Page 14 of Only Cold Depths
Vesper shook her head. “They’re not bounty hunters. The woman wearing a long red cloak and the guy clutching two war hammers. You threw that ball of explosives at them.”
“Those two? I just got a glimpse of them, and I thought the explosives killed them. Besides, they weren’t my main objective. I just wanted to cause a distraction so I could pick off more of the bounty hunters and get closer to you.”
Vesper’s frown deepened. “But if you weren’t targeting them, then how did Esmina know to move out of the way?”
She chewed on her lower lip, and her fingers drummed on the corner of her tablet, making the screen flicker. I knew that look. Esmina and Pollux, whoever they were, had presented Vesper with a challenge, a puzzle, and she wouldn’t give up until she solved the mystery.
Vesper’s fingers stilled. “Ask Daichi to hack into the security footage from the marketplace. Esmina bumped into me there, and Pollux was probably lurking nearby.”
Daichi Hirano was my chief of staff and extremely skilled at ferreting out information. If anyone could track the elusive Esmina and Pollux, it was Daichi.
Vesper tapped on the arrow streaking upward through a cluster of stars that was stitched onto her jacket right over her heart. “And we can download the footage from the spy camera in my jacket. That should also help Daichi identify them.”
The arrow and stars were the sigil for House Caldaren, so the same symbol was stitched into my own jacket, and the same spy camera was also hidden in the fabric.
“I’ll send the footage to Daichi. Which means you can take a break and get healed. Your arm still looks awful, despite the skinbond injector.”
I’d given Vesper a strong dose of chemicals, but they hadn’t helped her nearly as much as I would have liked. Neither had my psionic shield, and the pain of her injuries kept slipping from my mind and body back into hers.
Vesper glanced down at her arm, and her nose crinkled with disgust. “It looks like I’ve been run through a meat grinder, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I growled, stabbing my finger at a long rectangular table near the front of the cargo bay. “Which is why you need to get on the medtable.Rightnow.”
Vesper raised her uninjured arm and snapped off a salute. “Aye, aye, captain, sir!”
I rolled my eyes. “Your mockery is duly noted.”
“As is your bossiness,” she quipped back.
“I thought you liked it when I was bossy. I certainly didn’t hear any complaints last night.”
A blush exploded in Vesper’s cheeks. Her eyes glittered with heat, and the velvety ribbon of her in my mind arched, hummed, and vibrated with pleasure. A memory erupted in my mind: Vesper writhing on the bed last night while I loomed over her, kissing, licking, and tasting every single inch of her soft, delectable skin. My dick hardened, and a different kind of throbbing coursed through me.
I blinked, and the image vanished. Had that been my memory—or Vesper’s recollection? Now that we had both accepted the truebond, I could tap into her psionic powers just as she could mine. Over the past few weeks, more than one silver flare of light and lifelike vision had filled my eyes, but the odd surges of Vesper’s power seemed completely random. As a Regal lord and especially as an Arrow, I had been trained to use my telekinesis, telepathy, and telempathy to their utmost ability, but I had no idea how to access seer magic, much less wield it like a weapon the way Vesper could.
Vesper set her tablet down on a counter. She sauntered over to me, then reached out and toyed with a button on my jacket. “Well, if that’s the kind of bossy you have in mind, then I say boss away, my lord.”
“I’d like nothing more, my lady,” I murmured in a husky voice.
I bent my head as though I was going to kiss her. Vesper licked her lips and rose up on her tiptoes. I lowered my head a little more . . . and a little more . . . and then I leaned down and scooped her up into my arms, careful of her injury. I crossed the cargo bay in a few long strides and set her down on the medtable.
“You’re no fun.” Vesper pouted.
“I am exceedingly fun—when your arm doesn’t look like raw sausage. Now, let the table heal you. Consider it an order from your bossy lord and ornery captain.”
Vesper snapped her hand up in another mock salute. Still being careful of her injury, I helped her peel off her ruined jacket, then used a dagger from my bandolier to cut off her right shirtsleeve, leaving her injured arm bare from her shoulder down to her fingers. Vesper’s grumbles faded away, replaced by one pain-filled grimace after another, and she laid down on the medtable.
I hit a button, and a clear piece of polyplastic slid out of its hiding spot, arced up over the table, and sealed itself shut on the other side. Oxygen hissed into the hyperbaric chamber, while robotic needles popped up out of the tabletop and danced around Vesper, administering skinbonds, antibiotics, and other medicines. She jerked and let out a muffled cry that pierced my heart, but her body relaxed as the sedatives took effect, and her eyes fluttered shut.
“Severe burns detected, along with a deep puncture wound and significant nerve damage. More skinbonds needed,” a feminine voice chirped in a chiding tone, almost as if the medtable blamed me for Vesper’s injuries.
Well, that made two of us, because I was certainly blaming myself.
I gripped the table and watched while the robotic needles quickly, expertly sloughed off Vesper’s burned, blistered skin and repaired the blaster hole in her arm. The overhead lights brought out the russet strands in her dark brown hair, which framed her face in wavy wisps. Her skin was paler than usual, and a few tiny freckles stood out on her cheeks like a star map I could spend hours studying. Even covered with blood and grime, Vesper still took my breath away.
My fingers twitched with the urge to smooth back her silky hair and feel her warm skin against my own, to wake her up and see the silver flecks glimmering in her dark blue eyes like pinpoint moons reflected in the surface of a beautiful lake. But I didn’t dare interrupt the medtable’s work, so I contented myself with devouring her with my gaze.
Vesper remained unconscious, a dreamy smile on her heart-shaped lips. She was probably in her mindscape, which was filled with doors that showed everything she had ever seen, done, and experienced. I hoped Vesper was viewing a happy memory instead of this disaster of a day.
