12. Calder

After dinner, Throop insists we hit the dance floor. Jarel Onel is still here, so even though I desperately want to take Elodie somewhere quiet and continue our aborted conversation at the bar, I stay too. “Want to dance?” I ask her.

“Yeah, sure.”

The dance floor, a sprawling affair with multiple levels, takes up almost half the area. The decorator must have been on one hell of a mind-altering bender when they designed this place. The floor shimmers with liquid light, thin tendrils of a bioluminescent gel twisting beneath the feet of the dancers, responding to their movements with eerie ripples of radiant colors.

The music is loud and rhythmic. Elodie is silent as we move to the floor, her expression distracted. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m just thinking.”

I do a quick scan of the room. Throop and his girlfriend are arguing about something at the bar. Onel is chatting with Dalia Kent, who heads the Class B Division. Maro and Danica are dancing, and Valk Shea and Jamaal Rivera, the other members of the Onel party, have struck up conversations with two women painted from head to toe in glitter. Nobody’s paying any attention to us. “Thinking about what?”

“Things,” she says evasively. Her luminous brown eyes rest on me. “You never got a chance to finish your sentence earlier.”

I tighten my grip around her waist. Contradictory desires war within me. I was a soldier and then a spy. Lying is second nature to me, but I don’t want to lie to Elodie any longer. I want to show her the real Calder. Not the version of me that’s drenched in blood and gore, haunted by relentless nightmares, but the man who wants to make the galaxy a little better every day. I want to roam the stars with her, take her to Chiara to meet my sister Enola, and everything in-between.

How did I ever think I could leave Harte without her?

“It was real,” I breathe. “Everything I feel about you is real.” She’s so small in my arms. So fragile. This afternoon, Raz contacted me via implant comm to tell me the weapons sale is tomorrow. I spent the rest of the day scoping out the location. Matters are coming to a head, and my mission is about to get exponentially more dangerous.

But once again, all I can think about is Elodie.

“I don’t want to pretend. I’ve been attracted to you since the day I moved in. I think I’m?—”

A hand falls heavily on my shoulder. “There you are, Blaze,” Deandra Siffi says. A pissed-off smile stretches over her lips. “Do you have any idea how difficult it’s been to find you?”

Fuck.