Gus let that sink in.

Someone wanted her dead. Whether because of a grudge or because they saw her as easy pickings. Weak. There for the destroying.

They’d declared war on her and everything she’d built.

Belladonna and its crimes would trace back to her. The plant obsessed hermit stupid enough to name her organization after one of the most infamous poisons of all time.

In retrospect, not her brightest moment.

And since Gus actually was the person behind Belladonna’s creation, she doubted denial of any involvement would work.

Someone, somewhere was bound to put two and two together.

Ryan’s impending visit made Gus think he already had. Even if that wasn’t his purpose in coming, there was still Kira and Jin to consider. They were bound to pull on that thread eventually. It would lead them right back to her.

Gus could guess what would happen then. Kira would rampage. Jin would wield his own brand of snarky chaos.

And Gus. Gus would bleed.

She might die. Maybe not. Kira had a soft heart. Their history might stay her hand.

Not the forty three’s though.

“Think. Think. Think.”

Forewarned was forearmed. She knew where the knife was coming from. There was still time to change her fate if she was brave and clever enough to figure out a way out of this.

Caius was the key.

The uncharacteristic impulse that had led her to intervene on his behalf may have just become Gus’s saving grace. From this moment on, he was the most important person on Titan. Her survival depended on his.

First though, she needed information.

Gus scrubbed at her cheeks, feeling steadier now that she had a plan of attack. She might not have her siblings appetite for destruction, but she was no slouch. She wasn’t going to just roll over and let the mastermind destroy her life. Not after everything she’d endured.

A search of the other two bodies uncovered tattoos in various stages of completion. The second Gus revealed was the most finished and belonged to the man she’d pegged as their leader. It had a skull whose eye socket the belladonna was growing through. Several clusters of berries decorated the stalk.

The last was only half finished. It lacked a skull and there was only a single cluster of berries resting beneath the purple bell shaped flowers.

Gus wondered if the number of berry clusters was their way of determining rank. The fewer clusters, the lower they were in the hierarchy.

Not that it mattered. They were all going to die one way or another. By her hand or someone else’s.

The sight of thee tattoos extinguished the small hope Gus held that this might all be a mistake.

It wasn’t a mistake. Here was the evidence.

“I told you to wait in the garden,” Gus said, folding the arm she’d been examining back against the man’s chest. There hadn’t been enough time for rigor mortis to set so it went fairly easily.

“Would you have waited just because someone told you to?” Anandra asked.

Gus pushed herself to her feet. “Probably.”

In her experience, disobedience invited punishment. Gus wasn’t a fan of pain. If there was a way to avoid it, she would. Even if others called her coward.

Her response seemed to take Anandra off guard. His gaze flitted from Gus to the bodies behind her. “You’re really not with them?”

Gus followed his gaze, barely restraining her sneer. “Oh no, I am their death.”

A little dramatic but accuarate.

“Come—I promised you food,” Gus ordered, trusting Anandra to follow as she glided past on whisper silent feet.

Unsurprisingly, the boy did. His hunger—or curiosity—compelling him to trail in her wake.

For the second time that day, Gus prepared two mugs of masala chai. The first she set in front of Anandra. Along with a plate of food.

The second she kept for herself as she claimed a seat across from the boy.

She took a sip, the knots in her stomach settling as she stared at the boy over the rim of her mug.

For someone who’d likely been fed swill for who knows how long, he was being awfully picky. Not touching the food or drink Gus had made him.

Gus lowered her mug. “Problem?”

Reluctantly, Anandra reached for the drink. Unable to hide his suspicion, he took an experimental sniff.

Gus was gratified by his look of surprise upon his first sip.

Anandra held the mug away from him, tilting it so he could examine its contents more closely. “This tastes like laug.”

Of course it did. That’s why Gus had made it. To give Anandra a taste of home. A gift in circumstances as trying as these.

She had a feeling this boy had walked through a hell she knew all too well. The fact that something familiar was also likely to loosen his tongue was neither here nor there.

“I’m glad you like it,” Gus murmured into her own mug.

Bolstered by how not terrible the chai was, Anandra tried the food in front of him. His first small bite was followed by a second, much larger one.

Soon, he was shoveling the food down his gullet as fast as it would go.

Gus was a little afraid he might choke if he didn’t slow down.

“Tell me about those men,” Gus said when Anandra had worked through the majority of his plate.

Anandra paused in the act of chewing. “You didn’t want to know earlier. What’s changed?”

“Everything.”

For starters, someone was using her organization in ways that it was never meant to be used.

Gus couldn’t tell him that, however. Not without losing the small amount of trust she’d built through food and a beverage meant to remind him of better times.

Anandra played with the handle of his mug as he stared at Gus. “You’re Tuann. Are you a wanderer like me?”

Gus started to answer then paused, considering. The definition of a wanderer was someone who existed without the protection of a House. In that sense, Gus fit. She and the rest of the forty three walked this universe alone. Only their skills to protect them.

“I suppose you could say that,” Gus allowed.

Anandra seemed to find her answer reassuring, his expression relaxing. “Where’s your enclave?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Me neither,” Anandra admitted glumly. “Not anymore.”

To a person who’d been trained not to miss people when they were gone, his grief felt unfamiliar and unwelcome. Gus didn’t know what it was to mourn. She’d never had ties deep enough to warrant such an emotion. Nor had she wanted them.

Now seeing how broken Anandra was, she thought that might be a good thing.

“They came in droves,” Anandra whispered, a distant look in his eyes that said he was no longer entirely present. He was back there. Witnessing the attack that upended the life he had and thrust him into a nightmare. “Wielding strange weapons and possessing intelligence regarding our defenses that they never should have had.”

Gus hummed into her beverage. “Probably the work of a plant.”

It could explain how they breached the defenses of a wanderer’s enclave. No easy feat given how paranoid they tended to be.

Seeing Anandra’s look of confusion Gus lowered the mug and expanded. “It’s a favorite tactic of the pirate clans infesting this sector. They send in someone who looks harmless. Someone you’d never suspect as a threat. That person then gathers intel on the target, getting the lay of the land before passing that information back to the assault team waiting in the wings.”

She was surprised a wanderer enclave fell for it though.

There had to be deeper things at play.

Maybe the weapons Anandra mentioned. She also couldn’t discount the possibility of internal betrayal either.

The Tuann did love their grudges.

“There was a child,” Anandra reminisced.

“Human?”

Anandra shook his head. “Tuann.”

Gus’s hand clenched around the handle of her mug. The only sign of her distress. “You’re sure?”

Anandra didn’t seem to notice Gus’s tone as he nodded. “Very sure. My—mom—did the medical checkup.”

Gus noticed the way he stumbled over the word mom. Along with how quickly he recovered afterward.

The resiliency of children never failed to amaze her.

“Were you the only survivor?” Gus asked.

Anandra shook his head. “Me and two others.”

“Children too?”

Anandra’s nod made Gus silently curse. What the hell were the Tuann doing?

Over and over again, it had been pressed home how protective the Tuann were of their offspring. Their desire to reconnect with the forty three was at the center of the group’s current divide. Even as removed from the others as Gus was, she’d heard the whispers. Some among them were open to giving their former House’s a chance. Others were happy with the status quo and wanted to keep their distance.

And yet there were three, maybe four, Tuann children running around the galaxy. Alone. Unprotected.

Was everything the Tuann said merely lip service? An attempt to pacify the children they’d failed?

“There were Tuann with the humans,” Anandra volunteered.

Gus’s gaze landed on Anandra’s, wanting to ask if he was sure, but she could see that he was.

“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?” Gus asked instead.

“I’ll never forget them. Their faces. Their eyes.”

The hatred in Anandra’s tone might have startled someone else. Someone who thought youth was an impediment. Who had never tasted that particular cocktail of grief and anger that was so familiar to every member of the forty three.

Anandra may have been young but he’d already been put through a crucible and come out the other side, if not intact, at least alive.

Gus wasn’t going to try to tell him everything would be okay. That forgiveness was divine.

Because it wasn’t. It was something someone told others to get them to stop inconveniencing them with their surplus of feelings.

Anger. Hated. Both were sometimes necessary. They were what drove you to get up in the morning. To keep going when it was so much easier to just lay down and let the sorrow consume you.

Anandra was too young to have learned this lesson but there was no going back. The loss of his enclave had warped him. It would shape his future. Good or bad.

“Good,” Gus said.

Because she had a feeling she knew who those Tuann he’d encountered were.

“I’ll show you some photos later,” Gus added.

She had no idea how she’d get images of the forty three, but she’d figure something out.

Whichever siblings had decided to fuck with her, they were going to die. Slowly. Painfully. If Gus didn’t make them experience half of the emotional turmoil Anandra had with the fall of his enclave, she would consider her time spent as the master’s favorite pet wasted.

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