Chapter 23 · Blood-Stained Escape

"Move your ass, Nova! Now!" Kael’s voice cracked like a whip, his hand gripping my upper arm so tight I could feel his pulse hammering against my skin.

I didn't move. I stared at the holographic terminal, the red alert flashing across my retinas. "I need ten seconds to wipe the logs, or Silas will have our coordinates before we even hit the perimeter."

"We don't have ten seconds!" Kael slammed his back against the reinforced door, his golden boy facade completely gone. He looked ragged, his white tunic stained with soot and something dark that looked suspiciously like blood. "The dampener is dead. The guards are coming, and I’m not getting caught in a hole like this for a girl who’d rather be a footnote in Silas’s memoir."

I sneered, my fingers flying across the glass interface. "A footnote? Honey, I'm the one who wrote the book. You're just the pretty cover everyone likes to pretend is virtuous."

He lunged forward, pinning me against the console. The cold metal bit into my spine, but it was his heat that drowned everything else out. He was too close. I could smell the ozone and the sharp, metallic scent of adrenaline.