Chapter 13
Blair
Iswing my arm as hard as I can. Like I learned in self-defense class. I’ve never hit anyone outside of class. Not ever. But I smack my fist into the side of his face. His brown eyes snap back to me.
“No one touches my daughter,” I yell. “No one!”
“Mom, I’m fine. It’s okay. He touched my hair. It startled me. It’s okay.” Marlee’s holding on to me. But Eros and Sterling have the male’s hands behind his back.
“It’s not okay,” I yell in the male’s face until he shuts his eyes.
“Mom?”
Annabelle and her other three pod mates are circled around us.
Along with two males I saw back in the teahouse.
During the time we were on the run from Russell, I got into the habit of watching my surroundings.
Was the man in the corner of the café with the baseball hat on the same size as my ex?
Did the man in the oversized raincoat have a gun?
I watched. I studied. And when we stayed anywhere longer than a month, I found places to take self-defense classes when I had the money.
Marlee did for a while too, but she didn’t like it.
She spent more time on the treadmill. “I’ll just outrun them, Mom. ”
My chest heaves, and I need to calm down or I’m going to pass out from hyperventilating.
Sterling places his hand on my shoulder, and I glance up into his gray eyes. “Are you good?”
“Yes, I’m okay.”
“I’ve got this.” He grabs the male I hit in the jaw. His hands are cuffed behind his back. I didn’t see how it happened.
“Sunshine, take Marlee and Blair and go home,” Eros growls.
“Come on, Aunt Blair,” Annabelle says.
“What? No, you go on.” I smile at her. “I’m okay.”
Nico corrals Marlee and Annabelle. “We are leaving now. Holter and Eros will help your aunt if she wants to make sure the male pays his restitution.”
“I . . .” Annabelle holds my eyes. “Is that what you want, Aunt Blair?”
“Yes, please go.” When the four of them are out of earshot, I pivot to the male Sterling is holding. “What are you going to do to him?” I ask Sterling.
“He will pay,” Eros says.
Sterling has a firm grip on the offender, who can’t be more than nineteen.
“Pay how?” My shoulder’s rise.
“He will die,” Sterling clicks out.
“For touching Marlee? Die as in dead, not as in a metaphor?”
Sterling’s forehead scrunches up. “How is dead a metaphor?”
“It’s not, but I was kind of hoping it was.”
“Execution.”
The male looks up. His brown eyes flick to mine for only a second.
“That’s what you would normally do?” I ask.
“Yes,” Sterling says.
“You’re not verbose, are you?”
“No.”
I hold back my laugh. “You can’t kill the kid—podlet. That’s what he is.” I’m chewing on the side of my cheek. “They can’t kill him, can they?” I ask Eros.
Eros looks from me to Sterling. “Our justice system is different from yours, Blair.”
“It’s a bit extreme.”
“We’re a society of mostly males. It keeps things under control.”
The male in cuffs looks up. I clocked him good; his lip is split. I’m sure it hurts more than my hand does. Which is a fair amount. “I’m asking for leniency. Is that a thing here?”
“I suppose it can be. Your niece saved a male’s life aboard the Centauri,” Eros says.
The male hasn’t said anything. He hasn’t begged for his life.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
“I’ll never be mated. I’m an eighth son to a pod that doesn’t have a lot of money. I’ve got nothing. But now at least I can die knowing what a female’s hair feels like.” His eyes sink to the floor.
“Sweet pancakes. You can’t kill a poor boy for that.” Then I turn to him and, in my best mom voice, say, “You can’t go around touching girls—females. It’s not right. They’re not property. You’re young, but I’m sure if you work hard, you can make something of yourself.”
He blinks at me like I’ve told him the sky is purple. Which I guess isn’t something they say around here.
“What do you think your punishment should be?” This might backfire. I used to ask Marlee and Annabelle what they thought their punishments should be, and they always picked something much worse than I would have. Please don’t say death, please don’t say death.
He glares at me and takes a long time, and I’m starting to think that he might say it. Death.
“Banishment from the marketplace for a year, and I need to do labor for the Portsmouth pod.” He looks from Sterling to Eros and back to me.
“Banishment is good enough. I don’t want you around my apartment,” Eros says.
“Okay.” His voice doesn’t shake, even though he’s facing banishment.
“Wait, no.” Eros shakes his head. “What dome are you?”
“Braesen.” He looks down again.
“No, you’re not banished from the market. You will come to the Zaffiro jewelry store tomorrow. At nine before the market opens. My brother will be there. You’ll scrub the back room and wash anything else he tells you to. For a year,” Eros says.
“A year? That’s not fair.” I glare up at my new nephew.
“You’ll be paid. Not much until you prove yourself,” Eros adds. “Give me your information so I can send it to my brother, Azzurio.”
Sterling pulls the cuffs off. He doesn’t look happy at either me or Eros. The two younger beefy guys with him look downright angry.
But the male doesn’t seem to notice. His smile gets too big, and he grimaces.
“I will let everyone know what a kind mermaid you are. And what a fierce punch you have. No one will ever touch you or your daughter again.” He backs away.
I want to stop him and say I’m not a mermaid, but semantics seem like a foolish thing to get involved in right now.
Our ten-minute head start’s long over, and there’s a crowd gathered. They’re keeping their distance.
“Can I give the three of you a ride home?” Sterling asks.
“Yes,” I say at the same time Eros looks up from his block and says, “No.”
“How else are we going to get back to Glyden if Annabelle and the others have taken the omada?” I ask.
“We will take my vehicle. And we will move out now.” Sterling lifts his chin like no one would ever think to not do as he asks.
“I guess our outing is over,” I say.
“It was over when the teahouse became more crowded than Calypso’s Depth,” Holter adds.
I nod. I have no idea what Calypso’s Depth is, but I’m guessing I should put my hand on ice.
I can’t help but be a little disappointed.
On the way to the teahouse, there were so many interesting things to look at.
And now that we’ve caused a scene, I’m wondering whether Marlee and I will ever be able to go out again.
So when Sterling sets out at double time, I’m dragging my feet just a little bit.
There’s a lot to see. In this section of what I’d call a mall, there are kiosks down the center.
Tridents, scarves, and a stall that it takes me a second to realize sells sex toys.
There’s a large group of men looking at different vibrators.
None of them even look over at me, and it makes me smile.
Then there are so many women’s clothing shops, one after another.
But when I get to a furniture store with a giant red sofa in the window, I stop.
“Blair, we need to get going,” Nico growls.
“I know, but what is that? And how would you even get it into an apartment?”
Eros looks away and then back at me. “It’s a pod couch. For large pods. Ten or so, I would think.” He tilts his head as if he’s counting.
Sterling clears his throat. “No, seven would barely fit on it.”
“You would know better than me,” Holter says.
“Humph, we go.” Sterling steps behind me, corralling me without touching me like my old cattle dog.
“No, I’m curious. How does it get from here to, like, your apartment?”
“At night, there are larger omadas that roam the city. But most of these collapse onto themselves, or come apart, and the merchant assembles them for you,” Sterling explains.
I’ve got my head cocked almost flat. I’m not sure why, but I’m just trying to figure out the how and the why a circle would work better than a rectangle for more people.
Annabelle’s pod room has a square bed. A really large square bed.
One that I do my absolute best to not think about.
This circle is at least twice the size of hers.
And it’s got armrests. I just . . . I cock my head the opposite way.
There’s loops on the side. Metal loops. Right.
Okay, time to go. When I look up at Sterling, my cheeks are burning. “You seem to know a lot about this.” And I want a string. A string to pull those darn words right back into my mouth. I clasp my hands over my lips, no longer feeling my age. Not at all.
“Your hand.” Sterling’s voice drops. And he carefully takes my forearm with one hand and lightly rests my palm in his other. Sparks shoot up my arm, but not from pain. “You should have told us you were injured.” Sterling’s eyes flick in the direction the male took off in.
“Yeah, that happens when you don’t close your fist properly and throw a punch.” I stretch my fingers out and back. They’re stiff and it hurts a little, but ice will help. I’ve done much worse in class before. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re fragile,” he says with a blatant blankness that kind of makes me want to kick him in the nuts and have him see who’s fragile.
My head ricochets back. “I’m not fragile.
” I don’t want him thinking of me as fragile.
I don’t want anyone thinking of me as fragile.
Not ever again. I’d rather be feared than thought of as breakable.
I narrow my eyes at him, mimicking his stance.
When I take my hand away I instantly miss the warmth of his touch.
But I’m not one of those women who pretends to be weak to get favors from men.
I tried it once and bought myself twenty years of hell.
“You need a doctor.”
“I need ice. Or maybe just a bowl of ice cream.”
The three lines are back between his eyes on his forehead. I want to take my thumb and smooth them out. That is, if I could reach that high.
“You need a doctor.” He pulls out his block. “Grayson. Where are you? Good, we’ll be right there. The human female is hurt.”
“Human female?” But I’m darn sure he doesn’t hear me. He’s too busy sweeping me up into his arms. My head’s buried against his chest. It takes a second to rearrange my arms and get my bearings.
Sterling is all out running through the market. People are jumping out of the way.
“Wait, where’s Eros and Holter?” I twist and turn. My head bounces in the crook of his elbow until I find my new nephews. They’re running alongside us.
“Here, Blair.”
“Tell him I’m fine.”
Eros is laughing. “I know you are.”
“Well, tell him.”
“But we’re making better time.”
“Eros!”
“Sterling. Put my Aunt Blair down.”
“I’m taking her to receive medical aid.”
In my peripheral vision, doors swing open, and the change in humidity tells me we’re in the docking dome.
“Okay, put her down now. We’re outside,” Holter says.
“Indeed.”
My feet land gently on the dock. “Thank you. But I’m fine.”
“We will let the doctor decide that.”
I cross my arms over my chest and mistakenly apply pressure to the side of my knuckle, and I wince.
“You are not fine. Get in the vehicle.”