“What about you?” I ask, and my voice is slightly hoarse—probably from all the smoke I inhaled earlier. Still, there’s something inside me urging me to take a risk for once, to be just a bit reckless. I listen to it, even though I know I shouldn’t, and ask, “How do you like your guys?”
“I don’t, normally.” He takes a step closer, and my breath catches in my dry throat. “Do you really want to know what I like, Princess?”
I swallow and shake my head, adding a little disdainful sniff for good measure. “Why would I?”
He ignores the comment. “Right now, I seem to like stuck-up princesses who think they’re better than everyone else. I have an overwhelming urge to find out just what makes you so special.”
I consider backing away, but I’ve done that more than I ought to in the past day. So I stand my ground and square my shoulders even as I try to ignore the warmth that’s settling low in my belly. “Then why don’t you come over here and find out?”
He moves toward me a little bit at a time. “Here I come, Princess. Better brace yourself.” He’s leaning in slowly. Steadily. Closer and closer until the very air between us is filled with the warm coffee-and-leather scent of him.
It’s a good scent—an arousing one—and I find myself drawing it deep inside my lungs as I wait and wait and wait.
“It doesn’t matter one bit to me what you do.” I try for a superior air, but did my voice just tremble?
Honestly, in this moment, I don’t give a shit, because Ian is right here, big and strong and so, so dangerous, and all I can think about is the way he’s looking at me. And the way I am the worst of liars, because nothing has mattered more than what he plans to do next—
There’s a sudden thump behind us, like someone’s just dropped something or run into a wall.
I jump back, heart in my throat. Then stare up at Ian, wide-and wild-eyed as I realize what just almost happened here. And that someone else on board saw the whole thing.
Chapter 13
Beckett, Newly Escaped Prisoner 826
My head hurts. A lot. And not because I just almost walked in on the ship’s self-appointed captain and the princess doing…whatever it is they were doing, though what I did see was more than enough to turn my stomach. I thought Ian would have better taste.
No, the ache in my head is different. I’ve had it for days. Weeks. I’ve got no idea where it came from and even less of an idea when it started. I just know that one day I woke up and my head felt like it was being split straight down the middle—by a crowbar. Slowly.
No matter how many times I try to think it through, I come up blank. I remember lots of small moments from my childhood. I remember Jarved. I remember my mom. I remember joining the rebels, then getting captured. I remember being taken to the Caelestis. I even remember some of the “experiments” they did on me. But then…nothing. One minute I was strapped to a chair while they asked me questions, and the next I was curled in a ball in the corner of my cell, crying.
Except weeks passed in between, weeks I have absolutely no recollection of. It’s maddening. And terrifying. I can’t help wondering if the same thing happened to Jarved when they took him.
I really hope not. It’s one thing for me to be going through the confusion and the pain. It’s another thinking about my little brother suffering the same agony.
I just wish I could remember exactly what—
A sharp pain slices through my head, putting my brain in a vise and nearly bringing me to my knees. I cry out, reaching for the wall to steady myself as I try to breathe through the pain.
It’s harder than it sounds. When the pain finally passes, it’s all I can do to remain upright.
I don’t have a choice, though. I don’t know any of the people on this ship, and I sure as shit don’t trust them. There’s no way I’m going to lower my guard with them for a second. Especially not when the crown princess herself is on board.
When the nausea finally passes, I start walking again. This isn’t a big ship, but it’s not tiny, either. And if my stay on the little space station of horrors taught me anything, it’s to know your environment. If I hadn’t paid attention—at least while I was lucid—to all the places they took me and all the codes they entered when they thought I wasn’t looking, there’s no way I would have gotten off the Reformer. And no way that I’d be here now.
I’m not sure here is a particularly good place to be, but it’s better than not being alive at all, which is what likely happened to everyone else on that ship, and right now, that’s good enough. I’m going to know every nook and cranny of this ship before the night is over.
As I pass a hallway, I glance down it and see the little one—Rain, I think her name is—sneaking out of one of the rooms that run along the corridor. She’s not overtly doing anything to make me think she’s sneaking—no tiptoeing, no glancing over her shoulder or up and down the hallway—but I hold to my first impression. There’s something about the way she’s moving, so carefully and quietly, like she’s afraid to attract any attention, that intrigues me. And has me altering my plans and turning down the hallway to follow her.
Now both of us are sneaking down the hallway, which doesn’t make me feel ridiculous at all. But I’m too intrigued to turn back. I want to know where she’s going and why she feels the need to be stealthy as she does it.
And maybe—probably—this isn’t what I should be doing when I still have so much more of the ship to learn. But in times of crisis, you’re supposed to know your enemies so you can understand them. Surely I can chalk this little detour up to getting to know how Rain thinks. The fact that she didn’t feel like an enemy when I met her on the bridge only makes it more important that I figure her out.
After all, what’s more suspicious than someone who doesn’t seem suspicious at all?
Chapter 14
Rain
From the moment Ian and the princess left, Merrick didn’t look happy. I understood why—being trapped on this ship with a guy who just pulled a gun on him, who is also telling us what to do, is probably his worst nightmare. Especially since I’m fairly certain the ship is taking us away from Serati, where he really, really wants to go.
I tried to copy his disgruntled expression—I’m definitely supposed to be as upset as he is—but it was hard to do because inside, I was fizzing with excitement.
“Arrogant bastard,” he muttered after Ian disappeared out of the room, closely followed by Princess Kalinda.
“I know,” I said, trying to inject my voice with an annoyance I definitely didn’t feel. “Come on,” I added in an effort to divert his attention. “Let’s go look around.”
I didn’t wait for him, instead heading straight out into the corridor. It runs in two directions around a solid section that takes up the middle of the ship. There’s a door, but it won’t budge. Maybe it’s some sort of power supply?
I could hear Ian up ahead to the right, and, since Merrick was right behind me, I took the other corridor. The first door led into some sort of storage bay with lots of containers. I opened up one of them and peered inside.