would never touch her without her permission. Let's just set that on the table."
"Well shit, I didn't ask for tongue kisses," Adiron chimes in. "I should have asked."
"You wouldn't have received," I say tartly and turn back to Helen. "You and me will chat later, all right?" It's natural for Helen to be sexually interested in the first halfway decent men we've run across in our adventures, but I need to remind her that she needs to be careful. I eye each of the women again. "Is anyone hungry? Do we need to eat something before we have our meeting?"
"I'm good," Alice says.
Ruth just shrugs, turning to give a smug look at Straik.
Helen lights up with excitement. "Jade, you should have seen it! They have a thing in their dispenser that makes cake! I had a cake! With whipped stuff on top of it! And Mathiras said I could have as much as I want!"
That makes Ruth sit up. "Well, now I want cake."
"Oh my stars, Ruth, it was SO good," Helen enthuses.
Straik just sighs, rubbing his face. "I'll put in an order for cake. While we wait, can we please continue?"
"Yes," I say, stepping in again. I straighten in my chair. "We women need to know what our position on this ship will be before we agree to anything. Are we cargo? Are we crew? What rights do we have?"
At my side, Adiron shoots me an admiring look, as if he approves of my ballsiness. "You'd be crew, of course."
"If we're crew, we get weapons, then? Our own quarters? Bodily autonomy?"
"Access to the ship and her workings?" Ruth asks in an innocent voice and then ruins it with a slow smile.
"All the cake we want?" Helen adds.
"And someone to show us how to use everything on the ship, I assume," Alice chimes in, ever practical. "We'd need lessons on how to do the remedial stuff. Access to language lessons, too."
"This is my ship," Straik begins, and I can tell he doesn't like the way the bargaining is going. "I'm in charge here—"
"And Jade is in charge of us," Helen interjects quickly. "That's why we trust her to talk for us." She pauses for a moment, and then adds, "Not you."
I'm proud of her. She's not been completely distracted by cake—or trying to kiss Mathiras—after all.
"I cannot believe this." Lord Straik makes an indignant noise. "We're trying to rescue you, you ungrateful humans."
"You're crew," Adiron reassures me. "We'll figure it out. You're in control of your body. That's not even a question."
There's so much I want to address in this moment. Lord Straik's calling us ungrateful, Adiron and the others ignoring him, the whole body thing—but I need to stay focused. "Let's talk about rescue, then. What does that entail, exactly? Are you bringing us back to Earth?"
Adiron hesitates for the first time and looks at his brothers. I get a sour, sad feeling in my stomach.
Something tells me that no matter how this goes down, it's going to make me unhappy.
24
ADIRON
I hate that I don't have the answer Jade needs. I hate that I can see disappointment in her amber eyes. She wants to go back to Earth. There's two problems with that. One—Earth is supposed to be off-limits to everyone, not that slavers pay much attention to that.
And two—there's not much Earth left to go back to. A few years ago, the stupid Earth people caused a temporal rift to open up in their planet's atmosphere and everything got all keffed up. There's no “Earth” to return to…at least, not how she thinks it is. The planet's still there…just the people aren't. The cities have fallen, the humans have more or less disappeared, and rumor has it that a few misplaced drakoni just run around burning everything.
"You can't go back to Earth," Mathiras says, but his tone is odd. "Long story, but it's not on the table. I'm sorry."
There's a long, aching pause, and I remember all the times my little sister begged to be taken back to Earth, “just for a visit.” I remember how devastated she was when the news about the rift back on Earth made its way to us. It's one thing to choose to stay in space. It's another to realize you can never go home again, because your home has been destroyed.
"So that's it, then?" The yellow-haired one—Alice—says. She crosses her arms over her chest, looking mutinous. "You just decide we can't go home, but we're not slaves. So what are we,