Page 20 of Sixth
“Comforting.” But she followed his instructions. Hands open. Shoulders loose. Pulse trying not to sprint.
The single mote pressed closer to her skin. The mark at her wrist brightened. The mote answered, small body pulsing in a perfect echo. Another drifted in. Then another. They wheeled in a slow, deliberate orbit around her wrist, then circled out to hover over Apex’s.
His mark answered with a slow throb. The motes brightened. Emmy’s vision prickled. She didn’t cry. She refused to. She bit the inside of her cheek and thought about the first night she’d stood under a human sky and wished for magic. She hadn’t wanted it for herself. She hadn’t been greedy. She’d wanted to know it existed.
It did.
“Look,” she whispered.
“I see it,” Apex said, and something inside his voice that wasn’t hardness or command made her throat go tight.
The planet breathed. The motes circled. The bond burned. For a long, long moment, the three things were one thing.
And then, far above them, something tore the harmony like a fingernail raking down the back of asong.
Emmy jerked. Apex’s head snapped up. The motes scattered to the hull’s edges, lights dimming, as if the planet had winced.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Apex’s eyes had gone knife-sharp. “Listen.”
She did and heard it now too, thin and distant and wrong. Not the low hum of the forest. Not the static of their broken Core. Awhine that didn’t belong to anything alive. Her stomach turnedcold.
“Voss,” she breathed.
“Possibly,” Apex said. “Or his drone.” He pushed off the brace and tried to stand.
She moved fast to stop him, palms to his chest. “Absolutely not.”
He looked down at her hands, then up at her face. He didn’t shove her away. He could have. He could’ve moved her without trying. He didn’t. “Emmeline.”
“No,” she said, shaking now for a different reason. “If you tear open that shoulder we’re done. I’m not losing you because you had to prove you could stand.”
“I am not proving,” he said. “I am protecting.”
“You can do both sitting down,” shesaid.
His eyes flickered. Heat moved through them like a shadow.He sat back. “Affirmative.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, so relieved her knees shook.
They waited. The whine rose and faded like something searching. The forest’s hum deepened as if the planet had thickened itself, hushing its surface, making its light small. The motes clung to the hull’s torn edges and went very still.
“It cannot find us if the world refuses to echo us,” Apex said, too soft for anything but truth. “Be quiet, Emmeline. Be calm.”
She nodded and did the hardest thing she’d done since the crash. She calmed on purpose. She forced her breath into his rhythm. She matched her mark to his beat. She pressed her palm, very lightly, to the center of his chest and let the planet take that as the note to tuneto.
The whine faded.
The motes brightened by a shade. The forest’s hum loosened, like muscles unclenching. Emmy only then realized how hard she’d been shaking.
“You did that,” she whispered.
“We did that,” he said. “The planet did that.” He tipped his head, studied the light. “We were too loud. When we are in agreement, we are less visible. When we are afraid, we are bright.”
She thought about the flight, the crash, the way the mark had flared hottest when she’d panicked. Heat flushed her cheeks. “So… kissing keeps us safe.”
His mouth curved. “You are not wrong.”
