Page 67 of Taken to Heimo
“Go, heelee. You’re starting to annoy me.”
I smile a little trepidatiously at that. She is a formidable female and I owe her a lot and I’m still not sure she won’t chuck us out of an airlock if I say something wrong so I just nod and leave her to her box and bottles and slip into the storage room.
My stomach punches down into my toes at the sight of Krisxox on the thin, dirty mat on the floor. Metal boxes are tottering high all the way to the low ceiling — a ceiling so low Krisxox would have to bend in order to stand upright — and the path between them and Krisxox’s mat is narrow.
I yank the door shut behind me and squeeze onto the mat on Krisxox’s right side. His chest looks gruesome and the entire room still smells like burning flesh from when his wounds were cauterized.
Using the prayer mat for a pillow, I lay down beside him and look up at his face. His right shoulder is a heaping mass of black fabric, none of which looks sterile, but that the Eshmiri assured me were safe. But his expression looks oddly peaceful.
I place my hand on his chest, reassured by its rise and fall. His plates are scratched badly and he sports two grisly bruises on his face and neck, which blacken his skin.
I touch his chin, stroke his ridges, kiss the outside of his arm. “Hexa, Krisxox,” I whisper out loud, even though the only one that can hear me now is the Tri-God. “I will marry you.”
19
Krisxox
Pain. I feel it, then I don’t. My warrior’s training understands pain, every curve, every crest, every trough. I’ve been trained from the time I was a youngling and first knew that I was destined to be Voraxia’s greatest warrior on how to keep it at bay. The only painful chasm I couldn’t cross was what Xana gave and now she’s satisfied, so there is no need for pain anymore.
I take the dark web of agony spread across my body and I carefully tie it into little knots, then move those knots into a little box where I let them live only in two places — a small patch of skin in my gut on the left side and in my right shoulder. Then I come to life.
I open my eyes and scan the world surrounding me — caging me — for a weapon. There are pocked metal crates everywhere and I see a syringe the length of my hand sticking out of one. There’s a weapon already. On the count of three, I’ll reach for it, then I’ll tear the walls of this prison down until I find her. She needs me. I felt that while I slept. That she needed me and I couldn’t get to her.Failure. I failed her…
I suck in a breath that fills me to the soles of my feet.
I let the bursts of exquisite pain flare, but I don’t let them own me.
“Krisxox?” The small sigh comes from somewhere close. Very close.
I try to say her name, but my jaw feels like it’s been wired shut and my tongue doesn’t obey my commands. All I manage is a weak grunt, but the reaction is immediate.
Her hand. I feel it there on my abdomen in scorching heat. All five alien fingers.
I swallow but my mouth and throat are so xoking dry. “Here,” she says. She sits up and I know my eyes are open when I see her face.
If this were a dream, she’d be clean and free of the blue and orange goop that covers her. The sight of her all mangled like this nearly makes me laugh. Never have I seen her less dignified.
“Are you laughing at me?” She says, managing to look stricken, and that only makes everything worse.
I start to cough. She whispers a prayer to her Tri-God and quickly brings a rusted metal cannister to my lips. “Instead of teasing me, you should focus on healing. Here, drink this. Don’t try to speak. The heavens only know you’ll just shoot yourself in the foot anyway — it’s a human expression. I’m not sure it translates.”
I choke on some of this substance she calls water. “It’s awful, isn’t it?” Hexa, and the only reason I know it’s water at all is because she says it is, and she’s too foolish to lie to me.
“Augh,” I sputter, choking more of it down and Svera laughs and everything is okay. There’s a hard bed under me, sweat covering my front, a hard wiry blanket lying over my hips. I’m naked beneath it, but for the first time since my xora met Svera, it doesn’t rise to the challenge.
“Where are we? Are you safe?” I croak when she pulls the can away from my lips. Water dribbles down my cheeks and she dabs at it with something soft.
Her expression softens then and I try to reach up and touch some blue on her cheek — more likely Oosa than my dried seed — but I can’t move my arms.
“You’re safe and I’m safe. We’re on board an Eshmiri reaver ship, but it’s operated by a human. Ahybrid.She was one of the original kits that Mathilda sold, but whatever happened next, she ended up in the hands of a horde of Eshmiri. They raised her and she considers herself Eshmiri now. She’s taking us back to the human moon and sending us down in a shooter of some kind, but she won’t join us. She’s doing this just because she’s got some honor.”
I grunt. “And credits. How much did she win?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure, but I doubt she’ll see those credits. Or if she does, I have no idea where she’s hiding them.” Svera glances around and wrinkles her nose. “This place…could use improvement.”
“Bloodthirsty,” I say with a light chuckle.
She smiles down at me again and brushes her hair behind her ear. She looks perfect. Like a xoking dream.
