“Sorry, all I could think about at the time was you.”
A wide grin spread across his face. “Aw, damn. You’re really sweet on me, huh, Mo’acair?”
She made to smile, but her lips twitched, her amusement extinguished along with the reminder of Lace’s final words. Griffith still didn’t know what’d happened to her.
Heat rose to Adequin’s face, and her breath caught as she looked down, kicking at the floor with the toe of her boot. She crossed her arms low and tight over her stomach as it heaved with an acidic burn.
“Uh, shit,” Griffith said quietly. “What’d I do? What’s wrong?”
She swallowed the sour lump forming at the back of her throat. “Lace told me what that means … My anchor.”
“Oh, she did, huh?” He tightened his arms around her back. “Well, it’s apt. You’re what brings me back from the Divide.” She looked up and the warmth in his eyes vanished in an instant. His brow lined deep and he licked his lips slowly. “What is it?”
She swallowed more acidic phlegm. “She’s gone, Griff. I’m so sorry. I tried, but…”
His grip on her loosened, shoulders dropping as he took a half step back.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I know how much she meant to you.”
He nodded as his vacant gaze drifted over her shoulder.
“I’m sure it doesn’t help, but you should know … we’d never have made it off the Argus without her. She died saving us.” Her throat burned with more swells of bile, a sharp ache tightening under her rib cage. “So many people are dead, Griff. I couldn’t save…”
His chest swelled as he blew out a heavy breath, then pulled her into him. She clamped her eyes shut, dampening his vest as a few tears pressed out.
He stepped back, keeping hold of one of her hands. “What happened?”
Pushing out a trio of long breaths, she did her best to clear away her worry and guilt and dread long enough to explain everything that’d happened since they parted ways. He was shocked to hear about the Argus, and equally as shocked that someone managed to convince her to board the Hermes and escape. When she told him how that went down, his expression tightened—equal parts amused and resentful. She wasn’t sure if he planned to thank or punch Puck later—or both. News of Augustus Mercer’s cloned Drudger army, her brief and unproductive interaction with Poine Gate, and the cryptic Viator message left him looking just as bemused and fatigued as she felt about the whole thing.
“I just can’t figure out what we’re supposed to do next,” she explained, chewing the inside of her lip as she picked at her nails. “There’s no directive that even comes close to covering this situation. Except maybe the outer-colony abandonment protocols, I guess? But that doesn’t even really apply—we never got an official withdrawal order, and there’s certainly no ‘insurmountable enemy force’ to trigger it without one. So technically, as the final point of egress, we should be holding Kharon Gate until contacted. Either way, until we get that gate functional again, we’re stranded out here, and the Legion has disappeared—”
“Fuck the Legion, Quin,” Griffith said dismissively. She stood straighter, surprised by the vehemence in his tone. “We don’t need them to survive this.”
She swallowed down a lump in her throat, and he gripped her hand tighter.
“But you need to get this guilt-trip shit out of your system,” he continued. “And you really gotta stop pretending like the Legion is gonna rally behind us.”
Her cheeks warmed. “So that’s it?” she said, aware of how desperate she sounded. “We’re just on our own?”
“Has Lugen called back?”