CHAPTER TWELVE

ZANE

I couldn’t deal with any more family drama right now, so I went to my tower library and shut and locked the door behind me.

I stomped around for the better part of a minute, pacing past the piles of books and weapons haphazardly strewn across the tables, but slowly, the rest of my anger drained away, leaving behind an empty, hollow, cracked cavern deep in my chest.

I stopped in front of the mirror I had used to get ready for the solstice celebration. Mussed blond hair, dull blue eyes, dirt and grime streaked across my cheeks, and of course, the black hole in my tailcoat where Silas had shot me with his hand cannon. The Techwaver might not have killed me, but his aim had been truer than he realized, and I didn’t feel like I even had a heart right now. No, right now, all I could feel was the aching loss and brimming bitterness in the place where my heart should be.

Another harsh laugh spewed from my lips, and I spun away from the mirror.

My gaze landed on the brewmaker on a nearby table. I should make myself a cup of tea, cram a few protein bars into my mouth, and get cleaned up. Perhaps even take a quick nap, if I could somehow drift off for a few minutes. Holloway would want me to report to Crownpoint and give him all the details about the Techwave attack as soon as the sun was up.

A tired sigh escaped my lips, but I went over to the table. I fished Jorge’s wristwatch and Asterin’s jewelry box out of my coat pocket and set them aside, then rummaged through the table’s center drawer looking for a pod of blueberry tea. The motions reignited the dull ache in my ribs. Another skinbond injector wouldn’t hurt either—

A presence stirred the air behind me, and the sweet, soft scent of spearmint flooded the tower library. I froze, then slowly straightened up and turned around.

Vesper was here.

She was standing in the middle of my library, a confused look on her face, as if she didn’t know how she had gotten here.

Over the past few weeks, I’d studied countless photos of my sister, so her features were as familiar to me as my own—dark brown hair with a few red highlights, pale skin, and dark blue eyes studded with silver flecks. She was wearing an Arrow uniform of a tactical jacket over a matching shirt, cargo pants, and knee-high boots, all in the sapphsidian blue of House Caldaren.

My lips curled in disgust. Out of all the people in the galaxy, my sister had a truebond with Kyrion bloody Caldaren. I hoped whatever quirk of fate that arranged this vicious irony was having a long, hearty laugh at my expense.

I stepped away from the table. Vesper’s startled gaze flew over to me, and her image flickered just a bit around the edges, like a hologram. We faced off in the middle of my library.

“Astral projection?” I drawled. “My, my, my. You must be a much stronger seer than I realized to do that.” I tilted my head to the side. “Or perhaps Kyrion’s power is fueling your own and driving it to even greater heights. I don’t know much about truebonds.”

“Trust me, this little appearance is as surprising to me as it is to you,” she muttered.

Vesper crossed her arms over her chest and looked me up and down, her gaze lingering on the hole in my coat, the black ring that marked my heart like a macabre bull’s-eye. “Rough night?”

“You could say that.” I crossed my arms over my own chest and leaned my left hip back against the table, mimicking her posture. “There was a minor incident with the Techwave.”

She snorted. “A squad of Black Scarabs rampaging through a Regal ball is a bit more serious than a minor incident.”

“Agree to disagree.”

She snorted again. She dropped her arms, then turned around in a slow circle, studying the library. “Your lair is very cluttered.”

“Lair? That’s a bit harsh.”

“All villains have lairs.”

“You consider me to be a villain? That stings almost as much as this did.” I gestured at the black hole in my coat.

Vesper rolled her eyes. “And yet you’re still alive.” She frowned and studied my coat a little more closely. “That scorch mark is from a hand cannon. I recognize the burn pattern.”

“Not just any hand cannon.” I gestured over at Silas’s weapon, which was lying on a stack of books on a nearby table, along with his tablet. “That cannon.”

Recognition flickered across her face, and her frown deepened. “How did you survive a blast from one of the new Techwave hand cannons? They’re designed to cut right through psionic shields and kill Arrows like you.”

I grinned at her. “Trade secret. Or perhaps I’m just a little tougher, stronger, and smarter than your boy Kyrion.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Kyrion is not my boy.”

“Ah, but you didn’t hear him waxing poetic about your many virtues before the midnight ball. He’s quite mad for you.”

A smile softened Vesper’s lips, and her eyes sparkled with warmth. She was as mad about Kyrion as he was about her, which meant I wasn’t going to be able to shove my stormsword into the broody bastard’s chest after all. Damn. I had been looking forward to that.

Vesper turned around in a slow circle again, her gaze going from one pile of books and weapons to another. “So much clutter.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, it just reminds me . . .”

“Of what?”

She grimaced. “My own workshop at Quill Corp. And my apartment. They’re both very cluttered.”

I knew they were. After Vesper and Kyrion had escaped from Corios, I’d gone to Quill Corp and her apartment on Temperate 42 to see if she might have left any clues behind, and the clutter had felt strangely, eerily familiar.

“You should see the mess in my father’s workshop. Perhaps clutter runs in our family,” I drawled.

Vesper jerked, and her eyes locked with mine again. “So you know that I’m your . . . sister.”

The word escaped her lips with a hiss, as though it was a bitter poison she was trying to spit out.

I arched an eyebrow. “I might not be the strongest or most skilled telepath, but I can hear the thoughts of others when I want to. Besides, Kyrion was quite clear in the elevator before the midnight ball. He was very smug and dramatic about it, flicking his fingers, showing me the eye carved into his palm, and whispering the words Vesper Quill is your sister. Why, he was so bloody smug and dramatic that I wanted to shove my stormsword into his chest. I still do.”

Kyrion had been smug because he’d known—he’d known—how the information would impact me. Kyrion knew that family meant everything to me and that I would do anything to protect my father and my grandmother . . . and my sister too. The rogue Arrow had been counting on it, and his gamble had paid off, since I’d done exactly what he thought I would.

I’d played right into his hands, something that still irked me.

Oh, Kyrion might not realize all the things I’d done to help him and Vesper escape. How I’d used my telekinesis to knock the Imperium soldiers away so he and Vesper could finally reach each other and trigger their truebond. How I’d let him cut me with his stormsword to hobble me. How I’d deliberately confused and slowed the soldiers’ pursuit to give him and Vesper enough time to reach the docking bay where his ship was located.

No, Kyrion might not have put all those pieces together, but he would have his suspicions about my actions that night. I wondered if he’d shared his suspicions with Vesper. Probably not, given the anger and disgust pinching her face.

“Why do you want to kill Kyrion so badly?” Vesper asked. “Because we escaped from Crownpoint? Because you haven’t found us and dragged us back to Holloway yet?”

“That’s one of many reasons. Kyrion and I despised each other long before you came along. Let’s talk about something more interesting. How did you get here?” I asked, genuinely curious. “Why now?”

She chewed on her lower lip. “I’m not sure. I was tinkering with a few projects when I got an alert about the Techwave attack. I started watching the gossipcasts. Great press conference, by the way. Very reassuring.”

I uncrossed my arms and held my hands out wide. “What can I say? Command looks good on me. Especially being head of the Arrows. Much better than it ever looked on Kyrion.”

She ignored my insults. “Anyway, I watched the gossipcasts for a while. I must have fallen asleep, because I started dreaming about my mindscape. Suddenly, a door appeared, showing me your library. I went over to the door in my mindscape and sort of . . . walked through it. And now here I am, talking to you, whether I want to be or not.” She muttered the last few words.

“That sounds rather sketchy, even for space magic.”

Vesper slapped her hands on her hips and glared at me.

“It sounds like you can’t fully control your seer magic. That’s a serious problem,” I said in a thoughtful voice. “Especially since Holloway has sicced the Arrows on you, along with every bounty hunter in the Archipelago Galaxy. You and Kyrion are going to need all your truebonded power to stay alive. If I were you, I’d start figuring it out.”

Vesper harrumphed. “Why would you want us to do that? I’ve seen the gossipcasts where you have vowed to bring Kyrion and me to justice for daring to escape Holloway.”

I shrugged. “Just following orders. Ask Kyrion. He’s done just as many horrific things as I have on Holloway’s command.”

“You’re really going to hunt me down? Your own sister?” Vesper huffed. “I should have known you would be just as awful as Nerezza.”

I remembered what she had said during the midnight ball. “Did Nerezza really call you a useless child because you didn’t have enough psion power for her liking?”

A shadow passed over Vesper’s face, and her pain twinged my telempathy, as sharp as a stormsword stabbing into my chest.

She spun away from me and continued her exploration of the library. Eventually, she wound up at the opposite end of the table where the Quill Corp brewmaker was. She stabbed her finger at the appliance. “Why do you have one of these?”

“Because it’s a marvelous device. So is the beverage chiller. You truly are a mechanical genius. I suppose you get that from our father.”

Vesper stared at the brewmaker, a muscle ticking in her clenched jaw.

I pushed away from the table and straightened up. “We didn’t get off to a very good start, did we? Perhaps things would be different now if we had.”

She spun around to me. “Good start? You insulted me, and I burned your clothes. Not to mention us mutually threatening each other at one of the Regal balls.”

I winced, thinking back to all the insults I’d hurled her way over the past few months. “I’m sorry I called you a conquest.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Would you be sorry if you didn’t know I was your sister?”

“I would be less sorry.”

Her eyebrow arched a little higher.

“Okay, fine, I wouldn’t be sorry at all.”

She huffed. “Somehow I doubt Zane Zimmer is ever sorry about anything.”

“Someone recently told me that referring to myself in the third person is exceedingly arrogant.” I grinned. “But I rather like it when you do it, sis.”

“Do not call me that.” Vesper growled out the words.

She took a step forward, and her fingers twitched, as though she wanted to lunge forward and strangle me. Could she do that in this astral form? Could she touch, move, or affect anything in the physical world? I made a mental note to start researching seer magic. It would be handy to know exactly what tricks my little sister was capable of.

“You might not like our familial connection, but it changes things.”

It changes everything. The words rippled through my mind, but I held my tongue. I doubted Vesper was ready to hear my thoughts on the matter, especially since I was still sorting them out for myself.

Vesper shook her head. “Now you sound like Kyrion.”

Perhaps I should give Kyrion more credit, if he’d tried to talk to Vesper about what being a Zimmer—my sister—truly meant.

“But I know the truth,” Vesper continued, her eyes glittering with anger. “Our so-called connection changes nothing. The Zimmer family has spent the last thirty-seven years pretending I don’t exist, and I am quite happy to keep that tradition going by pretending you all don’t exist.”

I thought of my father’s distress when he believed that I was going to hurt Vesper. He might not know his daughter, but he already cared about her. And so did I, as strange as that seemed.

“That was my grandmother’s doing. Beatrice never told Wendell anything about you. Me neither.”

“What would you have done if she had?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do know. Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Vesper snarled. “You would have kept my existence an ugly little secret just like your grandmother has all these years.”

“What Beatrice did to you was wrong,” I said in a soft voice. “That’s the truth.”

“And it’s just as ugly as everything else. I don’t need—or want—your fucking apology,” Vesper snarled again. “Just because we share some DNA doesn’t make us family.”

Even more anger filled her eyes, and disgust blasted off her like steam off a bubbling brewmaker. She was right. Just because we shared some DNA didn’t make us a family, but my grandmother had drilled the importance of family into my head since birth. Beatrice had always claimed everything she had ever done—good, bad, and ugly—had been for our family. To protect my father and me, along with my assorted cousins and everyone who worked for and depended on House Zimmer. I didn’t believe that anymore, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t—ignore my long-lost sister now just because it would be easier and more convenient to do so.

Unlike Beatrice, I didn’t care about the scandal it would cause. I just wanted . . . I just wanted to know more about Vesper. What her childhood had been like. If she’d ever wondered who her father was. If she’d ever dreamed about being part of a family.

If she had ever wanted a sibling as badly as I always had. And not just to help me shoulder the burdens of House Zimmer but to be an ally, a confidante, a bloody trusted friend.

I was a Regal lord, the heir to House Zimmer, and now, finally, the head of the Arrows, like I’d always wanted, but none of those things had ever come with friends. I’d thought Julieta Delano had been my friend—my best friend—but she had been plotting with Rowena Kent, and she would have let me be killed with Kyrion and the other Arrows when the Techwave had shot our ships out of the sky. Julieta had broken every single bit of care, friendship, and concern that I’d ever had for her, and I hadn’t even realized it until she was dead.

Julieta’s betrayal had cut much, much deeper than I’d let anyone know, except for Kyrion. We’d had a tense conversation about it a few weeks ago, but I don’t think even he realized just how much Julieta had hurt me. How embarrassed I was that I hadn’t seen her treachery. How humiliated I was to have put my trust in someone so duplicitous. And especially how bloody furious I was that she’d tricked me into thinking that she was my friend, that she actually cared about me.

Oh, yes. Julieta had taught me a particularly painful lesson that trust was for fools. Well, I would never be that sort of fool again.

But Kyrion hadn’t picked up on any of my misery. Like everyone else, Kyrion thought I was an arrogant idiot with minimal feelings. Despite all the years we’d fought together as Arrows, he had never seen the real me.

Vesper and Asterin were the only ones who had ever seen through my Zane Zimmer persona, and they both despised me. There was some lesson in that, probably about my being a masochistic glutton for punishment, but I didn’t have the time, patience, or emotional bandwidth to dissect it right now.

“Tell me where you’re hiding,” I said, focusing on Vesper again. “Make things easier on Kyrion and yourself.”

“Why?” she demanded. “So you can do your Arrow duty and drag us both back to Holloway? Hard pass. Although I can see how the idea would appeal to you. Holloway stuffing me in one of the Crownpoint medical labs would solve all your problems about what to do with me, the sister you never knew about and certainly never wanted.”

“Far better for me to find you than one of the other Arrows or some bounty hunter who doesn’t care how badly they hurt you as long as they get paid,” I countered.

She shrugged. “I’m not worried about the other Arrows or any bounty hunters.”

“So you’re only worried about me? How flattering.”

“That is not what I said.”

I grinned. “You have your interpretation, and I have mine.”

Vesper rolled her eyes skyward as if asking whatever gods or higher powers might be left in the galaxy for the patience to deal with me. Yeah, I got that expression a lot. But the fact it was coming from her delighted me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. I’d been wrong before. Vesper wasn’t a hard problem to be solved.

Why, having a sister might actually be fun.

“How is Kyrion treating you?” I drawled. “Have you finally managed to dislodge the perpetual stick that’s shoved up his ass?”

Her forehead crinkled with confusion. “If I didn’t know better, I would say it sounds like you’re actually concerned about me.” She shook her head, as if flinging off that thought. “But we both know that would be a lie. Zane Zimmer is only concerned about himself.”

“You told me once that the only good lies are the ones you actually believe yourself,” I said in a soft voice. “And I would say it sounds like you actually want me to be concerned about you.”

“You really do excel at twisting words around.” Her face hardened. “And you can certainly turn on the charm when you want to. I can see why you’re such a favorite of the gossipcasts. And shampoo companies. Love the new commercial.”

Her sarcasm stung, but she was right. I did charm people, and being the arrogant idiot had its advantages. But right now, it was putting me at a disadvantage. All I wanted was to reach some sort of truce with Vesper, but she wasn’t going to believe a word I said. I didn’t blame my sister, given what Beatrice had done to her, but I still had to try.

Zane Zimmer never gave up.

“My offer remains,” I replied in a smooth voice. “Tell me where you are, or at least where you’re going. Make things easier on yourself and especially on Kyrion.”

“If you come after us, Kyrion will kill you.” Her face darkened, and fury flashed in her eyes. “And if you hurt Kyrion, then I will kill you.”

“You would really kill your own brother for the likes of Kyrion Caldaren?” I shook my head. “That truebond has really screwed up your priorities.”

“The truebond has nothing to do with how I feel about Kyrion—or you,” she snarled.

“And how do you feel about me?” I kept my voice light, but my chest tightened with an odd mixture of dread and the smallest spark of hope.

Some of the fury trickled out of Vesper’s face, and her lips puckered in thought. “Out of all the people in the galaxy, I never thought I would have any connection to you. But I suppose that’s just irony working its magic.”

“You didn’t answer my question. How do you feel about me?”

Vesper’s gaze darted from my face to the scorched hole in my coat to the stormsword dangling from my belt. After a few seconds, she raised her gaze to mine again. The silver flecks in her eyes were more pronounced now, like tiny icebergs floating in her dark blue irises. “I don’t feel anything for you, Zane—just like you don’t feel anything for me. We are two strangers who happen to share some DNA. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Her voice was cold, calm, and steady, but I could have sworn the faintest bit of longing flickered off her, tickling my own heart like a nagging finger. Or perhaps that was just my own emotion. Either way, it hardened my resolve, and I walked over and stopped right in front of her.

Vesper tilted her head up, a wary look on her face. I opened my mouth to tell her that we had far more in common than she thought, including all our conflicted feelings about each other.

Vesper turned her head to the side, and her eyes grew distant, as though she was looking at something far, far away. After a few seconds, she looked at me again.

“Do us both a favor. Don’t come after me and Kyrion. Don’t make us kill you.”

“Ah, but that’s the one thing I can’t do. Holloway has made it crystal clear that if I don’t bring at least one of you back to Corios, then he’ll take his wrath out on me, along with my father and my grandmother and the rest of House Zimmer.” I held my hands out wide. “So you can see my predicament.”

Sadness filled her face, and the emotion tweaked my own heart. “I’ll warn you again. If you come after Kyrion and me, we will kill you, Zane.”

“Perhaps.” I grinned. “Or maybe I’ll surprise the both of you.”

Vesper frowned. Her eyes darkened, and she once again seemed to be looking at something far, far away.

“Vesper?” In the distance, a voice called out. I recognized Kyrion’s crisp tone.

Vesper looked back at me. Her image flickered again and started to fade away. Our talk was over, and her astral presence was going back to wherever her physical body was.

I held up a clenched fist, then lifted my fingers one by one. I said five words aloud with the motion, mimicking what Kyrion had done when he’d told me that Vesper was my sister the night of the midnight ball.

Vesper flinched. She stared at me a moment longer, then vanished altogether.

She might be gone, but my words echoed through the library. Five little words, seven simple syllables, twenty-two common letters.

See you soon, little sister.