Page 11 of Sixth
His fingers slid along her cheekbone and behind her ear, acaress that broke nothing and remade everything. The heat rose like a clean wave and she swayed into it. He braced her with a palm at the small of her back, not pulling, only there. She tilted her face up. The universe narrowed to breath and warmth and the aching distance between two mouths that could close that distance with a movement as small as a thought.
He stopped the moment before contact. His voice came low and rough. “Not again. Not yet.”
The refusal didn’t sound like rejection. It sounded like a vow deferred. The restraint in it shook her more than any touch could have. Tears pricked in a place on her that hadn’t softened for anyone in a long time. She blinked them back and stepped away first.
“Right,” she said. “Edges.”
He slid back into the pilot seat and reached for the arcs. “We will hold them until you choose otherwise.”
She opened her mouth to answer. The ship shivered under a force that didn’t belong to engine or drift. Asharp tone cut the air and went straight to the root of her teeth. Apex wasalready moving, hands on the controls, posture snapping from restrained to ready.
“What is that?” she asked, heart spikingfast.
“Target lock,” he said. “Rear quadrant.” His voice lost every softness it had allowed. It became pure function and steel. “Sit and fasten in.”
“Aram.” Her lips shaped the name before sound formed.
“Affirmative.” He stabbed a command that killed the cabin lights and bled the remaining glow from the panels until the cockpit went nearly dark. Only the stars and the thin amethyst ring of his eyes remained bright. “Harness.”
She sank into the seat beside him. He was already there, snapping the web across her hips with efficient, impersonal speed. The brush of his knuckles against her stomach sent heat racing toward the mark again. Her body didn’t understand the difference between battle and nearness. The Valenmark only understood proximity. She swallowed hard and locked the shoulderclip.
A hard clang juddered through the hull. The port flashed red as energy scraped their shields like wind tearing at metal siding. Her breath caught and froze in her throat.
“Shields at sixty-eight,” he said. “Guns hot. We will not outgun him. We outfly him.”
“This ship’s fast,” she said, clinging to what she had learned earlier, to anything that sounded like survival.
“It is fast,” he agreed. “Not faster than greed.”
Light knifed across the port, awhite trajectory that left a ghost line in its wake. Apex rolled them out of the strike with ruthless grace, the cabin tilting under the force of the maneuver.Emmy’s stomach lurched. The harness cut across her ribs. The Valenmark burned like a live wire underskin.
“Talk to me,” she said through clenched teeth. “I learn better when I talk.”
“Left arc, two degrees,” hesaid.
Another blast slammed into the shields. The sound shivered through the frame. Her teeth rattled. He was a stone at the center of motion, unshaken.
“He will try to drive us toward the field’s bright lanes,” Apex said. “He assumes we will run for the obvious exit. We take the quiet path instead.”
“The gradients.”
“Affirmative.” He skimmed them into a narrow corridor that looked like nothing to her eyes until she adjusted her focus and saw the faintest seam of darker shadow inside the dark. Aplace where sensor shimmer ran thin. He had shown her earlier that the safest way was not the bright one. Now he put the lesson into blood and metal.
Aram’s ship roared past the port, apredator’s shape silhouetted for a flash against starlight. It turned in a tight arc and came again.
“Hold,” Apex said. “We do not chase. We do not flee. We slide.”
He slid them through the seam the same way he had taught her, fingertips light, heel pressure measured, eyes on the gradients rather than on the bright threat. Breath by breath, motion by motion, he placed the ship inside spaces that didn’t look like space atall.
For an instant she let herself believe they might make it cleanly through.
Aram’s next strike came from above, not behind. The blast hit just forward of the port. The light that followed was a vicious bloom, bright enough that she flinched and threw an arm over her eyes. The ship lurched. Metal screamed somewhere deep. Warning tones layered over one another in a chorus that meant nothinggood.
“Forward shield out,” Apex said, voice like iron in cold water. “Brace.”
He shoved them into a dive, less like flight and more like falling through a crack in the universe. The stars wheeled. Gravity pressed them down hard. Another flash raked their flank and the cabin went dead dark for half a breath before the backup grid throbbed into life, weaker and more honest.
Apex didn’t curse. He didn’t promise safety he couldn’t deliver. He simply said, “Hold on,” and drove the small ship into the teeth of the attack as if he had been born for nothingelse.
The Valenmark flared white hot and locked to Apex’s pulse. Emmy curled her fingers around the harness until her knuckles ached and gritted her teeth against the scream of metal.
Aram Voss had foundthem.
And he did not intend to let themgo.
