Chapter 9
The Casino parking lot was full by the time I got there.
String lights ran between posts salvaged from the pier, yellow bulbs buzzing and flickering in the damp air.
Long tables crowded with roasted birds and grilled fish, crabs cracked open and steaming.
Bottles of wine pulled from cellar basements, labels faded and peeling.
Taylor had connected a wrist-com to a pair of Bluetooth speakers from a yacht, and country music blared across the tarmac, guitar and a man’s voice singing about a highway and a broken heart, a song that made little sense before the world broke but made perfect sense after.
I stood at the edge, watching. The Ci Dyn had formed a loose half-circle near one of the tables, their ears swiveling with each chord change.
They’d never heard this stuff before. A human girl, one of the Fatu Hiva survivors, was explaining the lyrics with her hands, and the Ci Dyn were nodding, ears perked, then one of them tilted her head and started singing.
Not with the melody, but around it. Her voice climbed, fell, and wove Barkish tonal runs between the guitar lines, and the sound was beautiful and chaotic at once.
Two more joined, then five, harmonizing without having to think about it, their voices blending into a sound that was half country ballad and half noise, but it was wonderful.
I watched it happen and didn’t try to explain it. Some things don’t need explaining.
Light rain started, fat drops hitting the tarmac with little plinks. The music kept playing. Nobody moved for a full song, then the rain picked up, and the whole gathering migrated inside the Casino ballroom in a cheerful, dripping wave.
The old Art Deco space filled fast. Bodies and laughter, the smell of salt air and wood smoke and roasted meat layered over the faded grandeur of the place.
The chandeliers were dark, replaced by more string lights strung across the rafters, and the floor gleamed under the yellow glow.
Women danced in pairs and small groups, human and Ci Dyn together, spinning and laughing.
A woman with one arm in a sling tried to teach a Ci Dyn girl with cropped ears a two-step, and the Ci Dyn was getting it completely backward and loving every second.
I moved through the crowd, stopping where the room thinned near the wall.
Dara sat on a crate, her leg propped on a cushion, crutch leaning against the plaster beside her.
The shrapnel wound from the Shima had healed clean, but the muscle was still rebuilding.
She nodded when she saw me, her dark hair falling across one eye.
“Captain,” she said. “They’re dancing.”
“They are,” I said. “You could be out there with them.”
“Next week,” she said, and tapped her left thigh. “Maybe.”
Cesna sat three yards down, her arm wrapped from elbow to wrist in clean gauze, the fabric still white but the edges tinged with old yellow.
Her right arm and left femur were broken during the Chesapeake explosion.
I’d found her unable to escape before directing others to help her.
I’d spoken with her a few times since then, but not enough.
I went to her. Resting my hand on her shoulder, I squeezed enough for her to feel the weight of it. Her skin was warm under my palm. She looked up, her dark eyes holding mine for several seconds before dropping to the floor.
“You look better,” I said. I knelt so we were at eye level. The string lights caught the gold in her irises. “Glad you came out. This is your celebration too.”
She nodded once, a short dip of the chin.
Her mouth opened, closed. The words didn’t come, but her thoughts reached me anyway, the way they sometimes did when the empathy kicked up a gear without warning.
Once I’m healed. Once I can stand beside him.
He will grace me with pups. Strong ones. Our blood.
I didn’t let my face change. “We’ll talk again soon, Cesna.” I winked at her and stood, my knees cracking. She almost smiled. Almost.
Across the room, Autumn was teaching a country line dance to Akia and six other Ci Dyn girls, and she was getting every step comprehensively wrong.
She’d swapped her green velvet dress for a salvaged flannel shirt that hung past her hips, the sleeves rolled to her elbows, and her platinum hair was loose and wild, swinging as she crossed her feet where they should step, arms going the wrong direction on the turn. She was laughing too hard to care.
Akia watched as if studying a complex mechanical diagram.
She stepped forward, planted her feet, and demonstrated the correct sequence twice, her small body moving with crisp, precise motions.
The Ci Dyn girls attempted it in a loose, enthusiastic line, tails wagging, ears perked, most of them missing the mark by a mile but having the time of their lives.
Joy stood nearby with a cup in her hand, raven hair catching the string-light glow, her soft blue eyes warm and amused. She caught me looking and raised her cup in a small salute. The next song kicked in, faster, with a fiddle line that made my blood jump whether I wanted it to or not.
Autumn spotted me and lunged across three bodies to grab my hand. “My humanz! Dance with us!”
I let her pull me into the line. The Ci Dyn girls made space, grinning, and I managed two full passes of the dance before my feet remembered they belonged to a man who’d spent more time on deck than on dance floors.
I slipped out toward the drinks table, catching Joy’s amused look as I went.
She held up two fingers and raised an eyebrow.
The drinks table was crowded. I poured some whisky into a plastic cup and turned to scan the room.
William Gerard stood near the east wall, surrounded by four Ci Dyn women who were asking him questions about starship engineering with varying degrees of sincerity.
His French accent had thickened with the wine, and his hands sketched elaborate diagrams in the air while the Ci Dyn watched his fingers with fascinated attention.
One of them, a tall golden-furred girl with floppy ears, reached out and touched his forearm, and William didn’t pull away.
Nolan Roux had found a quieter corner with two human women from the Shima rescue. They were laughing at whatever he’d said, his dark hair falling across his forehead, and one of them rested her hand on his knee. He looked equal parts terrified and thrilled.
Stuart sat on a bench with Flora pressed against his side, her sand-colored fur warm against his arm, her tail wrapped around his waist. Three other Ci Dyn girls had arranged themselves nearby, close enough to talk, far enough to give the couple their space.
Stuart caught my eye and gave me a look that was half help me and half don’t you dare, and I grinned and raised my cup.
The ballroom doors swung open. Rain gusted in, carrying the cold salt smell of the channel, and Lyubor stepped through with two other elves behind her.
Platinum hair, sharp green eyes, moving with the unhurried precision of a woman who had seen a thousand celebrations and would see a thousand more.
She was fashionably late, which for an elf probably meant arriving exactly when she intended to, regardless of what the clock said.
She stepped inside and looked around, slow and careful, like she was measuring every corner.
The air changed. I felt it in my arms first, a chill that crept up under my sleeves.
The music kept going, but the dancers missed a beat.
Near the door, a few people stopped laughing.
I caught myself watching her instead of the crowd.
I took a long pull from my cup and set it down. Time to go say hello.
I threaded through the crowd with my drink, taking a wide arc toward the ballroom’s far wall.
The string lights didn’t reach this deep.
Only thin moonlight filtered through the fogged windows.
Lyubor stood with her back to one of the big, crumbling pillars.
Her face read as perfectly at ease, but the two elves flanking her made the rest of the story clear.
Yaloni kept her arms folded and her spine so straight that it looked like a plank run down her back.
She stared at the dancing girls as if watching a hostile animal, her blue eyes fixed and her mouth set in a line.
Three feet down, the other elf, Venceslao, if I remembered right, stood even taller than Lyubor, with a face so thin and fine-boned I was sure most people in the room would mistake him for a woman.
His hair was black, perfectly straight, and hung past his jaw.
The way he watched the crowd, cool and patient, said he would rather be anywhere else but here.
Ci Dyn girls spun and pressed together on the dance floor, tails lashing at air, ears flicking in time to the music.
Nobody danced alone unless they wanted to.
A few human women joined the tangle, most of them giggling, more than a few taking the Ci Dyn hand offered and letting themselves be twirled until dizzy.
The music made the floor thump underfoot, even at the wall.
I didn’t bother to check if the elves would join.
It was obvious they would not, still, they were invited.
I stopped beside Lyubor and nodded once. “Didn’t expect you here,” I said.
She watched the dancers a moment longer before answering. “Tonight is about belonging. If we leave ourselves out, we forfeit what little we have.”
Yaloni’s jaw ticked, and I caught the edge of her thought: It is not about watching, but about participating. She didn’t say it. Her eyes flicked to me, then away.
Venceslao didn’t move. He regarded me with a flat blue gaze, then said, “The food is very good. The music is less so.”
I grinned. “It’s an acquired taste. Country music isn’t my go-to, but it’s okay, and it’s fun to dance to.”