“Why?” I asked, an odd tingle creeping up the back of my skull. Did he have something to do with this place? With Mareeka being left in peace?
“We all choose our battles, Quin. Stop being so blind to everything but yourself.”
I drew back as if struck. “I’m selfish because I don’t want to be a lab rat?” I asked.
“You’re selfish because you’re capable of prolonging war until we’re all dead!”
I gaped. “I’m just one person. And I didn’t start any of this.”
Bridgebane snaked his hand out fast enough to grab my weaponless arm. I yelped, and Shade leaned in, pressing the gun harder to my uncle’s head. Bridgebane ignored him and pushed up my sleeve, baring the crook of my elbow where the skin still showed a small bruise and needle mark.
“See?” His eyes cut to mine with an almost frantic edge. “You even do it to yourself. Who will get your blood next, Quin? Where will it stop? When?”
Stepping back, I wrenched my arm from his grip. “I did it for the children! But you wouldn’t understand protecting someone other than yourself.”
He flinched. Ruthless, implacable Nathaniel Bridgebane flinched like I’d just slapped him across the face.
“I wasn’t there.” He went toneless again, his face turning blank. “I couldn’t help Caitrin, and you and she didn’t know what was in the blood.”
I hadn’t heard my mother’s name spoken out loud in years. It ripped through me like a gunshot, leaving a hole in my chest.
“You’d already abandoned us.” A tremor crept into my words, and my voice dropped. “Why? Why did you do that?”
Bridgebane ignored the guns between us and searched my face with his eyes. I could have sworn he was looking for something. Maybe understanding, or even forgiveness. “Because I couldn’t help you—either of you—and I couldn’t stay there and watch.”
My heart ached, torn between hate and something I didn’t understand, couldn’t process. “So you joined the forces of evil?”
“Evil is a perspective, Quin.”
“Evil is evil!”
“I did what I could.”
He kept saying that, but I didn’t believe him. He was from Sector 17. He knew their plight. He’d lived through the destruction. His stepsister had ended up the spoils of war—or a bridge to peace, as the conquering Overseer had liked to put it—and Nate had followed her.
“Mom sucked it up and married that toad.” The Overseer had wanted her, and she’d wanted peace. It had been an attempt to heal the galaxy after my father had shown what out-weaponing everyone in all the worlds could do. “The least you could have done was stick by her instead of buying into Dad’s crap.”
“I. Did. What. I. Could,” my uncle grated out, his teeth and jaw not even moving.
“You said you’d kill me!” I yelled, years of anger and betrayal pouring out. “When you brought me here, you said you’d kill me if I ever used my real name or showed myself again.”
Bridgebane kept staring at me, searching, something weird and unsettling in his eyes. “I put the fear of the Powers into you so you’d hide! And it worked—until you got stupid and stole the lab and then announced yourself over the com into DW 12. Why did you do that?”
“I thought I was going to die! I didn’t care what I said.” Although the sinking sensation inside me told me I cared a lot now that my father knew I wasn’t dead. My uncle had a point: handing over the lab would have made the Overseer at least think twice about going on a public, hard-to-explain daughter hunt. Without the lab to give him what he wanted, he’d come after me with everything he had.
“That serum is not worth your life!” Bridgebane shouted. “An unwinnable fight is not worth your life!”
He wanted to protect me? But he’d said he’d bring me in. Without the lab, it was me. He needed to provide something…or the Overseer would go on a rampage to find more type A1 blood. And the Overseer on a rampage was a terrifying thought.
I didn’t want to feel anything but hatred for my uncle. I’d loved him once, but he’d ruined that. Now I was confused—about so much.
“You shot my ship!” I accused.
“I tried to disable you! You were about to jump into the Widow!”
“If you take me in, to him, what kind of life do I have?” I asked.
“An alive one,” he ground out.
“No one’s taking her anywhere,” Shade cut in. His eyes darted to me, a