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Chapter Twenty Six

T he smell hit them first—acrid, metallic, choking.

Zynara stepped off the flier straight into the sand and cursed the idiotic heels she was wearing—they’d come straight from the summit.

She had grit between her toes and the sudden stupid feeling she was at the beach below the palace.

She was eight years old again, keen to prove she could swim better than her brothers, chasing Rayan down to the surf and stumbling in the soft sand.

Her mum called after her with sunscreen.

Her father seized her around the waist, lifted her effortlessly onto his shoulders and ran like a titan into the waves.

She would be saving him now.

Lottie pulled gear from behind the front seats of the flier. There was something conflicting about the casual way she handled it—a handgun into a holster under her skirt on her thigh, another tucked into the waistband at her back. She checked the magazine on a third and handed it to Zynara.

“It’s loaded.”

Clipped and efficient. She didn’t know this Lottie at all.

“I don’t want it. I’m a scientist, not a—”

“You’re walking head first into a trap with a killer, princess. Take the gun.”

Zynara shook her head. “Protect me,” she ordered, knowing exactly how unfair that was.

“With my life,” Lottie said simply. She looked at her. They both knew it was the most honest thing she’d ever said.

They walked toward the refinery.

It was a labyrinthine sprawl of pipes and towers and steel that stretched into the hazy heat.

Zynara knew precisely what it did. She might have carried renewables to the summit of the world, but she was Ain Zargieri royalty.

They had pierced her country’s belly for oil eighty years ago and gorged on it for decades.

It had made them the wealthiest country on earth.

She could split a long chain hydrocarbon into saleable products in her sleep.

Crude went in messy, sticky and almost useless and a series of vertical stills heated it, vaporised it and sorted the results by boiling point.

Physics and chemistry. Nothing elegant. Not even clever. Just effective.

And profitable.

This facility split cracked crude into petrol, diesel and jet fuel, and the associated natural gas as condensate.

She could see the fractionation process in the pipes, the distillation towers in sequence.

She could smell it in the air. Valves hissed.

Somewhere overhead, a rusted chain clanged in the breeze.

Her phone buzzed.

A message. Coordinates. Nothing more.

“He’s playing with us,” Lottie muttered, looking over her shoulder.

“Why does everyone think it is a game?” Zynara wondered.

Inside, the refinery was dark—a metallic warren of dripping pipes and flickering yellow lights.

Their footsteps rang hollow on steel walkways.

Zynara’s heart thudded harder with each corner they turned, each stairwell they descended.

Shadows jumped in the corners. All the while, the refinery rumbled like a sleeping beast.

“Ah, my darling sister.” Malik’s drawl echoed from the depths.

They found him in a wide control room, surrounded by pressure tanks and quality testing stations. Her father was there too, seated—too still—on a folding chair. His walking stick lay several metres away, the beautiful cedarwood snapped. The Q’sar’s head hung low.

There was a phone set up on a stand in front of the Q’sar’s chair. It even had a ring light. Malik always cared too much about appearances. Two men, almost comically goonish in suits with curly earpieces, hulked in the background.

“You made it,” Malik said, lifting a gun in greeting. “Now we’re all here together—as a family. Well, what’s left of us, of course. We can finally sort this shit out. Lose the whore,” he muttered to the men.

Beside her, Lottie Finch moved faster. In an impossible flash of movement, she pulled two handguns from her waistband and shot each of the men in the forehead before they’d even drawn their own weapons. They fell to the ground.

Lottie aimed both her guns at Malik.

Malik jabbed the muzzle of his at the back of the Q’sar’s head.

There was a horrible groan.

“Put them down, Lottie,” Zynara said.

“Not a chance, princess.”

“He will kill my father.”

“Pretty sure he’s going to do that anyway.”

“Put them down.” She looked at Lottie. There was absolutely no sign of the cheeky, ditsy, teasing woman she’d known until now, but she loved this woman too. “Please. He’s all that’s left of my family. Please put the guns down.”

Lottie didn’t take her eyes off Malik, but she crouched and placed the weapons neatly at her feet. When she stood, she gave Zynara a tight smile.

Malik snorted. “Kick them away. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Do you have to ask?” Lottie retorted—but she swept the guns away with her feet and popped her eyes when she was done, as if the whole thing was a drag.

Malik strode around the Q’sar’s chair. His eyes flicked to Lottie and he smiled a patronising smile at Zynara. “Our own little courtesan turned bodyguard,” he snarked. “So romantic. Is the bedroom talk all solar panels and wind turbines?”

“Zero emissions and maximum heat, mate. A sustainable circuit of desire and satisfaction. Not like your limp pipeline.”

Zynara nearly choked.

Malik blanched. He stood between Zynara and her father and folded his arms. “I want the throne. You can still walk out of here, go live your herbal little life with this slut somewhere, anywhere, I don’t care, and you can take Baba dearest with you.

But I will be Q’sar. All you have to do is record a message now—you and father—ceding power to me.

Easy. Three minutes and we can all go home.

” He grinned. Viciously. “Well, I can go home and you can fuck off, because I’ll be banning revolting little queers like you, but details, right? ”

Zynara straightened her shoulders. “I won’t do that. This country will burn under you. I won’t let that happen to our people.”

Malik surged suddenly forward, right into her space.

She barely stopped herself from stumbling backwards.

He was crazy. Insane. She could see it in his eyes now—but if she was honest, she’d always known it was there.

He waved his gun around—not pointing it at her head, just gesticulating like a madman, another rant frothing behind his lips.

Out the corner of her eye, she saw Lottie skitter backwards too, then off to the side.

Malik was too wrapped up in his own performance to notice.

Zynara wondered if she still had the third gun.

“I have been merciful,” Malik hissed. “You think I’ve wanted any of this? I could be at the casino, I could be designing my new yacht, I could buy Hawaii instead of fucking around here in the sand—”

“We are your family , Malik,” Zynara tried.

“You’re right, and the optics would be better if I didn’t have to kill you both and leave your bodies under a dune, but if you are half as clever as you’ve always thought you were, Nizzy, you and father could just get the hell out of my way.

We’re all ready to go.” He gestured at the phone with the ring light.

“Record a message saying you’ll stand aside, that you were wrong, and that I am right .

Admit that all of this is the only future worth betting on and renewable energy is a waste of time.

Declare me king of Ain Zargiers and we’re done. ”

“Don’t do it, my darling Niz.”

The croak came from the Q’sar and the wreckage of his voice nearly tore Zynara apart.

Malik spun on his heel, raised his gun and pointed it straight at the Q’sar.

“Oh, do shut up, Baba.”

“No!” Zynara screamed—

—but Lottie was faster.

She was suddenly there, leaping between Malik and the Q’sar like a spark of electricity.

The crack of the gun was deafening. The bullet caught her in the shoulder, spinning her sideways and down, but she rolled on the ground in a confusing blur.

She pulled a sleek matte pistol from her thigh and raised it in one fluid, wild, impossible motion.

Her face twisted in pain, but her hand was steady.

“Lights out, dickhead,” she hissed—and shot Malik in the stomach.

It didn’t kill him.

Zynara wanted to believe that was deliberate.

She threw herself to the ground beside Lottie.

“I’m fine,” the woman gasped. She sat up, pushing Zynara out of the way.

She still had her weapon in her hand and she still had it aimed at Malik.

She pressed at her shoulder with her other hand.

Her face was white against her curls. There was a stupid amount of blood oozing between her fingers.

It was shockingly red. “Check on your father. Is the Q’sar okay?

We should get out of here, princess. We need to move. ”

“But you’re shot—”

“I said I’m fine. You get your father, I’ll deal with this.” She was glaring at Malik who had curled into a ball and was moaning like a baby.

Zynara was still clinging to her childhood. “Don’t hurt him, Lottie. He’s still my brother.”

“He’s still an arsehole, ” she hissed between gritted teeth. She dragged herself to her feet. She stalked toward Malik like an angel of chaos—so incredibly beautiful, so chillingly lethal, so devastatingly unpredictable. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she muttered. “He’s still trying.”

Malik gripped his gun again, but his hands were slick. His shot went wide and ricocheted off a pipe. His next shot whizzed by them and hit a tank in the background. Lottie managed to look supremely unconcerned and thoroughly pissed at the same time. She shot the gun out of his hand.

He howled.

She looked dispassionately down at him and then back at Zynara. She raised an impatient eyebrow. “The Q’sar. Come on, babe, let’s move.”

A tiny remnant of Zynara’s ego rekindled itself. “Babe?” she asked. She hooked her father’s arm over her shoulder. He was appallingly frail.

“Just something I’m trying,” Lottie mentioned.

“I don’t like it.”