Chapter 10
ALLY
Twenty men were arranged in a line outside the mess, each standing straight and looking forward. Celdrake stood in the open door to the mess, his arms crossed. Behind him, Ally could see the men of Rigellus’s crew looking on with interested expressions.
Lyk walked the row of men, making eye contact with each of them. As he strode briskly, she couldn’t help but admire his form. He was so well made, as if fashioned by a sculptor instead of nature. The man would be sheer perfection if he wasn’t a criminal.
He came to a stop in front of Evie. “Could you point out the man who took your necklace?”
Ally was surprised when Evie bit her lip nervously. “Well, I, uh, I can’t exactly remember.”
Feeling protective, Ally stepped forward to stand between her sister and Lyk. “She was probably so traumatized by the robbery, she’s blocked out the memory.”
“I understand,” Lyk said, his tone full of compassion as he stared down at her sister. “Then we’ll have to rely on your description. The man had a raven tattoo on his right hand.”
Turning back to his assembled crew, Lyk barked out an order. “Men, I want you to expose your raven tattoo, wherever it is on your body.”
There was some shuffling among the men as they went about revealing their markings. Some removed shirts. Others pulled up pant legs. One man removed his pants entirely to reveal a large raven on his upper thigh. A few held up their hands.
Lyk asked the men with raised hands to come forward one by one.
Ally watched as the men showed their tattoos when requested.
The first had a raven on each of his knuckles.
The second had a flock of ravens on the back of each hand.
And the third had a large raven that covered most of the back of his left hand.
Ally frowned. Evie had described a tattoo that was smaller, with specific placement. None of the tattoos displayed her matched her description.
That doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth. He could have told the perpetrator to hide out in his quarters, for instance.
The words her inner voice spoke were true, but a tendril of doubt crept up inside Ally’s belly.
Evie seemed more nervous than usual. Ally wanted to chalk it up to her being around so many people after staying cooped up inside for months, but she’d not been so nervous at the spaceport, nor boarding Rigellus’s ship. Something was going on here.
“Could you perhaps be mistaken about the positioning or size of the tattoo?” Lyk asked politely.
Evie, eyes wide, stammered before shaking her head.
Ally, still protective of her sister, again interrupted. “My sister is a little overwhelmed at the moment, no doubt with fear of seeing her attacker again. I’m going to insist that she be allowed to rest somewhere comfortable.”
Lyk failed to hide a smile, which irked her. “Of course. If you follow me, I’ll take you to the quarters I mentioned earlier.”
Ally wanted to cuss him out, but she was in a bind. She’d have to accept those quarters and the possibility of being locked inside them while she figured out what was going on with her sister.
Lyk led them to a well-appointed chamber almost as large as his own.
There was a sitting area, a small dining table with two chairs, a private bathroom, and two beds with comfortable-looking mattresses.
It was a far step above their room on Gamma-17 and even rivaled her old bedroom back on the Rings.
“Please make yourself comfortable. And let me know if you run out of snacks.” Lyk winked at her as he shut the door behind himself.
Ally rushed forward to grab the door, but before she could, the telltale sound of the locking mechanism engaging clicked softly. Damn.
Evie wandered forward, fingering the expensive-looking duvet on one of the beds. Ally took a deep breath, not looking forward to the confrontation with her sister. Still, something about her story didn’t seem to add up.
“What happened that day at the market?” she asked softly.
Evie frowned. Her eyes had a faraway look to them, like she wasn’t seeing what was right in front of them. “It’s a bit hazy.”
Ally had known Evie since the day she was born. She knew when she was frustrated, when she was angry—and when she was hiding something.
I can’t believe I didn’t notice it sooner. Maybe it was the long hours she’d been working or her sheer exhaustion, but Ally hadn’t noticed any issues with Evie’s story when she’d originally told it. But now?
“You never told me why you were wearing the necklace that day,” Ally said, sitting down on the bed across from the one Evie was standing in front of. “We’d made a pact to take it off and hide it away whenever we went out, just in case something like this might happen.”
Evie nodded, looking at the floor. “I’d been wearing it earlier and I… I just forgot.”
That was plausible. Evie was an artist, and sometimes, her head stayed in the clouds while her body walked around on autopilot. But the irregularities didn’t end there.
“You said there were two of them, but you never told me what the second one looked like. Did he have the tattoo as well? If so, where?”
Evie tossed herself on the other bed, burying her face in the pillow. She spoke, but it was so muffled that Ally couldn’t make it out. “What?”
Evie turned her head so her voice was clear. “I said I made it all up.”
Ally’s eyes widened in shock. “You made it up?” she repeated, unable to process what her sister had just admitted.
Evie shifted so that she was lying on her side, looking at her sister.
“Yes. I knew you’d never sell it, even if we were on the brink of starvation.
I planned to sneak out and sell it one night when you were at work, then confess only after we’d booked passage off-world.
But you went storming off to accost the Raven and I got nervous.
Then you showed up with a wad of credits and we no longer needed to sell it, but I didn’t know how to tell you what I’d done and—oh, I’m sorry! ”
Tears were rolling down her sister’s pale cheeks, but Ally sat unmoving. Evie lied to me.
On her sister’s information, she’d confronted the Raven, setting off this chain of events that had almost gotten them kidnapped and sold into slavery, and currently had them speeding off, light-years away from the Rings, on a ship full of pirates.
And it turned out the damn King of the Pirates wasn’t the liar she’d thought he was.
Ally groaned, and this time, it was her turn to shove her face in the pillow to muffle the string of curses she couldn’t keep inside.
“I’m sorry!” Evie repeated. “I’ve got the necklace. See? It’s right here. So you don’t need to worry about getting it back!”
Ally turned her head to see Evie holding out the necklace to her. “Put that thing back where you hid it,” Ally hissed. “This isn’t the time to start flashing it around. They don’t need to know anything about this, okay?”
Mortified at the way she’d leveled all those accusations at Lyk, Ally didn’t need him rubbing this change of narrative in her face.
“This is all my fault,” her sister said, falling back against the pillows in a dramatic fashion. Ally frowned. Evie wasn’t usually so over the top in her emotional expressions. She must feel really bad about this.
“No, it’s my fault too. You’re right. I was being unreasonable. I wouldn’t have sold the necklace, no matter our need. And your opinion has value, just as much as mine does. So I’m sorry I was blind to that before. I will do better.”
“Ally, you’ve done great.” Evie sat up, her face intent. “You got us out of a dangerous situation, hid us away so we could regroup and figure out what to do. You kept a roof over our head and food in our belly.”
“Barely. What we were doing was no way to live.”
“But at least we were alive. And free.” Evie’s face fell. “Please don’t think I’m being ungrateful. You kept me safe while working yourself half to death. I can never repay you for what you did.”
“You never need to.” Ally smiled at her little sister. “I’m always going to watch out for you, no matter what.”
Evie gave a mirthless laugh. “Well, it looks like you have your work cut out for you this time because we’re either ending up at some outpost stranded again, or we join this crew of criminals.”
“We’re not pirates, Evie.”
Her sister looked her up and down. “I don’t know, Ally. You’ve always had a cutthroat quality about you. Are you sure you don’t want to pick up a sword and start swashing some buckles?”
Ally couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “I don’t know where you get this nonsense.”
Evie shrugged. “I like reading history books. On Territh, pirates were known as swashbucklers.”
“But what’s a swash?” Ally asked, confused.
Evie shrugged. “What’s a buckler?”
The girls both burst out laughing, causing some of their tension to evaporate. Ally let out a huge sigh. “It feels like we take a step forward, then get knocked back a mile. I guess we’ll have to find transport from this outpost to the Rings.”
“Can we afford it?”
“Lyk said he would give us credits.”
Evie’s eyes widened. “Lyk, huh?”
“That’s his name.”
“Before it was ‘the Raven’ or ‘the pirate’ or ‘the asshole.’ Now it’s Lyk?”
“Shut up, Evie. I’m just using the man’s name.”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him.” Her sister’s voice was sly, teasing. “He’s certainly handsome. There’s no denying it.”
“Where is this coming from?”
Evie smiled. “He took you to his quarters, didn’t he? After the thing on the bridge. You didn’t come straight to the mess.”
“What are you talking about?” Ally fought to squash any sign of embarrassment from her sister.
“I could tell by your body language when you came into the lounge. Something happened between you two. So spill it!”
Ally sighed. “Fine. You’re right. He did take me to his quarters. And he kissed me.”
“Oooh,” Evie said like a child on a playground, making Ally stick out her tongue in retort. “What did you do?”
“I slapped him.”
Evie fell backward in a fit of laugher, and Ally couldn’t help letting out a few chuckles.
“You slapped a pirate,” her sister gasped between laughs.
“I think he liked it,” Ally said before letting out a peal of her own laughter.
“I think the more important question is, did you like it?”
Ally let her laughs peter out. Yes, it was the most amazing kiss I ever experienced.
Instead of saying that, she substituted. “Yes. Slapping him was the most satisfying thing I’ve done in weeks.”