crash were doing to my stupid, fragile physiology. Thinking about it wouldn’t help, after all, and from the looks of this place so far, there weren’t any diagnostic units to hook into anyhow. No emergency surgeries or metal hearts, either. Why was that thought the exact opposite of panic-inducing? Being in this strange place was freeing, somehow. I concentrated on slowing my breaths, taking in as much of this cool, clean air as I could on an inhalation and then releasing it completely.
Until Nox pulled up short at the mouth of another tunnel and I almost ran into his back. He tapped out a pattern on the metallic door, and a voice inside said, “Quit scratching on my door already and get in here. I can’t wait to show you…”
Nox swung the door open on complaining hinges and stepped inside. I followed. And the voice faded into a…sort of a purr? A trilling, questioning, surprised sound that I could almost feel on the surface of my skin.
I blinked against the change in light—it was brighter in here and smelled like everything savory and delicious in the universe, and my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten in a really long time.
Long tables and benches were littered with vials and glass bottles and metal scales and jars of seed-looking things as well as liquids, some of which bubbled. Behind a bank of steaming blue fluid stood a man taller and leaner than anyone I’d ever seen. His night-dark hair was glossy in the bright lights, reflecting the blue of the fluid, and his laser-green eyes were tip-tilted and incinerating in their intensity. The first word that floated into my mind when I looked at him was slinky.
Which was exactly descriptive of the smile that eased onto his face. “Oh, my brother, what delicacy have you brought me this time?”
Those breaths I’d been monitoring and modulating? Stopped. Instantly. I caught my bottom lip between my teeth.
“She is a Bianca,” Nox said. “Do not eat her.”
The sleek one with the black hair rolled his eyes. “You know I only do that on the day of rest.”
Nox laughed, and I let out the breath I held. Oh, they were joking. Yes, he’d said Astor was off, but he hadn’t said cannibal. Surely this was a joke. I’d known Nox for half a second, but he wouldn’t have brought me here after saving my life just to eat me. Right?
“Bianca.” Astor smiled, and it lit up his face. He looked…less severe. “Who do you belong to? What faction has Nox stolen you from that he is now afraid to tell Torrin about so that he brings you here to me instead?”
Nox shook his head, dropping his bag on the couch before he threw himself down beside it. “See? I told you. He’s smart.”
Okay. Astor was smart. Maybe he could help me, or at least understand what I said to him. “My name is Bianca. Nox didn’t steal me. He saved me, actually.” I was speaking slowly, as though if I enunciated every word, he would simply be able to make sense of what I said based on the effort alone. I held out my hands to show him. “Treated my burns. I was in a crash.” I pointed at the ceiling. “The spaceship I was traveling on fell out of its trajectory. I don’t know why. It crashed. I survived. I’m here. I need to get home.”
Astor looked at Nox, who nodded. “I found her in flames. There is wreckage. Right where the battle will be fought. That’s all I know.”
The black-haired man shrugged. “Then one of two things has happened. She is either insane—and we know that happens with some of the factions, with the way they abuse women—or she is a trap. Decide which one she is and turn her over to my brother.”
Nox stared at Astor for a long moment. “Just one problem.” He nodded toward me again. “She has no markings. None. She has smooth, unmarred skin. No numbers. No tats. Nothing.”
This seemed to get his attention. “Let me see your arm. Everyone, even the most remote tribes, are marked at birth. It is the way. Everywhere.”
“I know.” Nox threw his hands in the air. “I’m not stupid.”
Astor didn’t so much as wait for me to roll my sleeves up as grabbed my arm and did it for me. His gaze scanned up and down my arm from my wrist to my elbow and back again three times. “This makes no