Page 72 of Taken By the Alien Killer
She snorts, then sobers without losing the light. “We can go today,” she says. “We can go now.”
“We can,” I say, and the ship brightens its screens as if it’s been waiting to be asked to matter.
“Or,” she says, eyes cutting to the planet that raised her, to the river where she raced goats, to the chess tree that knows too much. “We can go after we make it official that we’re not running.”
“We already did,” I say.
She nods. “Then let’s fly anyway.”
We strap in together because even saints and thieves bow to physics. The blanket pretends to be a cape on her lap. I key the thrusters and the ship wakes fully, stretching like a cat ready to do crimes. Star leans in and presses her forehead to mine for one long, unadorned breath.
“Anywhere you are,” she repeats, as much a course as an answer.
“Copy,” I say, and the old military humor doesn’t taste like lead today. I feed the coordinates to the drive. The planet turns its cheek to us, generous. The rings open like a gate willing to be surprised by who asks passage. We rise.
Behind us, there will be calls and apologies and a senator who pretends to be shocked and a matriarch who will never forgive being wronged by reality. There will be Sneed with a list, Mama with a laugh, Daddy with a cigar he pretends he doesn’t smoke. There will be Kaspian learning the shape of his own name in a story that finally belongs to him. None of that is on my console. What is: a string of numbers we chose. A note only weneed. A woman in my lap who has been a country and is now a person I get to meet for the rest of my life.
I set our course. The shuttle hums the key of consent. Her hand finds mine on the throttle and stays.
CHAPTER 17
STAR
We give it a couple of weeks before heading home. Part of me wanted to put it off longer, but my duty-minded alien mate thought otherwise, and he’s right. The return trip is uneventful despite the nest of butterflies in my belly.
Morning slides over Akura like warm milk, and I land the shuttle on the east pad with a hand that doesn’t shake. The hull ticks, the engines sigh, ringlight fades off the canopy, and everything smells suddenly, wonderfully like home: lemon polish and wet stone and that faint ribbon of basil the kitchen insists on tucking into the morning air. My hair is a bird’s nest and my mouth has the taste of sleep and his name; I smooth neither. I step down in bare feet because I forget shoes, because yesterday I stepped out of a life and today I’m not stepping back in.
Rayek falls in beside me, taller than the doorways, dark against all the pale stone. He doesn’t touch me, because the house has eyes, but he walks close enough that the heat off his arm changes the temperature of the hall. “Last chance to turn around,” he murmurs, a smile sleeping at the corner of his mouth.
“Please,” I say. “I’m starving.”
“For breakfast?” he asks.
“For being honest,” I answer, and he huffs that little laugh he keeps for when I get there first.
We don’t sneak. We walk into the main hall like two people who belong—not because titles invented us, but because love did. Mama’s already waiting because of course she is, hair pinned to perfection, mouth ready to either scold or sing. She makes a sound I’ve only heard her make when the rain comes after a bad summer and then she’s across the tiles, hands on my shoulders, face wet and shameless as she laughs and cries at the same time.
“Well,” she says, voice shaking, “you certainly know how to edit a day.”
“I didn’t like the ending,” I say, and she pulls me in so hard my ribs complain. I breathe her in—tea and steel and the ghost of the perfume I refused—and something in me unclenches that didn’t even know it was clenched.
Daddy’s behind her, beard askew, vest catching on joy. He’s less elegant about it; he just scoops me up like I’m five and spins until we both swear at the same time. “Starshine,” he says when he sets me down, eyes bright like polished wood, “is he treating you right?”
“Yes,” I say, and the word doesn’t wobble. “He treats me like I’m a person. Like I’m the person.”
“Then I’m happy for you,” Daddy says. “And if he ever forgets?—”
“He won’t,” I cut in, and when I turn to look at Rayek, I feel the heat off my own certainty. “He can’t. It’s not in him.”
Rayek inclines his head the way soldiers do when insult would be too small a word for what they’d feel if they were anyone else. He says nothing because the room knows the answer. Mama wipes her eyes and then smacks Daddy’sarm because she has to reestablish jurisdiction. “Sneed!” she calls, still laughing through it. “Come say something wildly inappropriate so we can get it out of the way.”
Sneed is already present, of course; he’s always where gravity collects. He steps out from a column like a footnote with excellent posture, slate tucked against his ribs. His crest spines lie very flat—a micro-tell that says he didn’t sleep. He surveys us all, the room, the morning, the world, and then bows to me, just a sliver, precise as a period. “My Lady,” he says. His gaze flickers to Rayek and back. “Commander. The household records will henceforth mark yesterday’s events as a successful stress test of both tradition and surveillance equipment.”
“Translation?” I ask, because I love him even when he’s impossible.
“Congratulations,” he murmurs, and then—God save me—he adds, very dry, “Passions of youth,” as if it’s a diagnosis he is forced by guild law to record. It’s so absurdly gentle my throat gets ridiculous. I almost hug him. Almost. He senses it and takes a dignified half-step back, because there are lines even in a new world.
“Breakfast,” Mama says briskly, clapping her hands so the house will obey. “And then we will have no meetings at all, because meetings are for people who haven’t learned to jump.”
