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I knew family lived there, beyond love, memory, what we went through as kids. Maybe even that idea of the Four, which always seemed to elude me more than it did Revik or Terian, had finally wormed its way into my light.

Once I admitted that much, I knew.

I knew the real reason I couldn’t let this happen.

It wasn’t only the Allie part of me that wouldn’t kill her.

The Bridge part of me wouldn’t kill her, either.

The part of me Vash exhorted me to trust, to pay attention to, even when it wanted or demanded things that made no sense. That part of me wanted Cass alive. For that part of me, sentimentality had absolutely nothing to do with it.

“I’m repeating the order,” I told Revik. “Don’t make me repeat it again.”

The emotion in my voice was gone.

All that remained was the Bridge.

Revik must have heard it, too.

When he glared up at the camera that time, the fury in his eyes abruptly turned colder. He turned, lowering the gun even as Raddi finally spun the outside wheel to open the door. It occurred to me only then that the ex-Rebel evaded my order until that instant, presumably to give Revik time to finish the job.

When I glanced at Balidor, I saw caution in the middle-aged seer’s eyes.

He reverted to a more relaxed stance as I watched, his face and gray eyes nearly blank as he combed a hand through his chestnut-colored hair. I could feel nerves on him, though, even as my eyes slid past him, focusing briefly on Wreg, then on Jon. It wasn’t until I saw the reflection in their more expressive eyes that I realized my irises were glowing.

“We’re done in here,” I told them. I looked once, sharply, at Raddi. “I want him relieved,” I told Wreg. “And demoted. He’s not to work this station again.”

I saw Jon flinch, right before he glanced at Raddi, too.

Wreg only nodded, raising his hand in the respectful sign of the Bridge.

“As you command, Esteemed Bridge.”

I felt my jaw harden when I felt the ripple of his words throughout the room.

There was a screech of metal––right before Revik exited through the open hatch. He walked up to me and stopped, his eyes holding that colder anger as he refused to lower his gaze. I saw Raddi turn the wheel to shut the locks on the heavy door in my peripheral vision, caught the flavor of anger in the ex-Rebel’s light at what I’d just said to Wreg.

My attention never really wavered from Revik, though.

Motioning with my head towards the corridor leading to the tank compartment we shared, I spoke before I knew I meant to, still using the voice of the Bridge.

“You’re confined to quarters,” I told him.

There was a silence.

That time, it settled over the entire security station.

I didn’t look at the others, but felt their combined reaction, like an inhaled breath. The person I felt the strongest was Jon, and not only because of the connection we shared. Shock expanded off his light, along with what might have been fear.

I didn’t look at him, at any of them.

I keep my gaze solely on Revik.

His eyes flickered in what might have been surprise after I spoke, but that look was gone so fast I can’t truthfully say I even saw it––although I may have felt it shiver through my light. Surprise certainly wasn’t the look his expression settled on. By the time I could make sense of the emotion in his eyes, I still couldn’t put a name to it.

My mind flashed to a conversation we had in another hangar once, back at the Rebel base in those mountains. It was probably the last time I’d seen anything similar to the look I saw in his eyes now.

I watched as he weighed me as an opponent, not his wife.