Syn moved to check one of the monitors. “Since the day I met him, Hauk’s fought the world with one foot already on the other side of eternity. Like he’s fighting a ghost. He’s had no real sense of self-worth. No regard for whether or not he returned from a mission. I know, ’cause I was like that, too. We all were. We fought because it’s all we knew. But it’s different when you have something to fight for. Someone to come back to. Someone you know will be destroyed if you don’t make it.”

That she understood. She’d been there as far back as she could remember – not really caring whether or not she made it through the day or the mission. And he was right. Now that she had Dancer, it made things much more complicated. Made her want to hold on when she’d already relegated herself to letting go.

Suddenly, the door behind them opened. Sumi turned to find a full unit of Andarion soldiers there.

Syn put himself between her and Dancer and them. “What’s going on?”

“Stand down, Doctor. We’re here for the woman.”

“She’s a patient of mine.”

He disregarded Syn entirely. “She’s under arrest.”

Sumi’s stomach shrank as she took a step back. “For what?”

They didn’t answer as they pushed past Syn and seized her, then hauled her from the room.

CHAPTER 24

His blood begging for vengeance, Hauk forced himself to kneel before his queen in the center of her small, makeshift office that had been set up for her onboard the ship, even though what he really wanted to do was take the sword from across his back and use it to cut her head from her body…

Mother of Nykyrian or not.

But he knew the eight guards standing between him and her would kill him before he could take more than a single angry step in her direction. He was good, but they were loaded for Andarion and would be as motivated to murder him as he was to execute his queen for arresting Sumi.

Cairistiona sat on the opposite side of a large desk, staring at him with an expression he couldn’t even begin to read. Her long black hair was coiled in intricate braids around her impeccably beautiful face as she watched him with suspicious white-and-red eyes. In her youth, before her affair with Nykyrian’s father, she had risen to the rank of prime commander for the Andarion armada.

Her lineage had always been one of the fairest skinned of all Andarions and her blood contained the only warriors who could give the War Hauks a run for their ferocity in battle. It was why his grandmother had sought to unite their blood after all these centuries. She firmly believed that they would birth legendary warriors who would guard Andaria for eternity.