Chapter 30
30
Toorin
A shaft of light shining in my eyes woke me. I yawned and stretched and promptly rolled off the bed. It wasn’t far to the ground, so I landed with a soft thunk on the clothes we’d discarded in a rush the night before. They were still damp.
“M’kay?” Marc muttered before promptly falling asleep again.
No. I wasn’t okay. Not in the slightest. Today was the day. Today, we’d meet Dr. Hahl and try to convince her to risk her life for a journey back to Toonu to complete surgery on two people she shouldn’t have any reason to care about.
I should have been excited. I should have been waking everyone up, eager to get going.
Instead, a heaviness grew roots in my chest, and as I sat and watched Marc sleep, his ribs rising and falling with each soft breath, that heaviness morphed into dread.
If you don’t get your heart back, you’ll die.
Maybe. But at what cost? My life wasn’t worth more than Marc’s. I was nothing more than the spawn of a scrapper. While Marc… Marc was a chancellor’s spawn, one of the best men I knew and the man I loved.
I crawled back into the prickly mattress and spooned him from behind, my cock hard and my heart soft. Marc pressed his ass into my groin, and as much as I wanted that, I wanted to hold him more. I kissed his neck and whispered in his ear. “Sleep. It’s early yet.”
He threaded his fingers through the hand I laid over his heart. I hadn’t laid it there out of envy. I no longer wanted my heart back, but I loved feeling it beat strong and true in his chest. It had served me well, and I only wanted it to do the same for him for the rest of his years, however long the stars allowed.
Marc rolled over, his back to the wall, and threw a leg over mine. His eyes were at half-mast when he said, “Are you excited?”
I kissed the knuckles of our joined hands. “I’m not sure that’s the word for it.”
His eyes flew open, suddenly wide awake. “No. We’re not doing this.”
Moon and mars, I should have kept my mouth shut.
We’d talked about this before, but it was time I took a stand. “I don’t want to go through with this. No,” I said as Marc opened his mouth to speak. “I’m not going through with this. We can rest a few days, you can collect your camel, and we can go back to the IP where we belong.”
“We have no quarters on the Lark for a camel.”
I took his chin in my hand. Where I wanted to squeeze the sense into him, I kissed him instead and deepened it.
He pushed me away. “Stop. I’m not letting your lips distract me.”
“Shame.” I waggled my brows at him, but he only scoffed.
“Would you stop?”
I raised my hand, surrendering.
When he seemed confident I wouldn’t speak over him, he said, “I don’t know when you got it in your head about not going through with this. We risked our lives. Bodie, Lyric, Darwin, and Juniper have risked their lives to do this. We’re not turning around now.”
“Not even if I want you to have it? It’s not my heart anymore. In every way I can give my heart to you, it’s yours.”
Marc closed his eyes. The silence filled the room. The drunken shouts from the night before had given way to the quiet of the early morning. Not even the street vendors were hawking their wares yet.
When I thought he’d agree, he opened his eyes and said, “If I agree to this—which I don’t —Bodie’s going to think all this was part of my elaborate plan.”
I snorted out a grim chuckle. “What elaborate plan? To seduce me? To get me to fall in love with you so I wouldn’t want my heart back?”
“Well… aye.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it?”
I wasn’t going to allow him to go down that path. We were in this together. I wouldn’t permit him to push me away. I knew he loved me, and I wouldn’t put it past him to pull something foolish. I cut him off at the knees with one look.
“Okay, okay.” Marc finally relented. “It is, but Bodie—”
“Let me worry about Bodie.”
I started to rise, but Marc grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. “Where are you going?”
“To tell Bodie the plans are off. We agreed—”
“No. We didn’t. We owe it to ourselves and them to at least talk to the doctor.”
I narrowed my eyes, and he looked away. “You think I’ll change my mind once I talk to the doctor.”
Marc’s laugh came out layered in derision. “I already know how stubborn you are. Promise me you’ll talk to the doctor. That’s all I ask.”
“I promise.” I kissed him and crawled out of bed before he caught the lie. Or at least my uncertainty. I would talk to the doctor, but nothing the doctor could say would make me want to go through with the surgery.
We stumbled downstairs not much later to find the crew already eating breakfast. We sat at the table with them and immediately had a bowl of porridge and flat bread plopped down in front of us from an out-of-sorts barman.
Bodie slurped up a bite. “I traded that one corroded chip for the food. The one with the broken solders and two good diodes.”
I glanced around at the food. All in all, we probably came out ahead on that one. The porridge would stick to our ribs, and the diodes wouldn’t even buy the barman a quarter barrel of musty mead.
Bodie twisted in his seat as if stretching out a sore spot.
“How did you sleep?” I asked.
He cut me a look that would have sliced through the thickest bowline. “Like a nursing spawn.”
A blatant lie. I chuckled.
“I slept great,” Lyric said. “Until Marc came so loud he woke the whole boarding house.”
Marc choked on the porridge. “I didn’t—”
“I was two rooms over,” Juniper said, not raising her mouth far from the bowl as she shoveled in the food and talked around the mouthful. “And you did.”
“Sorry,” I said with a grin big enough to prove I wasn’t. Marc turned a shade of red I hadn’t seen on his face since it was the heat of the day in the badlands.
The four of them scoffed.
“Not a sorry bone in that body,” Bodie said.
I didn’t argue because he was right. I wasn’t sorry. Not in the least.
After we had our fill, we shouldered our packs, and the barman came to clean the table.
“Where’s the hospital?” Bodie asked.
Out of all of us, he’d been the most anxious to get going each morning and push for the extra mile or two every day. He wanted this over, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. It was just that I felt like each step, each mile, each hurdle that we overcame brought me somewhere I no longer wanted to be.
Bodie clapped me on the shoulder.
“What?” I tuned back in to find everyone staring at me.
Those sharp eyes of Bodie’s scrutinized me. I appreciated them when I needed him to spot constellations on a cloudy night. I didn’t appreciate them nearly as much when he turned that scrutiny on me. “The hospital is at the top of the hill.”
“Bloody brilliant.” I had all the enthusiasm of someone walking the plank in the middle of a storm.
This bar had an actual door, and Darwin held it open while Lyric, Marc, and Juniper filed out.
Bodie caught my arm as I turned to follow. He leaned in, though no one was around to overhear. “What’s going on with you?”
I pulled my arm free. “Nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
“Aye.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
I considered coming clean, telling him that all our efforts had been in vain, that I would refuse the transplant, that we were wasting our time and the doctor’s.
But I knew he wouldn’t accept that answer the same way Marc hadn’t. I’d speak with the doctor, no more.
Stepping to the door, I held it open for him. “Let’s get a bloody move on.”
Marcelis
We stood at the bottom of the hill and craned our necks upward. “Why are the hospitals always at the top of a hill?”
This one made the hike up the culvert to the hospital in Toonu look like a stroll through the shanties on the fringe.
“It’s bloody fucking ridiculous,” Darwin said.
There was no reason for all of us to rush the hospital like a brewing squall. They could have stayed in the pub at the boarding house and waited for Marc and me to return. “You all can wait here. Maybe it would be best.”
“Fuck that,” Juniper said and started walking.
Lyric followed. “I’m with her.”
Darwin grumbled after them. “It’s not like I wasn’t going to go.”
Bodie took hold of the strap of Toorin’s pack.
“What are you doing?”
“Give me your pack.”
I wanted to kick myself. I should have thought of that. Out of all of us, Toorin was at the biggest disadvantage physically.
Toorin shrugged him off. “I can carry my bloody pack up a hill.”
“It has switchbacks,” Bodie said as if that would make him change his mind.
Turning to me, Toorin said, “Would you tell this man to bugger off?”
I refused to do that not only because I agreed with Bodie but because he’d probably flatten me if I did. He was very protective of Toorin, and I didn’t hold that against him.
Toorin kept hold of his pack and grumbled as we started up the hill after Darwin. Toorin’s strides were long, his footfalls heavy, his breathing ragged. It didn’t take long before he was out of breath.
He kept going.
“Can you talk some bloody sense into your man?” Bodie whispered so loud I’m sure Juniper, two switchbacks ahead, heard.
Toorin didn’t bother turning around when he said, “I can hear you.”
“That was the point,” Bodie fired back.
I didn’t reply. The question hadn’t been meant for me. And I knew the answer anyway. The answer was no . Clearly.
In the distance, a narrow road wound up the hill toward the hospital, with camel-drawn carts pulling the sick to the waiting doctors. While walking on the road would have been easier than the trail, it had to be nearly twice the distance.
Bodie and I caught up to Toorin as he slowed and pulled off the trail. “Go ahead of me. I can’t take you two breathing down my neck.”
Sweat stained his clean clothes and beaded on his brow before rolling down and falling off the tip of his nose. He pulled the cork off the top of the waterskin and took a long swallow. He offered it up, but we waved for him to drink his fill.
I glanced at Bodie and caught his eye. Aye, his look said, the walk was a little steep, but it wasn’t that bad .
Bodie crossed his arms over his chest, not liking what he saw. This time, when he reached for Toorin’s pack, Toorin tucked the waterskin away and let Bodie take it.
Toorin leaned against a boulder. “You two go ahead. I’ll be right behind.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Toorin shook his head. “I’ll come. Promise .”
I took his promise in and held it close. He wasn’t only talking about walking the trail. He was talking about the promise he’d made me that morning. With no clue how I’d convince him to proceed with the surgery, I turned and continued up the hill. Besides, it would be five against one when it came time to convince him to go through with it. Besides, we had to bring the doctor safely to Toonu before we could even think about the surgery… assuming we all survived the return trip.
A lot could happen between now and then.
While my damp clothes had dried on the walk to the hospital trail, sweat now trickled down the crack of my ass. At least we didn’t have gritty sand sticking to us.
At one of the switchbacks, sure footfalls caught up with me. I turned to say something to Toorin, only to find he wasn’t behind me.
With little more than a stutter step, a woman stepped around me and continued up the trail, her breath slow and even. Bodie turned and watched her ascent. Below us, Toorin leaned against the boulder, his head bowed. “He hasn’t moved a step.”
“I should go—”
Putting his hands to his mouth, Bodie shouted, “Oi!”
Toorin’s head snapped up, and he heaved himself to his feet, then started shuffling up the trail. My breathing had nearly evened out by the time he caught up.
“You good?” I asked
He stopped long enough to give my cheek a peck. “Fine.”
We kept going since we didn’t have the extra chips to splurge on a camel cart ride to the top. I had to hope that Toorin’s heart would do the same.
We found Darwin, Lyric, and Juniper at the top, sitting in a patch of dirt in the shade near the entrance, and stood as we approached.
“Hurry,” Juniper said. “Dr. Hahl is at lunch. But we talked to her assistant. He’s going to slip you in between appointments.”
Toorin looked at each of them in turn, and they looked guiltier by the second. “How did you convince him to do that?”
They exchanged glances before Lyric said, “Probably best we don’t tell, ye.”
In unison, Darwin and Juniper said, “Aye.”
“Moon and mars.” Toorin cursed as he approached the front door with an upward twist to his lips that he couldn’t hide.
They led us through the hospital, down empty corridors, and up a flight of stairs before coming to an open area where a man sat behind a counter. He stood as soon as he saw us, nearly stumbling over his feet as if he couldn’t decide whether to walk or bow.
What have they done?
“I’m Siv. Dr. Hahl’s assistant. Please follow me.” He gestured down the hall, averting his gaze as we preceded him down the hall.
I thumped Juniper on the shoulder when he passed us. When she turned around, I mouthed, “What the bloody fuck?”
She turned back quickly and completely ignored me when I tapped her again.
The man opened a door, and we all filed into the sparse, stuffy room and turned to face him.
“Dr. Hahl will be in shortly.”
When he went to bow, Darwin cut him short with a slicing motion across his throat. They had zero subtly, and it would have been hilarious if I didn’t suspect that I knew what they’d told the man.
The door quietly clicked closed. Beside me, Toorin fumed. After a few seconds, he motioned to me. “Check the hall.”
I opened the door, scanning the hall, but we were alone. “Clear.”
Toorin rounded on the three of them. “How could you be so careless? For weeks, we’d been trying to keep Marc’s identity a secret and—”
“Wait, what?” Juniper said. “You think we told that bloke who Marc was?”
“What else am I supposed to think when he’s falling all over himself trying not to bow?”
Juniper stepped closer. Nearly going toe to toe with her captain. “That we’re smarter than that. That you can trust us the way we trust the three of you.”
Ooof . We all felt that verbal blow. The guilty look on Darwin and Lyric’s faces had morphed into hurt.
Bodie placed a hand on Toorin’s shoulder and stepped in front of him. “Enough.” Since Juniper was their defacto leader on this, Bodie spoke to her. “Then tell us what you said because that man thinks one of us is someone we’re not.”