9. CHAPTER NINE
Sira’s voice ripped through the corridor at a volume that should have been illegal before whatever time it was.
"Everyone up! It's a free day! I need itineraries as soon as possible though, or you are not leaving the bus!"
I jerked awake so hard that I nearly rolled off the bed, which would have been embarrassing enough without the added complication of Zhari’s arm tightening around my waist and hauling me back before I hit the floor.
“She does this every free day,” Zhari mumbled into my shoulder, her eyes still closed. “She cannot let us have one nice thing without a spreadsheet, but I still totally love her.”
“I heard that, Zhari. Dune has the comms on in the hallway,” Sira called from somewhere down the corridor. “And yes, I do need a spreadsheet. Last time, Lyn got lost in a canyon for six hours, and we had to delay departure.”
“It was a beautiful canyon,” Lyn’s voice chimed in through the comm. “I regret nothing.”
I settled back into the pillow and stared at the ceiling, which was doing that slow fiber-optic thing where the fake stars drifted in lazy circles. Zhari’s face was pressed into the back of my neck, her glow warm against my skin.
When I cracked my eyes open, I could see it spilling over my shoulder in a soft, steady rose-gold that hadn’t really dimmed since the night before.
She was practically radiating.
I was too, if I was being honest. My whole body felt loose, warm, and stupidly happy in a way I hadn’t felt in years. Maybe ever.
Last night had been—I mean. Yeah.
I smiled, pressed my face into the pillow, and let out a breath that was half laugh and half disbelief.
She pressed her lips to the spot behind my ear.
“Good morning,” she whispered seductively. “I had the best sleep.”
“Good morning to you,” I murmured.
I turned toward her and brushed a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. Then I slid my fingers into her hair, following it down to the back of her neck. A gentle tug brought her closer until our mouths met in a slow, sleepy kiss.
“You are glowing,” she murmured against my lips.
“You mean you’re glowing. I don’t glow. I’m human,” I said as I traced circles along her back.
“You are glowing on the inside,” she explained. “I can see it in your aura. It’s doing something new today.”
She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at me.
“It’s, like, swirling purple and pink. But there’s also a faint blue glow around the edges. It looks beautiful.”
“It sounds beautiful,” I said.
“It is,” she said, grinning before her smile faded and she let out a long sigh. “I wish we could stay in moments like these forever. My favorite kinds of days are the slow and peaceful ones. I rarely get them.”
“Me too.”
I pulled her down and kissed her—playful and teasing, our tongues swirling together in a flirty little dance. She slipped her hands beneath the blanket, found my hip, and gave it a cheeky squeeze.
When I pulled back, she grinned and rolled on top of me in one smooth motion, straddling my hips with a playful wiggle.
She looked down at me, her hands sliding up my waist and her fingers squeezing lightly.
“We should do something… fun.” Her brows did a quick little wiggle, a smirk tugging at one corner of her mouth.
“We did something fun last night,” I said. “But I could definitely do that fun again.”
I smirked.
“Something outside,” she said, her glow flickering on her neck. “I want to show you Orin. You have only seen it while going to and from both concerts. You haven’t actually been to Orin. It’s one of my favorite places besides Vela.”
Zhari booped my nose and rolled off me, sprawling out beside me.
We’d been there for a few days by then, and I’d barely seen any of it beyond the concert venue and the loading dock. The concerts were at night, so there wasn’t much to see in the dark. Once we got to the city, it was rush, rush underground and then up to the venue.
The shows there had been incredible. The crowds were smaller than at the Lumara concert, but they were louder and more intense. Zhari fed off it. She was different there—looser onstage and more playful.
She’d improvised an entire new bridge on the second night, and Lyn had just gone with it, grinning behind the drums while the crowd lost their minds.
Orin itself was still a mystery to me beyond what I could see from the viewport. I would look out the window in our room, where I could see the landscape stretching beyond the city limits.
The rolling hills were covered in something that wasn’t quite grass. It was more like low, silvery ferns that caught the light and threw it back in shifting patterns.
The sky there was also different from Vela’s. It was paler, almost pearlescent, with two small suns that hung low on the horizon and never seemed to fully set. Everything had a soft, permanent golden-hour quality that made me want to sit outside with my sketchbook for about six hours straight.
And don’t get me started on the flora.
The flora was wild.
Even from the bus window, I’d spotted things I had no names for—trees with pale trunks that you could almost see through if the light hit them right, their sap moving inside like thick honey.
Clusters of something that looked like coral grew out of the hillsides, bright orange and teal, swaying even when there was no wind.
Flowers, if you could call them that, seemed to open and close in slow pulses, their petals curling and unfurling in rhythm with one another as if they were breathing together. They were spectacular.
A few small creatures moved in groups across the fields. They ran low to the ground, their bodies shifting color to match whatever surface they crossed. They looked almost like a mix between squirrels and foxes.
Very strange-looking things, but cute.
I had also seen something that looked like a bird, except it had four wings and moved through the air in spirals instead of straight lines.
Yuki told me the local animals were mostly harmless, except for something called a Ridgeback, which was apparently the size of a dog with the temperament of a wasp.
You did not want to meet one after dark.
“Yes, this is true. I have never been here before,” I told Zhari as I sat up and stretched. “I had no idea what to expect, and nothing could have prepared me for the fact that the trees are basically glass with sap.”
“They are super easy to climb,” she said. “If you are not afraid of heights.”
“I’m not afraid of heights,” I scoffed. “I’m afraid of falling off the weird alien glass trees and dying in front of you.”
I rolled my eyes.
“This is a reasonable fear,” she said solemnly, then ruined it by picking up a nearby pillow and throwing it at me.
I caught it, laughing, and swung my legs off the bed.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said as I tucked my hair behind my ear.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to eat me up.” I raised my eyebrows playfully and smirked.
“I am always thinking about eating you up,” she said, leaning over and giving me a quick forehead kiss. “Get dressed. I want to take you to the market.”
“Oh, I love markets. I haven’t been to one in a few years. There’s this cute one in London that sells the best cherry cheesecake and—”
“You like cake made out of cheese?” she interrupted.
“We have a thing called cheesecake,” I said. “It’s not just a brick of cheese. It’s made from a bunch of ingredients. You’ll have to come to Earth to try it.”
She tilted her head, smiling.
“I would love that.”
As we talked, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, stretched, and bounced to her feet. She walked over to the dresser and grabbed a pair of soft lavender track pants and a matching hoodie that had clearly seen a lot of laundry cycles.
She tied her hair back in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck, then tugged the hood up over it so only a few glowing strands poked out around her cheeks.
The casual, half-hidden look made her seem less like Zhari Lumis, pop star, and more like some girl I was sneaking out with between classes when I was in high school.
“We have moon cheese,” she added as she rummaged through the nightstand until she found a pair of sunglasses. “Obviously not from an actual moon.”
She rolled her eyes as if that were a common mistake.
The sunglasses were thin and iridescent, their frames shifting from blue to rose depending on the angle. They were totally out of orbit.
I was halfway to the small wardrobe when the other thing—that quiet, anxious part of me that hadn’t shut up since the dressing room—suddenly got even louder.
“Question,” I said, turning back to her. “Yesterday. Last night. That wasn’t—”
“Bad?” she said. “Regrettable? Something you wish to erase from the timeline?”
She laughed.
Her smile faltered on the last one, and it made my chest pinch.
“No,” I said quickly. “God, no. It was—”
I flailed my hands, searching for a word that wasn’t just feral screaming as I walked closer to her.
“It was… a lot. In a good way, though.” I laughed.
“But?” she asked softly.
“But,” I said, sitting back down on the edge of the bed, “I need you to know that me wanting you like that isn’t the same as me signing up for the forever-bond thing. My body is apparently very on board. My brain is still in a meeting about it.”
Her brows furrowed.
“You think I cannot tell the difference?” she asked. “Between you wanting to touch me and you wanting to bind your life to mine? I understand my species is different from yours. We move fast.”
“Yes, Velans do. Also, I don’t know what you can tell,” I said. “You keep saying the aura knows, like it’s this wise little light bulb in your chest. Mine just feels like static.”
“For me, it is not just light,” she said. “When our auras clicked at the concert, it was like…”
She searched the air with her hands, fingers spreading as if she could pull the right words out of it.
“Like hearing a song I had loved my whole life and suddenly remembering the lyrics. It did not feel new. It felt like… Oh, there you are. I have been waiting for you.”
My throat went tight.
“That’s a lot to put on someone you just met.”