Page 59 of Vindicated

"You are my only heir." He said it as if he required no more justification than that. "You belong with your people, not scraping by in the dust of some backwater colony, and certainly not aboard a Vandar warbird with these barbarians."

He yanked me forward before I could answer, hurrying me down another corridor, then another, until, several turns later, he stopped and swiveled his head to scan the featureless steel walls with mounting frustration. He'd clearly lost the way back to wherever he'd breached the hull.

My chest had been burning since the moment we'd fled the hangar bay, an itch so fierce I could no longer ignore it, and I scratched at my collarbone without thinking, dragging my nails across skin that felt like it was on fire from the inside.

My father's gaze snapped to my hand. He grabbed my wrist and wrenched it away from my chest, his eyes going wide as he stared at my skin. I instinctively pulled away and tried to cover myself, but it was too late.

"Why do you have Vandar markings?"

"What are you talking about?" But even as I said it, I looked down, and my breath hitched. Black swirls curled across my collarbone and down toward the neckline of my dress. They hadn't been there yesterday. I was fairly sure they hadn’t even been there that morning.

My father grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard enough that my teeth clacked together. "Did you let those animals brand you?"

"No! I don't even know what this is?—"

He released me as if I was poison, his top lip curled back from his teeth in something too vicious to be called a smile. "I have heard of females who whore themselves to Vandar warlords earning their marks. I never imagined my own daughter would be one of them."

The words were a slap, and for one disorienting moment I couldn't tell if I was furious or terrified. He shoved me toward a suspended walkway that stretched out over the ship's yawning chasm, and I stumbled, catching myself on the cable railing as he raised his blaster and leveled it at my chest.

"Maybe you're too far gone to be saved," he said, and something in his voice had gone flat and final. "Maybe you're too much like your mother." His scowl deepened, twisting into something uglier, something I knew I’d seen before. “She was never good enough. I should have killed her before she ran. Before she took what belonged to me. Before she ruined you.”

I stared down the barrel of his blaster and thought, absurdly, of every stage death I'd ever performed, but none of it had prepared me for the genuine terror of watching my father decide my life was worthless. Thoughts of my friends darted through my mind, then flashes of laughter, and then the clear image of Lorken.

A pang twisted my heart that I would never see him again or feel his touch. That was followed by a flutter of surprise that he’d been my last thought. I brushed my fingers over my burning marks for comfort and looked my father in the eyes. “You never deserved me or my mother.Youwere never good enough forus.”

His eyes narrowed to slits and he pulled the trigger, but the blast went wide, sailing high over my shoulder as his arm jerked violently to one side.

I watched his face shift from cold hate to raw shock in the space of a single heartbeat. Then he pitched forward, an axeblade buried deep between his shoulder blades, and he crumpled at my feet.

My knees buckled, and I grabbed the cable railing to keep from going down with him.

Zarn stood where my father had been a moment before, his chest heaving, his dark eyes fixed on the body between us. It took several seconds for my mind to catch up to what my eyes were telling me. Lorken's own brother, the battle chief who'd made no secret of his suspicion of me, who'd wanted to torture me about my Zagrath connections, had killed my father and saved my life.

Zarn stepped over my father's body without so much as a glance down at it. His gaze dropped instead to my collarbone, to the black marks still spreading across my skin, and something shifted in his expression. He grunted. "It seems my brother was right about you."

"I don't—" My voice came out cracked and thin. "I don't understand any of this."

"You are one of us." He said it simply, as he extended his hand to me. When I didn't move, still frozen and staring at the body of the man who'd been my father, Zarn's expression edged toward sympathy. "Come. My brother is tearing this ship apart searching for you. We should find him before he does something reckless enough to damage himself further.”

I took his hand, wondering if it was possible to be more shocked than I was at that moment.

Chapter 51

Lorken

When I got Zarn’s message, I raced back to the hangar bay. The battle was over and our fighters were returning, wheels skidding across the floor as they made combat landings and smoke hazing the air. The enemy battleship was in retreat and all the Zagrath soldiers who’d come on board had been dispatched by my raiders.

I spotted her standing with her friends as they fussed over her, and my chest loosened when I saw that, aside from tousled hair and red-rimmed eyes, she was unhurt.

She spotted me, and her chin quivered despite her smile. I ran to close the distance between us, my wounded arm forgotten, and caught her against my chest with my one good arm as she clung to me tightly.

“I thought you were dead." Her voice was muffled as she buried her face in my chest, and she made no effort to hide her tears. "I saw you fall. I saw the blast hit you, and I thought?—"

"I thought I had lost you to your father." The words scraped rough from my throat.

"He's dead." She pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, her lashes wet. "Zarn killed him. He was going to shoot me, and Zarn?—"

I lifted my gaze to my brother, who stood a short distance away with his axe still bloodied.