Shit. Now that he said we were leaving, I wanted to go. Now. Waiting was going to kill me. Possibly literally. “What’s tricky about it? Besides the obvious harboring fugitives part.”

“My brother is here,” he said as he stood up.

Mom hissed.

He reached down and pulled me up off the floor. “Exactly.” He let go of my hand, and I felt cold without it.

I rubbed my palm off on my pants to stop myself from reaching out to him again and moved to sit next to Mom on the couch. “Why does your brother being here make this trickier?” I felt like I was missing something.

Declan moved to the door, leaning against it as if to stop anyone from coming in. “My brother hates the Aunare. He’s made his career outing halfers, and it all started with you and your family. It’s a lot to get into right now, but let’s just say he blames you specifically for everything that’s gone wrong in his life. Catching you is everything to him. He thinks it will bring him closer to our father. Closer to finally getting back at me for every wrong he thinks I’ve done him. Closer to starting the war both he and my father want.”

“Jesus. What did I do to piss him off so badly? I was a kid.”

“Nothing.” He crossed his arms as he stared fiercely down at me. “You didn’t do anything, and you’ve got enough to worry about without worrying about a past that you can’t change. What matters right now is that we have to be very careful with what our next move is.” He let out a long sigh.

If he felt nervous about this whole thing, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about it.

“You got that implant over two weeks ago, and I’ve known exactly where you were since then, but I couldn’t come. Not until I had a good reason. I used the groundbreaking of the spaceport’s expansion as my excuse to get here, and my brother was off on VegaFive. He shouldn’t have come for something like this, and yet he landed an hour after me. I got to your apartment about five minutes before you did. And not long after that, IAF takes in your upstairs neighbor?”

I always knew that things were crazy dangerous for me, but it felt more real in that moment than ever before. To know that IAF had been that close to picking me up was terrifying.