Chapter 39

Cade

Cade Kingston loved trouble, had lived it and breathed it since the day he’d come back from his errands on the starship docks, and found Jeb Montforth kneeling over his parents’ corpses.

Jeb held an unconscious Karr in his arms, a bloody knife in his fist.

But Cade had his father’s pistol, so he’d first shot the man with Jeb, and then he’d forced Jeb into a sparring match.

In the end, Jeb won the match, besting Cade because he was twice his age and twice his size. But looking back, Cade knew that he’d bound himself to trouble that day, that it would someday come to find him again.

And find him, it had.

“You work for Geisinger,” Cade had said, when Jeb pressed him to his knees and held his father’s gun to his head. “You’re here to finish us all off, because my parents tried to run from him. They didn’t honor the deal they’d made. The payment.”

Jeb’s hand was trembling on the gun.

Like he was bold enough to use a blade on a fully grown man, but too much of a coward to use a bullet on a kid.

“We’ll pay their (debt,” Cade said. “My brother and I. We’ll work it off. We’ll spend the rest of our lives doing his bidding. We’ll go anywhere, steal anything. I’ve seen my parents work, I know how to run this ship.”

Jeb called Geisinger up, and gave him the counteroffer.

And just like that, the Kingston brothers sealed a lifetime of indenture to Friedrich Geisinger. But the man didn’t want to deal with them. Space trash, he’d said, so Jeb himself became a bastard father of two. Geisinger would call upon them if he ever had need.

Karr couldn’t know about the deal.

So Cade had spun a lie.

A lifetime of lies for a lifetime of trouble.

He wasn’t entirely surprised, when, ten years later, Friedrich Geisinger himself forced him into the Dohrsaran deal.

Cade had done it. Not because he’d wanted to—the weight of the sins he’d have to carry, doing the man’s bidding… what he’d have to do to the people there…

It was hideous work.

Unforgiveable.

But Cade had already committed a lifetime of unforgiveable sins.

So he’d taken the deal, in part because Geisinger swore it would be the final job to pay off his parents’ debt. But also because Cade wondered, if perhaps, by giving Karr this gift—true freedom—he’d be able to save his little brother from burning in some locked cell in hell for his sins.

Sins by association.

Sins Karr didn’t even know he’d had a part in committing.

“How can I trust that you won’t run, like your parents once did?” Geisinger had asked. “How can I trust that the sins of the father won’t pass down to the son, and repeat themselves over again?”

Cade had bet his life on this job. Because he’d needed it. God, he’d needed it, to set Karr free.

It was a stupid bet. Downright foolish, but not on Cade’s part. It was foolish on Geisinger, because Cade never intended to leave this job alive. Fate was too fickle, a guiding force that he had decided, years ago, would not let him live to grow old.

He’d never forget the pain of that night, after he’d signed on the dotted line for this job.

When Rohtt came to his hospital room and wheeled him into surgery.

When the pretty nurse with a robotic eye had ripped Cade’s chest open… and a queen mite was attached to his very heart. As long as the queen mite lived, the other mites lived, too. A complete failsafe, so that Cade would have no other option but to complete the job.

Do what Geisinger asked, return the Antheon, and the mite would be removed.

But if he failed…

All Geisigner had to do was hit stop on the queen mite that held Cade’s life in balance.

Then he’d join his parents in whatever came after death.

The queen mite ached. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, and the more he wriggled and tried to scratch at the queen mite, at the flesh that had healed and cracked open again, despite the anti-rejection medication Rohtt pumped him with each night…

The queen mite was slowly sucking the life from him. Twice, he feared Karr had almost noticed, from the plans in his quarters, and the bleeding on his chest, when they’d landed on Dohrsar. But Karr had messed this mission up in other ways.

This was Cade’s last stand.

His last chance.

And he would do whatever it took to finish the job.

The rubble cleared, and Cade climbed over it, past the point of the drill as he beheld the Antheon within. The pulsing black rock was real, nestled in the middle of a golden amphitheater, a ring of firelight casting a glow on the entire cave.

He’d done it.

Cade nearly wept as he walked forward, his eyes finding the Antheon. All the pain and the planning, all the lies and the sins he’d commited… it would all be worth it, when he commanded his prisoner army to rip it right from the Dohrsaran ground.

Cade reached the edge of the amphitheater, a grin blooming on his face.

But it fell, the moment he got a full view of the bottom.

“Karr.”

Damn him and his resourcefulness.

For there his little brother stood, alive and well and still without his S2 helmet. Cade almost didn’t believe it, didn’t want to trust that his eyes weren’t betraying him. But sure enough, Karr stood before the Antheon, his hair pushed back from his face as the rock itself seemed to sigh. To take a breath in and out, pull and release.

“You shouldn’t be here, Cade,” Karr said.

His voice echoed up the golden steps like a gunshot.

Cade swallowed, and held out his arms, considering how he’d perform this very last dance. How he’d get Karr to come back to his side, before all was lost. “Come here, little brother. It’s not too late to return to your own people. Your family, Karr. It’s all been a misunderstanding. We can keep you safe. That’s all we want. Whatever effect this poisonous atmosphere has had on you… let’s remedy it together. Come back to my side. We’ll take the Antheon and soar away from here forever.”

His voice carried out above the strange pulsing of the Antheon. The sighing of some sort of sickly smelling wind. Just as Thali had told him, it was alive. Like a creature in its own right.

“You can’t have the heart,” Karr said. “This job, and what you’ve done to these people to complete it… it’s not worth it, Cade. Stop now, before I stop you myself.”

Rohtt laughed out loud. “Fool boy. I should shoot you.”

“You will stand down, Rohtt,” Cade commanded. He glanced back over his shoulder, where his army was still clearing the rubble.

The drill itself had died out, smoking and smelling of turned oil. They’d have to dig by hand to widen the entrance, and if they dared stop… Cade would tap the control panel on his S2, commanding them to feel nothing but pain.

“This is the end,” Karr said, drawing Cade’s gaze back. “Stop it now.”

The Devil stood at the bottom of the pit beside him, staring at Cade with a hunger—a hatred—that he had never seen reflected in the eyes of the living. There was the outlaw Jaxon, who Cade had traded and set free. And there was the beautiful young woman, Azariah, who had snuck inside the ship with the Devil. Finally, the illusionist Markam, who’d changed Thali’s appearance—but he was unconscious, lying beside them.

Cade stepped closer, the dark space calling to him.

“Come to my side,” Cade begged one last time. What had happened, in so little time, to change him? To make him choose strangers instead of his own flesh and blood? Cade had given everything, everything, to protect him. Was it the poisonous air? Perhaps it morphed the brain, changed the way someone thought. “Come back, and we’ll talk about this. I’ll tell you the truth, Karr. All of it.”

“The truth doesn’t matter anymore,” Karr said now. “It won’t change a thing.”

The small group drew closer to Karr and the Devil, hands flexing as if they were preparing for a fight.

“Enough is enough, Karr!” Cade shouted. Fury sparked to life inside of him. “You’re acting like a selfish child. I’ve brought you a gift. I’ve promised you a forever with it. Leave the heart. Come to my side, where you belong.”

“I don’t belong there,” Karr said. He smiled sadly. “I belong right here. I always have.”

Cade laughed harshly, the sound reverberating off the walls. It sounded a bit like the laugh Thali had given him inside the ship’s brig. He silenced himself, checking his temper. He turned his gaze away from Karr, onto the Devil instead. “What did you do to him?”

“The question,” she said softly as she drew herself to a standing position, her sword in her fist, “is not what I did to him. But what you did. What your parents did, the secret you kept. He’s not your brother. Not fully.”

Cade tilted his head.

Something squirmed inside of him. A feeling of sickness, of unease. How could she know the truth? It wasn’t possible. Beside him, Thali seemed to perk up, listening closely for the first time since they’d entered the cave.

“What are you talking about?” Cade didn’t have time for this. “Karr! To my side. Now.”

The Devil drew her sword, a pathetic attempt at a threat from the bottom of the amphitheater, when Cade stood above with real weapons. But she snarled up at him, and said, “Do not speak to him as if he’s your beast, forced to sit at your feet and lick the blood from your wounds. He’s not yours to command. He never was. Not since the day your people replaced his heart with Soahm’s. Not since the day you swore to keep that secret to yourself.”

That squirming thing broke free inside of Cade.

It was terror. Terror, because how could this girl know the truth? For if she did… that meant…

“I know everything,” Karr said next. He looked back at the Antheon, his fists clenching as he stepped away from it. When his gaze swung back to Cade, it was full of so many things. Sadness. Horror. Disgust.

“All these years, you knew, Cade,” Karr said. “You knew that the only reason I am alive is because of a boy our parents abducted from this very planet. And now you dare to come back here, to the place I owe my life, and destroy it by ripping the very heart from it.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Cade whispered.

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Karr said. “I saw all of it. I see all of it, and I keep seeing it, even when my eyes aren’t open. It’s the very worst when I look at you.”

“I didn’t choose,” Cade started. “I didn’t choose any of it, Karr! They did! They started this!”

Karr held up a hand. “Stop,” he growled.

And as he did… the ground trembled.

Cade thought he imagined it. An aftershock, perhaps, from the drill breaking through the mountain.

“You are my brother, Cade,” Karr said. “We share a lifetime of pain. A lifetime of things we did not deserve, but our parents brought it all onto us. And then you decided to continue it, when you made a deal with Jeb.”

How did he know? How could he know?

Cade realized, suddenly, as his body felt dipped in ice… this was not Karr standing before him. This was a monster wearing Karr’s skin. Perhaps his real brother died that day on the sand, when the Devil turned her sword on him and drove it into his chest.

The Antheon had brought Karr back. Geisinger said it had the power to do such things.

But what if it hadn’t? What if it brought back a monster instead, some twisted version of Karr, that saw all and knew all, and…

“Enough of this,” Thali said. “I’ve waited long enough.”

She stepped away from Cade, walking forward into the unclaimed space between the two groups.

“Thali,” the beautiful one called up. “It’s okay. We’re going to protect it from them.”

“Silence, Princess,” Thali hissed. “For so long, I have had to put up with your voice.”

The woman below gasped, and took a step back, shock spreading across her face.

“All these years,” Thali said. “All these years, I have sought to find a way to enter this sacred space. The heart lives. The heart breathes. It is so, so beautiful. I never thought… never thought I would finally find it.”

“You shouldn’t be on their side, cleric,” the Devil said, her voice turning to a warning tone. “Care to explain what you’re doing with them?”

“Hello, Eona,” Thali said. Her wolf mask swung right, her eyes just barely visible in its shadows as she glared down into the pit to stare at the Devil. “How long have you been hiding in there?”

Cade watched, unsure what to do. Unsure when to command his people to move.

Karr’s posture was rigid instead of lazy. His smile was wiped clean from his lips, and his eyes… they looked up at Cade with a burning intensity that they had never held within.

It was almost like hatred.

Cade couldn’t look away from Karr, couldn’t stop feeling like the brother he’d always known and loved and protected, that he’d given all of himself for… was dead.