clenched the edge of the stool so tightly the metal rim bent in her grip. “I know what I have to do. What I don’t know anymore is why I should bother. Helping people, doing the right thing—it’s not the way the world works. Knox told me that, but both of you drove the point home.”
“Nina—”
“No.” She turned and pinned Ava with a glare. She didn’t know if she looked angry or pleading or desperate—or all three. “Instead of contacting me, you kidnapped someone so you could blackmail the Devils. And instead of asking for my help, Knox lied to me. He set me up. Everyone has an agenda, Ava, and if I don’t face up to that, I’m going to get my crew killed. I can’t afford to do this anymore. I can’t afford to be me.”
“You don’t even understand what it’s like to be around you,” Ava whispered. “Knox lied to you. He set you up. I gave him every reason in the world to betray you. His agenda was a tactical certainty before he met you. But you made him want to change the way the world works. And you weren’t even trying. You’re like a star, Nina. Everyone who gets too close ends up drawn into your orbit.”
With Knox, it had been more like a collision course. “It hurts too much, Ava. Believing in people.”
“I know.” The shimmer was back in her sister’s eyes, but Ava squeezed them tight before tears could fall. “I don’t know how to apologize. The words would be empty if I said them now. I’m still too angry. But you’re the only one left who can make me want to believe.”
Maybe words were always empty. Maybe that was the problem. “So don’t apologize. Help me. Make me want to believe, too.”
Ava’s eyes popped open. It only took a moment for shock to turn into a thoughtful assessment so achingly familiar Nina’s breath caught. “You want to save the Silver Devils.”
“It’s what I do, right?” Nina pulled out the stool, slid onto it, and reached for the notebook Maya kept stashed near the freeze-dryers. “I know a guy in Druid Hills who can get us what we need, as far as materials go. Benny owes me. But I can’t collect without more information. Biomed records. Can you get them?”
“From the TechCorps?” Ava hooked the other stool with a booted toe and dragged it to her. “You wouldn’t believe how many of those L1 and L2 pigs barter proprietary trade secrets for access to their favorite vices. I may be lightly blackmailing a few of them. Give me twenty-four hours.”
There were so many pieces she needed to line up. Nina would have to contact the Professor, see how much time they had left before the Protectorate’s final strike. And Benny was just the start. He’d supply the raw materials, sure, but he never got involved in any processing that could be traced back to him. She and her crew would have to do the heavy lifting.
They needed more help. They needed the Devils. Besides, it was only right to let the men have a hand in their potential salvation. A chance to save themselves.
“I’ll have to face him, you know,” Nina whispered. “Knox. And I haven’t figured out how yet.”
Ava wet her lips, uncharacteristically hesitant. “How do you feel about him?”
She felt … pity. Admiration. Fear. Lust. Hatred.
Love.
“I miss him,” she admitted. “Which is difficult to say out loud, because I should be smarter than that, right?”
“Logically?” Ava tilted her head. “He wouldn’t have done any of it if I hadn’t threatened him. Of course, he still made his own choices. But there at the end … He wasn’t lying about that, Nina. He was going to betray me. I know it.”
“The fact that it would have benefited me doesn’t turn it into a ringing endorsement, Ava.”
“Debatable. For all my irritation with Captain Knox, it’s difficult to claim the moral high ground over a betrayal when you opened the relationship with hostage-taking.” Ava sighed softly. “It wasn’t the easiest method, you know. I have the money to hire mercenaries, whole armies of them. I chose him because there’s something exhaustingly noble about him. I thought I could trust him not to hurt you.”
How wrong she had been. “He did hurt me, but that’s not on you. You couldn’t have seen it coming. So you can take that off your list of things to atone for.”
“It’s still a significant list.” Silence fell, and Ava