A young man screamed as he pointed them out. Then another scream came, and another, and another, until the entire room had erupted into terror.
When the first shot rang out, Andi already had an electric dagger pulled from her thigh holster, the blade sizzling with electricity, eager to protect, eager to kill.
Chapter Eighty-Three
* * *
DEX
XEN PTERRAN SOLDIERS swarmed the room.
One second they weren’t there, and the next, they were everywhere, all around the crowd, black rifles held before them like beacons of death. It was Adhira all over again.
Onstage, Valen still stood over his father’s body, knife held in his hand, a strange, absent look on his face as on-duty Arcardian soldiers lifted their own rifles and readied themselves for battle.
They’d only taken down a few enemies when Valen gripped the microphone.
He turned to face the Arcardians, his hand raised in a lazy gesture.
“Stop!”
The soldiers froze, accepting the command immediately. Their limbs were unmoving, and their eyes were vacant in their slack faces.
“Lay down your rifles,” Valen said.
The Arcardian soldiers dropped their weapons.
Then Dex saw the purple crackle of electricity as Andi’s dagger appeared in her hands.
“Wait!” he yelled.
But she sprinted past him, heading straight for Valen.
Chapter Eighty-Four
* * *
ANDROMA
ANDI DIDN’T THINK; she just moved as her feet carried her across the room toward Valen.
Her grip tightened on the dagger as she reached the stage, leaping onto it and skidding to a stop in front of Valen, prepared to do what she had to.
He spun around just in time, arm held before him with the knife still clutched in his fist.
“Why?” Andi asked. “Why would you do this?”
Behind Valen, six Patrolmen stood frozen, still as statues, midstride, their weapons discarded on the floor. And yet they did not move. Not even to blink. They only moved when six gunshots rang out, and they all fell to the floor in a heap.
General Cortas lay a few feet away, gasping as Merella pressed her hands to his wound, screaming for help, her voice ragged as all around the room, soldiers from Xen Ptera fired their guns. Andi watched as a woman dropped, her head hitting the floor with a sickening thump. Her arms splayed out against the swirling floor, limp.
Andi couldn’t see her crew, could barely see anything in the chaos.
“Androma,” Valen said. She whirled back to him. The knife in his hand shone red with blood, all the way to the handle.
Time froze around the two of them.
“I had to do it,” he said. She could barely hear him above the screams. What could only be bullets flying from the guns, striking partygoers and shattering glass. Merella was still screaming as Xen Pterran soldiers angled guns at the other system leaders, who sat stunned in their seats, arms raised in surrender.
“He’s still alive,” Valen said. A smear of blood was trailing from the general as he gasped and tried to crawl away. Valen sighed. “I have to finish the job.” He turned, twirling the knife so that he held the blade like a paintbrush, ready to render death upon his own father.
Andi slid past him and stood in his way. “Valen. Stop.”
Whatever the reason, this was wrong. This wasn’t Valen standing before her—not the sensitive boy she’d known, nor the sad, broken man she’d found in Lunamere. This was a killer, cold and heartless.
This was someone like her.
Valen’s jaw twitched. “Move.”
Andi remained in position. “You don’t have to do this,” she said, her heart hammering. She frowned at him. “What did they do to you in Lunamere? What did they say?”
“The truth.” He closed his eyes, rolled his neck from side to side, a small frown on his lips. When he opened his eyes, they were full of an evil she never would have believed him capable of harboring.
“Please, Valen,” Andi said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You’re wrong, Androma,” Valen said. His eyes fell on the dying man between them. “It’s all I’ve ever had to do.”
“I’ll stop you,” she whispered.
“No.” He tightened his grip on the knife and stepped forward. “You won’t.”
Chapter Eighty-Five
* * *
DEX
SPARKS FLEW AS steel clashed against steel.
Andi and Valen were a blur as they fought on stage, too far away for Dex to jump in. The crowd roared around him, people sprinting and bodies falling, their extravagant clothing tripping them up as they tried to escape the chaos.
The Xen Pterran soldiers shot heartlessly, their bullets striking down everyone in their path. It was Adhira all over again, despite what the general had said, despite Arcardius’s so-called invulnerability.
Now General Cortas was dying, by the hand of his own son.
Valen the weak.
Valen the painter.
Valen the murderer. It didn’t add up.
A man screamed as a soldier began raining bullets in his path. The weaponry was older, outdated, and yet the ammunition was not. Dex saw the moment the man was shot. He watched, horrified, as a silvery substance splattered against the man’s forehead where the bullet had gone in. The liquid shimmered and sank beneath his skin, like water into a drain.
The man crumpled to the ground, where he lay faceup, staring up at the sky.
Move, Dex told himself. Get the hell out of here.
He could see the exit, a perfectly straight path to freedom, with only a few bodies in his way.
But he couldn’t leave Andi behind.
Then he heard her scream.
It was a sound he knew like the beat of his own heart, like the roaring of the blood in his ears. He whirled around, his vision tunneling to focus on her.
Andi was down on one knee before Valen. Blood dripped from her collarbone, seeping from a deep wound.
Andi’s knife was on the ground between them, the electricity crackling a single time before it winked out.
She grabbed it and shook it once, like the snap of a whip. The electricity fired back up, swimming across the sharpest edge.
Dex was close enough now to hear her voice.
The shots were fewer, lessening to the point that he knew they had no time. That in seconds, he would probably be next.
But he couldn’t look away.
When she stood, somehow hauling herself up on shaky feet, Dex knew that Valen would die.
Because it was not Andi who rose, but someone else in her place.
The Bloody Baroness.
Chapter Eighty-Six
* * *
ANDROMA
ANDI FOUGHT LIKE Valen was her past come back to haunt her, and with every swing of her blade, she saw the chance to erase him.
But he was too quick. Too skilled. Too other.
Not the Valen she’d grown up with, not the Valen she’d rescued.
Lies.
Betrayal.
Take him down, Androma, take him down.
It was not her voice, but Kalee’s, that called to her mind.
She advanced on him with fire in her heart, pain lancing through her veins like a poison. The shaky friendship they’d built was gone. She wasn’t even sure if it was ever real.
“Kalee wouldn’t have wanted this!” Andi screamed. “She wouldn’t have...”