ANDROMA
THE ALARM SPLIT the silence like a knife.
“Damn it all!” Dex shouted, though Andi could barely hear his voice above the alarm. “We’re too late!”
She turned back to face Valen, her mind racing.
One more floor down, and they’d find Soyina waiting for them, along with the promise of escape. They had to go. Now.
“Valen,” Andi said, rushing to his side. “Come on. We’re getting you out of here.”
Valen’s eyes slammed shut. He fell to his knees, shaking his head, murmuring, “No, no, no,” as he scrambled away, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
How in the hell were they supposed to get him out of here like this? He was a bleeding, shattered mess, hardly able to stand, let alone run down a flight of stairs while being chased by guards.
“Help me get him up!” Andi shouted to Dex.
Valen howled and skittered back even farther, leaving another fresh smear of blood on the stones. He tried to stand, but his legs shook with the effort. His arms were covered in bruises and lashes, and they were far too thin.
It was a wonder he was still alive. Andi tried to tamp down the wave of horror she felt at seeing him in this state. They didn’t have time for this. Somewhere in the distance, shouts rang out, and blue lights danced on the walls outside Valen’s open cell door as guards came closer.
She peered out the cell door. In the mouth of the stairwell, a guard appeared. Then another behind him, followed by two more.
She hadn’t expected things to go this way. But she knew this was the only part of the mission that counted, the part that would earn her and Dex and her crew their pardoned names and a shipload of Krevs.
Andi looked down at Valen and frowned.
He was a shadow of the person she’d once known, but he was still a Cortas—a living fragment of Kalee. Andi hadn’t been able to keep her friend alive, but she’d be damned if anything happened to Valen under her watch.
“I’m sorry about this,” she said.
Then she brought the solid base of a short-whip down over Valen’s head.
He crumpled in a heap.
Dex stared, openmouthed, from behind him. “That’s your plan?”
“Take an arm,” Andi commanded.
Soon the two of them stood in the mouth of the cell, Valen’s unconscious body hanging between them.
“You remember all those sword-fighting lessons you gave me on Tenebris?” Andi asked. “The ones where we fought single-handed?”
“Oh, love.” Dex lifted a dark brow. “How could I ever forget?”
Valen’s head lolled against her cheek, and she nearly gagged at his rotten scent.
“One more thing, Dex?” Andi asked, shoving Valen’s head the other way. Dex met her eyes as she doused the light on her cuffs. “Don’t call me ‘love.’”
She gripped her short-whip tight, imagining it was one of her swords, already seeing the way she’d slice it through tendons like a blade carving through raw meat. In her mind, she was a Spectre again. She imagined Kalee in Valen’s place.
No one would harm her charge.
“Steady,” Dex whispered. “Silent.”
They waited for a breath of a second, allowing the guards to get closer, the light from their weapons brightening with each stomp of their boots.
“Now,” Andi said.
Together, she and Dex stepped out of the cell, carrying Valen Cortas between them.
Six guards stood just around the corner, weapons raised, looking ready for a fight.
* * *
They sprang, their two bodies moving in one single motion, Valen still between them.
Dex on the left, Andi on the right. They moved so fast the world around them seemed to pause.
Andi’s whip flashed in a glorious arc, striking the guard closest to her just as he moved to action. The end of her whip curled around his, snaking like electric fingertips intertwining, and Andi yanked backward. The guard’s whip soared past them, then exploded with a shower of sparks against the cell door beyond.
“Cover me,” Andi growled.
Dex attacked as Andi rose, using the counterweight of both boys, and swung her foot into the weaponless guard’s jaw. A crack sounded as bones shattered beneath her boot.
“Down!” Dex shouted.
A short-whip soared past the space where Valen’s head had just been. It severed the end of Andi’s braid, the scent of burned hair wafting into her nostrils.
She rose, snarling, as a lock of her hair tumbled to the floor.
These Lunamere bastards were going to die.
* * *
The world moved in flashes as darkness and light fought and intertwined. The guards before them were like ghosts that appeared and then flickered out as the whips and gauntlets cracked from blue to black and back again.
With each patch of darkness, Dex and Andi moved forward. Valen’s body was like dead weight against their shoulders.
“Take them out!” a guard screamed.
Passing Valen to Andi, Dex dropped to the floor, leg extended as it rammed into the guard’s legs and sent him sprawling.
“Come on!” Andi yelled from behind him, moving toward the stairs.
Dex looped an arm around Valen, pulling the three of them into the stairwell. He slammed the door behind them, quickly fusing the lock with the electric heat from his short-whip.
Fists pounded the metal behind them.
“One more level, and we’ll be out. Soyina will be waiting at the door, if we’re lucky,” Andi said, already pulling the three of them down the eerie staircase.
Something whizzed past his face.
Andi yelped as a knife sank into her shoulder.
In a blink, she yanked it out and held it before her.
“Hold Valen,” she growled.
Before Dex could stop her, she rushed down the stairs, swinging the knife.
There were too many guards. Even as Andi fought her way down, more poured up the steps toward him and Valen.
He was out of weapons. Out of options.
* * *
“Sorry about this, friend,” Dex said.
With one grand shove, he pushed Valen down the remaining stairs.
The guards toppled in Valen’s path.
The guy was unconscious. No harm done unless he died on the descent—it was only one flight of stairs, not twenty.
Dex leaped over the railing to the floor below, scooped up a whip from a fallen guard, and swung his way to Valen’s sprawled form.
Andi was already there, wrestling a final living guard away. The guard swung with his gauntlets, electricity spitting blue. Andi ducked, then came up swiftly enough to knock his head backward against the wall.
A final grunt, as she kicked him into silence.
Then, nothing. The alarm cut off.
Silence swept over them as a door creaked open behind Dex.
On the other side was a sight for sore eyes. Soyina, holding a key and standing beside a rolling cart. Her mismatched eyes flashed as she looked at the aftermath of the fight.
“Looky looky,” Soyina said. “The gang got out.”
* * *
“You threw him down the stairs?” Andi asked.
Dex helped her lift Valen onto Soyina’s waiting cart. “I had to get creative.”
Beside him, Andi’s breath came out in ragged huffs. “We need to go,” she said. “Finish the job, Soyina, and get us the hell out of here.”
Soyina stared at them, a sickening, sideways smile on her lips. With a strange cackle, she said, “Alright then. This may hurt a bit.”
She reached behind her, pulled out a gun and, with a single shot, sent Dex reeling into darkness.
The last thing he saw was Andi’s head hitting the ground beside him, her pale eyes wide as moons. Then white light enveloped him, and all semblance of the world melted away.