Shades of Treason (16 page)

Rykus straightened. “Hagan?”

Could he… Was he… Oh, hell. What if he was a victim the same as she was?

She jerked away from Rykus, then tripped and scrambled to Hagan. She couldn’t lose him. If this wasn’t some trick or elaborate farce, she needed him. She could
think
to him.

She grabbed his arm. “Hagan.”

He shook her off. Cursed. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his chest rose and fell with his breaths.

Rykus grabbed her by the neck. “Are you doing this?”

She ignored the vise putting pressure on her carotid artery, kept her focus on Hagan as he ran his hands over his face, up and down, up and down, up and down.

Hagan,
she tried to pull him out of the spiral.
Hagan!

His hands dropped to his sides. He leaned his back against a tree and his wide, bloodshot eyes stared off into the distance.

He didn’t move.

“No,” she said, her voice breaking. “No.”
You can’t die.

She reached for him again.

Hagan’s gaze snapped to her. “I’m not dead.”

Rykus’s hand tightened on her neck. “What the hell is going on?”

Closing his eyes, Hagan drew in one long breath, then focused on Ash’s fail-safe.

“Your anomaly has been telepathically assaulted,” the war chancellor said. “And so have I.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

RYKUS LOOKED AT Ash. He expected her to laugh, to make some quip or sarcastic remark, but she remained crouched in front of Hagan, her expression mannequin blank. And Hagan didn’t correct or clarify his words. He just sat there, apparently waiting for his statement to sink in.

The blood rushing through Rykus’s ears almost drowned out the sounds of the forest. Hagan thought he’d believe him? He thought he’d believe telepathy was possible? It was a fiction reserved for movies, literature, and kook sites. Over the centuries, multiple planetary governments had investigated and tested individuals who claimed to be telepathic. They’d all been proved delusional.

So why the hell did Rykus want to believe it?

He looked at his anomaly again. She was as still as a Caruthian deer encircled by predators—until she closed her eyes in a long, spell-breaking blink. When she opened them several seconds later, she finally moved. She closed the distance between her and Hagan, grabbed a handful of his shirt and kissed him.

She kissed him on the mouth. It wasn’t a deep kiss, it wasn’t sexual or romantic, but it agitated the hell out of Rykus. He locked his jaw shut to keep himself from verbally tearing into her. They weren’t on Caruth. She wasn’t his cadet. He shouldn’t be affected by the behavior of a traitor.

An accused traitor.

Ash sat back. Hagan’s expression had changed. He didn’t look surprised, upset, or aroused. He looked… sympathetic.

“Someone better start explaining,” Rykus ground out.

Ash’s hands shook. The quavers were worse now than they’d been the last time he’d noticed them.

“You can’t say anything, can you?” Hagan said, directing the question at Ash.

She looked wary. Tense. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

Leaning forward, Hagan laid a hand on Ash’s shoulder. When she didn’t respond, didn’t blink or focus on him, Hagan humphed.

“How has no one noticed this?” the war chancellor asked.

“Noticed what?” Impatience made Rykus’s tone sharp, but he stared at Ash, waiting for her to blink.

“You’re anomaly is unresponsive, Commander. Someone’s put a lock on her mind. Every time she tries to answer one of your questions, she shuts down.”

“She’s trained to shut down during interrogations,” he said slowly.

When Hagan’s gaze shifted from Ash to him, it turned condescending. “I’d say this is a little more complete than that.”

The man rose to his knees and then to his feet, his bones popping like a civilian breaking every twig on a nature hike. He wiped at his blistered face again, then stared down at Ash, who was still staring straight ahead.

“Telepathy,” Rykus said. This time his tongue tested the word, the theory.

Hagan nodded.

Seeker’s God, this was absurd.

“
Ashdyn,
” Rykus commanded. “
Get the hell up.
”

She didn’t move.

“She can’t hear you.”

“Did you two plan this?” he demanded, stepping backward. He couldn’t believe this. He
couldn’t
. “I expect something like this from her, but not from the Coalition’s goddamn war chancellor.”

“Listen to yourself. You think I arranged for her to escape? To conveniently abduct me? To cut us off from all communication with the Coalition?”

“It makes more sense than what you’re suggesting.” His heart was beating too quickly, too hard. He wasn’t in combat. He shouldn’t feel like he was walking into an ambush.

“You were selected to be an instructor on Caruth.” Hagan’s voice morphed into the cold, cavalier tone he’d used during the anomaly hearings years ago. “It was a job reserved for the best military personnel in the Coalition. I’m surprised someone with your résumé is so slow on understanding the situation.”

“I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t believe—”

“She says you didn’t train a traitor.”

Some unseeable, unidentifiable force ripped through Rykus. Ash hadn’t moved, but her posture was different, and while her expression remained neutral, it wasn’t as blank as it had been. She seemed to be seeing now.

Was it really possible she hadn’t been seeing before?

Her green eyes slowly rose and met his. He felt like a paper tachyon capsule. If he moved any direction, he’d crumple. He’d been searching for a way to explain her behavior. Treason had never made sense. A mental breakdown hadn’t fit either. A telepathic rewiring of her mind, as ludicrous as it sounded, could explain the inconsistencies. And it wasn’t that far-fetched, was it? The Coalition had brainwashed her with science.

But science was accepted. Science could be proved.

“I need evidence.” He had to force the words from his throat. “Show me… tell me…” He swallowed to work moisture into his mouth. “Tell me something only you would know.”

Ash’s expression shifted from serious to slightly amused. She looked at Hagan.

Hagan’s brow wrinkled. “The night before D-day. She says she—”

Rykus held up his hand. “That’s enough.”

Adrenaline sped through his veins, quick as a bullet chasing its target. His vision sharpened. His breathing deepened. No one else knew about the night before Drop Day. He’d given his cadets leave, time off so they could think about the consequences of completing their training, and time for him to come to a final conclusion about who should be dropped from the program. No one should have been in the barracks that night. The fact that Ash had returned early meant trouble, and idiot that he was, Rykus had gone to investigate.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to block out the memory, but he could still hear the squeak of the shower. He hadn’t wanted to turn, hadn’t wanted to see her standing there, her back to him, her lean, sculpted body drinking in the water’s heat. He’d started to leave, but then he’d seen the flesh-stitcher shaking in her hand and a gush of red slithered over her left hip. She shuddered, the stitcher fell, her knees buckled…

And he’d caught her. How the hell he ended up in the shower, immersed in its steamy heat, he didn’t know, but he was there before she hit the tile, his arms wrapped around her body. God, she’d felt divine.

He opened his eyes, saw the teasing brightness in Ash’s gaze. Did she remember that night as clearly as he did? Nothing had happened, but he hadn’t been able to get the sight of her out of his mind since then.

“You aren’t working with the Sariceans,” he said. Those were the only safe words he could grab hold of. Ash had been set up. All the evidence—the evidence that he’d
known
was too blatant, too convenient to be true—had been fabricated. She hadn’t fooled him, hadn’t turned against her team and the Coalition. She was the victim. She needed his help, not his condemnation or his…

“Why the hell did you try to push me away?” he demanded.

Ash’s half smile confirmed his suspicion. She
had
been trying to get rid of him.

She drew in a breath like she wanted to say something. Her lips parted, but then she pressed them together and looked away.

He looked at Hagan. “Ask her why.”

Hagan kept his gaze on Ash. “She isn’t deaf, Commander.”

“Then what did she say?”

His gaze flicked Rykus’s direction. “Perhaps she dislikes your company.”

Ash laughed. Rykus tuned to give her a glare, but there was an odd note in the way her laugh ended, and when he focused on her, she didn’t focus on him.

Another blackout.

His right hand clenched into a fist. He wanted to destroy something.

Or someone.

“Who did this to you?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“My assistant. Stratham,” Hagan answered, even though Rykus hadn’t directed the question at him.

“He’s been with me the past four years,” Hagan continued. “He knows everything I know.”

His gaze shot to the war chancellor. “Everything?”

Hagan gave him a grim nod. “He reports to someone else. I don’t know who.”

“He silenced you like he has Ash?”

“No. He didn’t…” Hagan’s brow wrinkled, and he rubbed at it like he was trying to rub away a headache. “I believe Lieutenant Ashdyn has been aware of what’s been done to her. I wasn’t, not until she ripped off the veil Stratham threw over my memories. This isn’t the first time I’ve learned what he is. He… partitioned my mind. When I come across evidence of what he is or what he’s done, he wipes my memory.”

“You remember now?”

“I remember what I’ve discovered,” Hagan said. “He and whoever he represents are trying to take over the Coalition.”

Rykus eyed Hagan as he knelt in front of his anomaly. “They’re not the Sariceans?”

“I…” Hagan’s mouth thinned. “I don’t think so. Not entirely, at least.”

Rykus turned his attention to his anomaly. “Ash?”

She didn’t respond, and the skin around her mouth was white. He placed his hand on her shoulder. Several seconds passed before she swayed slightly under the weight of his touch.

“She wasn’t like this on the
Obsidian
,” he said. “I would have noticed.”

Ash blinked. She focused on him, squeezed her eyes shut again, then looked away.

“She says the blackouts are getting worse,” Hagan told him. “Longer and more debilitating.”

The breath she drew in turned into a cough, but even after she cleared her throat, her shoulders shook. Her whole body shook.

He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her until she stopped trembling. But that would be wholly inappropriate, so he just tightened his grip on her shoulder and quietly asked, “You going to make it, Ash?”

She raised her eyes back to his, gave him a little smile. “Of course I will.”

Her tone was light, but he heard the tension in it, the slight hesitation, the fear. She would never admit to the latter. No anomaly would. They lived by the motto
No fear. No failure.
She wouldn’t quit until she was dead.

The underbrush crunched behind him. Hagan moving nearer.

“What happened on your last mission, Lieutenant?” the chancellor asked.

Ash’s gaze seemed to fade. Rykus thought she might have blacked out again, but then he saw the fire in her eyes. Her nostrils flared and she wet her lips.

“I need to move.” She got her feet under her then awkwardly stood. Awkwardly because her hands were still bound.

Rykus drew his knife from his boot and straightened. Gently, he grabbed hold of her right arm, just above her wrist. Carefully, he cut her free.

She let out a low, almost silent moan and flexed her left wrist. She kept her right one still though. It remained in Rykus’s hand. He didn’t let it go. She didn’t pull it away.

Seeker’s God, he wanted her. He couldn’t stop his thumb from sliding across her skin. Her arm looked small in his hand, undeniably soft and feminine. How was it possible for someone to be both fragile and unbreakable?

Her hands shook again. He wrapped his around both of them.

She tilted her head up to meet his eyes. A hot wind blew strands of hair into her face. He resisted the urge to tuck them behind her ear. It would only have been an excuse to slide his fingers down that half-hidden lock of braided hair. He wanted to say so many things. He wanted to apologize for the bastard he’d been—the bastard he’d always been—and for not believing in her. He wanted to tell her she was safe now, she no longer had to fight, he’d take care of everything. But those confessions and promises were too revealing.

Instead, he leaned close to her ear and said, “You’re absolved, Ash.”

Her entire body stiffened. Not the reaction he’d expected, but it only lasted a few seconds. The tremble that went through her this time wasn’t like the tremble in her hands. It went deeper than that, like those words—those words from
him
—were all she needed to hear to be free.

Goddamn loyalty training.

Hagan cleared his throat. Whether that was due to the smoke or to the fact that he and Ash stood almost forehead-to-forehead, Rykus didn’t know. But he took a step back. He hadn’t intended to get that close. He hadn’t expected Ash to let him. She kept people at a distance with her flirtatious comments, her innuendos. It was a form of self-defense. But where were her provocative smiles now? Why wasn’t she making some remark about how close his mouth had been to hers?

The air clawed his throat. He used a cough as an excuse to put more distance between them, then said, “Let’s head out.”