A soft breeze kicked up as the man and I squared off in our silent battle of wills. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t feel like backing down was an option at this point. I had laid out my terms, and they knew what was at stake.

But that didn’t stop me from feeling queasy at the thought of an injured woman being on board the ship, possibly dying while this exchange went on. I didn’t want anyone to lose their mother, especially to violence. The wound it left was a raw, gaping, thing—even if our relationship hadn’t been that great.

That meant a compromise.

Of sorts.

“While you’re busy pondering that little enigma,” I started, keeping my voice low, “I would like to send my medic and a guard on board. But I need to know how many other people there are before I do.”

The gray eyes boring holes into my own blinked in surprise, and his brows drew together. “You’re… still going to help her?”

I pulled my face into a carefully placed mask, so I revealed nothing, and choked out the only words I could think of that would make him understand. “My mother died less than a week ago.”

His head cocked inquisitively, and I met his gaze without flinching, trying not to let him see how much saying those words had cost me. In fact, my mother had died five days ago, and trying to pretend that wound wasn’t there, on top of being drained mentally, physically, and emotionally, was a herculean effort.

But somehow, I managed.

The girl took a few hesitant steps down the ramp, reached out to wrap her hand around his arm, and stepped delicately around him. As her features came into view, I realized there was a striking resemblance between them. Not in their coloring; her hair was picking up just enough ambient light for me to see that it wasn’t red like I had initially thought, but a rich chocolate color that turned red in the right light, while her almond-shaped eyes were a luminescent green, so bright they practically glowed like a cat’s. She gave me a sympathetic look, but her next words were for the man beside her, and rich with sadness.

“Check out her eyes, Thomas. She’s got the look.”

I frowned and shifted my eyes back and forth between them. “What look?”

Thomas pressed his silky lips together in a solemn line, the weight of his silvery gaze making me distinctly uncomfortable. “Our parents have the same heaviness in their eyes as you have in yours.”

He said that as if I could somehow extract meaning from it, so when he didn’t continue, I gave him the most obnoxiously annoyed look I could manage, and then squinted my eyes at him. “You do realize that literally none of that explains what the hell she’s talking about, or answers my damn question? I mean, do you want that girl’s mother to die? You called us for help, for crying out loud.”

“Yes, but we don’t understand why you’re meeting with us,” he explained, and the slight snap of teasing condescension made me bristle. Sure, he was sexy as sin, but anyone who fell for this man would be in a world of trouble, trying to keep him from running all over them. He practically oozed command. “I believe you when you say that your mother died, but…” Trailing off, he looked at his sister and clamped his mouth shut, the look on his face telling her it was her decision.

She studied me a second or two longer, and then nodded. “There are only two more in the cargo bay,” she informed me. “Our cousin, Helena Vox, and her mother, Amberlynn Ashabee. I’m Melissa Croft, and this is my older brother, Thomas.”

Thomas gave me an imperious nod, and I rolled my eyes, unimpressed. “My name is Liana Castell,” I informed them. I started to open my mouth again, but suddenly Quess was speaking.

“Her name is Champion Liana Honorbound Castell, Wayfinder, Defender of the Gate, and leader of the Knights of the Citadel.”

My eyes drifted closed as I tried to keep the embarrassment off my face, but I thoroughly planned to murder Quess later. The only reason to give all the details was to brag, and that really wasn’t my style. Not to mention, they had no idea what any of that even meant.

“What happened to Devon Alexander?” the girl asked curiously, and my eyes shot open. She knew the former Champion’s name? That solidified the fact that they were a part of the same group who had come here before. Devon Alexander had been on the council twenty-five years ago, and the fact that they knew his name and that I had taken his place was incredibly revealing. I wanted to know more about what happened—because I was certain that something in that story could help me figure out who exactly had escalated the destruction of Scipio since that time.

And if I knew that, perhaps I could use it to keep them from getting any worse.

“Champion Castell killed him,” Maddox informed them, her voice carrying a dangerous undercurrent.

And just like that, I added Maddox to the murder list. I loved my friends, and I knew they meant well, but this was not the best start to fostering a positive relationship. Rolling my eyes, I let enough of my displeasure show as was socially acceptable.

“To be fair, he tried to frame me for murder and then kill me.” I paused as a secondary thought occurred to me, and added, “Technically, I didn’t even kill him.” I sometimes forgot that little detail. Everyone in the Tower believed that I had done it on Scipio’s orders, but it was Leo who had actually killed him, right after Devon tried to kill Grey by shorting out his net. “Quess, Maddox, get on the ship and see what you can do for their aunt.”

I gave the siblings in front of me a searching look, letting them know that the ultimate choice was theirs, and Melissa nodded. Quess and Maddox immediately broke off from Leo and Alex, leaving the five of us alone as they went up the ramp.

“Thank you,” Melissa said, and I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. Because they deserved to know that we weren’t even meeting under legitimate terms. I was a representative of the Tower, but I wasn’t here as one, and we only had a limited amount of time before they had to leave—or risked being discovered.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said grimly. “You need to know that we aren’t exactly… meeting with you on behalf of the council. We knocked out the sensors and hijacked your signal to keep you off the Tower’s radar. But that won’t last long. If the council finds out you are here, they’ll pull up the protocols from what happened last time and follow precedent.”

“You mean use those laser things on us?” Thomas asked, and I nodded. The two exchanged a long, considering look. “Then we should talk inside,” Thomas said brusquely. I watched as he pulled the gun out of the holster, ejected the clip and a round from the chamber with a practiced move, and then set the weapon on the ground. Melissa followed, her hands a blur as she repeated his action with her own gun, before placing it next to his.

I stared at both of them and realized that if we had gotten into a shooting match with them, they probably would’ve won. I had only used the thing once, with the help of some weird ability in the legacy net that hadn’t even been mine. Still, I did know how to remove the clip and clear the chamber, so I followed their lead.

Only I didn’t bother to move fast, because I knew I wasn’t confident enough with it yet. Instead, I opted for a lazier motion, hoping that they wouldn’t pick up on the fact that I wasn’t as good as them, while also showing them that I didn’t feel the need to compete with them.

Leo followed my action and unloaded his gun, and then the five of us were walking up the metal ramp toward the rectangular light coming from the opening. When we reached the top, I immediately zeroed in on Quess kneeling next to someone on the floor, Maddox squatting close by with his medical bag to hand him items as he needed them. I couldn’t see who they were working on, but a young woman, probably eighteen or nineteen years old, was standing over them both, her arms folded tight across her chest. Her hair was a deep auburn and hung in tight corkscrews around her heart-shaped face.

She glanced over at us as we entered, and I got a flash of blue eyes that were so vibrant, they glistened like the crystal components in our computers. “What are you doing?” she asked warily, taking half a step toward us. “You know that we’re not supposed to let anyone on the ship. Your dad—”

“Is already going to be pissed that we came here in the first place,” Thomas said on an exhale, two parts annoyed, one part indifferent. “We’re already in for a penny, Hela. Might as well get something out of it. Besides…” He trailed off and gave me another appraising look. “They’re keeping us secret from the rest of their council to help us.”

Helena—Hela—blinked her eyes several times, and then looked at the three of us, studying Leo first, then Alex, and finally me. “Her?” she asked, and Thomas nodded.

The redhead sucked in a breath, and then shook her head. “Mom is going to tear us all a new one when she wakes up.”

“Be grateful for it,” I told her in a raw, hoarse voice, before I could stop myself. The pain I felt regarding my mother’s death was only rivaled by my curiosity and interest in what she was saying—that they were breaking the rules about being here, as well. They weren’t alone—they had experienced supervision—but had gone against the orders of their government in an effort to save her. In a lot of ways, they were in the same boat that we were.

She gave me another considering look, her facial features tightening. “Guys, did you notice her eyes?”

“Of course we did,” Melissa said impatiently, flipping some of her deep brown hair over her shoulder. “It’s why we let them on board.” She paused and shifted her weight as her gaze drifted over to where Maddox and Quess were working. “How is she doing?”

“How she is doing is a very complicated question,” Quess grunted, his body moving back and forth with the motions of his hand. “The very simple answer is not bad, all things considered.”

“All things considered?” I repeated stupidly. On impulse, I moved over to where he was only a few inches away from falling face-first onto his patient. But as more of her came into view, I realized what Quess had meant.

The woman on the bed was in her early forties and had an assortment of slight wrinkles on her slack face, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. It was the lines of blackened and cracked flesh that radiated from her side up and across her chest, a slash of pink through the middle of it, where the flesh had ripped open to reveal the muscles and tendons inside. I immediately recognized the damage as severe electrical burns. It was clear they had been doing their best to take care of them with their own medicine, but some of the larger ones were leaking sickly yellow lines of pus.

“What did that?” I asked, horrified at the damage I was seeing. Quess was doing his damnedest to help her, and with what he had in his medical kit, I was certain he could save her, but she would be severely scarred for the rest of her life. Bio-foam was amazing with all sorts of lacerations, but on burnt flesh, we had to resort to other methods—namely a transplant of a gelatinous material we produced in the Tower, along with some secret components that sped up the healing process. It would scar, but she would be alive.

“We got caught up in a war going on in the south,” Thomas said tiredly. “We were down there trying to establish a diplomatic relationship with the regime of one of the settlements under attack, when there was a coup at his palace. We managed to make it back to our ship, but Amber was caught in a blast from one of their weapons. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

A war? Down south? Between people? It took me a moment—probably because I had been raised my entire life to believe that we were the only humans who had survived the End—but it finally clicked that there were more people. Living out there and surviving, just like we were. Well, maybe not exactly like us, but still. Dozens of questions hovered on my tongue, just begging for me to open my mouth and let them flood out, but I held them in place.

“I thought she was dead,” Hela whispered, blood draining from her face. “Will she make it?”

I wanted to reassure her, but once again, Quess beat me to it.

“Listen, you don’t know me yet,” he said, emphasizing the yet with the sound of tape tearing from a leech patch, designed to draw out infection in wounds like this. “But I am friggin’ awesome at everything I do. So believe me when I say that your mother is going to be just fine.”

Beside him, Maddox chuckled and looked up at Hela. “He is really good at what he does.”

Hela scowled at them, her eyes almost crossing with the force of her annoyance. “I won’t believe it until I see it,” she declared imperiously.

Quess only laughed at that and continued to work. I watched for a few more seconds, and then moved back to Melissa and Thomas, the questions dancing a merry jig around my head. I wanted to ask all of them at once, but I didn’t want to overwhelm them, or tip my hand about just how ignorant we were regarding the outside world. So I settled on the one that had been bugging me since the start of this.

“Why do you all keep fixating on my eyes?”

Thomas gave me a small and sad smile. “Sorry if we’re weird about that. You can tell a lot about a person from their eyes, and yours are very special.”

“Why?” I demanded, still woefully confused and unhappy about it. Was it the color? Admittedly, amber-colored eyes were super rare, but what did that have to do with anything?

“Your eyes remind us of our parents,” Melissa said. I looked over at her, and her own eyes were full of shadows. “They have the same look. They have ever since the war.”

“The war down south?” I asked, still bewildered. “And what does it even matter if I have the same look in my eyes as they did?”

“Relax,” Melissa said soothingly. “It’s just evidence that you’ve seen a lot of horror in your life and managed to survive with a sense of justice and honor intact. We respect that. Hell, our parents and extended family probably wrote the damn book on it. We just… We can tell that you wouldn’t hurt us unprovoked.”

I blinked at her, and then shook my head and tried not to snort derisively. That was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. But if it earned me some trust, then I was willing to take it.