Reaper crossed the room before Mercy completely processed that he’d left his chair. He gripped her arm, his fingers painfully tight. He was standing so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body. It was a distinct contrast from the intense cold of his eyes, so pale they took her breath. Her heartbeat thrummed loudly in her ears as her body responded instinctively with a wash of adrenaline.

Reaper was gone. In his place, an implacable Killer stood before her, the bones of her arm grinding together in the grip of his hand.

“Reaper.” Her voice trembled over his name, and she stiffened her spine and cleared her throat. “You’re hurting me.” She glared at him, refusing to be intimidated.

The fingers around her arm relented fractionally, but he didn’t move away. “You’re sure you saw another Killer?”

“Um…pretty sure.” Mercy remembered those eyes. They’d looked exactly like Reaper’s did now. Or was that her memory playing tricks with the present and the past? “But how many people have blue eyes?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “The shade is distinctive. Are you certain?”

“I was six!”

His hand flexed, like he was thinking about shaking her.

She winced. Okay, that’s going to bruise, and I’m done.

Mercy didn’t stop to think about what she did. They were already standing so close, and Reaper was only slightly taller. His head was tilted down as he stared into her eyes. All Mercy had to do was lean forward to brush her lips against his. It was feather-light, barely a kiss at all.

Reaper froze. Mercy was no empath, but she could feel the shock course through him. He stood stone-still, tension in every line of his body. She pressed closer, placing a hand against his chest and sliding it up to his neck. He hadn’t responded yet, but he hadn’t killed her, either. That was something.

She brushed against his lips again, using more pressure. His hand on her arm loosened. The bruising grip relaxed. She could have pulled away then, but she’d come this far. Why not take it further? She flicked her tongue out, teasing. This time his lips parted, his mouth moving against hers.

Reaper kissed her back, and everything changed from light and teasing to something much more intense. It had been a long time since Mercy kissed anyone. That was the fleeting thought she had to explain the sudden spike of lust rushing heat through her veins. Her fingers curved around his shoulder as his tongue slid over hers, his mouth more sensuous than she ever would have imagined from a man as controlled as Reaper.

Maybe that was the attraction.

He broke the kiss an eternal moment later, letting her go and stepping back. It was so abrupt she almost stumbled, left standing there like an idiot with her arm still raised in the air. She lowered it quickly.

Color had come back into his eyes, a darker circle of blue bleeding back into the irises.

“Why did you do that?” His head tilted, and she knew he was confused.

“It seemed like the safest option.” She shrugged, running nervous fingers through her hair. “Besides, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Practically since the day we…met…” Mercy heard her own words trail off as she stared at him, stared at his eyes as they darkened. Something in the tilt of his head, the confusion that tugged his mouth into a frown.

Nik, what are you doing?

Nikolos.

The boy on the dock. Verath 6.

“Mercy?”

“It’s you. You’re him.” Feeling a little shaky – from realizing who he was, not from the kiss – Mercy sat in one of the chairs. “The boy from the docks.”

It made so much sense. Why she’d felt such an instant connection to Reaper. Why she’d trusted him on an instinctive level, even when everyone else clearly thought she was crazy for doing so.

She looked up at him. “I’m right, aren’t I? You were on Verath 6 all those years ago. Looking for my mother. And me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” She’d always wondered why a boy would be sent on such a mission.

“You and Pallas were Dem’s first assignment as a Hunter.” Reaper hesitated. “You might not remember, because you were so young. But he knew your family. We both did. Or at least, we’d met you. Dem was the only Hunter who ever had.”

Mercy shook her head. “I don’t remember. I was only three when we ran.”

“I know. Dem and I were trained together in those days. I was brought along so our training as Killers wasn’t interrupted.”

Mercy remembered the moment clearly, standing frozen, knowing her life was over. Reaper staring at her from two docking spaces away. The others had been grouped behind him. Oblivious.

“Why didn’t he find me? If he tracked me that far…”

“Not you. Pallas. Dem didn’t remember your psychic imprint well enough, and it changes a little as we grow. After ten years, he couldn’t get a fix on you. He tracked Pallas to Verath 6, but we lost her there.”

Mercy’s throat closed. She stared down at her folded hands. I lost her, too.

I know. I’m sorry. Reaper knelt in front of her. Do you want to talk about it? What happened to her?

Mercy looked anywhere but at him. “I don’t know, exactly. She just…didn’t come home one day. Only two things could keep my mother from me. Death or capture.” Mercy closed her eyes. “She always told me not to use my Talent to try and find her if she ever disappeared. That it might lead people to me. But I couldn’t…I had to look for her. On the third day, I searched for her mind.”

“What did you find?”

“She wasn’t dead. I felt the connection, her presence. But it felt…different.”

Run Mercy! The command had been so powerful, Mercy had been compelled to follow it. She didn’t remember leaving their tiny apartment or grabbing her go bag. She only remembered walking down the street to catch a transpo to the spaceport.

“I knew she’d been discovered. Taken. I thought, at first, by you. Well, by people working for Lilith.” She opened her eyes and gave him a shaky smile. “But then you arrived on world, and I knew I’d been wrong. That someone else had her. Someone worse.”

“Why worse?”

Mercy shrugged.

“This is important, Mercy. You thought Lilith would kill you both. What is worse than that?”

She stood up fast, moving away from him. She realized she was rubbing her hands on her thighs, and stopped. Her throat was dry and her heart was beating too fast. She’d never told anyone this, not even Atrea.

Reaper waited silently. Patient.

“It was just an impression,” Mercy said. “A feeling when I connected with her. I think she was trying to shield, to keep me from knowing what was happening to her. But I know she was being held. She was lying on a cold surface, and there was the sound of a heartbeat, the hum of technology. The smell of cleaning agents and…it was faint, but I could smell blood.”

“A medical facility. Or lab.” Reaper’s tone was thoughtful.

Mercy swallowed, trying to keep control of her emotions. Her fear. Her anger. “Like the one Willem Frain had on that space station.”

She felt Reaper’s eyes on her.

“You think Frain’s people had something to do with your mother’s disappearance?”

“Yes.” She turned to face him. “Maybe not Frain himself. He isn’t much older than you. But whoever he works for.”

“It’s possible. Why? What do you think they want?”

“I don’t know. They invaded my mind, examined me physically and mentally. Took samples.” Mercy had to swallow bile at the memory. “I think he knew I was a…queen. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

“Pallas was no queen.”

“But she produced one. Me.”

Reaper stared at her for a long time. Mercy sat down, and then stood back up, too nervous to sit still. It felt so strange, finally telling someone everything she remembered.

“There’s something else,” she said into the silence. “I think…I think Willem had something to do with the bomb.” Saying the words out loud made it real.

Reaper shook his head. “There is no way he could have boarded our ship, even if he could find us. Why do you think that?”

“Maybe he’s not here physically, but I had a dream…or a vision maybe? Like a conversation with him, before I woke in the infirmary. I don’t think my mind made it up. He said things. I’m telling you, whoever planted it was being influenced or ordered or…I don’t know. But he’s responsible for that bomb.”

Reaper said nothing for so long that Mercy had paced the confines of the room twice. She made herself stop and face him.

“You believe me, don’t you?”

“I believe it’s worth looking into. I think others need to hear this. All of it. My brother Dem, Cannon.”

Mercy hesitated, but now that she’d told it once, what did it matter if she did so again? Thinking about it now, she wasn’t sure why she’d felt so compelled to keep silent all these years. Absently, she rubbed at her forehead. It surprised her when she felt fingers close around hers, and realized Reaper had taken her hand. He didn’t squeeze it the way someone else might have, but just stood in front of her, holding her hand in his own.

I will find whoever threatens your life, he said in her mind. It went unspoken what would happen then.

Mercy stared at him. This was Reaper being reassuring, she realized. It occurred to her that he used wording not just addressing this moment, this threat, but any threat. Ever.

“What are you going to do? Kill anyone who looks at me wrong?”

Don’t be absurd. I will limit my response to those with the intent to harm you.

It was on the tip of her mind to ask him just how he meant to discern what anyone intended, when she realized he was quite capable of reading that, if not in their body language, then in their thoughts.

“You can’t kill everyone who wishes I was dead.”

Reaper raised an eyebrow. His eyes weren’t that icy cold color yet, but they held enough chill to assure her he was serious.

“Reaper, seriously. People think things they don’t mean all of the time.”

Trust me to know the difference. No one understands the intent to kill better than a Killer.

That was probably true. But the idea of Reaper killing just anyone who threatened her still made her queasy. On the other hand, she was tired. Tired of looking over her shoulder, of wondering who she could trust, of never trusting anyone. Outside of Wolfgang and Atrea, of course.

Reaper was watching her intently.

“What?”

“I have contacted Dem. We’ll have dinner with his family this week, and after, you can tell him what you told me.”

The abrupt change in subject left Mercy groping for an appropriate response. She didn’t want to have dinner with people she didn’t know and trust. She didn’t want to talk to Reaper’s brother, who had spent part of his youth hunting her.

Then she thought about Tamari, the little girl she’d met in the infirmary. Dem’s daughter. She sighed.

“All right.” She had to start making connections with these people. Connections beyond Reaper and Vashti. She’d decided to stay, but along with that came making a life here. It would be fun to see Tamari again. And informative to watch how Dem interacted with the little girl and his wife.

Mercy shied away from looking too closely at why she found that prospect interesting.

And who knew? Maybe these people would be able to help her do what she had failed to accomplish. Maybe they could help find her mother.