Page 38 of Adrift!
“I thought I…” Why did his universal translator keep failing?
Except he knew the tech wasn’t the problem.
For the suspension between one heartbeat the next, he imagined how this could go: another closed-off place falling away behind him even if they were still adrift.
Sometimes letting go hurt less than holding on. He’d learned that from an Earther rose thorn.
Buthewas an alien, with fake, unfeeling parts, whose last glimpse of home had vanished in a refugee ship’s afterburn. And that made him uniquely qualified to treasure the prickly heart of a woman who’d mistaken failure for fate and silenced her own song.
He held her wary gaze, the sheen over her eyes reflecting the fading glow of the resonark’s crystal prison. “I’ll take that stage with you, Remy. If you want me. You already know I can’t quite do the melodies yet, but for backup and synthesizer in a pinch, I could be…your man.”
She wanted to say yes. He felt it in the way her body canted just a bare degree toward his, the bitter set of her lips softening just a breath.
But she shook her head. She’d gathered the red locks he’d fisted last night into a tight braid that would prevent tangling, and her unyielding stance screamed without a sound not to touch.
“I need songs I haven’t written and some instrument I’ve never played.” She swallowed hard. “I just…have to focus on that, please. On not failing spectacularly and killing us all.”
“It’s not just you,” he reminded her softly. “It’s us.”
“Ikaryo,” Nehivar called.
Glancing over his shoulder to see Felicity hushing the captain, Ikaryo reached out for Remy at the same time…
But she was already gone, only the flicker of her pale hem disappearing from the bridge.
Felicity hurried up beside him. “I’m so sorry. Kufzasin captains growl first and recognize heart-to-hearts never.” She glanced at the empty doorway. “She’s petrified. And not just of performing.”
Ikaryo groaned. “If she’s petrified, how did she move so fast?”
Felicity gave him a reproving look. “Maybe you were moving too fast?”
He returned her stare. “Said the Earther who moved into the spaceship captain’s quarters.”
“Ooh, got me. But relationships are tricky even when you’re not trying to save the universe.”
“Very helpful. Thank you.”
Though the sound was strained, she chuckled. “As angry as I am at Mr. Evens, I get why he’s obsessed with finding the holy grail of love, so we wouldn’t have these problems anymore.”
His translator was slow to provide context. “Seems like a lot of people die on endless journeys looking for holy grails.”
She lifted one shoulder. “Like I said, it’s a problem.”
He wanted to be done with endless lightyears, with passages etched in his skin that no one saw but him. He’d found a place he might belong.
If she’d let him past the thorns.
As he followed Felicity back to their impatient captain, he passed the projection of the capacitorus. Suvan had added a countdown timer. Yes, very helpful.
Behind the crystalline facets, the resonark’s pattern pulsed a dying rhythm, and Ikaryo didn’t need a button to understand the feeling when it beat in time with his own half-broken heart.
Chapter 13
The ache in those ice-shine eyes had gutted her. If she didn’t hold herself together, everything she felt would gush out over her fuzzy orange socks, nastier than fermented mold in a shattered glass.
Huddled into one of the corridor alcoves where passengers had searched for romantic game tokens not so long ago, Remy pressed her knuckles to her own eyes, as if she could block the tears.
In that empty coffee shop a million years ago, she’d sung out her soul.
