Page 24 of Sixth
“So that is what you call it?”
“What?”
“Breaking their quiet.”
He almost smiled. “There are better words. Most of them are impolite.”
““I could like you better if you swore,” she said, mouth soft and knowing, eyes lit with trouble that invited him closer.
“I do not need the words to make my point.” He looked at the engine, then looked at her. “I prefer results.”
Heat rolled over her skin in a visible tide, flushing her throat and the fine bones of her collar. He saw the small parting of her mouth and the dark bloom of her pupils. The Valenmark warmed, asteady pulse that matched her breath and his. He noted every tell—the lift of her chest, the flex of her fingers against the console—and chose restraint, holding the line when every instinct urged him to close that last, irresistibleinch.
“Core,” she called, voice thin because she needed air. “Status?”
“Online,”the ship answered.“Primary engine integrity at eighty-one percent. Secondary at seventy-four. Structural alignment improved. You may attempt low altitude lift fortesting. Full departure is not recommended until reinforcement is complete.”
“Of course it is not,” Apex said. No heat, only certainty. “We will do it anyway.”
“We will?” Emmy asked.
“We will take the engine off its knees and make it walk. If it walks, it lives. If it lives, Ican make it run.” He scanned the sky and weighed color for threat. “After we test, we will set camp. We will use the time to complete the alloy reinforcement, recalibrate the stabilizers, reseal the hull seams, and run a full diagnostic sweep.”
“You sound confident.”
“I am not reckless. Confidence is a different thing.” He touched the small of her back as he moved past, atouch he didn’t need and didn’t apologize for. “Strap in.”
They tested. The ship shuddered, lifted, settled, lifted again. It didn’t scream. It didn’t try to tear itself apart. He coaxed it like a war-trained animal with a repaired leg that still wanted to run. He never took his eyes off the data. He never lost track of where Emmy’s body was. When she braced a hand on the console, his palm covered it for a breath, warm and steady, his thumb settling over her pulse by the mark. When the nose dipped his palm found her hip and held her in place. When lift settled true his hand didn’t leaveher.
“Good,” he said. “Better.” He set the ship back into the cradle the crash had carved and powered down. Silence did what it always did on this world. It hummed. Light flowed. Air moved slow and sweet over her bare forearms.
Lume slid down from Emmy’s hair to the console and peered into readouts as if she were born to it. She made a small approving sound and sprang back to Emmy’s shoulder.
“Show-off,” Emmy said, and smiled again.
Evening slid toward them. He chose to set camp beside the hull, not within. The planet needed to see them. He wanted the planet to see him watch overher.
He marked a clear space, mapped wind, set the compact field burner and the small ceramic pot that made heat into a ritual. He shaved pale bark into a twist that caught with quick flame. The glow from the firelight turned his hands into savage tools and gentle instruments. She didn’t taste the food. He saw it in the way her mouth barely closed around each bite. She kept close to the heat because it came from his hands.
Snow began like breath fogging in cold air. Aveil of luminous threads drifted from the high canopy and gathered over their heads. No burn. No chill. Snow that had learned to glow. The world became a soft theater of color and quiet.
He stripped a cloth from the kit and gave it to her. “If it settles, brush it away. It builds and then shifts and slides off like foam. It will not harm you, but I do not want it covering your face.”
“You’re bossy.”
“I am.” He sat on the far side of the low fire, profile cut dark against glow. “Come here.”
She came. She didn’t pretend otherwise. Light painted muscle across his bare chest and shoulder and he watched her mouth go dry. Lume curled in her lap, aheated coil, her star-silk tail looping Emmy’s wrist near the Valenmark, slow sparks threading along thesilk.
“The Council once claimed Vettian nobles were forbidden to love outside the bloodline,” he said. He hadn’t planned to speak it, but silence made poor cover for truths that demanded shaping. He watched the fire instead of her. “They wrote it as duty. They enforced it as law.”
“And what did you call it?” she asked, brushing light-snow from Lume’sback.
“Prison.” He spoke it without heat and with all the truth. “From distance it has the shape of safety. Up close it is a cell.”
“Do you always obey?”
“I do not.”
“Right. You bond a human to you in a room full of people who would sell her and then apologize to no one.”
“I did not intend to invoke the mark.” He looked at her then. “But I will not apologize for keeping you.”
