Page 159 of The Last Hope

Don’t give up.

I wrench with all my force, the metal chain digging into my flesh—but the wooden leg is starting to break.

I can feel my eyes rolling back in my head. And my wrist goes slack.

“Heya, he’s going to pass out,” the bossiest cadet snaps. “Lift your boot.”

The tall, freckle-faced cadet complies, and I choke on air. Gasping. My throat swells in pain, and they laugh some more.

Wretched luck. It’s what I focus on—my poor, ugly luck—while sweat slips down my temples and my tongue is thick in my mouth with snot and spit. Or else I’ll be thinking about Court and Franny, and I can’t think of them without fear punching my gut.

I pray to the gods that they’re not feeling this torture.

I’m not sure how the cadets found us. If there are cameras outside the hotel, or maybe we were spotted in the east wing. But just as Zimmer and I were checking on an empty suite, we heard footsteps banging up the stairwell and the door whooshed open right beside us.

SixRomuluscadets emerged in burgundy StarDust uniforms, and the looks on their faces—like they’d just discovered the rarest and most prized bear among all the lands—is not something I’ll be forgetting easily.

They grabbed at Zimmer first. Just tossed him like a sack of potatoes into the opened suite.

Seven shocks with the electrowand and they had me subdued enough to shove me right behind him. Then the door swung closed.

Locked in.

Without the boot on my throat, I yell between my teeth and fight against the metal clasps on my ankles and the chain on my wrist. When I try to rip my hand from underneath the shoe, a bossy, short-haired lady cadet holds out her hand to another. “Adrian,” she snaps. “Pass me the electrowand.”

Adrian is the one stepping on my damned hand. His voice is shrill, and his barbed eyes gleam wickedly. “You lost yours, Henna. You can’t have mine.” He’s bulkier than the others, and he leans more of his weight on my opened palm.

I growl, “You—”

He zaps my side, and I shut up all right. Muscles burning, I shake violently, as helpless as a tree limb in a snowstorm.

I hear the sound of splashing water, a vicious struggle coming from the bathroom.

“Leave him be!” I holler, my pain subsiding to a dull throb. I don’t have eyes on Zimmer. A younger boy dragged him into the bathroom, and the only thing I’ve been hearing is that water. They’re hurting him. I don’t have to be a Wonder to know that.

Henna smiles a nasty smile. “Don’t worry about your bludrader friend. He’s being dealt with.”

I scream harsh obscenities, my throat rubbed raw and my voice gnarled.

A third, much older cadet—gray wispy hair above his lip and nestled on his chin—squats near my face and presses his electrowand to the flesh beneath my eye. “I wonder,” he muses, voice deep and hollow. “What would happen if I shocked your eyeball. Would you lose sight or just die?”

“Probably die,” Adrian says, unknowingly releasing some of his weight off my hand. “Think about it, Igor. He’s weak. Jolee could slice him right now and he’d just pathetically bleed out.”

Jolee, I realize, is the leering lady with piercing green eyes and a mane of golden hair. She’s seated on an elegant blue chair and swings a battle-ax back and forth.

Just sitting. Just watching. Like a vulture on a branch, waiting to dive onto the carcass.

That ax—I recognize it from theLucretzia.By the leaf emblem forged on the blade, it must be a human weapon. Not something anyone can find on a Saltare planet.

Her lip quirks as she catches me staring. “You like this?” sheasks and inspects the ax with a fondness. “Plucked it straight off your precious Admiral Moura’s back.”My birth ma.

I glower, wrath suffocating me. Stealing my voice.

“Commander Theron let me have it. You want to know why?”

I’m about to yank my limbs every which way and growl until all noise dies out. But I remember Court. What he’d tell me to do.Calm down, Mykal.

My aggression quiets as I breathe and remember.