Heaven's Queen (9 page)

Anthony opened his eyes to glare at me. “And I suppose
he
helped you make that choice?”

“Yes, he did,” I said. “But if you think there’s a man anywhere who can make me do anything I don’t want to do, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Anthony didn’t say anything after that. He just stood there, fists clenched tight. Since there was apparently nothing left to discuss, I turned and started back to the house. I’d made it two steps when I heard his voice behind me.

“You turn your back on me,” he said softly. “You walk away now, Deviana Morris, and we are through. I risked more than you can know to come save you today, but if you throw that back in my face, I will leave you to your damn monster.”

“You don’t leave me anywhere,” I said, turning to face him again. “I got this far on my own. I’ll finish the same way.” And though I knew it was petty, after that display, I couldn’t help adding, “Besides, considering we’ve got your ship, I’d say you’re the one getting left.” I turned, waving over my shoulder. “Enjoy your stay in the soypen, Captain Pierce.”

“Devi!” he shouted, but if I looked back, I’d punch him, so I didn’t. I marched into the house, grabbed my armor and my guns, and kept going, blowing past Anthony’s guards on the porch. Neither of them tried to stop me as I stomped out over the crushed soypen stalks toward the ship.

As a captain in the Home Guard, Anthony had access to a wide variety of top-line hardware, and the cruiser he’d flown here was no exception. The five-man ship was new and shiny, though, being Paradoxian, it was three times the size of a similarly outfitted Terran model with less than half the features. I’m as loyal a servant to the king as you’ll ever find, but even I could admit the Terrans had us stomped on shipbuilding. Still, it was nice for a Paradoxian rig, and there was something nostalgic about the absurdly thick armor plating that was stuck everywhere.

Unfortunately, there were phantoms, too. I hadn’t seen any of the little buggers other than the one that had been waiting for me when I’d woken up, but for some reason, Anthony’s ship was full of them. My best guess was that the bright light outside had made them harder to see, which meant I just noticed more in the shady ship. I didn’t know if that was actually the case, but it was far preferable to my first paranoid impulse, which was that they were following me. That was stupid, of course, and I made a great point of ignoring the phantoms as I lugged my armor case down the ship’s narrow hall toward the bridge.

Spoiled as I’d gotten during my years working in the Republic, once thing I had missed about flying Paradoxian was the armor-ready rack located at the back of every ship’s bridge. As expected, Anthony’s was fully outfitted with top-end hookups and chem tanks full of everything a suit of powered armor could need. My suit was still sitting pretty from my stay at the Montblanc embassy, but I wasn’t about to miss a chance to top off, especially since my adventures on Reaper’s ship had depleted my air purifiers, so I hooked my case in to refill before going to look for Rupert.

I found him up front in the pilot’s chair, scowling through the colorful cloud of stars the projected navigation map had thrown up around him. I sank down in the gunner’s seat beside him, careful not to touch anything. I was looking for a safe place to rest my elbows on the chair’s touch-screen arms when Rupert said, “Hicks asked me to tell you he was sorry.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Hicks wanted me to tell you he was sorry he tipped off Captain Pierce,” Rupert repeated, turning off the star maps. “He’d heard something about Montblanc but he didn’t know the full story or that you’d been declared dead, and when he saw me, he was worried you were in trouble. But now he sees that you didn’t need help, and he wanted you to know he was sorry for interfering.”

It was nice to know Hicks hadn’t turned me in for the money. Still … “Why did he tell
you
?”

“Given that you were chewing out a Home Guard captain at the time, I think he decided I was the safer option,” Rupert said, tapping his console. “He left immediately after.”

I arched an eyebrow. Rupert didn’t look like the safer option to me. Actually, sitting hunched over in the pilot’s console with his face set in that deadly scowl, he looked downright dangerous, and extremely un-Rupert-like.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you—”

I was cut off by the boom of the thrusters as Rupert fired the engine. “Strap in,” he said, buckling his own harness. “Lift off in thirty seconds.”

I glared at him as I lashed myself in, but I didn’t want to yell over the engines, so I sat back to wait. I caught one last glimpse of Anthony stepping out to join his officers on the front porch before Rupert jumped us into the air. After that, all I saw was green as we lifted out of the soypen field and into the blazing light of the gas giant and the two suns hanging in the star-spangled blue sky.

Rupert turned as soon as we cleared orbit, putting the light at our tail as he angled the ship toward the nebula’s outer edge. “We’ve got two hours before we hit the Atlas continent freighter,” he said, tapping numbers into the autonav system. “From there, we’ll use its gate to jump to Kessel.”

“Kessel?” I said with a snort. “That’s a pirate haven. Why the hell would we go there?”

“Because if Captain Pierce knows you’re alive, everyone else does, too,” Rupert replied. “If we want to avoid the Eyes, we’ll need to switch this ship for something less obvious, and unlike legitimate shipyards, pirates don’t ask questions.”

I pursed my lips. I hadn’t considered that angle yet, but he was right as usual. Even if Anthony hadn’t told anyone before he left, he sure as hell was going to light things up now. “Do you think the Eyes will try to jump us?”

“Without a doubt,” Rupert said, locking the autonav on course. “Commander Martin is the Eye’s current head officer. He was the one who sent Caldswell and me to Montblanc to collect you after our office on Paradox forwarded Baron Kells’s write-up of your report. Once word gets out that you’re not dead, I’m sure the order to bring you in will be reinstated, and having lost you once already, I don’t think they’ll be taking any chances.”

I did not like the sound of that. Still, it wasn’t like Rupert and I were a soft target, and we had a head start. I just hoped Rupert’s mystery plasmex doctor didn’t turn out to be a disaster like Brenton’s xith’cal, because if this failed, I didn’t have another plan B. I turned to tell Rupert my worries, but he wasn’t even looking at me. He was sitting on the edge of his seat, scowling at the navigation console like he wanted to smash it to pieces.

I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair. “Spit it out.”

Rupert looked at me like he didn’t understand, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “If you’re pissed at me, just say so. You sitting there taking it out on the ship doesn’t help anything.”

Rupert glanced at the console in surprise, like he was seeing it for the first time. “Sorry,” he said softly.

“Why are you apologizing?” I snapped. “I asked you to tell me why you were mad, not apologize for it.”

“I’m not angry.”

My look must have told him what I thought of that, because Rupert covered his face with a frustrated sigh. “Fine,” he said. “I’m angry. I’m angry we have to be on the run again so soon. I’d hoped for more time, but then that man came in and ruined it.”

Considering what Rupert and I had been doing—or rather, almost doing—when Anthony busted in, I didn’t have to ask what the “it” was. Honestly, though, I was kind of glad Anthony had broken that up. I’d been very close to just saying screw it and jumping Rupert right there in the kitchen, which would have been a monumentally bad idea. Casual hookups were one thing, but adding sex to the confusing emotional minefield that lay between Rupert and me was asking for a disaster I did not have the resources to handle. Especially not when I found it so unexpectedly gratifying that Rupert, Mr. Iceberg, had gotten this upset over
me
. I was busily reminding myself of all the reasons why being happy over his attention was a
very bad thing
when Rupert dropped the real bomb.

“I’m also upset that you’ve been hiding the virus from me.”

I jerked around to see him glaring at me. “I saw your hands as you were going upstairs,” he said. “You had another attack after the kitchen. That was why you went and hid in the bathroom, wasn’t it?”

I briefly considered lying, but there wasn’t really a point now. “Yes,” I said. “But I’ve got it under control, so you don’t have to worry.”

Rupert’s jaw tightened, and I suddenly got the feeling that the anger I was seeing was only the tip of the mountain. “And what part exactly shouldn’t I worry about?” he asked. “The part where you’re having flare-ups of a virus that could kill off every living thing around you, or the part where you’re hiding it, thus preventing me from doing anything to help?”

“It’s not like you could do something,” I said, suddenly defensive. “It’s my virus, okay? I’ve got it under control.”

“That’s just it,” Rupert said, his voice creeping up. “I don’t think you do, because I don’t think something like this
can
be controlled. Not reliably.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I know you don’t trust me, Devi, and I don’t blame you for that, but you can’t keep trying to handle everything by yourself.”

“I have to,” I said. “I didn’t ask to get this virus, but it’s mine now. I’m the only one who can use it, and it’s my duty to make sure I do the most good I can.”

“But you don’t have to do it alone,” Rupert said. “No one’s doubting your courage or your honor, but there’s a difference between being brave and being reckless. You always charge blindly forward, throwing your life around like it’s meaningless, but it
isn’t
.”

“I do what I have to do,” I snapped. “If I’d sat around worrying about my hide in Reaper’s arena, we’d all be dead. Instead, we’re alive, Reaper’s fleet is gone, and we have another chance to actually do some good.”

“It’s pure luck you didn’t die,” Rupert said.

“If I was afraid of dying, I couldn’t do half the shit I do,” I told him. “But I’m not, and if you’re going to try and tell me I should be, you can forget it.”

That was probably a step too far, but I didn’t care. I was so sick of men trying to protect me. “I can handle myself,” I said. “I’ve been handling myself in combat for nine damn years, and I will
not
let you hold me back now.”

“I’m not trying to hold you back!” Rupert shouted, and then he stopped, taking a deep breath. “I don’t want to control you,” he said, his voice quieter but no less intense. “But I do worry about you, Devi.”

“I never asked you to.”

“That makes no difference,” Rupert said. “I’ve worried about you constantly from the moment we met.” He glared at me. “You are, without question, the single most stressful person I’ve ever encountered.”

I glared back at him. “So why are you still here, then?”

“Because I love you,” Rupert snapped. “And even though you drive me mad with worry, I wouldn’t change a thing. I can’t, anyway. Anyone who thinks they can push you around is either stupid or crazy.”

I was perversely flattered by that statement, but Rupert wasn’t finished.

“I’ve made peace with the fact that I can’t make you stop charging in recklessly or treating your life like something that can be thrown away,” he said, reaching out to take my bandaged hand. “But I see no reason for you to take everything on yourself.”

He turned my hand over in his, gently stroking my burned palm with his thumb. “Let me help you,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss my fingers. “Do it out of pity for a worry-prone man who goes out of his mind when you’re not with him. Just please, for my sake, let me be of service. Let me help you.”

The feel of his lips sent a chill through me, because this was the second time today that a man had kissed my fingers and asked for something. Unlike Anthony’s, though, Rupert’s plea got through to me, because he wasn’t asking for something I couldn’t give. Where Anthony had demanded I come home and come to my senses, Rupert had admitted he had no control over my decisions and was simply asking for the chance to help. In those few words, he’d proven he understood me better than my lover of seven years, and after so long fighting alone in unknown territory, the idea of having someone at my back who just wanted to support me, even if he didn’t agree, sounded very nice indeed.

No sooner had that thought formed than the rest of me started to balk. What was I, stupid? Charkov had
betrayed
me. I’d sworn never to trust him again not two days ago, and now I was seriously considering teaming up? But the old arguments didn’t hold the water they used to, because a lot had changed since I’d fought him in the clearing.

I don’t normally put much truck in apologies, but Rupert’s had been pretty good, and he’d stuck by my side through some pretty scary shit ever since. It wasn’t enough to balance out what he’d done, but the more I learned about what was really going on with the universe and my growing place in it thanks to the black rot hiding under my skin, the more I realized I couldn’t afford absolute choices like never trusting again. Life wasn’t that simple anymore, and as I looked down at Rupert, who was still bent over my hand like he was scared to let me go, I decided it was time to try something new.

“I have a crazy idea,” I said quietly. “What do you think about starting over?”

I felt Rupert’s breath catch as he looked up. “Starting over?”

“Between all the lies and the lifesaving, our balance sheet is pretty tangled,” I said with a shrug. “Frankly, I’m sick of trying to figure it out. So what do you say we just wipe the whole thing clean and start fresh?”

Rupert released my hand at last. “I’d like that,” he said softly. “More than anything.”

“Good,” I replied. “Here’s my offer. If you really want to help me, then we have to start acting like a team. No more secrets, no more lying, no more of that ‘keeping things from me for my own good’ bullshit. Clean slate from here out. And if you betray me again, I will shoot you in the head for real this time.”

It’s a sign of how messed up our history was that Rupert smiled at that last bit. “That sounds more than fair, but does this no secrets promise cut both ways?”