Page 44 of Collision!
They had to pass the Starlit Salon to get to the cabin corridor, and to her shock, Lub darted into the room.
Which was empty, luckily.Except for the resonark.
Lub paused beneath the glowing knotwork, craning its stubby neck to stare upward.Its bulbous orange eyes seemed to turn black, reflecting some wavelength Mariah couldn’t detect.
The resonark pulsed with that mesmerizing pattern of rainbow and darkness.The shadowlight, Suvan had called it.
Lub let out a keening sound, not musical in the slightest but somehow still matching the anomaly’s subtle subharmonics.Mariah clutched the blanket to her chest as the resonark flared, for a heartbeat.
Lub’s lure blinked on with the same shadowlight.
The first time Suvan had kissed her, he’d said he was afraid she’d been hypnotized by the resonark.
She wasnotgoing to kiss the goblhob.
Even as she took a step forward—because she was totally gonna kiss Suvan’s pet if she had to—Lub scampered back to her, toothy jaws agape.It bolted right past her into the corridor.
Bemused, she followed.
Lub tracked her path back to the extra stateroom they’d chosen for Suvan’s recovery.She wasn’t sure if the goblhob had smelled her earlier route or was homing in on its person, but Lub lumbered ahead of her to scratch at the door until she let it in.
“Don’t jump on him,” she warned, ready to intervene.“He’s hurt.”
Delicately, Lub anchored its front claws on the side of the bed and boosted higher—without jumping—to stare at Suvan.It whined again, very quietly, and its lure dipped.
The lingering shadowlight glowed on Suvan’s face, and Mariah held her breath…
But nothing happened.
She’d just wanted a little magic.
With a sigh, she coiled the blanket at the bottom corner of the bed and patted it.“Shall I boost you up?”
Lub’s rear end wriggled, which she took as a yes please.
Careful not to jostle Suvan, she levered the surprisingly dense goblhob to the blanket.Lub circled once with equal care and settled with its heavy jaw on Suvan’s foot.
The shadowlight lure still glowed.
She sank into the chair next to the bed, her tote of knitting abandoned on the floor, and watched him breathe.
+ + +
She’d gone to the kitchen counter to see if Felicity had left her any stimulants when Lub croaked out a happy sound.
Whirling, she raced back to the bedside.“Suvan?”
The tiny scales on his face rippled with tension, as if he weres trying to emerge from beneath a terrible weight.She eased down beside him and grasped his hand.
When his fingers twitched in hers, she held back a shout of elation.“We’re here,” she whispered.“And we haven’t blown up your engines yet.”
She patted the mattress next to his elbow.“Lub?”
Crawling up to nestle under his arm, the goblhob draped its lure across his chest.Mariah forced herself to sit back in her chair.
All those hours she’d practiced patience, stitch by stitch, and it was not helping at all now.But she kept breathing and waiting anyway.
Finally, Suvan’s eyes opened, the pale crystal beauty blurred with a haze of bewilderment.
