Chapter 17
Someone was crying.
It wasn't the kind of crying that wanted comfort. No, it was the wet, gulping kind that came when someone had been at it for a while and had given up on being quiet.
Emily tried to move.
Her wrists didn't come with her.
Something hard bit into her pinned wrists, pain shooting up her arms and making her wince.
What the fuck?
Her eyes shot open, and she twisted around to try and see what the hell was going on. Consciousness came back a little more, and she grunted. Cuffs. She was in cuffs that twisted her arms behind her and made her shoulders scream.
She yanked again, but the cuffs didn't give. They were bolted to something behind her, a pipe or a rail or something. Shit. Her fingers were half numb, the circulation partly cut off, and the way she was crunched up made her shoulders feel like her arms had been twisted out of their sockets.
Shaking her head to clear the fuzziness, she got barely a second before what had happened slammed back.
Leaving Raaevik in bed, her desperate flight through the station to the escape point, and the cargo bay doors. She'd walked through them knowing that was it; she couldn't go back. But she'd done it anyway, knowing it was the only way to save Raaevik's life.
Then Lucy…
The crying hitched, then carried on. Emily zeroed in on it, struggling to sit up from where she'd half slumped against the wall and floor.
Lucy sat three feet away, knees drawn up, and her face buried in her arms. She wasn't cuffed, her arms wrapped around her knees.
Emily's eyes narrowed. Lucy had fucked her over. Offered escape, but all the while she was planning on—
She dropped her head back with a groan. Sacrificial lamb. Again.
When she got out of this… if she got out of this, she was never trusting people again. She was getting cats. Lots of cats. Cat-siblings for Barnaby. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes at the thought of the big, ginger tom with his broken-engine purr. What if she never made it back to him? What if—
She cut that thought off mid-stream. No, fuck that, she wasn't giving in like that. Looking around, she took in their surroundings.
Okay, this wasn't the shuttle. Definitely not the shuttle.
The space was larger and rougher... a cargo hold. Scarred metal walls, peeling paint, overhead lights buzzed and flickered, casting a yellow haze. The deck vibrated with a deep rumble that she felt in her teeth and the base of her skull. Wherever they were going, the ship was running hard.
She flexed her fingers behind her back, trying to get some feeling back. The cuffs were too tight, and her head ached where the rifle butt had connected. Probing the inside of her cheek with her tongue, she found the swollen area where she'd bitten down.
Lucy's sobs paused, and Emily turned to look at her, meeting red-rimmed eyes.
She said nothing.
Silence stretched between them as Lucy's sobs grew louder, building to a peak before dropping to a whisper. Waves of desperation begged to be noticed.
Emily counted the rivets on the far wall.
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
Lucy's crying softened, then grew louder again.
Emily kept counting, tilting her head to look up.
Twenty-three. Twenty-four.
"Emily." Lucy's voice was raw, scraped hollow. "Emily, please. Say something."
She said nothing. Not a word.
"I had to do it." Lucy unfolded slightly, wiping her face with the heel of her hand. "You have to understand. My sister, she's... they've had her for weeks. They sent me pictures. They sent me audio. She was begging and I couldn't... "
Emily started counting the rivets across the ceiling.
"What was I supposed to do? They said the only way to get Sarah back was to deliver something they wanted."
Lucy swallowed, the sound loud in the hold.
"Someone. Deliver someone." Her voice cracked on the word. "I tried to find another way. I looked for weeks. I went to station security, but they have people everywhere. I couldn't trust anyone. And every day they sent me another message, another picture, and Sarah was getting worse, and I just..."
She drew a shuddering breath. Started again, and this time the words came faster, tumbling over each other.
"I didn't want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. You're my friend. The only real friend I've made since they brought us here. But they were going to kill her, Emily. She's nineteen. She's a kid. I thought maybe I could negotiate with… get you and Sarah back at the same time..."
Excuses. Bullshit excuses.
Emily speared her with a hard look. "You sold me."
Lucy flinched. "That's not—"
"You sold me," Emily's voice was flat. "You gave me up in return for a bullshit promise. Crying doesn't change what it was."
Just like Miranda. Different wrapping, same fucking deal. At least her mother had had the decency to skip the friendship part.
"That's not fair," Lucy whispered. "It's not the same thing. I didn't have a choice."
"You had a choice. You made it."
Turning her head, she looked at Lucy.
"'The Emperor's breeding stock really shouldn't be wandering the corridors alone,'" she said quietly. "'It's dangerous.'"
The blood drained from Lucy's face.
"Those were his words. On the ramp, do you remember? While your friend was being tackled to the ground ten feet from you." Emily held her gaze. "That's who you delivered me to. A man who sees me as livestock. Did you stop to think why they wanted me?"
"You're in shock," Lucy whispered. "You don't know what you're—"
She snorted and dropped her head back to the wall. "I'm not in shock. And you're a fucking idiot if you think this ends well for either of us."
Lucy's mouth opened. Closed. Her chin trembled. "They promised they'd let Sarah—"
The ship lurched as the engine pitch changed.
Emily slid sideways, the cuffs catching her full weight and wrenching both shoulders so hard she gasped. Her head bounced off the pipe behind her. Lucy tumbled across the deck, arms and legs flailing as she slid, hitting the far wall with a thud.
The vibration through the hull shifted from a sustained rumble to a series of deep, irregular shudders. It was a landing sequence. They'd just arrived… somewhere.
There was another jolt, harder this time, and the overhead lights flickered.
She braced her feet wide against the deck, pressing her back flat to the wall and trying to keep herself in place as the ship bucked and groaned.
Metal creaked around them. Lucy scrambled to grab onto something but didn't manage it, sliding back and forth with each pitch of the deck.
A final shudder ran through the bay, and the sound of the engines wound down to a whine, then silence.
Heavy, fast footsteps rang down the corridor outside the hold. The door ground open with a hiss that set her teeth on edge, and two warriors filled the frame.
"On your feet." The first one was looking at her.
"She can't," Lucy started as he walked past her like she wasn't even there. "Her hands are—"
Reaching behind Emily, he punched something into the cuff mechanism, releasing her from the rail. Before she could get her feet under her, he hauled her upright by her arm. She winced, hissing through her teeth as his fingers dug in hard.
"This one comes with us." He jerked his chin toward Lucy. "Leave that one, she's worthless."
"Wait." Lucy scrambled to her feet. "No! What about Sarah? I did what you asked. I brought her. We had a deal! Korrait promised—"
Her voice rose higher and broke, words tumbling over each other while the guards ignored her. Emily dug her heels in and made herself a dead weight as they dragged her toward the door.
They didn't slow down.
Twisting against their grip, she threw herself back with everything she had.
The warrior on her left grunted and grabbed her hair in a fist. She gasped, her scalp burning as he yanked her head back, forcing her to look up.
"Walk," he snarled. "Or be dragged. Makes no difference to me. We only need you breathing for the ritual."
She froze. Ritual. What ritual?
Her mind went white with panic for half a second before she shoved it down hard. Whatever they were planning, she couldn't stop it right now, and falling apart wouldn't help.
Emily shot one last glance back through the shrinking gap in the doorway.
Lucy stood in the center of the hold, arms at her sides, ugly-crying.
Emily looked away and quit struggling.
Getting her feet under her, she let them march her forward. Whatever came next, she'd need everything she had left.
The door sealed shut behind her, chopping Lucy's sobs off mid-sound.
The corridor stretched ahead—dim, industrial, reeking of fuel and old metal. Emily walked between the two warriors, wrists raw, head pounding, and her shoulders screaming.
Raaevik wasn't coming.
She'd made damn sure of that.
* * *
The corridor was cold.
No—cold wasn't the right word. It was hostile. The kind of temperature that bit through clothes and settled into bone, like the station's environmental systems had given up trying to be hospitable. Each breath Emily took burned on the way down and fogged on the way out.
The walls weren't smooth metal like Devan Station. They were rough, dark rock visible where the ceiling panels met the walls in uneven seams. Gouges and drill marks scarred the surface. This place had been carved out, hacked from something bigger.
They passed a narrow viewport set into the corridor wall, and her eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of scattered stars and the edge of rock falling away into space.
Shit. They were on an asteroid. Not a building she could walk out of and not a ship she could hijack, not that she knew how. But a bloody rock, floating in the middle of nowhere.
That quiet little ember of "I'll find a way out" died.
The guards' grips tightened on her arms, fingers digging deep enough to bruise. She'd have marks later.
"I can pay you." Her voice came out steadier than she'd expected. "Whatever they're offering, I can double it. Triple it. My mother would—"
The guard on her right didn't even glance at her.