Page 22 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
Winter wanted her to describeyellow. People, he learned, often associated colors with emotions, smells, or tastes. He found those connections to be fascinating, but he would not ask because she was obviously a spy and he would not encourage her espionage.
“Dad says you know ships?” Zero asked.
“I’m a pilot.”
Oh no.Winter knew what Zero would do with that information.
He had to endure the next few hours. The storm could not last forever.
Marigold
Outside, the sky darkened, feeling almost like twilight. Rain hit the windows in sheets, distorting the lights of the village in the distance.
Despite the storm thundering outside, the house felt cozy with plenty of charm. Older, it had been updated recently and decorated for tourists with money to spend. The dim lighting added to the cozy feel, like a warm, dry haven against the storm. The decor leaned toward bland, lots of tasteful gray and white, and little personality.
Honestly, Mari didn’t know if that was just Valerian’s bright technicolor preferences burning away her optic nerves. She liked color. Her mother liked a lot of color. Like, alotlot.
The comm unit chirped again with another message from Nox. This one was a photo of Mari and her mother at breakfast, taken that very morning.
“Don’t you have anything better to do? Babies to steal candy from? Puppies to kick?” she wrote. Distantly, she knew she shouldn’t antagonize the moneylender because if Nox had people watching her, he also had people who could break her kneecaps or whatever his sort did.
She didn’t think he specifically sent people to Fortune merely to monitor her. She didn’t owe that much money, and if she did, he wouldn’t have allowed her to leave Olympus Station. Fortune was a common destination from the station. Nox likely had resort and hotel staff on his payroll just as a matter of course.
Still, the idea of someone watching her and her mother made her skin crawl.
“Merry-gold,” Zero said, pulling up a stool to the kitchen counter.
“Please call me Mari.” She shoved the comm unit into a pocket, not wanting to see whatever new photos Nox sent. She wasn’t an expert on organized crime—though she watched a documentary with Valerian—but harassing her hardly seemed a cost-effective use of Nox’s time.
“You told me you were called Merry,” Winter said in an accusing tone. His eyes were an icy blue. Sharp and rather beautiful, she thought.
“Mari,” she said.
“Merry-gold,” Zero told his father in a tone that questioned the intelligence of all adults, everywhere.
“Merry-gold,” he repeated.
Close enough.
“Your hair is fluffy. Is it always like that? It looks like an angry cloud. I like it. Can I touch it?”
Mari ducked to avoid his incoming hand. Her frizzy hair was a sore point. The island’s humidity turned her normally manageable waves into a mess. She had been relying on a leave-in conditioner to keep the frizz at bay but didn’t have any on her to reapply after her shower. She said, “Yes, my hair is frizzy. No, it’s not always like this. The humidity makes it frizzy. And it’s rude to touch other people’s hair. Could I grab your ear?”
He gasped. “No, that is impolite. My apologies.”
Winter set two plated sandwiches on the counter, along with water. The offering was basic, some cold meat between thick slices of bread, but she devoured every crumb.
The comm unit in her pocket chirped again. Groaning, she answered, because it wouldn’t stop until she did.
“Keep making the jokes. I add a credit to your total for every joke,”Nox wrote.
“What was that?” Zero asked.
“Nothing important.” She deleted the message and powered down the phone.
“Do you play King’s Table?”
“I do,” she said. Practically every pilot played the game. Flights often had long periods of downtime, and connection to the network for streaming entertainment was not always guaranteed. The game involved moving tokens across a grid. No token moved the same way as another. Every planet in the Interstellar Union had a similar strategy game. On Earth, it was called chess. Growing up, Mari had a battered old resin set. Sealant tape and goodwill held the cardboard box together. The instruction sheet on different planetary rules had long ago vanished, but Mari had the rules memorized.
