stumbled, falling into the man next to him in a far less destructive recreation of their escape from the medivessel.
People tended to be squishier than droids and far less likely to catch fire when they slammed into each other, but the impact still made a nasty crunching noise as their bones broke, limbs splaying against the ground at unnatural angles.
The room erupted into chaos. Three more men went down like dominoes, crashing into the ground with bone-jarring force. Mathias’ men had started firing on the loyalists, providing them a bit of cover.
Aiden ripped the binding from his wrists, then Nannette’s. In a fluid movement, she reached under her jacket to release her twin blasters, took aim, and fired. He turned to remove the binding from Veselko to find Elenor already cutting off his bindings.
Pivoting, he focused on the weaponry in the hands of the enemy soldiers, ripping them away and lodging blasters in the ceiling plaster with a flick of his fingers.
A falling weapon discharged, sending a stream of energy into the view screen on the wall.
Sparks flew out of the device, singing the wallpaper.
I hope Evelyn’s okay with redecorating in here.
Pearl was out of breath by the time she reached the receiving room.
She found the peaceful, if tense, scene she had left had devolved into chaos.
Soldiers were firing on each other. Blood spattered the carpets.
Sparks were flying from the view screen.
Weapons and fallen soldiers were scattered on the floor.
Dead center in her line of sight stood the love of her life.
Veselko. Her traitorous stomach flipped at the sight of him rubbing his wrists, laughing at whatever quip Elenor had just made as she pulled a knife from the shoulder of a soldier.
Radiating joy in the midst of chaos, as always, sunshine personified.
Behind him, a dazed-looking soldier was groping for a blaster.
Pearl recognized it as one of Bauder’s nastier weapons, lethal regardless of how precisely the stream hit.
Lost in the chaos, he was lining up a shot at the largest threat he could see.
Pearl did the only thing she could in the split second she had.
She shot Veselko in the shoulder. Down he went.
The energy stream from the man’s shot passed over Veselko’s head as he fell.
Pearl took another shot, now that she had a clear line of sight at the soldier.
Her beam went right into his throat. He slumped against the wall.
Veselko looked in the direction of her shot.
She waved.
Evelyn had been so busy trying to maintain her composure, she’d completely forgotten the most important lesson that she’d learned during her time on the Dawn.
She was the weapon. It had been so easy to fall back into Tanalian princess mode — hide yourself, hide your talents, put on the mask and play the politics you hate — that she’d completely ignored the fact that she was the most dangerous player in the room.
Seeing the crew presented to her, bound and pissed off, had reminded her that while yes, she technically was Tanalian royalty, she was also much more than that. She had more tools at her disposal than policy and mind games. Queens were the most powerful pieces on the board.
So she now stood in her mind palace, focused on Emil’s energy signature as it pulsed around him.
There was something oddly familiar and wrong about the way his energy sparked in her mind.
She had sensed him all those years ago, like a jet engine purring on a runway.
The roar of his energy was there, but it was shot through with a distinct ripple of otherness.
It was like someone had dumped a spoonful of sage into their coffee instead of sugar.
Conflicting vibes poured off of him in waves.
She gripped her hand around his arm more tightly. The difference in his energy was irrelevant. Academic, really.
He would never let her family out of those damn stasis pods.
He would never let her out of one again, either, unless it was to be a pretty puppet.
And if he thought he was going to lay a finger on Nannette? Veselko? Elenor? Aiden?
Fuck that.
She drew the energy she felt fluttering under her fingers into her mental chamber. Dust-colored wisps shot through with golden flecks circled around her, flowing from the arm under her hand. It filled the room, obscuring her view, dancing around them.
Evelyn’s focus snapped back to the receiving room when she felt the arm lock Emil had held her in loosen.
His grip strength had abandoned him while she’d been siphoning off his energy, and he could no longer keep her in such a punishing hold.
The rest of her physical senses came knocking, the scent of burning electronics and singed wood warred with the iron tang of blood on the air.
She was surprised she’d been able to keep the volume of the fighting around her from breaking her concentration.
The skirmish was anything but silent as the Dawn’s crew and Corrie’s soldiers fought Emil’s last few loyalists around them in the too-small space.
She twisted around to face Emil and screamed at the sight that met her eyes.
The dour, well-dressed man from moments ago was nowhere to be found.
The impeccable suit sagged on his desiccated frame, his skeletal figure a macabre mannequin.
Skin dry as parchment was stretched across Emil’s skull, his cold, dark eyes bulging out as the lids continued to recede.
The suit shifted with every labored breath he took, air whistling through his teeth, no longer guarded by his stern lips.
Be good, children, or the Siphon Queen will get you.
Horrified at what she’d done, she took a step back into a squishy, blood-drenched patch of carpet. A soldier to her left fell, his blaster flung to the ground as the life left his eyes. Quickly.
Not like what she was doing.
Trembling like a leaf, Evelyn stepped towards Emil again.
She took his body into her arms, his frame light as a child’s.
She closed her eyes and returned to her mental chamber.
She needed to end this. Emil Bellica was a monstrous man.
He had forfeited his right to live. But that didn’t mean she had to torture the man to death.
She could barely even see the Amplification tank now; the air was so heavy with his energy. Evelyn took a steadying breath and continued to pull the dusty streams forth, vaguely aware of Emil’s body slumping against her own in the receiving room.
She squinted through the dim haze and scanned the shelves of her chamber.
She didn’t have enough jars for this. She had never dreamed she’d need a vessel large enough to hold a human’s worth of energy.
Even when she’d stored emergency energy from the forest on Antopolet, she’d just contained it in big jugs.
She visualized a wooden barrel. It clattered to the ground next to her.
The dusty, gold-flecked power swirled around her, a tornado seeking direction, and she shoved it towards the barrel.
She heard Emil scream in the distance.
The energy unfurled, twists of dust-colored whirls throwing off blobs of golden light.
The gold flecks hovered in the air, hopeful lanterns glowing down on the stormy gales of Emil’s energy.
The glow finally registered with Evelyn.
Emil had managed to do to himself a version of what she’d accidentally done to Aiden: imbue his body with Amplification.
Not just boost his own fledgling psychic talent, but his life force.
From the way the globs were freeing themselves, she judged that it clearly had not gone as seamlessly for Emil as it had for Aiden. Her stomach flipped.
Focus on this problem now. Horrific science experiments are tomorrow's issue.
She forced the dust-colored swirls of Emil’s energy into the barrel.
She slammed the lid shut. She heard the last breath escape his lungs.
The floating golden orbs had coalesced into a large globe of light above her.
She guided it back into the vat of Amplification energy.
The globe unfurled into a stream, seeking the well it knew it sprang from.
The stream traveled up the tap, back into the supply of otherworldly potential it belonged to.
Evelyn opened her eyes. The room around her was a disaster.
The walls were singed, the carpet beneath her feet soaked with blood.
Nannette was sheathing a knife. Elenor was kneeling over Veselko.
Aiden was in the doorway, barring Pearl from entering the room.
And Evelyn was holding onto the husk of Emil’s corpse.
His head reminded her of an apple left out for far too long, his limbs spindly and frail in her arms. She expected to feel disgusted with herself.
She’d just done the thing she’d spent her whole adult life desperately trying to avoid.
Instead, she was overcome by exhaustion; the knowledge that, however hard won this battle had been, the true fight was just beginning.
She dropped the weightless mass, and the desiccated body fell at her feet. She kicked it away.
“This is so typical. She dumps me. She shoots me. It’s a little unfair, don’t you think?” Veselko griped.
“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Pearl said. She poked her head into the room over Aiden’s outstretched arm. “It’s a flesh wound, and it’s better than having your head blown off by the asshat on the floor that was aiming for you. You’re welcome.”
Nannette sighed. Evelyn caught her eye and mouthed, “Cardigan girl” at her.
Nannette nodded. Hot damn, Veselko. Excellent taste.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Only Veselko would be optimistic enough to try to knit a sweater for a legendary mercenary with a reputation that would castrate a lesser man at fifty paces.
“I think I’m going to pass out now,” Evelyn said.
Her eyelids were heavy with exhaustion, her legs felt like overdone fettuccine.
She heard Veselko make a joke about feeling drained.
The corner of her mouth flipped up, but she couldn’t muster the energy to laugh.
She took a step in the direction of the sofa just as her eyes closed.
She didn’t feel a thing when she hit the ground.