Page 144 of Carousel

I could throw up.

I’m trembling. Drake must notice, because he touches my shoulder, in a gesture I suppose is intended to be comforting. But the skin through my blouse immediately prickles with heat from the contact, and rather than comfort, I feel something more like dread.

Because the sparks remind me of Cosmer, and how this connection between Drake and I is a definite problem.

I was mildly interested by the link between us before.

Now, I’m disgusted by it.

Maybe sensing my unease, his hand slips off me.

“Do you still believe you know your opponent, Captain?”

“She. W-We—” Dezeeves stammers. He’s deathly pale. Gaping.

“Instructions, Dezeeves!” Meg demands.

Drake addresses Ephraine instead. Speaks as if reciting from a book. “You need some hard hitters down there. Rike is good. Work at getting the gap closed, even if it means losing defence elsewhere for now.”

That snaps Dezeeves back to attention. “I will remind you all I am the captain.”

To my relief – and I think, to the relief of everyone else in the room – he focuses again on the sky, and sends an instruction, quickly, into his radio band. “Defences breached. Deck 1, starboard. Rike and any open frontline pilots – support the effort. Protect the Chamber.”

Pilots begin manoeuvring, and for a minute the sky looks like a playroom being rearranged – and we’re the toys.

But I freeze. Because a single word comes through my own radio band in a voice I recognise.

“Darling?”

I look around, my heart pounding.

No one else seems to have noticed. Apart from Meg, who’s still on my frequency. She’s frowning.

I don’t know what that was, I try to tell her, with my eyes.

But the voice comes again.

“I’m here, Darling.”

The word flies out of my mouth before I can think properly about the million reasons that saying it would be a bad idea.

“Mother?”

CHAPTER 26

The Prophecy and The Fortune

Dezeeves rotates to me. “I beg your pardon?”

“Mother,” I repeat, thinking on my feet. “That’s the sign-off on Riss’ code. I’ve just realised it means the Queen. She’s known as the mother of the country – which has always been a matriarchal society.”

Drake – maybe sensing there’s more to this – nods in agreement. “If you have received a code signed that way, then it must be from the Queen herself. It is how she signed all messages to The Bridge on The Dragoness.”

“Thank you,” I say.

And I don’t mean for his insights into the Queen.

Dezeeves says, tersely, “I will ask you to please discuss the semantics of signatories with me at another time.”