The oldest one, a tiny man with white-streaked hair, shrugged. “I’ll go with you.”
The wiry male in the middle slouched lower in the chair. “What is the work?”
“Battle.” Maybe when they won Zandia there’d be more, but it was all he had ever known.
The wiry man grinned a broken-toothed smile and sat up straighter, flexing his fingers in the manacles. “Battle, eh? Count me in.”
The third man, nervous and missing one eye, ducked his head, as if Lundric might not notice him.
“What about you?” Lundric demanded.
The male muttered something softly under his breath, but Lundric couldn’t make sense of it. He appeared to be a bit simple.
“Quin is in, aren’t you, Quin?” the wiry male asked.
Quin bobbed his head. “Quin is in, yes, Quin is in.”
“Good.”
“So? Will you tell me now? What do you need me for?” Tal asked again.
“Cambry wants you.” His voice roughened just speaking her name.
Tal’s face transformed as well. It went from brazen defiance to a mixture of hope and anxiety. “You have Cambry?” His voice raised in pitch.
He nodded.
“She’s alive? Because I’d heard—”
“She’s alive. So you will come with me. Agreed?”
The boy swallowed and nodded.
Lundric unlocked each human’s manacles even though there was a chance they could overpower him and take the ship. “Buckle up. We’ll be there soon.” He dropped into the pilot’s seat and started up the engines.
Back to the pod. To Cambry. He rubbed his sternum, which had ached since the moment she’d left him. Maybe now that she had her brother, she would no longer run. He couldn’t make her love him, but he could, at least, provide what she needed to be content. Because he wasn’t letting her go—not ever again.
~.~
Cambry swooped around Shooku, pushing the battleship to go faster, diving in and out of the rock formations to practice her skills. Vokart gripped the edges of the copilot’s chair with white knuckles, but he didn’t say a word.
“Captain Lundric requesting permission to land.” The deep sound of her warrior’s voice crackled over the comms unit.
Her heart bounded. Lundric had returned! She swung the craft around, searching the skies for him. There. He had just entered the planet’s atmosphere.
“There’s one student flight in the air, Captain, but otherwise you’re clear,” someone spoke from the landing dock.
Without asking permission, she positioned her craft and executed her best landing yet.
She’d already unsnapped her harness before she turned to Vokart.
He pursed his lips, appearing half-annoyed, half-amused. She’d asked him a dozen times for information on Lundric’s disappearance and return. “Permission granted,” he rumbled. “If you were going to ask.”
“Yes, I was,” she said, already halfway out of the craft. “Thank you.”
She grabbed a helmet and shoved it over her head, running the distance to the pod. Lundric and four other beings had gone in ahead of her. She entered through the hatch and waited for the atmosphere to clear before opening the interior door.
“Lundric!” she shouted as soon as she entered, ripping her helmet off and hanging it on a hook on the wall.