Renegades (Hotbloods #3)

Instantly, her hands shot up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point, Riley!” she shouted, her voice anxious. “I was upset that it didn’t go as planned, and I took it out on you. I can see that now. I overreacted, and I apologize for that! Please, step away from the generator, so we can talk about this properly!”

Navan landed on the ground beside the queen, with Bashrik following close after. The soldiers all landed a short distance away, the chase evidently over in the wake of Brisha’s unexpected apology. Even the soldiers holding my friends’ heads down desisted, taking a step back so Angie and Lauren could breathe, although it didn’t stop Angie from shooting her guard the dirtiest look I’d ever seen.

“Your Highness, if you would just listen to us, we might be able to explain what happened to the elixir,” Navan spoke up, loud enough so I could hear. “Threatening us like this will do no good when we might be the ones who can help you to move on from this failure and succeed the next time.”

What are you up to? I wondered, lowering the bomb.

“I’m listening now, Navan,” Queen Brisha remarked tersely, evidently disliking the way he was speaking to her in front of her soldiers.

“Of course, Your Highness. The thing is, from what I know about elixirs from my father, every single ingredient has to be correct, and in the precise quantity needed,” he went on, garnering an unimpressed look from the queen. “Bear with me, I’m getting to the point. It’s just, I think there might have been an ingredient missing. Something small, but very significant—that’s the way it always happens with these things. Jethro and Ianthan thought there was something special about Kryptonian blood. Now, Jethro knew blood better than anyone, and I would believe his word over a whole planet of alchemists, which is what makes me think there must be another issue. There has to be something else that we’re missing,” he reasoned, a tightness coming into his voice as he mentioned Ianthan.

The queen sighed. “Your thoughts reflect my own, Navan, but what might this ingredient be? If it’s not something we can seek out then we are back at square one,” she muttered.

“Then allow us to go in search of it for you,” Navan offered. “Send us on an official mission for you, and we will deliver the missing ingredient right into your hands. I already know where to start our search.”

Ah, so that was what he was up to.





Chapter Twenty-Eight





Queen Brisha glanced at Navan. “Before I agree to anything, will you please remove your beloved from the roof of my alchemy lab?” she remarked, flashing a look in my direction.

A grin spread across Navan’s face as he launched himself upward, landing gracefully at my side. “Time to put down the bombs, Riley,” he teased, pulling me toward him and tossing the belt of explosives over his shoulder.

“But she might be bluffing. She might arrest us as soon as we touch solid ground,” I whispered, still feeling uncertain.

“If she does, she will have gone back on her word in front of her soldiers. That’s not a good look for a leader,” he reminded me. I peered over the lip of the rooftop, noting the frozen soldiers standing uniformly with their hands behind their backs. Like this, they didn’t look nearly as threatening.

I sighed. “Fine, but put me down elegantly. I don’t want to go stumbling around in front of the queen,” I replied with a small smile.

“Of course,” he murmured. The air rushed out of my lungs as he scooped me up and carried me down to ground level. He handed the belt of explosives to one of Brisha’s soldiers with a dramatic bow.

“So, you were about to make a suggestion, Navan,” Queen Brisha continued, barely offering me a glance. It seemed she was just relieved that I was weaponless and down from the roof, away from her precious generators.

“It’s a thought that occurred to me very recently, Your Highness. You see, my father always taught me that, where serums and elixirs are involved, there needs to be a baseline, a reactive, and a stabilizer. In your elixir, we have Vysanthean blood as the baseline, Kryptonian blood as the reactive, but we have no stabilizer. At least, I don’t think we do?” Navan enquired, raising an eyebrow.

To my surprise, it was Lauren who answered. “There is no stabilizer, Your Highness. In all the books I’ve read on the subject, there has never been a mention of a stabilizing blood added to the mix. There are stabilizing elements from elsewhere, but none are in blood form,” she explained, rubbing the back of her neck, where the guard had roughly shoved her.

Lauren’s words seemed to convince Brisha in a way nobody else’s could. There was trust between them, though I hadn’t understood the extent of it until now. I supposed it was inevitable, given the amount of time they had inadvertently spent in one another’s company during long evenings in the library. It was only natural that a bond would form, and now we could use it to our advantage to persuade Brisha of the need for this extra element.

“How did none of my alchemists see this missing part, if Navan’s father knew of it?” Brisha asked, her tone sharp as she glanced back at the lab.

“My father doesn’t know of it. It’s just a structure I’ve seen him use in other elixirs. Most of the time, a stabilizing element will do, such as a root or a compound, but considering that this elixir has to alter the genetic makeup of an individual, and seeing what it did to your test subjects, I figured it must need a third blood to stabilize the reactive and the baseline. Mere elements wouldn’t be enough,” Navan went on confidently. “I wouldn’t have known that unless I’d seen the test with my own eyes. A genetic element is missing.”

Queen Brisha turned to Lauren. “Is this true?”

She nodded. “I believe it’s why the body decayed instead of immortalizing, Your Highness. There was nothing to counteract the potency of our blood, mixed with the Vysanthean blood, and the other ingredients. To make it viable, you’d need a blood that could slow the reactive process, giving cells a chance to morph and adapt, instead of exploding and decaying the way they did today,” she ventured, her intellect shining through. I believed every word she said, and I knew everyone else did too.

“What kind of blood?” Queen Brisha pressed eagerly.