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“A powerful love,” she continues. “The kind of love in Rhavnan fairy-tales.”

A soulmate kind of love.

“Rike…” I start to say, my voice strangled.

She stabs her spoon in my direction. “Now, him, I can take you to see.”

The Training Room is busy with pilots and soldiers. It doesn’t seem to matter that many of them have just been flying – if anything, they’re training even harder than usual, like they’re running on the adrenaline from that. Sleep really isn’t something that is done a lot of here.

Meg spots Rike straight away. He’s near the far wall, bent over a contraption that another pilot is lying beneath while pushing against a bar loaded with weights. I guess Rike’s on watch to make sure the pilot doesn’t drop it.

Meg cuts through the room like she’s been here a million times before. Her curvy hips sort of sway as she walks, her every step silent over the wooden floor, despite the fact she’s tall and wears the same boots we all do.

I trail behind her, trying to ignore the many eyes drifting to us.

“Can we borrow you, Rike?” she asks.

Her voice, or maybe her presence itself, makes the other pilot drop the weight. He’s centimetres from a crushed skull. But Rike lunges forwards, catching the bar and bringing it up back into place, his bicep flexing.

“Cosmos. Thanks, Rike,” the pilot gushes.

“No problem, brother.” Now looking up, he says, “Borrow me? What would the reason be?”

“I misspoke. We will be borrowing you. It wasn’t a question.” When he doesn’t immediately move, she says, “Are you causing an OTI, Pilot?”

That seems to change things. Rike bows his head slightly, the way one would in Rhavna to someone who was their senior. Custom is harder to shift than loyalty, clearly.

As Rike steps around the equipment, a soldier on the equipment to the left of us sits up.

“Three Rhavnans together? It’s like a circus in here.”

Meg turns her gaze on him. It’s penetrating.

“Sorry? I didn’t catch that.” The threat in her voice is clearly there.

But the man seems to miss it.

“I’m just saying. Good job Chapp was executed really, isn’t it? He’d be raving about how we’ll all be murdered in our beds tonight.”

She saunters to him. Flashes him her turned-up collar, indicating the embroidery there. It’s more detailed than that on Riss and Cosmer’s collars.

“Do you know what this means?”

The man sneers. “That you slept your way to the top?”

It’s instant. Meg slaps him, hard enough to leave a red mark across his cheek.

Then she straightens up, looking calm. She dips her hand into the pocket of her long coat and extracts a small book and a pen. She pulls the lid off the pen with her mouth and scrawls something.

Removing the lid from her teeth, she says, “You’re Duncan, aren’t you?”

She doesn’t wait for him to answer. Just says to me, softly, almost playfully, “Ara. Let’s make this fun. Choose a number between one and one thousand. Hint – make it a big one.”

I really don’t want to be part of this. Especially as the man’s attention is now on me.

“Go ahead,” she prompts.

“A thousand,” I say, shrugging. She did say to pick a high number.