Page 15 of Sixth
“Do not cry.” Even half-gone, command lived in him. “You will listen.”
“Bossy,” she muttered, absurd relief fizzing through her, then sobered. “I’m listening.”
“Pressure… right quadrant,” he said. “Bind it tight. You will splint the shoulder before I wake or I will move and make it worse.”
“You’re already awake,” she said, but she did it anyway. The splint hissed as it hardened. He grunted, breath catching.
“Pain suppressant,” he said. “Half dose. Iwill need my mind.”
“You’ll get it,” she said, rummaging in the kit. Her hands didn’t seem like her hands anymore. They were steadier than she had any right to expect. Maybe that was the mark. Maybe the planet. Maybe it was simply that she refused to losehim.
She injected the med. The tension around his eyes eased a fraction. It didn’t take the edge off his presence. If anything, with the blood scrubbed from his temple and the binder snug around the breadth of his chest, he looked more like the force that had upended her entire life and set it spinning.
He blinked, and his gaze finally caught hers, clearer now, focused. The look went through her like heat. God, she’d become too aware of everything, the flex of his abdomen under her palm when she checked the binder, the rasp of stubble along his jaw when her fingers brushed there to clear away a smear of blood, the clean scent of him beneath smoke. The bond magnified it all until an intense need layered itself under herskin.
He must’ve picked up on the shift. The corner of his mouth moved in something that wasn’t a smile and wasn’t not. “Later,” he said quietly, and though the word was simple, the promise inside it made her stomach go molten.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said, but the protest came out softer than she’d intended.
“Then do not put your mouth so close to mine while I am injured,” he said, so absolutely himself she almost laughed. “I will not be gentle.”
Heat slid through her in a slow, treacherous ribbon. “You’re injured,” she said, because thought seemed safer than sensation. “We’re half-buried. The Core’s dying. And you’re flirting.”
“I am warning you,” he said, amethyst eyes steady.
Something in her answered that steadiness—aclick, afitting into place. She cleared her throat and smoothed her palm once over the binder, along the hard rise of his ribs. The forest’s glow pulsed with the motion, as if the planet were leaning closer tosee.
“Okay,” she said, businesslike because that seemed safer. “We need to move you out of the smoke.”
“Agreed.”
“On three,” she said. “And yes, Iknow you’ll say you don’t need counting. Humor me.”
“I do not need—”
“Three,” she said, and slipped her arm under his shoulders, her other arm across his abdomen. He was heat and mass and the scent of smoke and wind and something unique that belonged to him alone. He braced with his left arm and let her take less of his weight than he should have. Stubbornman.
They got to the corridor beyond the cockpit where the smoke thinned. The angle of the hull forced them into a sideways crab-walk. Emmy swore as a loose panel caught her hip. Apex also swore, though in a language that melted along her skin. Outside, the world breathed light.
They reached the midship compartment before the floor gave a warning shudder. Emmy froze. So did Apex. The shudder passed like a big animal turning over in its sleep.
“Core?” she said. “Stability?”
“…structural integrity… fifty-one percent… hull breach aft… containment failing… powering down non-essential…”
“Don’t you dare power down,” she said. “You don’t get to leave me with him half-broken and a planet trying to… listen.”
“…this world hears you…”the Core whispered, almost human now, then crackled into static.
“Core?” she called. “Core, stay with me.”
Silence.
The sudden absence of that voice made the ship like a body that had just exhaled for the last time. Emmy pressed her lips together hard and breathed through her nose. Don’t cry. Don’t break.Move.
“Emmeline,” Apex said. “Listen.”
She stilled. The hum outside had shifted again. The rhythm had lengthened, slowed to match something steady. Her own heart? No, the beat under her palm where she braced him. The planet mirrored him, not her thistime.
