Page 28 of Phoenix's Last Heist
“I did. Brill took me back to his home planet, Ooneryx,” she replies.
“That’s not quite the same thing as leaving of your own free will,” I say.
She pulls a face in derision. “What part of my situation gave you the impression I had access to my own free will? You think I lie, cheat, steal, and smuggle for fun?”
Her words shouldn’t hit as hard as they do. I’ve hunted enough criminals to know deflection when I hear it—but this isn’t that. There’s no performance in her voice, no laughter-coated coyness. It’s just bitterness worn thin. The jealousy in me twists into something else—grief and rage at Brill. Or anger at myself for caring at all.
She tugs the cup from my hand and rolls. Nine. She swears.
I roll again, grinning smugly at the eleven dots on the dice below. Lyra flips me off and downs her drink. Her next roll is a double, and while I could stomach the drink, I don’t want to annoy her enough to stop playing. I just have to focus on getting some real information from her.
“Ask your question,” I say.
Her eyes light up and she taps her chin in thought.
“What happened to your parents?” she asks.
“Straight for the throat, I see,” I reply, already regretting my peace offering. “They died on theArkanium.”
The question hits a hollow I keep carefully barricaded. My chest tightens. There’s a buzzing behind my ribs, a low hum of remembered grief. I stare at the dice like they might rescue me from the answer I’ve already begun to feel rising in my throat.
Lyra stills, the mirth gone from her eyes. “They were on the colony ship?”
“You know of it?”
“Everyone knows about it. It’s only the biggest interstellar tragedy in our time,” she says, placing a hand atop mine. Her touch is warm and my skin tingles beneath her hand. “I’m sorry, Orion.”
Her hand shouldn’t undo me like this. The touch is soft, tentative—and somehow it reaches deeper than any sympathy I’ve ever received. My pulse stumbles. The restless ache that’s lived dormant inside me for years begins to stir, raw and uncontained.
“My father was a well-known Xylothian historian. My mother was an accomplished doctor. When they were offered places on the colony ship, they felt duty-bound to go. But the ship ran off course and no one knows what happened next—all we heard about was the crash. There were no survivors, and little more than small pieces of twisted wreckage left floating in the void of space,” I say, the lump in my throat tightening with the horrible memories. The words scrape out of me—every syllable feels like reopening an old wound.
Night after night, I’d tried to make sense of it—the silence from them, the silence from the gods. The way my bond with Sylph splintered when I failed her, when the rage took over and I became someone she didn’t recognize. I chased oblivion through the bottle and through the hunt, punishing criminals harder than necessary just to feel something that resembled control. The shame still clings to me like smoke. And now, with Lyra sitting across from me, her hand still resting over mine, I realize how long it’s been since anyone has simply…stayed.
And somehow, against all logic, she’s here—bruised, infuriating, impossible—and I can’t tell if she’s my salvation or my undoing. Both, in all likelihood.
Sensing the shift in the air, Lyra pushes the dice into my hand. When I roll a one and a five, she reaches out to flip the one to a two, offering me an encouraging smile.
“Ask away,” she says quietly.
“Tell me about your parents,” I murmur.
She can’t disguise the pain in her face, though she tries. Her eyes turn glassy and she pours herself another shot of moonshine. After drinking it, she blows out a breath.
“My father was human. He showed up on Velusia one day looking for a good time, and ended up falling head over heels for my mother. He sold her all kinds of lies to win her over—that he was some long-lost Earth prince with vast wealth at his disposal, that he was the universe’s greatest lover, that he was an honorable man and a skilled warrior who would protect her for all his days,” she says, the ghost of a smile playing about her lips.
“Your mother believed him?” I wonder aloud. “He must’ve been quite the con man.”
“Oh, he was. One of the best in the business. Con man, smuggler, and good-for-nothing rogue,” she says wistfully. “We had a complicated relationship, but stars, I loved him. I was always more like him than my mother. Anyway, in an unsurprising twist, their relationship got rockier over time. My mother was pregnant with me when my father left, but he swore he’d come back for me because he didn’t want me being sold off to the highest bidder.”
She pours herself another glass, but holds it in her fingers for a long while before drinking it.
“Still, my mother trained me as a Velusian. She told me I’d bring great honor to our house because of my mixed blood, even if it lessened the power of myvellia.She was…she might have loved me, I think. But Velusians aren’t known for their parenting skills. She was distant on a good day, and cold on most other days. But, true to his word, my father came back when I wastwelve. I still remember their argument word for word. I never thought my mother would relent—she was so stubborn—but he finally wore her down.”
“I take it your father taught you in the criminal arts?” I say, pouring myself a shot.
She smiles again, sending a bolt of pleasure through me.
“He did. This is his ship, you know. Modified to his exact specifications.” Something dark passes across her face. “We had five great years together—running amok all across the galaxy. But then we got word that my mother died. It was hard for me, sure, but my dad…my dad just went to pieces. He refused to go back to Velusia for her funerary rites.”
