Starfall (Starflight #2)(9)
She winced, blinded by the sun. Her boots met the crunch of dried grass, but she couldn’t see or hear anything to indicate where she’d landed. From somewhere in the distance, a crow gave an eerie caw, and then a light breeze stirred her hair, smelling faintly of smoke. Slowly, she blinked until her surroundings came into focus.
It was obvious there’d been a fire here, which explained the charred scent in the air. Blackness covered the gently rolling hills, stretching all the way to the horizon. A few jagged tree trunks pushed up from the ground at awkward angles, like corpses rising from their graves. For miles around, there was only death.
She didn’t recognize this place. Had they landed on the wrong planet?
One of the men shoved her forward and pointed at a shuttle bearing the Durango crest, the house seal of Marius’s family. “Marius wants you to take a homecoming tour before your delivery.”
The breath caught at the top of Cassia’s lungs. She jerked her gaze back to the landscape, this time picturing the hills covered in lavender wildflowers and graceful willows spilling leaves onto the breeze. She spun in a clumsy circle until her eyes found a lake in the distance, and then her vision flooded with tears. Because she did know this place, knew it by heart from the years she’d spent gazing at its likeness taped to her bedroom wall. She was standing on her royal ancestral land.
Ravaged by the war she’d caused.
“Move,” the man said, shoving her again.
Cassia lumbered onto the shuttle and took a window seat, then watched as the devastation unfolded below. Nothing could have prepared her for what two years of battle had done to her city. Most of the streets were impassable, pockmarked by shock wave mortar, and the Rose Academy at the heart of the scholastic district was reduced to rubble. Fields were ruined and warehouses torched. Not even the hospital was spared. Half its roof had melted off, revealing heaps of twisted metal and piles of scorched beds that likely hadn’t been vacant during the attack.
Her eyes couldn’t process the devastation. She wasn’t naive—she’d seen images of war on other planets—but weapons of mass destruction didn’t exist here. The four founding dynasties had agreed to that in the colony charter when they’d terraformed Eturia hundreds of years ago. Obedience to the charter was their most sacred tenet, and the Solar League was supposed to help enforce it. That was why colonies paid taxes. So why hadn’t the League stepped in?
She continued scanning the city and noticed her family’s palace was still standing, though a portion of the east wing had crumbled, and the walls around the front entrance were defaced with symbols painted in red. Squinting, she was able to identify them as basic squares with an X marked through each one, but she didn’t know what they meant.
As the shuttle jettisoned away from her family’s territory, she peered into the distance and noticed similar devastation in the neighboring kingdoms. Only the Durango lands seemed unaffected, which told her it was Marius’s family who’d betrayed the charter. That didn’t surprise her, but she couldn’t understand how they’d funded the war. Weapons didn’t come cheap, and the Durangos possessed the least amount of wealth. That was why they’d agreed to a marriage between Cassia and Marius in the first place.
The question moved to the back of her mind as the shuttle touched down behind the Durango palace. She steeled herself, using both shirtsleeves to scrub the wetness from her eyes. Her enemies had already taken too much. She wouldn’t give them her tears, too. When she exited the shuttle, it was with her matted head raised to the sky.
She’d assumed she would end up in a jail cell, and she was right. But instead of taking the most direct route to the basement, the Daeva led her slowly along every corridor in the main house so the servants and visitors could see how the once-regal Cassia Adelaide Rose had been reduced to a stinking prisoner in bloodstained rags. Refusing to acknowledge any of them, she stared blankly in front of her as she made her way through the mansion and eventually down the staircase to the brig.
She’d never had an occasion to visit a dungeon before, not even inside her own palace, but this was how she’d imagined one would look. Half a dozen long cells stretched opposite a security station, which was manned by two gray-uniformed guards. By habit, she made note of the weapons at their hips—an electric prod and a pulse pistol, each hanging on an unsecured holster loop. She estimated how quickly she could grab a weapon with her wrists bound, but as if sensing her awareness, both guards stood out of reach while they pulled aside the cell door of fiberglass bars.
The cell was dim and cool, smelling slightly of mold, and the floor tilted on a decline that led to a round drainage grate near the back wall. She tried not to dwell on what fluids had once flowed there, but the burgundy-colored stains around the catch basin painted a vivid enough picture. The door slammed shut behind her, making her jump.
“Unshackle the prisoner,” one guard told the Daeva, his voice thick with disgust for the bounty hunters. Among lawmen, the Daeva commanded fear, but never respect.
Cassia stood flush with the bars, holding still while the Daeva who’d taken the most delight in abusing her reached through and unfastened her wrists and ankles.
“I’m gonna miss this one,” he said while leering at her. “She has a nice scream. Wish I had the credits to buy her so I could hear more of it.”
Each time his skin brushed hers, she had to clench her teeth to keep from flinching. His cuticles were crusted in her blood. The sight of his hands brought back a flood of memories the sedatives had dulled. When the Daeva slid the chains free and turned to leave, Cassia drew a furious breath.