CHAPTER 25 KORI #2
Adria sighs and sits beside me on the bed. The mattress dips under her weight far more than mine, but this bed was designed for nightfolk to start with, so it maintains its integrity despite her muscled bulk. Her wings flare wide so that one wraps around my body, cradling me close to her side.
“My technologists were able to cobble your ship together into … something … akin to what it was. The engine blessedly survived the crash, and you should have just enough fuel for a one-way trip back to the Daylands. Aspect is fully recharged and waiting by the boarding ramp. They were … surprisingly helpful with the repairs.”
A little laugh breaks from me. “Like mother, like robot, I suppose.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Hopefully their help on repairs is better than their help in combat.”
“It would be a tall order for it to be worse.”
We both laugh at that, our hands wandering to meet again between us, her long fingers all but eclipsing mine.
Despite her skin being cooler than mine, a little shudder of heat goes through me at the contact.
I bring my other hand over to play with her fingers, and she lets me, despite the vicious claws and strength they hold.
I lift each finger one by one, trying to memorize what they felt like on the skin of my cheek, in the waves of my hair, splayed across my back holding me fast in our long-awaited kiss.
“I have to go, don’t I?” I breathe, unable to meet her eyes. “I have so many questions that it hardly feels like going home at all.”
“You’ll come back to me,” Adria says, not a question this time. “Look at me, Kori.” I do, her gaze swimming with adoration I can still hardly believe. “And I’ll be waiting for you. I promise. I swear it on everything I have left to lose.” Her lips quirk upward. “There’s one other thing.”
She reaches into a pocket of her robes before plucking out a jagged stone that gleams a soft, steady blue.
It’s just the right size for her to drop it into my palm.
I expect the stone to be cold against my bare skin, like everything else in the Shadowlands, but it pulses with ethereal warmth instead.
It’s beautiful, but somehow primal, too.
My heart races, nearly pounding through my chest, as if to keep pace with a fundamental rhythm at the heart of the world.
I stare wonderingly. “Is this …?”
“A piece of the Diakópsei, yes.”
One of the gemfruits. I remember these from our visit to the Cataclysm site.
Since they’re so much smaller than the main asteroid, the comparatively tiny energy they contain isn’t immediately overwhelming upon physical contact; instead, while I can feel the power pulsing beneath its surface, I think the gemfruit could be used as needed, staying contained until the right moment arose.
But it was definitely never meant for my use. I feel the blood draining from my face, and a chill weaves down my spine. “Elysium can’t have possibly approved of this. Let alone Thaane, let alone the court—”
“I didn’t ask Elysium for permission,” Adria says, unflinching. “And I didn’t tell Thaane, or the court.”
I shake my head rapidly. “They’re waiting for any mistake, Adria. Any misstep at all. If they catch word of this—”
“They won’t.”
“But why risk it?”
Adria closes one hand over mine, locking the shimmering gemfruit between our palms. “When these are secured in their vessels, on either side of the Diakópsei,” she says, “they’re endlessly renewed and refueled by it. But if you take one with you, it’ll only work once.” Her violet eyes
pin me in place as she withdraws her hand. “Then you have to come back to me.”
I turn the gemfruit over and over in my palm, feeling out its strange shape, admiring it like a talisman. A ward against forces of dark and light alike.
“I’ll always come back to you,” I breathe, pressing my lips to the fruit’s surface.
I feel its primeval power glint briefly, impossibly blue on my lips, electric, before I press them back to Adria’s.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, my fingers threaded in her overlong hair, her hands holding me steady at the hips, her mouth eclipsing every fear that haunts the edges of my mind, but it’s not nearly long enough.
I don’t think any length of time would be enough.
All things considered, Adria’s technicians did an impressive job salvaging my starship.
Cracks spider throughout the central dome, and the wings aren’t quite at their intended angles, with additional trusses of support added between the upper and lower pairs, as well.
It’s easy to tell which pieces had broken off and were soldered back on, often with bits and bobs missing.
It looks like Charon if I had tried to sketch it from memory, with my left hand, while blindfolded across one eye. But it’s still Charon. It’s still my ticket home.
Home. I want to curl up beneath Adria’s wings and simply tell stories back and forth until we can’t keep our eyes open.
I want to wake up to Russ unnecessarily slobbering all over Aspect’s scratched-in smile with three enthusiastic tongues.
The Shadowlands were never meant for me, but I can’t shake the persistent sense that Adria was.
Despite all that logic would dictate, I could build a home here.
Instead, I’m being called back to the ever-shifting sands, then diving beneath them, back to the
settlement. A downward spiral into a potential conspiracy I’m only just beginning to understand.
For all the impressive cobbling together that the nightfolk did, Charon’s boarding ramp was apparently beyond saving.
Adria lifts me on her shoulders to reach the cockpit.
Aspect is already waiting inside, eyes brightly beaming cherry red, both arms waving at different speeds.
Not unlike Charon, their limbs bear new patches of foreign metal, with the occasional gear or cog sticking unnecessarily out, but they hardly seem to mind.
“Aspect—fixed ship. Aspect is still—useful—at the end of the world.”
“Not the end of the world yet.” I laugh, taking their outstretched hand and sliding off Adria’s shoulders. Immediately, I keenly feel the absence of her body on mine. “Adria.”
She looks at me, though the tension in her jaw and her furrowed brows tell me it’s taking all her strength not to look away and spare herself the pain of watching me leave.
“Be the queen I know you are. Hold the line.” I slip one hand into my pocket, feeling the unearthly shape and pulse of the gemfruit I’ll carry with me. “And when I come back, I expect you’ll be waiting.”
“You’re making demands now? On my side of the planet?” She laughs, but it’s dry, humorless. “Be safe, Kori.”
“I’ll try.” It’s the best promise I can offer. Not enough, but something, at least.
I reach to tap my armor’s trigger points, triggering the extension of a helmet around my face, then a cascade of protection across the rest of my body.
I don’t really need any of it until I’m home, where it will be necessary again: both to preserve any remaining anonymity and to avoid alarming anyone at my ability to withstand Pagonian radiation.
But my eyes burn something fierce, my throat closing up.
If, stars forbid, I don’t come back—if I collapse somewhere on my quest for answers and never know the sweet assurance of her lips on mine again—I don’t want Adria to remember me crying as I said goodbye.
“You better,” Adria says, but I hardly hear her over the struggling engine’s roar. What I do hear, unbelievably loud, is three canine heads howling headlong at the sky, watching their robotic companion slowly shrink smaller and smaller as we ascend.
The tears I’ve been fighting back rally hard, my eyes burning.
Aspect leans out the ship’s still-open entrance like the lead in a romance film, holding onto the side of the doorway with one hand.
“Aspect—will miss—” But the wind around us is picking up something fierce, a stirring whirlwind.
Unsteady, they nearly pitch forward, and I catch them hard by their other arm, pulling them back into Charon’s interior proper.
“TRIPLE DOG!” Aspect concludes, waving their free arm wildly farewell as the cockpit seals shut around us.
Distantly, the dog’s wails carry over the wind. Aspect produces a strange series of low, nearly musical beeps that I’ve never heard before. First words, of a sort? Why did they have to be born of tragedy?
Is this really what it is to be a person, then? An understanding, first, of hope, of dreams … only to have those chased by inescapable pain?
Charon’s battered husk rises, defiant as ever, into the sunless sky. Through muffled sobs of my own, I take the pilot’s seat and set our course for home.
I struggle almost as much as Charon with our trip across the Passage.
Every cough and sputter of the half-wrecked shell and practically zombified engine threatens to shake a little sob out of me.
My clammy hands struggle to grip the remaining controls at all—very few left working, save for the essential directional lever and an on/off trigger for the engine—and when I do get a decent hold, it’s a death grip, sending shooting pain through my arms. It doesn’t help that the autopilot was dead on arrival, so I have to make every flight decision manually, even when I want to curl into a fetal position.
Compared to the Shadowlands, the heat wave of entering the Passage should feel like rebirth.
Instead it feels like I’ve gone from cold, solid safety to formless, blazing torment, the sands below us ever shifting and swirling with violent winds.
I thought I missed warmth, especially when I tried to sleep, but now my eyes sting, my skin prickling with it.