Page 23 of Sixth
“Tell me what you need,” she said. “I’ll find it.”
Asset and risk in one package. He swallowed down the heat that rose with the offer. Then he nodded.
“Core analyzed local geology. The primary engine requires alloy reinforcement. Trace minerals in the eastern ridge match composition. The crystals will look like ice with light inside. They will cut your fingers, so wear the gloves in the lower locker.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“I will repair the fuel shunt and align the stabilizers. We will remain within sight of one another at all times.” He braced a palm against the torn frame of the access panel and the metal answered him. “If you move beyond that ridge, Iwill come for you.”
She pretended not to shiver. He noted it. She pulled on the gloves as Lume climbed to the knot of hair at the crown of her head, asmall warm form like a promise. Emmy moved into the crystalline grass and it parted around her without breaking, flexing like water, color sliding from the pressure of her steps and flowing back. She glanced over her shoulderonce.
He worked bare to the waist in the rising heat, hands inside his ship’s open heart. Survival demanded accuracy, and his care read as reverence. Her gaze touched him the way a scope settles on his chest, cool and exact, impossible to ignore. He didn’t look up. Awareness lived under his skin. The pull between them had shifted from fire to a steady burn. The mark glowed warm, not hot, like a hand closing aroundhis.
Focus.
At the ridge, the crystals were as predicted, ice with light inside. His gloves on her hands spared skin from the cut. Lume chirred warning whenever Emmy reached for a shard too deep in the seam and lifted it instead with her tail, efficient and pleased with herself.
“Show-off,” Emmy murmured, smiling. The creature answered with a sound that harmonized with the world’shum.
Apex heard the change in Emmy’s breathing from fifty meters away. Joy, small and unguarded. He drew the plate he’d straightened across the engine’s mouth and spanned the width of the cavity, shoulder braced, both hands locked. Every muscle engaged and held, despite sweat beading. Light caught andmade each drop of perspiration a glowing star. He didn’t grunt. He didn’t curse. He applied pressure until metal yielded and the seam kissed closed.
He exhaled once and the mark pulsed. Across the clearing Emmy pressed her thumb to it as if she’d experienced the same exhale in her own lungs.
When she returned with the satchel full, he reopened the housing. Cupping a shard, he lifted it to the light and nodded. He reached for her wrist without asking, found the quick heat of her pulse, and let the Valenmark drawhim.
The band pulled his hand the way a moon pulls tide. His thumb stroked a slow arc over the light. Warmth uncoiled through both of them, the kind that comes after cold, the sure seal of a door against weather. She drew in a breath and swayed. He steadied her and held, watching her pupils expand and the soft flush rise along her throat.
“Does it still hurt?” she asked.
“It does not.” He kept her wrist a breath longer, reading the quick beat against his thumb.
“What changed?”
“You.” His answer came quiet and unyielding. “You stopped fighting the Valenmark’s pull. You let the bond settle and do what it was made to do.”
The band warmed under his touch and her breath caught, not in fear, inheat. “Which is?”
“Bind us together.” He let her go with care like a promise and slid his hand along her forearm, guiding her closer to the open housing. “Give me the rest.”
They worked as if the world had narrowed to hands and breath. With any other partner the task would’ve been silence. With her it carried current. When she fitted small shards into their sockets he steadied the back of her neck with his palm, barely there. When he torqued microfasteners she held tight, and the brush of his knuckles against her thigh stayed where it landed because neither of them moved away. When she leaned over the engine he reached instead of making her rise, chest crowding her back for one breath that smelled like sweat and heat andher.
“Tell me if I am in your way,” he said. He meant the opposite. He wanted to be in her way. He wanted every space measured by his body first.
“You’re fine,” she said, and the tremor in it slid across his nerves likeheat.
He heard it. He didn’t feed it. He took a slower breath because the instinct to put his mouth where her shoulder met her neck had sharp teeth.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, aquiet question to keep them both breathing.
“Other than you?”
He let the words hold while he studied the shine on her mouth and the small beat at her throat. Heat moved under his skin in a slow, certain climb. The Valenmark warmed where his thumb had rested on her earlier, answering as if it remembered her pulse. He wanted his hands on her hips and his mouth at the soft place beneath her ear. He wanted her yes spoken against his tongue.
Control held. Barely.
“Yes, other than me.” She tipped her head, hazel eyes steady.
“I am always thinking about the Council.” He tightened the last fastener. “They codified the bloodline edict: Vettian nobles will not take consorts beyond the line, the Valenmark will not be set on any off-worlders, heirs will remain pure. Iset the mark on you in the House of Sovereigns, under witness. That broke their quiet protocols of constraint. They will not forgive it or permit it to stand without a challenge.”
