Max
Desta was alive. Desta was here.
She’s been in his house too long. Things change in the dark, the demon warned.
I turned my head, and there she was, charging straight at me. Marco moved in the same instant, faster than sight—the vampire who’d ride with me to the Haven tonight cut into her path, took her down, and pinned her to the floor, all in one motion.
I was already moving. Not even the heels could slow me. Xander forgotten. The whole room forgotten.
“Let her up, Marco! That’s Desta, my friend.”
Marco’s eyes found mine and held them half a second, one hard question in them. Then he hauled Desta to her feet.
She came up sobbing and threw herself at me, and I caught her, her head against my chest. I’d have held her longer if half the continent’s brass hadn’t been watching.
This was a reception for the top politicians and military of all three kingdoms, not a homecoming.
I’d already made a scene. I wouldn’t make it worse and drag it out.
Duty shouldered my emotions aside the way it had been trained to, and I still had a job to do.
I peeled her off me, set my hands on her arms to steady her, and got my first real look at her.
She was different.
The rag-cloth I remembered was long gone. She wore silk now—a gown cut for a lady of some court, the kind of fabric that had never seen a day’s work. Her hair was clean and styled, her hands soft where they gripped mine. Life, it seemed, had been very good to her.
The old desperation was scrubbed clean off her face.
But the hunger underneath it was still there.
Desta had always been the hungriest of us for more, the most ambitious, the most calculating, and that hadn’t changed.
It had only found better clothes. She’d filled out the way I had, healthier than me even, her skin smooth and flawless.
And there was muscle on her now—not miner’s muscle, she’d always found a way to duck the worst of the digging and we’d all let her, but the lean, deliberate kind that came from training. One soldier knows another.
“Desta. You’re alive.”
“So are you.” She laughed through the tears. “I was sure you were dead, Max. Like all the rest.”
My heart dropped. I didn’t ask about Kaid.
Didn’t ask how he’d died. I didn’t have to.
I knew, the way I’d known about Rogue, the moment the words left her mouth.
If I said his name out loud, the grief would take me, and I couldn’t come apart in this room.
I locked it down. Kaid. The joy of seeing her. All of it, shoved somewhere deep.
I needed a clear head and I needed answers. I let my gaze move over the room to keep myself anchored, and I felt them out there—Marco, Frost, Bryn—close, but not too close. Watching my six while they left me room to work.
The trust in that settled something in my chest.
Aelindor and Nikolai were locked to Xander and the President of New Columbia across the floor.
I could feel how badly they wanted to cross to me and understood exactly why they couldn’t—someone had to keep our enemies penned.
Caspian had no such leash. He’d already slipped the knot of foreign women around him and was cutting a line through the guests toward me.
I gave him the smallest shake of my head, and he held where he was.
“Did you know I’d be here, Desta?” I kept my hands on her arms, kept her engaged. “God, it’s good to see you. Did you come from the Haven?”
My eyes snagged on Drakken across the room.
Still with Delia—but he wasn’t looking at his date.
He was looking at me, and his face had gone dark.
Of course it had. Desta was draped in Xander’s colors, and from where Drakken stood, it must have looked like I was huddled in close with the enemy, trading whispers.
There was no time to explain that the woman in my arms was a girl I’d swung a pick beside in the Crimson Ridge mine.
“I came for you, Max.” Her eyes shone. “Saint Xander found me out in the Scorched Wastes, half-dead, and he carried me home. He’s a great man.
A great leader.” She turned to look at him, and her whole face changed—lit, reverent, the way a believer looks at their deity.
She’d never once looked at Kaid or any of us like that.
“I’d have died out there without him. We were too late for Kaid.
” A shadow crossed her features, there and gone, and then she was bright again while the old grief drove through my chest at the loss of Rogue and Kaid.
“They searched for you for days. You were already gone.”
Lucky, then. A few miles the other way and I’d have been the one he collected. I let go of her arms.
“The boys didn’t make it,” I said, almost on autopilot. My mouth tasted like sand.
“Maybe that’s a kindness.” She said it gently, like she was comforting me. “They never would have fit, Max. Not in the world that’s coming. They weren’t like us—you and me.”
I stared at her. It wasn’t only the silk and the soft hands. Somewhere between that swamp and this ballroom, the girl I’d known had been swapped out for a stranger wearing her face.
“They’d have fit fine.” My voice came out harder than I intended. “With us.”
I made myself move on. “Have you had any word out of the mine? Did anyone else get out?” I kept the next part light, like it cost me nothing. “I’ve had no news of Missy since the day we ran. I don’t even know if she’s alive.”
Every word out of my mouth was carefully chosen. I no longer trusted the woman in front of me. She’d been in his house too long.
Desta stepped close, and I bent to her height to let her reach my ear.
“Missy isn’t in Crimson Ridge anymore.”
I went still. “Then where is she?”
“The Haven.”
“With you?”
She nodded. “And with the Saint. He treats her like a princess.”
“Did he bring her tonight?”
“No. It isn’t safe. We left her behind.”
“Why wouldn’t she be safe with me?”
“Because the heirs aren’t what they pretend to be.” She said it like she was sorry to be the one telling me. “I’ll explain everything when we’re somewhere safe.”
“I don’t exactly trust them either.” I dropped my voice. I, Max Morning, could be a convincing actress when I needed to be. “But they’ve been good to me.”
“Only because they want to use you.” Her hand tightened on mine. “You have to trust me, Max.”
I nodded like she’d reached me. “You left her behind. Who’s with her? Who’s taking care of her?”
“Elite guards. Day and night. They watch over her like she’s a jewel.”
Jewel, my ass.
Guards posted day and night meant Missy had tried to run and failed, and now they kept her prisoner.
Desta had wrapped a cage in pretty words and handed it to me like a gift. I wanted to put my old friend’s teeth down her throat. Every soft word out of her mouth was a fucking lie, and the betrayal went in deep and kept cutting.
“Where, though?” I asked. “The capital? The palace?”
“You’ll see for yourself soon enough.” She squeezed my hands. “That’s why we came—for you. I know what it is to feel trapped, Max. We’re here to bring you home. To Missy. We’ll all be together again, like the old days. The only difference is we’re finally getting our happily ever after.”
I nodded to show trust, then let doubt flicker across my face. “How did they even find out about Missy and me? I’m nobody.”
She gave me a long, pointed look. “You know perfectly well you’re not nobody.”
I swallowed.
The suspicion hardened into something solid and cold—my friend had sold me.
Sold my sister. For silk and soft hands and a roof in paradise.
And yet. Xander hadn’t earned the name Saint by accident.
It was just as possible that Desta was a victim, hollowed out and refilled with his words until she believed every one of them.
Either way, I couldn’t tell her what he really was.
Not here. Not without throwing the whole mission into the fire.
My heart sank past the floor, down to the cold place underneath. I wanted to rage. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake the miner’s daughter back into her. I did none of it. I didn’t even let my hands curl into fists. I kept my face smooth, not a muscle, not a flicker along my jaw.
I had a part to play. Keep the Collector blind and unruffled, the same as Aelindor and Nikolai were doing across the room. So I’d play my old friend right back while she worked me.
“Thank you, Desta,” I said. “For watching over her. I’ve been worried sick.”
“Of course.” Desta glowed. “She’s my sister too, you know that. And she loves it there—it’s paradise, Max. She can’t wait for you to come home.”
And there it was. Missy’s face, tearful and terrified. Her scream rang in my ears. My throat closed. I forced the image down.
Not now, little viper. But I’m coming.
A breath later, my face was blank again, giving nothing away.
“When the Saint leaves, we can arrange for you to leave with us,” Desta said. “Would you like that?”
“Yes, I’d like that.” I let a thread of hesitation into it. “But it might be difficult.”
“I know.” She said it like she knew a great deal.
“The heirs seem quite taken with you.” Her eyes went down me and back up, slow, the way you’d price a companion for hire, and caught on the necklace at my throat.
“You’ve done well for yourself. But I promise you, the Haven has more.
More riches than this, more luxury than you can picture.
The Saint gives his people everything they could ever dream of. ”
Over her shoulder, I saw Xander start toward me. Nikolai shifted to cut him off, said something, but Xander didn’t so much as break his stride.
“I have to go, Desta. I’ve got duties. My officers will have my hide if I don’t see to them.” I gestured at the gown, the necklace. “This is all just decoration. They want me looking the part.” I made myself smile. “Wait for me. I’ll come find you tomorrow night and we’ll talk properly. All right?”
Before I could turn on my heel, the Collector was there. Beside me. He’d crossed the whole floor in the space of a blink—one of his magics, I realized a beat too late.
Too late to slip away now.
I’d done more than catch his eye. I’d drawn the monster all the way in.
“Lady Morningstar,” he said.
Cold panic, fury, and hate surged up together, and I caught all three and held them down before they could reach my face.
“You’ve got the wrong person, sir.”
“Delightful.” He laughed, low and pleased. “You’re exactly who I’m looking for.”
I almost corrected him out of spite—whom—and bit it back.
“My surname is Morning. And I’m no lady. I’m a cadet, that’s all.”
“Lady Morning, then. For now.” His eyes moved over me with the attention of a man pricing something rare. “You don’t know what you are—they’ve kept it from you. I’d be glad to show you the truth of it, if you’d let me.”
My hackles went up.
“This is King Xander,” Desta breathed, folding into a bow so deep she was practically polishing his shoes with her tongue. “The Saint himself, Max.”
She said it like a prayer.
His shoes were very fine. They probably cost more than a working family earned in a year.
“What can I do for you, King Xander?” I wasn’t going to call him a fucking saint.
He gave me a savoring look, and the hunger in it crawled over my skin. I wanted nothing more than to turn and walk—before my Coldiron armguard decided for me, before it slid into a blade and buried itself in his gut.
“Not a king.” His mouth curved. “Xander. As you’d name an equal.”
“That’s well above my station, sir.”
“The heirs are giving you crumbs.” Amusement glittered in those tiger-ember eyes. “A dress to decorate you. A family heirloom to chain you.”
My heart stumbled. I’d taken the necklace for what it looked like—a string of sapphires and diamonds, nothing more.
I’d been a miner; diamonds were only a prettier kind of rock to me.
But a family heirloom—Aelindor’s family heirloom—around my neck, and no one had said a word.
I fought the urge to lift my hand to it.
Standing this close to that monster, I regretted every inch of the million-dollar costume.
I should have ignored the heirs and worn my cadet greys.
But they’d wanted exactly this—wanted Xander to find me—and they’d wanted one more thing besides: a debut, a way to walk me into the high circles of the three kingdoms’ command without ever putting it on paper.
I’d sat in classified briefings already.
This was meant to be the next rung, lifting my station without a single order anyone could point to.
So I’d snared the monster’s eye on the first pass. And now he had no intention of letting it go.
“It’s just a nice dress, sir,” I said. “And diamonds are only another kind of rock.”
He laughed in appreciation. “There’s my girl. You don’t disappoint, Lady Max Morningstar.”
He kept setting that name on me. What the hell was he doing? Morningstar was the surname of the King of Hell—Lucifer’s own—and no creature living was fool enough to claim it.
I held my face still while my blood ran hot, hate pumping through my veins with every beat. I had to get clear of this, or I’d wreck everything we’d built tonight. Desta had melted quietly into the background, her work done.
“Sir, I have a soldier’s duties to attend to,” I said.
He arched a brow and swept a hand out, courtly and certain. “Will you do me the honor of a dance first?”
Shit.
How did I shake loose of this without making a scene, without igniting his suspicion? The plan—let him see me, then vanish—had come apart in my hands. But one thing I knew down to the bone: I would not let this monster lay a single finger on me. I would not fucking dance with him.
“I’d like to talk to you about Missy.” His tiger-amber eyes pinned me. “Your absolutely adorable little sister.” A pause, deliberate and cold. “Please, Lady Morning.”