Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(27)

“She is Terran,” the girl says, gripping a slender black cylinder in a way that makes it seem like a weapon. “She is wearing the uniform. She is yours.”

“She—” He glances at me, clenches his jaw. “She is beneath our concern.”

… wait, what did he just say?

We’re in a huge room—part of a space station, I’d guess—and the whole place looks like it’s held together with spit and good luck. Gaping holes in the walls reveal a tangle of fire-hazard wiring, the lights flicker like they’re about to give out, and the only new things here are the crates I stowed away in. I followed Battle Leader de Stoy’s instructions, so I’m guessing this is where she wanted me to be? I just wish I knew why.

I wish I knew anything at all.

In reply to the tall boy’s edict, the girl raises the stick, and suddenly holy cake that thing’s definitely a weapon. Purple energy crackles to life, sprouting from it like a long, curved blade, and I scramble backward so fast I crash into Middle-Earth’s legs behind me.

“Control yourself, Aedra,” he says, voice cool. “You shame yourself, acting so, in front of a human. Should we survive, we can argue about the girl later.”

I both do and don’t want to know why our survival is in question, but apparently I don’t get a vote—he reaches down and lifts me to my feet like I weigh nothing at all, holding me in place while I get my balance. My knees are still singing a protest at being straightened as the girl kills the juice on her weapon, glaring one last time before stalking across the room like she expects to be followed.

“My name is Kal,” the guy says quietly.

“Aurora,” I reply, still miffed about the Beneath Concern crack.

“You are the girl Tyler Jones discovered in the Fold.”

“How do you know about that?”

“You were found on an infamous derelict after being lost for two centuries and you have the same name as the academy I have lived at for the past two years.”

Okay, good point, well made.

“Yeah. Look, sorry but I—”

“Explain when the danger is over,” he says, cutting me off like I hadn’t spoken. “For now, stay beside me and do not stray.”

His eyes are the same purple as the energy the girl called Aedra was wielding a minute ago. When I saw the vision of him in my room, I thought his hair was silver because of the light, but no—it really is that color, pulled back from his face and spilling down his back in five long, perfect braids. I can even see the same bruises on his jaw.

I remember the sound of screaming.

The blood on my hands.

A shiver runs straight up my spine when he looks at me, so hard the muscles cramp. It’s like a fear response, except it’s something else, too. There’s a coldness to him. Something entirely … well … alien, I guess. He scares me, but despite his crappy manners, he scares me slightly less than everything else in the galaxy for now. So as he turns and stalks away, I match his stride.

“What’s happening?” I whisper, just in case I understand the answer.

He looks at me with distant eyes.

“This is an abandoned mining station,” he finally says as we step into an ancient elevator. “I am part of an Aurora Legion squad sent here with relief and supplies. A warship manned by … by a violent faction of my people is nearby.”

“It was summoned,” Aedra says, and though her voice is calm now, she still gives the boy a glare that’s almost pure murder.

“It is dangerous,” he says, as though she didn’t speak, turning away from me. “But do not fear, human. You are among friends now.”

“Could’ve fooled me … ,” I mutter.

The elevator shudders to a stop and the doors slide open and we’re in a control center. Large screens show flickering images of the stars, incomprehensible graphs and graphics, half-dismantled control banks lining the edges of the room, the middle taken up by a central bank. The room is full of people, shouting and rushing about.

“Aurora?” Someone’s saying my name over in the middle of the room, incredulous. It’s Captain Hotness. Ty, I mean. He’s standing with his sister, the one with the bright orange hair, Scarlett, and a guy with paper-white skin. He must be Betraskan, just like Battle Leader de Stoy. Except this boy is wearing a sort of exoskeleton over his uniform that hums and whirs as he turns to me.

All three are staring at me now, like Kal just pulled me out of his hat. I feel him shift his weight, fold his arms beside me.

“Hi,” I say.

Solid opener.

Scarlett frowns at me. “Um, what’s she doing here?”

“The Unbroken first,” Kal says. “Questions later.”

I’m guessing the Unbroken are the violent faction he mentioned, and the looks on the faces around me send a finger of ice curling down my spine.

Tyler simply nods. “Cat, I want you flying perimeter in the Longbow. Keep out of sight. Kal, you’re on our defenses. That Wraith is gonna be on us in ten minutes unless we give them a reason not to be.”

The girl with the tattoos that I saw in the infirmary brushes roughly past me, the elevator doors rattling closed behind her.

Kal glances at me, but soon strides over to a series of consoles. I want to ask what’s going on, but considering the mood up here, I figure I should try to keep out of the way instead. So, I back up against the wall near an older-looking Syldrathi man. My heart’s beating a mile a minute, and a part of me wants to find a small space and hide. It’s too much. I can almost cope with two centuries in cryo, if I don’t think too hard about everything that entails. I can deal with stowing away aboard some ship with a bunch of strangers. Being lied to by everyone around me. But actively under attack might be a bridge too far.