Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Killan
Taking my shoes off in the passageway, I creep into my bedroom.
Lydia has left the bathroom light on, and it outlines the partially closed door, leaving thick shadows over the bed.
Exhaustion pulls at my body, but I do not rush.
Instead, I step slowly, keeping my movements measured so as not to wake the female.
She sleeps every night in my bed, but she is not mine.
Not mine, I silently repeat, a mantra designed to harden myself against the weakness that always seems to settle over me at the end of a long day, when I am so tired my mind threatens to gift my imagination license to roam through the impossible.
Lydia has her back to my side of the bed. One hand is cupped under her temple, and her shoulders are hunched. Even asleep, she is guarded—against Ril II. Against me.
Her hairs fan out behind her, and I am bending over the bed, a hand outstretched before I stop myself.
She rolls over, and I straighten so fast my shoulders crack.
“You are awake,” I say dumbly.
“Yeah.” She sits up, resting against the headboard. “I think we should talk.”
“No.” I speak my first instinct, lying down with my back to her.
“Bloody hell, Killan. What do you mean, no?” There is the sound of her hands hitting the mattress, then she is pushing at my shoulder, trying to turn me.
I refuse to be moved. “I mean no.” Every time we talk, I say something stupid, or she misunderstands my meaning, and we end up in another one of our arguments. I do not have the energy for that tonight.
The mattress creaks as she climbs off the bed. A moment later she is standing at my side, arms crossed, glaring down at me. A thin strip of light from the bathroom falls across her face, illuminating her bright eyes.
“Can this not wait until the morning?” I ask.
“In the morning, you’ll run out of here like your feet are on fire before I’ve woken up.”
“Harvest begins tomorrow. I have much work.”
“Well, so do I.”
I scoff, rolling over.
She scoffs right back at me and climbs over my legs to her side of the bed.
I close my eyes, resolutely ignoring the feeling of her body brushing over mine.
Why is she so much harder to ignore when I am exhausted?
And why, when I am half asleep, is it so easy for my treacherous mind to imagine all the other ways she could climb over me?
It is my fault she was abducted.
I fixate on the memory of her first discovering John Smith’s betrayal and how she stared at me, shocked and scared and furious.
My fault. My fault.
She wants nothing more than to return to her home. And I cannot afford to forget that fact, not even for a second, not even when I am on the brink of sleep.
“Chloe told me—”
“Chloe?” I sit up. “You were talking to Chloe?”
“I can talk to whoever I want. I’m not your captive.”
I take a deep breath, my temper rising. “I did not mean that.” Of everyone I have met, Lydia is the fastest to anger me, as if she knows exactly what to say to piss me off.
“Chloe told me that you’re a liar,” she says. “I didn’t believe her, except that you’re acting all weird.”
“And you trust Chloe?”
“Don’t growl at me,” she snarls.
“You were the one who wanted to talk,” I remind her. Slumping against the headboard, I bury my face in my upper hands. This is why I said no. Nothing good ever comes of us speaking.
“Stupid me,” she says, lying down, arms crossed and glaring up at the ceiling.
I follow her line of sight. Directly overhead is an empty hook from which a LOVE GALAXY camera used to hang. Lydia tore it down after John Smith deserted us. I caught her stamping on the camera, grinding it under her boot heel.
New guilt gnaws at my stomach.
“What did Chloe say about me?” I ask quietly, knowing I will not like the answer but feeling I should ask all the same. If Lydia wants to talk, then I will talk. It is the least I can do for her.
She was stolen from her home because of me.
Lydia is quiet for so long I am half asleep again when she finally speaks.
“She said that you don’t want me to leave. That you’re lying about wanting to help me get home. But of course I know that isn’t true. She was only saying that because…well, because.” I feel her shrug and look at her just in time to catch her watching me.
For a heartbeat our eyes meet, then she returns to staring up at the ceiling and the remaining evidence of LOVE GALAXY, hanging over our heads like a weight threatening to fall onto us.
“She said that the Guild will know where Earth is, and if we were to ask, it’d help us. Are you absolutely, completely sure it won’t—”
“It will not.”
“And you know this because you’ve already spoken to them?” There is a hint of…something in her voice. Accusation? Disbelief? I wish I could understand her expression, but it is not one I am familiar with.
I shake my head. “Even if the Guild wanted to help, there is nothing it could do. Your planet is not in its database nor on any of its star maps.”
“Hmm.” She makes a noncommittal sound. Does she not believe me?
Fek. “Chloe is as bad as John Smith, pitting us against each other.” Abruptly, I stand on the bed, my head hitting the ceiling so that I cannot straighten.
Taking hold of the hook, I try unscrewing it, wanting it gone.
It has been set into the stone more securely than I anticipated, and I struggle to get a firm hold of it, my hand large and the hook small.
“You should not trust her. She has proven herself unworthy of such an honor. She helped John Smith try to murder Briar.”
“I guess…” Lydia releases a long sigh. “I can’t help thinking that she knows something important. Something I could use to get home.”
“You miss…akh—” I have forgotten the name of her homeworld.
“Earth.” Lydia fills the silence for me. “Of course. Don’t you miss Ril I?” She names my birth planet and the planet after which this one was named.
“No.” Memories of my sister threaten to surface, and I push them deeper. She died a long time ago. I cannot still be mourning her. It would achieve nothing but more heartache, and I do not have time for that, not with the harvest tomorrow.
“Here.” Lydia stands, reaching toward the ceiling as if to help, but she slips across the bed toward me, my greater weight creating a divot in the mattress. She catches herself, a hand on my chest, struggling to stand on the uneven surface.
My scales are not sensitive, but I am surprised by how much of her touch I can feel. Her skin is a few degrees colder than me, and it is as if she is freezing the outline of her palm onto my chest.
Steadying herself, she snatches her hand back, but I can still feel where she touched me. I do not dare look, afraid of seeing the imprint of her hand on my scales. Or maybe I am afraid that I will not see the imprint.
The force of my anger dissipates. “What is it that you miss so much about Eer-th?”
“Lots of things.” If she is surprised by my question, I cannot tell. She reaches up, stretching, and grabs the hook with her delicate fingers. She works on twisting it free, her brow creased, and her other arm outstretched to steady herself.
I catch her extended arm, holding her still, but making sure to only touch the parts of her covered by her clothes.
“It’s not nearly so windy on Earth,” she confesses. “And there are lots of people and shopping malls and takeaway food and hairdressers.”
“Clothes for your hairs?”
“What? No.” She laughs.
I flinch, startled. Her laughter is…new.
“A hairdresser is someone who cuts your hair.”
“I could cut your hairs. I have a knife.” With my third arm, I gesture at the drawer of my bedside table.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m planning on getting home long before I get desperate enough for you to cut my hair.”
“I could do it.”
“You don’t have hair.” She gives me a quick look up and down, indicating my scales. With the bathroom light directly behind her, it is hard for me to see the finer details of her face, but I think the corners of her lips turn upward, just for a moment.
Or mayhaps I imagined it.
I rub my closed eyes, as a fresh wave of exhaustion washes over me.
“Almost there.” She gives the hook a final twist, and it comes free. She presents it to me, the hook lying on the palm of her hand.
“My thanks.” I take it, careful to keep from touching her skin as I do so.
“Bloody fuck.” Evidently having noticed and misinterpreted my intention, she stumbles back a step and almost loses her balance.
“I did not—” I begin, reaching to catch her, but she cuts me off.
“I’m going to sleep.” Dropping onto the mattress, she presents her back to my side of the bed, curling her legs up toward her chest, looking suddenly smaller than usual. A reminder that she is not Ril’os. That she is not for me.
We are not a good match. That is why John Smith chose her—because he knew we would fight. Because he knew we would give him the drama he craved. Even with him long gone from Ril II, he is a stain on our lives.
I close my fist around the hook, crushing the metal beyond recognition.