Page 43 of Radakk's Mate
“I’m sorry your mother went missing, Thalia. I’m especially sorry that it happened when you were so young.”
“Thank you.”
He leans forward and gives me an intent look. “I would like to discuss your career as a spy. You will tell me everything. Start talking.”
Chapter25
RADAKK
Thalia goespale and fidgets with her utensil, then finally sets it down beside her plate. She swallows hard and peers around the room, as if looking for an escape or perhaps a distraction. I make an impatient noise in my throat, and she finally returns her gaze to mine.
“Well, I wouldn’t really call it a career.” She sighs. “A career would imply I was compensated. I never saw a single galactic credit.”
“Nevertheless, I would like to know everything. Who did you work for?”
“My father.” She draws in a shaky breath, and when her hands start to tremble, she’s quick to place them in her lap, out of sight.
“Your father?” Fury burns through me. How dishonorable her father must’ve been if he asked her to spy. Or perhaps he forced her. “Your own father put your life in danger like that? Were you willing, or did he compel you to spy?”
Tears glimmer in her eyes. She blinks fast and lowers her head. “I don’t want to talk about it, Emperor. Please. Isn’t it enough to know I’m no longer a spy? That part of my life is over.”
I leave my seat and circle to the table to her side. After pulling her chair out and helping her to her feet, I guide her into the sitting room. I summon patience I didn’t know I possessed. Her unwillingness to make a full, immediate confession startles me. A female isn’t supposed to refuse her mate anything.
Human, I remind myself. She’s human. Not Darrvason.
I release her hand and gesture at a nearby chair, and she takes a seat. Her head remains lowered, and she’s on the brink of tears.Fluxx. I feel like a bastard for pushing her. For demanding she tell me everything about her past, including her activities as a spy. But I cannot simply let this matter drop.
I kneel in front of her and force her gaze to mine. “It maddens me that your father put you in danger.” I glance at the viewscreen, toward theJansonna. “He deserves to die for that. A father is supposed to protect his daughters, just as a male is supposed to protect his mate.”
“He’s already dead,” Thalia says. She blinks again and the tears vanish from her eyes, though she’s still too pale for my liking. She grasps her upper left arm, rubbing it and eventually scratching it. A pained look clouds her visage, but when I inspect her skin, I see nothing. Perhaps her scratching is a nervous gesture.
“How did he die?” When she glances toward theJansonna, I grasp her chin and direct her eyes back to me.
“If I tell you, you must promise not to breathe a word of it to Captain Warren. I-I’m not supposed to know he’s dead. If the captain learns who told me, he might punish them. Please, you must swear it.”
I growl. Not for the first time, I imagine strangling the life out of the captain. He radiates foolishness and cowardice, and it’s a miracle theJansonnahasn’t already imploded under his leadership. I give Thalia a deep nod. “I promise.”
“Thank you.” She takes a deep breath. “Perhaps I should start from the beginning, then tell you how he died. Less backtracking.”
I shoot her an encouraging look, and she continues.
“My father was the leader of a small rebel group. He lusted after the captaincy of the worldship and wanted to overthrow Captain Warren. He had several spies in his group over the years, myself included. He forced me to start spying for him just after I turned five years old. I would be instructed to hide in certain places and listen in on conversations.”
Another growl leaves me. “Five years old? If your father wasn’t already dead, I would kill him myself.”
“Yes, I was very young. Too young to understand what I was doing for a while, but even when I got a little older and realized my activities were dangerous, he wouldn’t allow me to stop even when I begged him. If I refused an assignment or failed to bring him the information he sought, he would withhold my daily rations.”
Rage builds inside me as she continues, a sometimes rambling but thorough confession of her childhood and teenage years. She tells me about her uncles and cousins, the visions her father claimed to have, and her years of spying on members of the command team, even the captain himself. She also reveals why she never turned her family members in. People who name spies and rebels on theJansonnausually end up dead.
“Snitching is frowned upon,” she says. “If I’d turned my father in to our security officers, I likely wouldn’t have lasted a week. I saw it happen again and again over the years among other rebel groups.”
“Did he die recently?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. He was executed a few days ago. After I was caught spying in the docking bay, I suppose it was only natural for my family members to become suspects themselves. I don’t know the full details of whether they were questioned first or charged with espionage immediately, but I guess it doesn’t really matter since they were all guilty.
“Yesterday, two women arrived in my temporary quarters to help me get ready before I came to theHaxxal. They were the ones who told me that my father, uncles, and cousins were arrested and put on trial.”
She speaks about the cowardly deal her uncles and cousins made to save their lives, as well as her father’s public execution in a depressurization chamber.
