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“Did you talk to the other girls?”

“You mean the servants? No. I tried. I mean, I heard they came into town, so I dipped out of work. But I went to the building they were holed up in and it was guarded by two Aurelians, real mean-looking guys who lost the third of their triad. They brusquely told me it was off-limits. No explanation, nothing.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’s fishy, right? After the attack, I don’t know how they can spare even two men guarding ten women who should have been sent to work like everyone else. My theory? One of the ten is someone’s Mate. Someone real important, so they’re keeping all ten locked up. Hell, I was going to ask you about it. I’m surprised your triad didn’t tell you anything.”

“They’re dealing with a lot.”

“I guess that makes sense. Hey, do you…do you like living down here?”

“It’s only temporary,” I say.

“It’s fucking locked up tight, is what it is. They don’t let you up at all?”

I look away.

Kat leans in over her steaming bowl of food, elbows on the table, getting more intense.

“You sure we’re alone?” she whispers.

“Yeah,” I say, keeping my voice low, copying her. “Why?”

“I keep thinking back to when the Scorp came. You saved my life. If it wasn’t for you and Summer picking up guns, we would have been overrun.” She gets a look of disgust on her face, shivering. “I would have been up in that tower, and Scorp would have crawled up and kill me. I think about that all the fucking time. You saved my life, and I owe you for that.”

“You don’t owe me anything. You saved mine, too, remember?”

She shakes her head. “No, I didn’t. You would have hidden in the cellar with the others if it wasn’t for me. The Aurelians would have come in time. Me? I’m too stubborn. I would have gone up alone, and I would have died.”

“Kat…”

Her eyes widen. “Rachel, I want you to listen carefully, and never repeat what I’m about to say to anyone. My life’s on the line here.”

I swallow, uncomfortable, rubbing my arm nervously, because she’s got the same look in her eyes as when we were preparing for the Scorp.

“I stashed a ship away. It’s functioning perfectly, but I marked it as out of commission. It’s in bay 2. You helped me, so let me help you. Give me one of your hairs, and I’ll set it up to respond to your DNA. If you’re trapped down here, it won’t help you, but if you convince them to let you walk around the palace…hell, get them to clear half the palace for you to stroll, they’ll empty the whole damn place for you. It’s the blue transport ship. It’ll get you out of atmosphere to wherever you want to go.”

“They’d catch me.” I don’t entertain the idea. I let the words go in my ears and out, so that I don’t react, my heartbeat barely changing. If the triad can remain calm while they execute people, I need to be clear-headed and able to mute my own emotions.

My aura must be near unchanged. The triad won’t suspect anything is out of the ordinary. I’m getting control of myself in a way I didn’t think possible.

“No, they wouldn’t.”

“They can feel me. Through the Bond.”

“They won’t be able to. The Aurelian Empire has been mass producing Bond disrupter rings, and even smaller devices. Every one of their soldiers wears one, to keep them from deserting. They’re easy to get. Cheap. I left one in the ship. You put that on and they won’t be able to track you. The ship has all the credentials it needs. There’s hundreds, thousands of ships going up and down every day, they won’t even know you’re gone before it’s too late. Rachel, it’ll be like they never existed. You can take the Bond, all that strength, those years, and go. Because you know this…” she says, waving her arms at the room. “This isn’t what you wanted.”

I let a deep breath out I didn’t know I was holding in. I reach out, touching the hard, cold auras of the three men. As flawed as they are, when I’m with them, it’s perfection. It’s only when they’re gone I have doubts. “I think I’ll stay.”

Kat’s eyes flash with anger. “This isn’t what you wanted. You were quiet when you worked. Just putting in your time. But when you were a fresh servant, you used to talk about what you’d do when you finished your ten years. We had a conversation a long damn time ago. Maybe you forgot it.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.”

“What did I say I’d do?”

“Nothing. Only that you wanted it to be over, so you could do anything. You remember that? You fought to get to this planet from some gods forsaken space station, and you signed a decade of your life away so you could be free. Now you’ve got centuries.”