Stealing the Dragon’s Heart by Kiersten Fay

22

At Luscious Vibes, Ash, Zeek, Vin, and Priya slapped their vouchers down on the table in front of Aidan. Between them, they had earned six. Not a bad haul, but not great if they wanted to really gain ground.

He’d just returned from delivering their new shield generator to Vin’s workroom. “Good work. So, tell me about the tournaments here on Latherial.”

“Some are pretty standard,” Zeek said. “Another VR race, this time allowing eight competitors at once. Last I saw, Onnika was strapping in for that one.”

“Of course.”

“There’s another cage match. Naturally, Ash won that right away. A couple of brainteasers. All me. Feats of strength, Ash again. Then there’s a dance competition, if you can believe that. Friggin’ frilly Angilius. I’m surprised they haven’t declared flower arranging a cultural sport. And, get this, both Priya and Vin dominated the shooting competition.”

Aidan raised a brow at Vin. “Been practicing?”

“Got me the best teacher right here,” he said, then kissed Priya’s cheek. “The most beautiful, too.”

“You’ve been extra sweet all evening.” Priya gave him a side-eyed glance. “What did you do?”

Vin’s expression took on an over-the-top innocence. “Can’t I just pay my woman a compliment?”

Eyes squinting, Priya observed, “Your nose is flaring. That’s your guilty twitch.”

“What? No, it isn’t.” He rubbed his nose.

She canvassed him up and down for a moment, appearing to grow more suspicious, but then apparently decided to let it go, for she said no more.

“Anyway,” Zeek continued. “There’s actually one tournament where they’re offering two vouchers to each winner, but none of us are willing to partake. They’re calling it a death match, though it’s not clear if that was the original intent. The way I see it, it was supposed to be a simple spacewalk. You go out and grab a few floating rings and get back before your opponent does. Here’s the kicker: you’re in a spacesuit, obviously, but your oxygen comes from an air tube that’s tethered to the station. Can you guess what’s been happening?”

Aidan could. “They keep going after each other’s air supply.”

Zeek’s finger shot in the air. “Exactly! No, thank you.”

“It’s practically all they’ve been showing on the feed.” Vin pointed to the holo-screen set up behind the bar, where a pair of contestants happened to be donning sleek spacesuits—

One of the contestants had…stark-white hair!

Aidan shot out of his chair so fast it toppled to the floor.

Asher had noticed, too. “It can’t be.”

Her back was to the cameras, but Aidan had no doubt who it was. Stubborn, reckless, overconfident Onnika.

He had to stop her before she got herself killed. Before he got her killed. Deep down, he knew this was his fault, demanding all those vouchers. He suspected she’d taken on Caryn’s burden, too, as fiercely protective of the girl as she was.

“Take me to where this is happening,” he ordered of no one in particular.

The entire group jumped to obey, racing out of Luscious Vibes and through the crowded arena, strong-arming people out of the way as they cut a path through the crowd.

They arrived just as the airlock’s inner hatch lowered, closing Onnika in with her opponent. Aidan banged on the porthole. “Dammit! Open this door!”

Both she and her opponent glanced back. The man looked exactly like the wrong sort to go up against: scruffy beard, shaggy, greasy hair, a scar running down half of his face, and the cold look of a killer.

Looking confounded to see him thumbing his fist on the hatch, Onnika mouthed Aidan’s name. She might have said it out loud, but the barrier between them blocked the sound.

“Get your ass out of there!” She might not be able to hear his words, but maybe she’d read his lips and actually follow an order for once.

No such luck.

She simply smiled and waved as the airlock began to pressurize.

“No! Don’t do this.”

Then the outer doors slid open, and Aidan had never felt so helpless.

Facing open space, the two pushed off the ledge and floated toward their prospective rings, three on either side arranged from near to far.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed Lear and Caryn spectating through another larger porthole built into the bulkhead. He advanced on Lear and thrust him up against the wall, white-knuckled fists clenching his collar. “How could you let her go out there?”

Lear shoved him away with equal strength. “I just got here. I don’t even know what’s going on.”

His rage zeroed in on Caryn next. She took a step closer to Lear, as if she expected the same treatment he had received, and even though Lear damn well knew Aidan would never harm a woman, he eased her further behind the protection of his body.

Through clenched teeth, Aidan asked, “How could you let her do this, Caryn? She’s going to die.”

Caryn faced the porthole again. “You don’t let Oni do anything. She does what she wants. And I’m sure she’ll be all right. She’s stronger than you think.” Yet she did look worried now.

Onnika had already looped one arm through the first ring and was on her way to the second. Optimism tried to barrel through his mind. Maybe this wouldn’t be a death match after all. The other man seemed to be jetting toward his second ring as well, though at a slower pace. His helmet turned in Onnika’s direction. When she was halfway to the second ring, his course deviated.

Horror twisted inside Aidan and his head roiled with panic. He was going for her line!

As if sensing the danger, Onnika glanced back.

Aidan gripped a nearby worker by the shirt. “I need to go out there, now!”

“T-That is not possible, sir. We cannot open the airlock until they have returned.”

Cursing, he shoved the worker away. There had to be something he could do. There had to be something…But he couldn’t think past the terror squeezing his chest.

The man floated nearer to Onnika’s only life support.

Onnika reached out and gripped her breathing tube like she might pull herself in. Instead, she gave it a hard vertical whip, sending the whole line sailing away from her opponent in a wide arc. Then she grabbed for the second ring and continued on toward the third.

Her opponent adjusted course with his suit’s thrusters and once again inched toward her line. For the first time Aidan noticed something glinting in his hand. It looked like the man had smuggled in something sharp with him, something that could…

Aidan’s terror sharpened, and he banged on the porthole like a wild caged beast, spilling vile threats from his lungs that went unheard by their intended target. For the second time in his life, Aidan wanted to commit murder. Wanted to suffocate this man with his bare hands and watch the light in his eyes dim to nothing.

Unexpectedly, Onnika glanced his way, and their eyes met, but only for a second. Again, she seemed to sense the threat her opponent posed, and she whipped her breathing tube once more, this time in a circular motion, sending it high overhead in a kind of jump-rope fashion. Trapped by his momentum, her opponent drifted a short distance before twisting around and reversing direction.

Onnika shot for the last ring.

Aidan’s pulse thundered so harshly his heart threatened to explode from the pressure. I’ll lose her, too.

Onnika closed in on the final ring; the villain closed in on her lead. For the third time, she tried to whip her tube out of his reach, but she was running out of slack and it didn’t go as far as it needed to. When she clutched the last ring, the man caught hold of her line with one gloved fist.

Aidan held his breath. This was it. He was about to watch her die. Another stain on his soul. Another reason to despise himself. He refused to look away. He deserved the pain of what was about to happen.

Rings hiked up to her shoulder, lead taut, Onnika used it to pull herself in faster than the tiny thrusters in her suit could manage, but Aidan already knew it was too late. Her opponent raised his weapon. When he struck, air spewed from the laceration. Aidan felt the agony of it in his chest.

Eyes swimming, he watched the man sever the lead completely. The dragon in him stirred, demanding blood and vengeance. The first indication of an uncontrolled transformation shimmered along his skin.

Lear placed a mournful hand on his shoulder. “That man will not live past this day,” he promised.

Aidan made a different promise to himself: the man wouldn’t live past the hour. Feeling his soul shriveling, he wanted to sink to the ground in shame while Onnika continued moving toward her murderer.

Then he spotted something that gave him a glimmer of hope. He sucked in an astonished breath when he realized she had managed to tie a knot in her end of the lead. She must still have a small amount of air in there with her, because she didn’t appear to be suffocating. Not yet, anyway.

With her added momentum, the man was unable to dodge her path. The two collided, and Onnika grabbed hold of him. No, no! Get back to the station. Her remaining air would be used up any second.

Locked together, the man raised his weapon as if to finish the job. Onnika gripped him by the wrist, holding the weapon at bay, and then pulled his body down and slammed her knee into his helmet. Aidan could almost hear the crunch and cracking of tiny fissures breaking out over his visor. Then she snapped his wrist back, forcing him to relinquish his weapon. It floated freely for only a moment before she snatched it and stabbed it into his shoulder.

Air and blood whooshed out from the gash. The man frantically batted at the tear while Onnika floated back and then kicked him hard in the chest with her heel, sending him spinning one way, and her another…directly toward the air lock. Her path was erratic. She used her suit’s thrusters to correct her course, but one moment it looked as though she’d overshot her target, then overcorrected the next. Was she out of air? Panicking? Struggling to remain conscious? Aidan couldn’t tell.

Just when her body seemed to go limp, her inertia carried her into the airlock. Her body bounced off the hatch door and then began slowly drifting backward…back toward open space.

“Close the damn hatch!” Aidan yelled, even as the outer hatch was already closing. As soon as it locked in place, the small antechamber began decompressing, and the artificial gravity sent Onnika’s motionless body to the floor. Aidan didn’t wait for the inner hatch to fully rise before shoving his way under it. He lurched toward her, feverishly unlocking her helmet and ripping it off her head. Her long white locks spilled free. Seemingly unconscious, she took in one large breath. Aidan nearly crumbled in relief. Then her eyes cracked open and she peered up at him. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t for her to give him that soft smile and voice a simple, “Hey.”

Boiling over with too many emotions that he couldn’t quite process, he railed at her, snapping and cursing and screaming. The word stupid was used a lot. Idiot, too. And a barrage of additional harsh descriptors he wouldn’t recall later and wasn’t really aware of as they escaped his mouth. All he knew was the sharp pain of his relief, the toxic sting of it fraying his nerves, and that he never, ever wanted to experience anything like it again, and that he was so damn mad he couldn’t think straight. He might have snapped that last part aloud.

When he was done, he had to suck in several harsh breaths to calm his dizzy mind.

She blinked at him, then glanced around, taking note of the rings still hiked around her shoulder. “Did I win?”

He threw his head back and bellowed.

“All right, all right,” she said, sitting up. “Calm down. I was just doing what you asked.”

He pulled her to her feet. “Did I ask you to get yourself killed?”

“Am I dead?”

“Not for a lack of trying.” Moments later he had her stripped of that fucking spacesuit and was ready to drag her back to the ship and lock both her and Caryn in their bunk until they could all leave this godforsaken place when a man strolled up to them. He had dark, ruffled hair and a crooked nose, the look of a man who’d survived more than a few brawls.

The man glanced out the porthole where her competitor’s body floated and then back at Onnika. “I see you’re still in the habit of leaving men to die.”

Onnika stiffly clutched Aidan by the arm, and there was a look on her face he’d never seen before.

Stark Fear.

Caryn, who was still nearby, had gone sheet-white.

Noticing the atmospheric change, his crew glanced between the girls and the newcomer.

“Who are you?” Aidan demanded.

Instead of answering, the man replied, “I see she’s got her claws into you now. Figuratively and literally.”

Aidan glanced down. Did Onnika realize how hard her nails were digging into his bicep?

“Good luck with this one,” the man said. “Just know she’ll betray you first chance she gets. No soul, no loyalty.”

Asher stepped forward, his expression menacing. “I think you should leave.”

The man raised his palms in surrender. As he headed away, he called back, “See you around, Oni.”

Now Onnika seemed frozen in fright, her tremors flowing into Aidan by way of her grasping fingers. Pulling her close with one arm, Aidan found his anger over her stunt had completely drained away. With tempered movements, he hooked his finger under her chin and guided her to meet his gaze. “Let’s get your vouchers and get back to the ship. I wager we have enough now.”

She blinked at him as if coming out of a daze, a small crease forming between her brows. Finally she nodded, releasing her grip on him. Oddly, he noted, he would have been fine had she kept hold of him all the way back to Dragoon.