Jàden’s gut ignited with heat as Jon’s beard prickled against her cheek. By the light of the Guardians, she needed to feel this man’s kiss, and she’d just had to open her big mouth when he’d tried. The change in his demeanor was instantaneous, from gentle and intimate to steel in his eyes and body coiled like a viper.

  Something knocked again on the ship’s outer hull, and Jon disappeared to the inner corridor.

  She cursed under her breath and slammed the firemark into the gun. Violet light bled through the seams from the butt to the tip of the barrel, powering up her shots. She pressed her head to the gun, another wave of fresh sobs gripping her chest.

  Kale was really gone, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to bring him back. She’d only wanted to see his face and feel like she wasn’t fighting for a dead dream.

  But Jàden would never be able to erase the video of Frank Kale in full Guild Command regalia speaking at his son’s funeral, talking about how Kale’s urn only held a piece of the ship as there was nothing left of his body. As if he actually cared about his son.

  “Fucking traitor,” she muttered, jabbing the rear sight repeatedly against her forehead.

  “Oh, little darlin’.” Frank’s deep voice reverberated from the top deck. “Three warm bodies inside the hull. Do I shoot one down or start with these bastards on their knees?”

  A shudder raced from the top of her head to the burning ache inside her gut.

  Frank would keep coming after her, and she had no one left.

  Kale wasn’t able to protect her anymore, and she couldn’t hide under the covers and hope the bad man went away. She pressed a hand to her mouth to suppress a scream of frustration.

  Courage cannot awaken without fear, Jàden, Kale’s voice whispered in her thoughts.

  Terror squeezed her throat like a vice. He’d always wanted her to understand that it was okay to be afraid, but now that fear was all she knew.

  I have two rules: stay dry and stay alive. This time it was Thomas in her head, his sharp tone needling her body to move. To fight. But she didn’t want to be alive anymore, not if her future lay trapped between glass walls. She should tell Thomas to fuck off and just drown herself beneath the waves, cradled in the embrace of her bonded moon.

  But a hint of Jon’s scent filled her nose, his heat clinging to her cheeks. Put the past behind you and focus on what’s in your life right now.

  Jon. She had her protector. The strength in his blood rippled through their tied energy. He was up there somewhere with Frank, except Jon wouldn’t have a gun. As strong as he and his men were, they only had their smarts and steel weapons while Frank had an arsenal of firepower at his disposal.

  Without Jon, she really would be better off dead. She couldn’t lose him too.

  But as the heat from his embrace, the closeness of his mouth, washed over her again, Jàden lowered the gun to her side and peeked around the stall. Time to show her courage.

  As the large object bumped the hull again, a scuffle broke out on deck, followed by gunfire.

  Her shoulders bunched up tight, but she had to protect Jon.

  Theryn’s muffled voice filtered below, and by his cocky tone, he was probably going to get everyone killed.

  A single shot fired, and tears slid down her cheeks.

  She couldn’t be responsible for another death. Jàden held the sight to her eye the way Kale showed her years ago, but nothing moved in the outer corridor. If Frank really was monitoring heat signatures, he’d be able to see by her stance exactly where she was.

  His voice washed over her from the deck again, loud and clear. “I have a secret, darlin’. Wanna know where he is?”

  Pain stabbed through her heart. Kale.

  “That boy used to look too much like his mother, but now he’s got my features. My grit. Maybe I should brainwash this bastard and turn him into the son he should have been.”

  “Fucking…” She slammed the butt of the gun against the stall, her hatred producing a fresh round of tears. Her hands shook so hard she had to clench the gun tight to hold on. Frank had taunted her like this for years, and there was always a truth to everything he said. She had no doubt he’d found Kale and would hurt him just to torture her.

  Jon first.

  The horses were restless now. If she crept to the deck with the horses, Frank wouldn’t be able to isolate her heat signature, and he wouldn’t shoot. Not until he was certain the target wasn’t her.

  With the gun pointed at the door, Jàden went to each stall and untied the harness ropes with one hand. The norshads were smart enough to untangle themselves from the restraint cloth, and within minutes, all eight stallions surrounded her. Agnar stayed close to her shoulder, but Jon’s black wanted his rider. He trotted to the outer corridor, his ears laid flat.

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  Andrew squeezed in next to her, a small silver dagger gripped in each hand. “The fuck are you doing?”

  “Frank can’t find me next to the horses.” She couldn’t really explain to him how heat tracking worked, but with one hand against Dusty’s horse, she followed the herd toward the deck.

  “Smart girl,” Frank muttered. “Gonna be fun breaking you again.”

  Jon’s black stopped at the top of the ramp, his ears laid so flat they practically disappeared into his head. Something was definitely wrong. The other horses bunched up behind him, neighing for their riders.

  Crouching low, Jàden edged between two legs and put the sight to her eye. One of Naréa’s crew lay sprawled across their path, a hole in her head. Vacant eyes stared at Jàden, but beyond the body, several people in full Enforcer battle gear lined the deck, their black armor glistening in the early morning storm light.

  At least, they stood like Enforcers, but the emblems on their shoulders were wrong. Some had a silver flame wrapped in the infinite circle just like Bradshaw’s lab. But one had a strange green orb that didn’t quite close, and something about that symbol sent a shudder to the deepest part of her psyche, though she couldn’t say why.

  Jon and the others were on their knees, electrical taser wires pinning their arms to their bodies. One press of a button and they’d either be shocked into submission or die by electrocution.

  “Who the fuck are these assholes?” Andrew whispered in her ear.

  “Dead, if they dare hurt Jon.” She bit her lip against another sob, wracking her brain for any idea to short out the wires.

  “Yes, sir,” shouted an Enforcer, who raised his rifle, pointing it at Malcolm’s head. “They’re at midship, and the place is empty.”

  Andrew nudged her shoulder. “What’d he say?”

  “They’re behind us.” Before she could say more, Andrew retreated to the back of the herd, no doubt intent on killing Frank’s men. If she tried to warn him, it would give her away.

  “I see you, darlin’.” Except every soldier with a rifle in their hands had the wrong build. Short, tall, bald, blond.

  Where was Frank?

  Gray light streaked across the dawn skies as a loud rhuum broke the morning silence. Jàden unbunched her shoulders. She’d heard that sound before as a child and again during her later years when she’d entered the Bioengineering Guild.

  The atmosphere processor.

  She found Jon in the lineup, fury in his eyes as he stared down the barrel of a rifle.

  There was nothing left to do—it was her or Jon.

  Closing her eyes, she pressed the barrel of the handgun against her temple. “All right, Frank. You win.”

  Jàden pushed past Jon’s black and stepped onto the deck, her hand shaking so hard she could barely hold her weapon.

  “Let them go, or I squeeze the trigger,” she said.

  “Nice to see you again, darlin’.” Frank’s voice echoed from a small device in the middle of the deck.

  That bastard. He wasn’t even here.

  She met Jon’s gaze, silently screaming at him that she had no idea what she was doing. Edging toward the rail, she peeked over the side to a sleek black submersible clamped to the hull.

  “What are the orders, sir?” one soldier asked into a headset.

  The device on the deck illuminated to a floating holoscreen, Frank in the center with crutches under his arms. “You may think you found yourself some muscle, darlin’, but I know where my son is. If you ever want to see him alive again, drop the gun.”

  Pain gripped her chest so tight she could barely breathe.

  “Should we shoot, sir?” an Enforcer asked.

  “You fucking do, and I’ll pull the trigger!” Jàden screamed. “Put your weapons down!”

  “Oh, darlin’, I forgot how fun you are when you’re angry.” Frank chuckled, limping toward the console with a cast on his leg.

  That was why he wasn’t there—Theryn and Dusty must have broken his leg. Jàden searched for their faces, both bowmen on their knees with cold anger etched into their features.

  “Fourteen new lives that boy lived without you. Shall we go for fifteen?” Frank hovered his palm over the console. “Got a ship targeting him now.”

  “Don’t hurt him!” Jàden clenched the gun tighter, sliding the barrel down until it touched her ear.

  Someone was going to die today if she couldn’t find a way out. The Flame’s power burned in her veins at the temptation to blow Frank’s soldiers off the deck. But one click of a button, one pull of the trigger, and Jon along with the others would be just as dead.

  She’d have to sacrifice them for Kale or sacrifice Kale for them.

  “Jon,” she whispered as several swallows landed on the ship’s rail behind Bradshaw’s Enforcers. Coastal birds who made their homes out of hard-packed mud.

  A steel column from the atmosphere processor slid into the corner of her eye, the northern half of it covered with earth and grass. The birds must have perched somewhere on that rocky spire, but Jàden couldn’t ignore the glowing firemarks embedded along its southern side, the steel lines of technology showing that power still flowed through its machinery.

  She loved Kale, a certainty gripping her thoughts as Jon stood up, his men mirroring the action as if they refused to die on their knees.

  But she needed Jon, and she wasn’t about to let Frank hurt him.

  Another small flock of birds landed on a soldier, creating a trail along his arm to the glowing firemark in his rifle.

  There was something creepy about how calm the birds were. The one near the firemark scraped its claw across the glass orb, dousing its glow and the gun’s power.

  Jon must have caught it too as he pressed his chest against the barrel. “You gonna kill me now?”

  Hundreds more birds descended to the deck like something out of a nightmare. Jàden edged back against the rail as Naréa and her crew stood too.

  Something was happening she didn’t understand, but it made every inch of her skin crawl.

  More birds circled the sky like a dark swarm as Jàden gripped the rail, unease twisting her gut.

  Everyone on deck had gone quiet except for Frank. “Last chance, darlin’.”

  She couldn’t take his taunting anymore. Jàden pointed the gun at the device and fired, crushed metal sparking as it skittered across the deck into the sea. Now she wouldn’t have to hear his voice or how he was going to kill the man she loved—again. I’m sorry, baby.

  The deck erupted in chaos, Jon and his men ducking the rifle barrels and charging Bradshaw’s Enforcers.

  Jàden froze when a dozen birds melted together into a man with bright blue paint on his cheek.

  The bird man grabbed an Enforcer by the back of the head and broke her neck over his shoulder. Her gun fired an arc into the sky as her eyes glazed over.

  Jon and the others dropped to the deck, electricity through the taser wires jolting their bodies. The man with the button reached for the dial to turn up the juice, and Jàden fired on the device, shattering metal bits into his palm.

  “Jon!” She raced across the deck and slid next to him, trying to untangle the wires pinning his arms. “I’m so sorry—”

  A shot fired between them, barely missing her head and scraping across Jon’s. Someone threw a spear from the other direction, slamming into the Enforcer’s neck where the seams were weakest.

  A dozen more people surrounded them, small blue feathers woven into their hair. Gripping long spears painted with bright blue swirls, they jabbed their points at Jàden. “You drop or we kill.”

  Jàden released the gun as irritation burned in her chest. “Please, just let them go.”