Chapter 5 #2
Structurally, his features were symmetrical. Though a little too sharp. The small imperfection making him that much more intriguing. Perfection and boring beauty giving way to something with personality and character.
The way he carried himself read playboy. There was a cockiness that had probably gotten him into trouble more than once. Gus bet it was the reason for that nick in his eyebrow too.
But there was more to him, Gus sensed. His roguishness a mask for something else. Something real, if treacherous. And maybe just a little lonely.
“You poisoned me,” Caius said.
“I sedated you.”
There was a difference.
Caius finally looked at her.
Fear tried to crawl up the back of Gus’s skull before she suppressed it. There were scarier things in this universe than an upset Tuann. No matter how deadly that Tuann might be.
“You were emotional. I thought some time out would be in everyone’s best interests,” Gus explained.
“You are very brave.”
And very stupid.
He didn’t say that, but Gus heard it all the same.
“I’m about to be very dead if you don’t get your ass in gear.”
They all would be.
Caius’s gaze drifted back to the trees. “I recognize these. They’re Tuann.”
“Are they?” Gus asked, playing dumb.
Caius’s gentle tone wasn’t fooling her. This man was considering whether to kill her or not.
That was gratitude for you. Save a life. Get dead for your trouble.
“How did you get them?” Caius inquired in that oh so reasonable tone.
“She’s a wanderer,” Anandra volunteered, missing, or ignoring, the building tension.
Gus stared Caius down, not looking away as she held her breath.
After a moment, he smiled, the look in his eyes deepening with an awareness that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “Not quite.”
“Can we discuss what I am or am not once we get out of here? There isn’t much time,” Gus said.
Caius held out an arm in a silent demand for help. “By all means.”
Gus eyed him warily, not fooled. With the essence he’d received from the choko tree, he should be in good enough shape to get up on his own.
Caius’s lips curved upward as he caught the refusal on her face. “I thought you were in a hurry.”
That didn’t mean she’d be complicit in her own slaughter.
A husky laugh left Caius at whatever he saw on her face. “So cautious, jani.”
Gus’s eyes narrowed. Translated, that word meant little goddess. An oddly sentimental term of endearment, given what he’d been contemplating a few seconds ago.
“Reminds me of another woman I know,” he purred.
Gus bristled. He meant Kira.
Seeing Gus wasn’t going to help, Anandra was eager to step forward, fitting himself under Caius’s arm. The boy struggled, attempting to lift the much heavier man and failing.
“Thank you, azala,” Caius said,
So, the commander had a gentle side. How disturbing.
Caius climbed to his feet, careful to let Anandra think he was helping.
“Hurry,” Gus urged.
Caius pushed Anandra away gently, indicating he’d move under his own power from here on out.
Gus’s thoughts turned to planning their escape route. If they could get to her workroom, they could take one of the maintenance tunnels to a different section. There was a hatch hidden under her fridge so that she could escape quickly and quietly with no one the wiser.
A second explosion rocked the forest around them, coming from the direction of the night garden.
“They’ve breached the living quarters,” Gus murmured.
They were moving much faster than expected.
“I take it that was where we needed to go,” Caius mused.
“Yes.”
“From your expression, I’m assuming there isn’t another exit,” Caius guessed.
Gus glanced at him. “Not an orthodox one anyway.”
There was a question on his face as she changed direction. Guided by instinct and memories from when she’d created this place, Gus navigated to one of the greenhouse’s exterior walls.
“Make a hole,” Gus ordered Caius, pointing at a spot between two sets of flowering vines.
One was an asqel with rose-like blooms dotting its stems. The dsali on the other side was considered something of a nuisance in most plant circles for how quickly it grew and how hard it was to get rid of, but Gus was partial to the blue veining on its leaves.
She’d also taught it the perils of exceeding the space allotted to it on its second week in the habitat.
“You want me to break down your wall?” Caius asked with enough skepticism to make someone unfamiliar with his capabilities doubt themselves.
“That’s what I said.”
She was pretty sure she hadn’t stuttered either.
Caius studied her out of the corner of his eye. “Why don’t you do it?”
Gus allowed herself a small, humorless smile. “My soul’s breath doesn’t lend itself well to such large scale destruction.”
If it did, she wouldn’t be preparing to flee her sanctuary.
“It might be wiser to stand our ground rather than flee,” Caius tested.
“I counted at least forty humans out there. Can you hold out against that many?”
“Perhaps if I had help.”
Gus’s eyes narrowed impatiently. “The boy would die.”
“The boy? Not you?”
“I would probably die too.”
She hadn’t mentioned it because she thought it wouldn’t carry much weight with him.
“Something tells me you’re being falsely modest, my lady,” Caius purred.
Gus wasn’t, but it was good he thought so. It might mean he was less likely to test her boundaries.
“Will you do it or not?” Gus demanded.
She jumped, her fear shooting into her throat, as the wall exploded outward.
Caius sauntered toward the hole he’d created. “Give yourself credit, jani. No one has ever incapacitated me.” He paused to aim a predator’s smile at her. “You’re the first.”
Caius’s words left Gus cold as she took in the destruction. He’d done this without the aid of a katta or one of the runes the Tuann needed for focus. Just intention and power.
Alerted by the growing commotion from the other side of the greenhouse door, Gus tugged Anandra behind her before pausing to take one last look at her home.
Her sanctuary.
Briefly, she wondered if fleeing was the wrong move. With the kind of destructive ability Caius had just demonstrated, it was possible he could hold his ground against the army coming for them.
A part of her, a piece so deeply buried that she was barely aware of it, yearned to make these intruders pay for their trespass in blood and pain. To protect what she’d created with her own hands.
“The way is clear but I’m sure that won’t be the case for long,” Caius called from outside.
The brief inclination to stay and fight vanished without a trace. Stuffed deep into the corners of her heart where she no longer looked.
Pride. Stubbornness. Those were things reserved for others.
Not Gus. Never her.
Abandon the things precious to her or die a pointless death. That was what Gus knew. That was how she survived.
Anandra’s hand slipped into hers. Its weight warm. Comforting. “Are you crying?”
“No.”
Tears weren’t something Gus was capable of anymore. Somewhere in those years she didn’t like to think about, they’d run dry. If she ever had them in the first place.
Gus tugged Anandra’s hood up to cover his head and face before doing the same with hers. “Caius is right. They’ll have heard that and will be coming.”
Anandra’s hand in hers, Gus walked out of the place she’d once considered home, uncertain if she’d ever return.