Page 26 of Sixth
Her eyes stung. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know.” No apology. Fact. Heat. Atruth he would not putdown.
She pressed her cheek to Lume’s soft wing and let her eyes close. Sleep took her like warm water lifting her, steady hands beneath her shoulders keeping her afloat. He watched the moment that quiet claimed her and let the world’s hum thread through his bones until his own breath matched the planet’s slow, deep rhythm.
She woke in deep night with need heavy and bright, not shameful, not panicked. Light sifted over her mouth like breath. She turned her head. He stood where he’d stood previously, afigure cut from night and haloed by soft snow. He didn’t pretend not to be watching. She lifted her hand and touched theband.
It answered. Warm. Certain.
He didn’t move toward her. He lifted his wrist and touched the twin. Light in both brightened and settled. The hum thickened, satisfied. Her pulse slowed, even while need didn’t fade. It found a rhythm she could live inside. She slept with his shape fixed as a vow in the edge of the firelight and in the band around her wrist.
Dawn pressed pale at the clearing’s rim, light laddering through the glass canopy until color pooled on the ship’s skin. Asoft chime lifted from the console and Core’s voice followed, meticulous and quiet:“Reinforcement stable. Low-lift test advisable after midday.”
Lume woke Emmy by patting both cheeks with her tiny hands, her name made small in a bright whisper. Then she climbed to crown Emmy’shair.
Apex had already gone to the leaves where dew beaded like clear coins. He tipped the narrow flask along an edge and let the cold gather. He returned and set it into Emmy’s palms, watched her mouth close around the rim and her throat work witheach swallow, the Valenmark warming to the same slow rhythm against his wrist.
He didn’t name what eased in him as the water went into her. He only stayed close until she looked up, color back in her lips and a quiet yes answering in his chest.
“You look even better than yesterday,” shesaid.
“I am,” he confirmed gravely.
“Completely healed?”
“Affirmative.” He added the rest before she asked. “The cycle is complete. The damage is fully repaired. Iam functional.”
“You were functional yesterday and last night.” Her mouth went dry. “You just chose not to… you know.”
Heat slid through him. “I chose.” He took the empty flask and his fingers brushed her knuckles. The contact sparked along nerves that had been waiting. “I will choose again. Iwill choose you.”
“Soon,” she whispered.
“Soon.” The word came rough.
They spent the morning reinforcing what they’d begun. Words reduced. Touch increased. The kind that looks like necessity and becomes language.
“You have good hands,” shesaid.
“I have killed many men with them.”
“I know.” She meant it. She’d seen it in the way he placed things. Careful. Exact. Never wasteful. Always certain. “They’re gentle with me.”
“They will remain so.” He did not lower his voice.
By late afternoon the ship stood truer in its cradle. Core offered data and he accepted it. He also registered the way Emmy’s attention dissolved into the heat between them. When he stepped behind her to reach the upper toggle the mark warmed and she leaned back a fraction and found him along the length of her spine.
“Emmeline,” he said, quiet as heat. Her name tasted like claim and future, apromise held between his teeth.
“Yes.” She angled toward him, gaze intense, breath a little shallow.
“Soon.” The single word carried the energy of aforever promise.
The Valenmark warmed against both their wrists, and her mouth softened. “Soon,” she agreed.
Night came again, soft and luminous. Lume ate something invisible out of the air and crooned to the ship like a mechanic’s familiar. The rain of light thickened and thinned, aslow tide that made even metal look content. The hull hummed as if relieved. He stood in the glow and watched Emmy as if the planet had been designed to explain how she could existhere.
Lume curled in Emmy’s lap and went boneless, awarm form settling into the cradle of her thighs. Tiny wings rose and fell in a slow, mesmerizing rhythm that seemed to smooth the air. Emmy’s fingers slipped through the soft fur between wing and spine and the little body purred, afine vibration that ran into her palm and along the inside of hisribs.
