When the glass is empty, she places it gently on the table. “Tell me what your plan is and how we can help.”
I exhale. We’re not through this yet, but now that we’re this far, I allow myself to think that maybe it will work, that we’ll get Milla back and the nightmare will be over.
I spend a few minutes explaining our plan. Beckett’s mother listens, interjecting here and there to point out flaws or ask questions.
When I’m finished, Marlina thinks for a few more minutes; then, finally, she gives a curt nod, and I have to hold back my whoop of joy. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a distraction,” she says. I lean across and pour myself another drink, then slump back in my chair. I feel drained. I hadn’t realized how tense I was.
“We’re going to get Milla back,” Max says in my head.
“I know.”
“There is one more thing to discuss,” Marlina says.
I raise a brow. “And that is?”
“Between my daughter and me.” She turns to Beckett. “Did you do what I asked?”
All the color drains from Beckett’s face, and somehow, I know that we are fucked. Again.
Chapter 89
Beckett
I knew that question was coming, and I’ve been dreading it. Because, no, of course I didn’t kill Kali. Maybe I could have weeks ago, when we were first on board together, but now that I know her? Now that we’re kind of a team? Now that Rain would never forgive me?
“No, I didn’t.”
Her mouth tightens. “You had one job. I said I would help you, but you needed to do that one thing for me.”
“What thing?” Max looks back and forth between us warily.
I don’t answer him. He doesn’t need to know.
“I know what I’m doing, Mom,” I tell her, even though that’s probably the biggest lie I’ve ever told. I haven’t known what I’m doing in a very long time. “You have to trust me.”
“I did trust you, and you’ve disappointed me.” She turns to Ian and Max. “The deal’s off.”
“What the fuck?” Ian leaps to his feet, which has Vix looming threateningly over him. He tends to not like any sudden movements around my mother. “You can’t just cancel—”
“I can do whatever I want. You’re in my town now.” She pushes back from the table.
Ian gives me a look that clearly says, Fix it.
I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try. “Why don’t you guys go outside? Let me talk to my mom alone for a few minutes.”
Skeptical looks from both of them.
“It’s fine,” I tell them.
The look my mother gives me—and them—says it’s definitely not fine.
But since everything rests on me being able to convince my mother, I don’t have much of a choice. And since Ian won’t take well to any discussion about murdering Kali, the only way this is going to work is if I get them out of the room.
“Go!” I tell them. “But leave the jewels.”
“Jewels?” my mother asks, brows raised. And in no time, she’s back in the game. It’s what I was hoping for.
Ian looks like he wants to argue, but I give him a just-do-it look. He does, reluctantly, dumping a handful of Kali’s necklaces on the table. Not all of them, I notice, but I figure if I was him, I’d hold something back, too. Especially since, in his mind, everything just went to shit for no reason.
After reuniting them with their weapons, Vix shows Ian and Max into the main bar area. And I’m one-on-one with my mother.
“You were alone on that ship with the crown princess, and you didn’t kill her?” my mother snarls. “Are you a traitor to the Rebellion or just a coward?”
“Neither. But killing her means nothing, Mom. The Empress has disowned her.”
“For now. I told you the other day: royal blood calls to royal blood, Beckett. You’ll do well to remember that.”
After what went down between Kali and her mother, I seriously doubt that. But maybe I’m wrong—my mother does have more experience with the Ruling Families than I do.
“That’s not the only thing, though.” I play the last card I’ve got. “I couldn’t kill Kali on the Starlight, Mom. Not if I wanted a snowball’s chance on Serai of making it back here to you.”
“You think some little princess could take you?” She sounds shocked now. “My daughter?”
“Not Kali. Ian. He’s in love with her.”
My mother’s head tilts in surprise. “That big, tough mercenary who was just in here with us is in love with the crown princess?”
“He’s completely head over heels for her. If she died with only five other people on the ship, he wouldn’t rest until he’d killed whoever was responsible. I wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving. Not to mention, we’d lose our best chance to find out if Jarved was ever on Delta V47.”
For a long time, my mother doesn’t say anything. She studies me like she studied Ian and Max a few minutes ago, as if trying to decide if she can trust me.
“What about when the job is done?” she asks. “When you’ve gotten onto the asteroid to find your brother? Will you kill the princess then?”
I swallow down the nausea in my stomach. Do my best to ignore the pain that feels like my skull is being split in two. And whisper, “Yes, of course,” even though I can’t imagine actually doing it.
Again, she studies me. “And you’ll come back to us when the job is done? When the princess is dead?”
“Of course,” I repeat. I’ve known it was heading toward this all along, known I was going to have to leave Rain sooner rather than later. But it still makes me ache to hear it out loud, to know just how close we are to the end.
She shifts her attention to the four necklaces on the table in front of us. “These are Kalinda’s, I assume?”
“They are.”
She holds up one of them—a huge ugly purple pendant surrounded by rondolinite. She studies them closely before holding it up so that the light glints off the jewels. “Definitely real. And definitely part of the Imperial jewels.”
She looks back at me. “Go confirm the list of weapons with your friends. I’ll have them ready when we meet in the Wilds in six days.”
It’s better than I expected—almost more than I’d hoped for.
But as I head into the bar, she calls after me, “You will need to keep your end of the bargain. Or there will be consequences.”
Ian looks up at her words, his dark eyes meeting mine with a question I have no intention of answering. And a trace of suspicion I have no way to allay.
I turn back to my mother with a nod and a look that tells her I get it. Of course there are consequences. In my world, there are always consequences. And those consequences are usually bad.
Why should this time be any different?
Chapter 90
Rain
The Wilds are directly in front of us, and as I watch them through the viewing screens at the front of the Starlight, I don’t know how I feel about that. Because once we rescue Milla—and maybe Jarved—from the asteroid, there will be nothing left to do. We’ll go our separate ways, and I may never see any of these people again.