Page 20 of The First Spark (Dynasty of Fire #1)

Zane was rummaging through one of the repurposed tool chests that stored medical supplies when near-silent footsteps drifted into the room behind him.

Mira stood on the other end of the room, with her lips pursed and her arms folded.

It wasn’t like she was going to turn him in for theft, though, so he shut one drawer and opened the next.

“I hear you’re hightailing it back to Dali.”

Zane snatched an okul patch. “Yeah, why? You have a problem with that?”

Fiddling with her ring, Mira sucked in a breath. “It’s just… it’s pr etty quick for a career change, isn’t it? You’ve known her for what, forty-eight hours?”

“Someone’s jealous.”

As Mira’s nostrils flared, Zane sighed. “I’m still not interested in being a mercenary.”

“Is it really so ridiculous? We could be partners. You’d be safe with me, you don’t have to go to Dali?—”

“I’d hardly call assassinations and bounty hunting safe, Mira.

You spend most of your time shooting at Feds.

” Zane yanked up his sleeve, ripped the okul packet open with his teeth, and slapped the patch over his healed wound.

At her raised eyebrow, he shrugged. “Better treatment than I got on Oppalli. Have them charge it to my tab.”

A smile twitched at Mira’s lips. “You mean my tab, don’t you?”

Grinning, Zane strode to the door. “Walk and talk. I’m running late.”

Her expression soured as he passed her and emerged into the hallway. Blinding lights blasted his eyes.

“Dali is Grimson’s Bar all over again,” Mira muttered.

Zane whirled on her. “Don’t—” soldiers marched past, and he flattened himself against the wall— “don’t go there. Don’t you dare.”

“I thought after you quit bartending, you moved on with your life. But here you are, still hiding, still shutting yourself off, still wasting your talents.”

“You can kill all the Feds you want, but I’m not getting involved in another war.” Zane shoved past her. “Not again.”

“Are you blind?” Mira’s angry voice thundered down the hallway. “She’s going to lead you into another war! That’s what she and Gar were talking about. She wants revenge.”

Zane tensed. He wanted to keep walking towards the waiting shuttle that promised him riches and security, but Mira’s words raised the hair on the back of his neck.

Mira’s ops usually left a trail of dead legionnaires in her wake, and with all the contracts she’d taken from Gar, she was already waging a silent war.

But Hannover… Zane clenched his fists. He’d thought she had some sense.

“War is coming,” Mira pressed, “and if you’re her guard, you’ll be in the thick of it?— ”

“By then, I’ll be in my manor on the beach. Maybe I’ll find a few Dalian girls to keep me company.”

Mira’s face darkened. He rounded a corner and walked away.

Guilt pressed down on his chest, but that was the point. He knew he should treat her better. She deserved better. But he couldn’t. If he let himself get too close, and he lost her… He couldn’t do that again.

Mira caught up with him, but she only spoke to tell him to go left instead of right. She hovered behind him like an ever-present shadow. Still supporting him, after everything. With every step he took into the busy hangar bay, the guilt grew, until he couldn’t hold it in.

“I’m sorry.” Zane stopped under a ship’s massive wing, scuffing his shoe against the polished floor. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Mira exhaled sharply. “Yes, you do. We both do. And you know my opinion.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t.”

Tiptoeing around, again.

Zane frowned. “You don’t care?”

“It was just a fling.” Mira strode towards the boarding tube where Hannover’s shuttle waited.

Zane bit the inside of his cheek. He’d said that first, the last morning, and he’d meant it.

After all the times he’d tried to open up to her, only for her to offer her predictable remedy of getting drunk off their asses, he’d thought it was only sex, brought on by booze and the thrill of danger.

She’d echoed it, but sometimes he wondered if it hadn’t been something more for her. Something real. Something dangerous.

“You’re my best friend. I just want you to be happy.” Pausing in the shadow of the boarding tube, Mira smirked and reached into her pocket. “If you could actually remember how to use a comm from time to time, that would be nice.”

“Oh, Mira,” Zane said, bringing his hand to his chest in feigned shock, “are you admitting that you enjoy talking to me?”

Rolling her eyes, Mira thrust a small metal pod into his hand. A thumb-sized depression was imprinted on the metal shell, and a tiny glass panel covered the top.

“It’s something new from Vak’shad.” Her eyes gleamed, as they always did when she was showing off her new gadgets.

“Untraceable line. I have the other one, see? If you need anything, press your thumb against this button. I’ll feel mine vibrate, and we’ll be able to talk. This way, we can’t be tracked.”

Zane grinned. “Good idea. Thanks.”

“You can thank me by using it.” Her pointed look eased into a smile, and she wrapped her arms around him. “See you around, Zane.”

He pressed his face into her hair, breathing in the scent of lavender.

For the first time in ages, he let himself relax.

The steady commotion of the hangar bay faded away.

It was just him and her, the way it had been since she crashed into his life on Santursi.

He could almost delude himself that he deserved her friendship, that there wasn’t any harm in sending her a message once he got to Dali, that nothing would happen to her.

She stepped back. Reality returned with the heavy weight of the metal tag hanging under his shirt.

Zane offered her a strained smile.

Judging by the look on her face, she knew what he was thinking.

Neither of them addressed the ghost in the air as he muttered “goodbye” and entered the shuttle’s short boarding tube.

He stopped inside the cargo bay and folded his arms. Hannover lingered around the corner, easily within earshot, avoiding his gaze. She fumbled with a lever on the wall, but she clearly had no idea what it was used for.

“Even I know eavesdropping isn’t polite.”

“You were being loud.” A flush colored Hannover’s cheeks as she took a seat in the cockpit, running her hands over the control panel. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

Zane scoffed. “Mira?”

“That’s the reason for all of it, right? The girls, the alcohol. I’m guessing you gave her a ring, but it didn’t work out.”

“A ring?”

“She still wears it.”

“She had that ring before we met. I don’t have a clue who gave it to her. Our engagement was only a cover for an op. I mean, yeah, we hooked up a few times, but what Mira and I had was nothing.”

“Nothing,” Hannover said, with one of her patented looks of disgust. “I wonder if she feels that way.”

He did, too. But he would never ask.

“Are you going to call her?”

He let his silence answer for him: probably not.

Hannover looked at him like something particularly horrible, like a piece of gum stuck to a shoe or moldy food left in the chiller.

Zane rolled his eyes. “What do you want to hear? We agreed it was just a bit of fun. Nothing more.”

The robotic pilot’s arrival spared him from Hannover’s rebuke.

With a cool glare, she moved out of the pilot’s chair and took the seat behind him.

The aibot set a nav path for Dali, sealed the docking tube, and eased the ship away from the station.

According to the nav computer, he’d be trapped in this cockpit with her and her questions for nine miserable hours. Zane stifled a groan.

“Who, then?”

Hannover’s dazed voice tore him out of his thoughts. She was staring deep into space.

“Who what?”

Hannover startled, and the glaze over her eyes vanished. She looked down at her shoes and bit her lip. He was starting to realize it was one of her tells.

“What? Might as well spit it out.”

“Something happened to make you this way. Someone happened.”

“All those cycles training to read people, and that’s the best you’ve got?” The chain of beads under his shirt was a weight on his chest, crushing him more with every sarcastic word. Ducking his head, he mumbled, “Not Mira.”