Chapter 9
STAR
Idon’t know if I’m dreaming or dying.
“Rayek,” I breathe, and his name tastes like metal and heat and mercy. His palm is huge and careful, claws tucked, thumb grazing the cut at my mouth so gently my eyes sting. CynJyn grips my waist and whispers, “Oh, thank the saints,” like laughing would break her ribs.
“I’m here,” he says, voice low and wrong for this ship, and I let myself fall into that sound for half a heartbeat.
Then the floor starts to shake.
Boots. Not many. Heavy like law. The air pressure changes, a weight in the sinuses. CynJyn’s fingers dig crescents through my sleeve. I turn toward the sound and catch the bar’s bone ridges against my temple.
“Go,” I whisper, not sure if I’m ordering him or begging him. “He’s coming.”
Rayek’s hand leaves my face. Cold slaps me. He’s gone—no, he’s above, muscle and shadow folding into the duct with a sound like a held breath. The panel barely kisses its frame. If I didn’t know where to look, I wouldn’t know he was there. My knees go watery anyway.
“Play dead,” CynJyn hisses, shaking out her shoulders, igniting her smirk like a fuse. “Or play mean. Dealer’s choice.”
“I’ll play me,” I say, rolling my neck until the bruise under my jaw hums like a struck chord. “Which is mean.”
The door slams open hard enough to rattle the teeth out of the hinges. Red light washes the block; everything looks blood-drenched whether or not it is. Two guards jump to attention, spines straightening like they borrowed steel. The crowd in the other cells goes quiet. Even the bad singing stops.
Brozen Khong does not enter; he occupies.
He fills the doorway, bone spurs catching the red like wet teeth, skin night-black under the wash, eyes a bad, bad kind of joy.
Splitter hangs lazy in his fist, humming a note that makes my molars hurt.
He smells like hot iron and old salt and the kind of hunger that makes people into decorations.
“Well,” he purrs, and his voice is a velvet razor. “Sunlight and gold. My gifts have excellent taste.”
“I’m not a gift,” I say, and my mouth is flippant before my sense files an objection. “I’m a rental with a steep late fee.”
One of the guards barks a laugh and shuts it down so fast his throat clicks. Brozen doesn’t look away from me. He steps close, bone spurs scuffing the deck, the red halo turning his blade into a nervous sunset.
“You are humor,” he decides, amused. “Humor keeps a crew loyal. I will keep you near.” His gaze flicks to CynJyn, sweeps her like an appraisal. “The yellow one bites.”
“She eats men for breakfast,” I say, leaning into the bars until they creak. “You first.”
“Careful,” CynJyn hisses, which is absurd because she’s staring him down like a saint with a knife.
Brozen’s smile widens. “Fire,” he murmurs, eyes back on me. “I like that you burn. We will bank it. We will take it out on festival nights and let the crew remember why they follow a man who brings them trophies they can smell.”
“Funny,” I say, ignoring the shake in my hands. “I was thinking the same about you. Put you on a pole, let children throw rotten fruit. Tradition, you know.”
One of the guards shifts like he wants to strike me. Brozen lifts a finger without looking and the guard becomes stillness incarnate. That finger traces the air between us and stops a hair shy of the bone-wrapped bar.
“I should scold you,” he says, and there’s a theater to it, a lazy drag.
“But I find myself in a generous mood. The Bloodseeker runs fat on luck. The other captains whisper my name like a prayer. Splitter is thirsty and we have a full jug.” He taps the blade lightly against his thigh.
“Perhaps we let insolence ripen. Perhaps we plant you where the crew can watch you refuse to bend.”
“You’re mistaking me for a palm tree,” I say. “I’m a cactus. Hug me and find out.”
He barks a delighted sound. “You will make an excellent pet.”
“I will make an excellent grave,” I say sweetly.
CynJyn snorts. “Put that on your crest.”
“Captain?” one of the guards blurts, not sure if he’s allowed to speak. “The chain is keyed. You said—”
“I did,” Brozen says, without turning. The air fur along his neck shifts; it’s the only warning I get that he’s leaning closer.
He sets his palm against the bar. It’s warm through the bone, too warm.
“Tell me, little sun,” he murmurs, so quiet I could pretend he isn’t letting the whole block hear, “what does your father pay to keep your throat uncut?”
“My father doesn’t pay for my throat,” I say, because fear is loud and I refuse to give it the mic. “But if you need money, I know a club where you can charge admission to watch you bathe.”
CynJyn elbows me. “Stop making eye contact with the tiger.”
“It’s a cat,” I say. “You don’t look away from cats.”
Brozen’s gaze slides to the ceiling, a lazy pan that is somehow more dangerous than a spear. He sees nothing. He’s looking for nothing. He is sure I have nowhere to put my hope. The duct above us holds its breath, all steel and prayer.
“Tonight,” he decides, stepping back, his blade making lazy figure-eights in the wash like it wants to draw blood just to feel its own weight. “We feast. Tomorrow, we play.”
“Don’t trip over the door on your way out,” CynJyn mutters. “It’s shy.”
He laughs again, big this time, and turns his back in a room where only fools turn their backs. He doesn’t know that the ceiling has teeth. He doesn’t look up. Power makes men brave and lazy in equal measure.
“Keep them pretty,” he tells the guards. “Keep them lit. And if anyone touches my pet without permission, I take hands.” He taps Splitter against the nearest wrist like a promise and strolls out, cloak swinging, bone spurs brushing sparks against the frame.
The door slams. The klaxon ratchets down a notch, still grumbling, a heartbeat we can’t dial down.
The guards relax all at once, exhale like they’ve been auditioning for statues.
One says, “Captain’s in love,” sotto voce; the other says, “Captain doesn’t do love,” and checks a wrist reader whose face is cracked like a bad tooth.
CynJyn leans into me. “Okay,” she breathes. “I’m not saying he’s ugly, but if ugliness had a hobby—”
“Shh.” My chest hurts. I look up.
The panel shifts—less than a blink—and drops like a whisper.
Rayek is there. No fanfare. No court. Just heat and gravity and the force of him.
He lands without sound. The guards don’t turn.
His hand is already at the belt of the nearer one, sliding a chip free with the ease of a sin he practiced in a different life.
He’s behind the second before breath remembers it should warn.
A pulse-touch under the ear and the man folds like a bad idea.
The first starts to speak; Rayek cups his mouth and the rest never arrives.
“Hello, boys,” CynJyn says brightly, because she is incapable of silence around crime.
Rayek meets my eyes and the whole room goes secondary. He slides the stolen chip across the bar reader. The bone-wrapped alloy clicks, sulks, then surrenders. The cell door unlatches with a metal sigh that feels like something out of my chest has found its hinge.
“Up,” he says, and I’m already moving, already dragging CynJyn by the elbow, already leaving a part of me behind to haunt these bars in case I need to come back to yell at them.
“Hey, Commander,” CynJyn grins, breathless. “Great vacation spot. Three stars. Towels were bones.”
“Hands,” he says, and his is there, palm open, a platform I’d jump onto in a hurricane.
He boosts me like I weigh nothing. I grab the lip of the duct, fingers skidding on dust and grease; he pushes and I slide in on my forearms, metal grating kiss-burning my skin through the thin fabric.
CynJyn scrambles after with a grunt, horns knocking the frame.
Rayek follows, a dark tide, closing the panel with a breath.
We are inside the ship like a cough. The duct is close, hot, smelling of old oil and fried dust and that iron tang that never belongs. My throat scratches. My knees protest. CynJyn says, “Ow, ow, ow,” in a whisper that laughs. Rayek’s breath is steady behind us, a metronome of sanity.
“Left,” he says. “Two meters, drop. Quiet.”
“How do you know—” CynJyn starts.
“He’s been walking the walls for hours,” I say, because hope tastes amazing and I want to chew it. “He knows her bones.”
“Bones,” CynJyn says, and huffs a little laugh. “Appropriate.”
We hit the drop, a maintenance shaft mouth like a dark throat. Rayek slides past us and lowers himself first, hands finding invisible rungs. His shoulders brush both sides. He looks up and that gold hits me like a flare.
“Your foot,” he says, and his hand is on my calf, guiding blindly, sure. “There.”
“Okay,” I whisper, and it’s please, and it’s yes, and it’s don’t leave.
Sirens somewhere else decide to join the party. A klaxon cycles higher. The deck under us thumps. A voice barks through the shipwide, crisp and furious: “Hard hold, report! What are you doing with my chain?”
“The chain’s lonely,” CynJyn mutters. “Let it date.”
We spill out into a wider duct and crawl faster, elbows and knees, palms slipping. Heat blooms under my hands; my bruises complain; my shoulder screams when I bump it wrong. The world shrinks to metal and breath and the low, constant growl of engines doing violence to the dark.
“Stop,” Rayek says, and we freeze. He leans into a grille and listens with his whole body. I can feel him hearing—jaw flexing, lashes a shadow across his cheek, a tiny tilt of his head toward a noise the rest of us can’t name. He points—two fingers, right, then down—and mouths, “Shops.”
“There be wrenches,” CynJyn mouths back, feral.