Gal holds out a paintbrush, but I raise my hands in protest. “Your handwriting’s way better. You should do it.”
“It’s for the both of us—we should both have a hand in it.”
“You write one word, I’ll write the other?”
“You first.”
I roll my eyes and take the brush, moving past him to run my hand over the chosen panel. “If I rut this up, I’m blaming you. And don’t you dare make me rut this up.”
Gal holds out the can of paint, but the mischief in his eyes makes no promises. I dip the detailing brush’s fine tip in, swirling it once before pulling it out and raising it to the hull. “How big should I make it?” I ask Gal, poised to strike.
“One foot per letter,” he says, and I snort. The point of this exercise is moot if our addition gets noticed and scraped off the hull. I trace my R carefully, then trace over it again, trying my best to lend some elegance to my strokes. It doesn’t work. No childhood penmanship lessons survived the fall of Archon, and my hand is shaky even at its slowest.
“Don’t laugh,” I mutter as Gal starts doing exactly that. I dip the brush back in and finish my work with haste, leaving the R overly dense and the “uttin’ ” traced in brisk, inch-high strokes. I step out of the way in time to dodge Gal’s brush.
He writes his “Hell” with perfect balance, the letters so measured that it looks like he drew them with guidelines. Against my rough font, his hand is ridiculously smooth, each character carving a graceful, shimmering arc. I jab him in the ribs with my brush as he’s finishing the last l, and he jumps sideways, accidentally streaking paint from the base of his work all the way down to the heat shield.
“Heavens and hells, Ettian,” he groans, flicking his brush at me. Brass spatters across my nose, and I flinch, grinning. “Give me your hand.”
I hesitate, but he sets the paint can down and grabs my wrist, flipping it palm-up before I can get a word of protest out. Gal runs his brush over the pad of my index finger, then pulls me down so he can get more paint.
“This stuff had better be washable,” I grumble.
“Agreed,” he says, glancing at the damage I did to his shirt.
“And nontoxic.”
He hesitates, his eyes flicking to the paint can’s label.
I shake my head, chuckling. “Whatever. They have a medical ward here. Do your worst.”
Gal finishes painting my finger, then taps a spot on the hull beneath our unofficial christening. I catch his drift, raising my hand and pressing my fingerprint into the Ruttin’ Hell’s metal. My finger comes away still dripping paint, and I reach out and wipe it on Gal’s brow before he can stop me. “Seriously, Ettian?” he yelps, trying to rub it off. The brass is only a few shades shy of his natural skin tone, falling short of blending into his golden visage.
“My turn,” I say, dip my brush, and paint the finger he offers. Gal marks the hull to the left of me, his own print a bit smaller than mine. And then, because he can’t resist revenge, he smears the leftover paint on my cheek. “Oh come on,” I groan. “It stands out way more on my skin than on yours.”
“I know.”
“We’re going to have a hell of a time explaining why we look like this,” I say, shaking my head.
Gal beams. He lifts his hand and draws a defiant line across the rest of his forehead, crowning himself in the metal of his blood. “I’ve talked these people into hijacking dreadnoughts. A little paint is nothing.”
CHAPTER 23
THE NIGHT BEFORE Archon’s reckoning departs, Henrietta Base lets out a long, needed breath.
The first bonfire lights at sundown, and by the time night has settled over the base, hundreds of towering flames are scattered across the drill fields. Whatever air isn’t choked with smoke is washed with the sharp scent of raw polish. Palpable relief hangs over the thousands of soldiers, technicians, and other personnel swarming the fields, celebrating their last night on this planet. The fires are fueled by possessions accumulated over five years on Corinthian soil—everything that these people won’t be taking with them when the fleet launches tomorrow.
I slip through the thick of it, blunted and unsteady. I’d rather be back in the dark corner I just stumbled out of, tangled in a rumpled, desperate mess with Gal, but the combination of bonfires, polish, and an unsupervised Wen Iffan has enough potential for disaster that I’ve extracted myself and waded out into the fray.
And there’s a part of me that knows it’s time to come clean. Before the assault launches, before she gets snared in the trap we’ve laid. Tonight, with the remnants of the life we’ve built on Delos in flames, there’s no better time to do it.
It takes me nearly an hour to track her down. I find Wen seated at the edge of one of the largest fires, part of a captivated crowd watching as Colonel Esperza narrates a story with a bottle of polish tucked under one arm and nothing attached to the other.
“So there I was,” Esperza says, gesturing expressively with her stump. “Back to back with Lietta Omoe—her in her powersuit with a fully charged vibrosword snarling in her hands, me with no ruttin’ armor and one ruttin’ pistol. The most honorable Nova Knight and a ratty Umber-born pirate who didn’t realize what she was getting into when she targeted this particular freighter.”
I hate to tear her away—especially with the way Wen’s eyes keep flicking back to the unmistakable burn scars that wreath Esperza’s missing wrist—but I don’t trust myself to hear whatever knight story the colonel is spinning and maintain my emotions. Not on a night like this. I tap Wen on the shoulder and hitch my thumb toward the darkness and quiet that fringes the fires.
She pulls a face, but comes willingly. I offer my arm, seeing the way she sways when she stands, and even though she scowls at the implication, she takes it. The feeling of her hand slipping around my elbow sinks a heavy stone through my conscience, sobering me almost instantly.
Wen trusts me to hold her up.
And I’m only going to let her down in the end.
“What’s up?” Wen asks, staring out at the distant shadows of ships staged along the runways. All preflight checks have been done, all practice runs have been flown, and all that remains is to strap in tomorrow morning and blast off for real.
I brace myself, trying to summon the truths she needs to hear. “I wanted to talk to you before there’s no going back. I want to be sure you’re…sure.”
That earns me a reproachful look. “I’ve been committed since we got here.”
“I’m just saying, there are easier ways to get off Delos. If that’s all you want to do, there’s no need to throw yourself into a fight you have no stake in.”