Gwynn and Delphine stumbled out of their rooms and into the lounge.

“What’s going on, why are the sirens going off?” Delphine demanded.

“We’re being boarded by space pirates.” Coppelius turned to Sorrel.

“And we’ve got no defenses to ward them off,” Sorrel realized aloud. “We’ll need shoes and coats then—“

Coppelius clapped his hands on Sorrel’s shoulders. “You need to hide the blade and the chalice. We can’t let them find it.”

“The chalice is in my room.” Gwynn’s expression darkened. “We’ll buy you time.”

“Thank you.” Sorrel looked into Coppelius’s eyes. “How long do you think we have before boarding?”

“I don’t know,” Coppelius admitted. “But you’ll have to be fast.”

Sorrel nodded, understanding the full gravity of the situation they’d managed to get themselves into. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

With that, she raced down the corridor to hide the artifacts they’d worked so hard to win.

The actual hiding process was simple. Sorrel decided to hide the sword and the chalice behind a vent in the closet of one of the rooms that wasn’t in use, and she used the dress she’d worn in the Sunken Pavilion to cover the glow.

She returned to the lounge to see that it was empty—but she was fairly certain as to where they’d gone. She hurried down to the cargo bay, which was now bathed entirely in blood-red light. She took Coppelius’s hand just as the airlock doors opened.

A group of space pirates swaggered in, looking more like the roughest men at the inn back at home. Sorrel could easily see a man like Mr. Teach being among them in his prime. They carried plasma-rifles and electrified blades like the ones that Versailles carried.

“I’m warning you, don’t come any closer.” Coppelius lifted his free hand, the blue light of his amulet breaking through the red of the alarm lights, curling around his hand like smoke. His white hair began to shine.

Delphine was quick to follow his lead, summoning the turquoise light of her own.

The leader of the pirates stopped in his tracks, but he didn’t look shocked or afraid. Instead, his rugged jaws spread into a shark-like smile.

“Oy, looks like there’s more of them like the boy,” the captain barked. “We know how to handle their kind, don’t we?”

The group burst into raucous laughter.

Coppelius faltered, the magic flickering—but only for a second. He frowned. “The boy?”

“Never you mind.” The captain lifted his plasma-rifle—but he didn’t aim it for Coppelius.

Instead, it was aimed at Sorrel, she realized in a paralyzing heartbeat. She heard Gwynn suck in a breath.

“Any sudden moves, and she—“

Delphine was the one to attack, to weave the light and fling it out like shards of the sun, while the blue tendrils of light that ran like smoke sprang together as a shield in front of himself and Sorrel.

The plasma bullet dissolved against the shield, and Coppelius pulled Sorrel behind him. Just as he let go of her hand, Gwynn took hers and pulled her back. Before Sorrel could protest or charge back in to help somehow her attention was arrested by a flash of sickly green light.

First Delphine went down, bound by ephemeral chains of that same sickly green magic. A second pirate removed a golden ball from his belt and unscrewed it. The magical chains sprang from it and forced Coppelius’s arms behind his back. He fell to the ground beside Delphine with a groan.

Sorrel rushed forward—only to hear the click and whirr of the plasma-gun charging up again. She quickly put her hands up.

“Good, keep ‘em there.” The captain kept it aimed straight at her as he looked down at Coppelius. “With that scar, I’d say he’s the one on the wanted alerts, wouldn’t you?”

“The one from Annwyn?” One of the crew members piped up.

“Now that you say it, he does!”

“I wonder how much his bounty’ll fetch us.” The captain looked back up to Sorrel. “Of course, the girls aren’t worth much, even if one’s like the boys. But I’m sure we can find uses for them.”

Sorrel’s blood went cold.

“Now, I recommend you listen well, unless you want the last thing to feel is one of these.” He glanced at the barrel of his plasma rifle and laughed. “Hurts like hell when one grazes you. Can’t imagine it head-on.”

“Understood,” Gwynn said quickly, before Sorrel could.

“Good. I like this one.” The captain nodded at Gwynn.

About half of the boarding crew picked up Delphine and Coppelius and took them away, while the captain and one of his other crew escorted Sorrel and Gwynn to a different part of their brig with the plasma-rifles aimed for their backs.

“Should we separate them?” The crew member asked as the captain swiped a card, opening the door.

“Nah, they aren’t much of a threat.” The captain shrugged. “Leave ‘em in there for all I care, we’ll figure out what to do with them later.”

“Aye.” The crew member jabbed Sorrel’s back with the end of the plasma-rifle. “In you go, girl.”

The door slid closed with a final click. Sorrel whirled around and started pounding on the transparent plastic. The captain just laughed.

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“Go ahead, try that.” He slipped his rifle back in its holster. “You’ll be there all day.”

With that, he and the crew-member headed off, leaving Sorrel to stand there and fume.

“Are they gone?”

Gwynn’s voice cut through the hazy static and whirring noises, the quiet and omnipresent.

“Yes.” They’d just turned the corridor, leaving them down in this section of the brig all alone. “I thought Coppelius and Delphine would be able to fight them off with magic. But I guess I was wrong.”

She turned back to see Gwynn looking relatively un-bothered where she sat, her legs crossed in a ladylike posture on the cell’s single bed bolted to the wall.

“You have a plan, don’t you?” Sorrel desperately hoped she was right.

Gwynn just smiled and rolled up her sleeve, revealing the bracelet that they had missed when they patted the girls down. “It’s a good thing that they’re bad at being pirates.”

“Not bad enough,” Sorrel grumbled. “You think you can get us out of here, then?”

“I have an idea, but you should probably stand back.” Gwynn stood up.

Sorrel decided to listen to her sister, and scrambled back behind her. She considered even darting under the cot. Before she could decide on a course of action, however, she had her answer.

In a flash of scarlet light, there was a cracking sound like thick ice breaking on the water right before spring. Then shards of the plastic went flying like shards of ice. Immediately, sirens went off.

Gwynn grabbed Sorrel’s hand just as Sorrel had reached for her, and the girls took off running. They took off down the corridor the opposite side of where the pirates had left, and began weaving through the hallways, turning as many corners as possible—only to hit a dead end.

“Find them!”

“They can’t have gotten far!”

Sorrel let go of her sister’s hand and started looking around. There had to be access panels to the inside of the ship or something, but she didn’t recognize this model, military ships or modified ones didn’t often make it to the junkyards of Perrault.

“Psst, over here!”

Sorrel frowned. She and Gwynn turned to see one of the panels open.

Footsteps drew closer.

She and Gwynn shared a glance. Uncertainty lingered in her sister’s features, but this was their only option.

Hoping they weren’t walking into a trap, Sorrel first ushered her sister in. Then she climbed in, taking care to shut the panel carefully behind her.

In the darkness of the pipes and internal workings of the starship, the shining white hair of the star-boy illuminated all, along with the sickly green chains binding his wrists. By her estimations, he had a youthful face but was probably over sixteen—if not older, given how old Coppelius, Delphine, and Versailles were.

But Sorrel could not ponder the newest member of the House of Ondrina.

“Follow me,” the boy whispered. “We’ll talk in a hidden place.”

He led them up a series of pipes and internal parts of the ship. Sorrel had climbed around on the inside of ships before, but certainly not while they were deep in space. She hoped that none of the panels had come loose or anything, or else they’d be in for a terrible death.

Luckily, none of that came to pass, and the boy led them out of the internal crawlspaces via a panel into a small, cramped closet with the door blocked and exposed wiring by the lock. There were worn blankets padded into a nest-like structure, pages of scrawled schematics taped to the walls, and half-built droids scattered around. There was a crate also pushed against the door that held what looked like clothes.

Gwynn and Sorrel settled onto the blanket-covered section of the floor beside the boy as he picked up one of his half-finished droids.

“We’ll be safe here,” the boy assured them in his hoarse, hushed voice. “They’ve never been able to figure out why they can’t open this door and they hit me when they remember that I haven’t gotten around to fixing it. But luckily that isn’t too often, so I can keep my secrets.”

Sorrel frowned. “They hit you?”

The boy laughed. “They’ve done worse, but it’s okay. Really, I’m fine. I’m used to it. I’ve been in the fleet for more generations than I can count.”

“They’ve forced you to stay, haven’t they?” Sorrel eyed the sickly green translucent chains hanging over his wrists.

The boy blinked, his starry eyes wide. Then he looked away, pink rising to his cheeks and his overgrown white hair falling into his face and swooping over his shoulders. He did not speak. He did not have to. Sorrel understood well enough.

He moved to tuck a strand behind his ear. “I heard that there were others with you. Others like me?”

Sorrel looked to Gwynn, who nodded encouragingly.

“Yes, we did.”

A smile crept up the boy’s face. “I thought I was alone after all this time.”

He then awkwardly stuck out his hand at Sorrel. “I’m Akira, by the way.”

“Sorrel.” She accepted it and shook it. She then jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “This is my sister, Gwynn.”

“Can you help us get out of here?” Gwynn asked, her voice gentle.

“Yeah, I can.” Akira set the droid down and picked up a duffle bag from out of the crate and started hastily throwing clothes and the half-finished robots into the bag. “One condition—you take me with you.”

“We would’ve done that anyway,” Sorrel assured him.

“No one deserves to be a prisoner,” Gwynn added.

“You mean it?” Akira’s eyes went wide. “Really?”

“We have to find our friends first, they were taken to a different place than we were, and they were held back by green chains like yours.” Gwynn pointed at his wrists.

Akira tugged at one of the green chains self-consciously.

“I’m guessing we’ll need to figure out how to break them?” Sorrel sat up straighter. “They’re magic, aren't they?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never been able to figure them out,” Akira admitted. “I do all kinds of magic for them—but I’ve never been able to figure these out.”

“Could I try?” Gwynn held up her wrist with the crystal bracelet.

“You’ve got magic crystals—sure, sure, it’s not like anything can physically break them.” He dropped the bag and stuck out his wrists towards Gwynn. “I tried that I think a few centuries ago—they don’t let me around sharp objects anymore.”

He then laughed nervously.

Gwynn pressed her lips together into a line as thin as a needle as her pale white hands hovered over Akira’s wrists. Red lights began to glow at the tips of her fingers. She worked methodically, weaving magic together the way Delphine or Coppelius had, or the way that she had back when she and Sorrel were trapped in the cell. Sorrel wondered if she was trying to do that same spell that she’d done there, that she’d done in Castle Arcadia.

To be fair, it was a useful spell.

Watching her sister work on magic of all things was strange. Especially given how Gwynn had shied away initially from the world of magic and stardust and god-emperors. A world that they knew through legends and stories already existed alongside them in their lone stars. But even with the comparatively commonplace practice of magic, they’d never thought that they’d get to use it.

Or that her sister would be so gifted with it.

The red light had woven its own chain around the chains, and when Gwynn was done, she nodded a silent approval. Then she snapped her fingers, and her charges detonated. The sickly green was enveloped by the blood-red, and it all dissolved in light as white as falling snow. Leaving nothing behind but Akira’s pale wrists.

He cautiously rubbed and rotated them, clearly appreciating the full range of motion.

Then he smiled, like a kid seeing the first snowfall on Perrault, or like Gwynn would on the first day of spring.

“Thank you—thank you!” He embraced Gwynn. She stiffened, but then gently pushed him away.

“Alright, I think I can help our friends break the chains.” She looked down at her outstretched hands. “But we need to make sure that the pirates aren’t on our ship, we need to find our friends, and we need to make sure everyone gets back onboard and we can make a clean getaway back into fast-travel. Can you help us with that?”

“I can.” He visibly preened. “In fact, they won’t be able to find you again once I’m done with your ship. They’ve been having me cloak their fleets for as long as I’ve been with them. I can do the same for you, when I get onboard?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Sorrel nodded. “As for our ship—“

“I’ll make sure they won’t be on it.” Akira pulled a tablet out of his duffle bag and began tapping furiously. “I know where to put some alerts out, that’ll send everyone in. Especially if there’s multiple.”

His eyes gleamed with the light of a thousand suns. “I’ve always wanted to do this, but I never dared because I always thought they’d just track me down again because I’m kind of obvious—but if I’m not the only one, then—“

He cut himself off and narrowed his eyes at his screen. After a few decisive taps, he grinned again.

“Let’s go get your friends, before they figure out that those alarms are fake.”