to the ground. The Hephaestus goon staggers and drops from Kal’s return shot, her rifle clattering across the deck. I can hear our squad screaming down our channel, Kal’s sister through the Totentanz’s comms unit, demanding to know what’s happening.
But I can’t find my voice.
Can’t do anything but stare at the smoking hole in Kal’s suit, edged in black scorch marks.
Right over his heart.
But despite all the voices, the shock, in a way that would please and definitely surprise my academy instructors, my Legion training kicks in.
First, secure your position.
That much is easy—one look at Grandma tells me that Kal’s blast knocked her stupid, and she’s lying unconscious in the passageway.
Second, medical emergencies.
Dropping to my knees with a thump and popping a multi-tool from a recess in my exo, I slice a clean line into the fabric of Kal’s suit and through the insulation beneath. He doesn’t move the whole time, and my brain is conjuring up images of Cat on Octavia—images of her bright blue eyes, flower-shaped, of her hand outstretched, of the sadness on her face as she watched us go.
First seven.
Then six.
Now five?
“Finian, report!” Tyler shouts.
Not again, no, not Kal too, please, Maker, not him too …
“Fin, what happened?” Auri cries.
“Kal’s hit,” I manage.
“Fin, no!”
“He’s hit… .”
My pulse is thumping in my ears, mouth dry as dust as I drag the suit fabric aside, waiting for a gush of deep, warm purple to soak my hands.
But …
But there’s nothing.
I blink hard, something between a sob and a laugh bursting on my lips. Because there, beneath the burned lining of Kal’s suit and the scorched fabric of his Legion uniform, praise the Maker, I see something has stopped the worst of the blast. My hands are shaking as I pull it out of his breast pocket, watching the console lights glint on the scorched silver, my mouth open in wonder.
That damn cigarillo case …
Kal’s out cold, maybe from the blast, maybe from slamming into the console. He’s gonna have an award-winning bruise when he wakes up.
But he’s alive.
I can’t say the same for the poor cigarillo case, though. It’s bent and busted open, and as my heart slams against my rib cage, as the voices of my teammates ring out over comms, I realize there’s something inside the case.
“Finian, status!” Tyler demands.
“Fin, what’s happening?” Auri cries.
“It’s okay,” I report, my voice shaking. “He’s okay… .”
I pry the case apart, forcing my hands to cooperate, though the adrenaline flooding my nerves is making it hard for my exo to compensate. There’s a piece of paper inside the buckled metal, small, square, marked with black handwriting.
It’s a note.
Four words.
TELL HER THE TRUTH.
Tell who?
What truth?
They’re both good questions. But for now, as I hear Saedii demand our surrender again, as more Syldrathi fighters swarm in the space around us, as I hear Ty give the reluctant order for me to stand down, my brain shoves them aside in favor of a much more compelling one.
I turn the note over in my trembling hands, dragging shaking breaths into my lungs. Trying to make the pieces fit. Because, like the rest of the gifts in the deposit box, like the Zero in the Emerald City docks, this note has been waiting to be found since Kal and I were both children.
So how in the name of the Maker is it in my handwriting?
11
SCARLETT
Remember Orion.
Those are the two words burning in my mind as Ty guides the Zero into the Andarael’s docking bay. I should be worried about Kal. Worried about Auri. Worried that the name Andarael means “She Who Lies with Death” in Syldrathi. I should be thinking of how I’m going to talk our way out of this. I’m the team Face, after all. We’re outgunned and outmanned—the only way we’re getting clear here is diplomacy. But I can’t quite bring my thoughts to bear on the problem at hand, can’t think of anything to say, witty, sassy, sexy, or otherwise.
Because these are the people who killed our dad.
Remember Orion.
He was a Great Man, our dad. That’s what everyone told me and Ty. Those were the words repeated over and over at the funeral of Senator Jericho Jones. All those diplomats and heads of state, all those military types with chests full of shiny medals. They said those words with gravitas. They said them like they meant them.
Capital G. Capital M.
A Great Man.
The thing about great men is that they usually don’t make great dads.