Chapter 28
Purple Majesty
He felt a bit useless sitting on the floor of the cargo bay while everyone else was milling around.
Theos had ensured Davik that, health-wise, he was in the clear.
Just suffering from mild vertigo and exhaustion.
The looming Icthian doctor had chastised him for poor hydration, so Davik was assigned “Sit and Sip” duty.
And he obliged. Sitting on his ass, finishing an electrolyte pouch.
Normally, he would be insistent on rallying to make sure everything was all right.
But everything had gone almost perfectly.
There was a minor hiccup, but they had made it back to the ship.
Though not using plan A, the result was partially plan F and a mix of plan P tossed in there.
The shadowy Icthian operative was recovering in the mess hall slash med bay.
Still unconscious, but Theos had said that his vitals looked all right.
Fia was, much to his chagrin, still in the bell. Right after she had stolen an excited kiss from him, she had darted back into the damn thing.
Things had gotten too hairy, so she had to hang back to scrub the feeds and help Carissa keep them under the radar. So that left Davik. Alone in the cargo bay. Alone with his thoughts.
This had all gone well, but he was keenly aware that their original plan involved brute force and weaponry. Expectations of casualties, preparation for bloodshed. He couldn’t solve all of her problems like this, with clever tactics and emergency exits. She was made for war. Not harmless hijinks.
You’re in love with a soldier. You’d better get a stronger stomach for this sort of shit, boy.
Despite his own doubts, he held on to a hope — as futile a hope as it may be — that there was a way he could find a workaround. That if he tried hard enough, they could fit between violence and pacifism. A peaceful middle-path.
“Fia, meet me in the med room. You’re due for a check-in,” Theos’ voice echoed through the speakers in the cargo bay.
Davik rose from his perch, meeting Fia halfway and grabbing her still-wet-from-the-bell hand as she hastily toweled herself off. She returned the touch with a soft squeeze and a smile.
The conflicted, remorseful twinge that had been mulling over melted away. He wanted to steal this moment to be with her, to tell her what was running through his mind, how the fear of this job going sideways and her getting hurt put everything in perfect clarity.
“Fi. After you’re done with all this, can we … can we talk?”
Fia nodded firmly, her brow-ridges knitting together in concern.
It was not the best phrasing, but he would have to fix that later. If things ever slowed down enough to do so.
The med bay slash mess hall smelled slightly of antiseptic. As they entered, Theos waited at the head of the table where the mysterious Icthian man was lying.
“You two look like hell,” he chuffed as he finished swapping out a bag of fluids.
The slate-scaled medic wasn’t wrong. Both Davik and Fia were pretty shaken up. But something about her wide-eyed gaze struck him as more than just exhausted delirium.
Fia strode by Theos’ outstretched hand as he attempted to greet her, pushing past him to stare fixedly at their unconscious contraband.
Much like the day after Fia had awoken from cryostasis, the stranger had become far less gray in his coloration as he recovered. The pale scales had darkened, showing faint violet markings along his features as his circulation improved.
The transformation seemed to have fascinated her as she loomed over the table to examine the man, her own tendrils flickering with excited little pricks of light. Or at least, he assumed it was excitement. He was still learning which patterns meant what.
Theos took her dismissal in stride, pulling him over for another check instead while she had her moment.
With a grumble, he complied, letting the orange-speckled medic give him a once-over.
Temperature, hydration, and nitrogen levels in his blood were all confirmed to be back to normal.
Even though he still felt like the walking dead.
“Theos,” Fia murmured, her hands clasped over her heart as she spoke with reverence. “I think I know who your mysterious benefactor is.”
“What, you found his return-to-sender sticker or something?” Davik said with a chuckle.
“No,” she said as she stood upright, crossing her arms behind her back. Her posture was suddenly stiff. “But whatever remains of the Sovereign Fleet will be happy to have him returned.”
“The Sovereign Fleet?” Theos asked, closing the scanner he had used on Davik with a satisfying click. “Like, the old wartime queen — rest in peace — that Sovereign?”
“Yes,” Fia said as she nodded once firmly. “This is her son. And, my Commander.”
Davik’s hope of finding a peaceful middle path evaporated in a blink.
Hours passed as Fia and Theos exchanged speculation in both English and Teelish, but neither of them seemed to have gained much ground.
Until the big guy woke up, they were just as clueless as they had been that morning.
If anything, they were even more perplexed now.
Davik wasn’t too familiar with exactly what had happened after the war, but he knew the Sovereign was a big deal.
The queen bee of the hive. And this was her son, the would-be hive-prince.
You’re not supposed to refer to their groups as a hive, that’s what fear-mongering assholes call it.
Davik shook his head as that thread of worry wormed into his mind.
If the guy they rescued was really the son of the Sovereign, the fear-mongering was based on legitimate fears.
The Icthian Incursion was not a bloodless territorial disagreement.
Davik held no love for Sol, but he had heard stories from the Rim and history lessons from his school days that painted a terrifying picture of what an organized force of unbound Icthians were capable of.
This was supposed to be a night for celebrating their escape, a job well done, and having secured a payday and his brother’s freedom.
Not a night where Davik sat in the corner of the mess hall and watched the woman he had fallen for become more and more reticent.
She was all hard edges, short words. No chuckling, no bright smiles. A stoic soldier.
Perhaps his ego had grown too large. Thinking his affection for her could soften those edges, that he could tame that part of her. But he also knew that was a part of her he loved.
The conflict made him feel ill. The conflict, and the third round of meds Theos had made him finish that evening. He had been so focused on worrying what this all meant that he didn’t even realize when Fia had sat back down next to him and pulled his hand into hers.
And just like that, his world snapped back to the center.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, her brow-ridges furrowed as she gave Davik a thorough once-over.
“Been worse, more worried about you. How’s your head?” he asked, reaching forward to stroke along one tendril that started near her temples. “We put you through a lot.”
Finally, a little smile broke through her stoic cast. “I will be fine. Theos has taken good care of me. I am just relieved you are here and safe.”
“Hey, you gave me an explicit order to come back to you. I’m good at following orders the tall, pretty lady with fangs gives me,” Davik said with a wink, earning him a laugh and a gentle nudge on the shoulder.
“Let us hope I do not need to order you around soon. You have done so much. You need some respite.”
“Okay, but the ordering can be part of the respite. I don’t mind at all. Just put on that slinky little suit of yours, and tell me to—”
Theos cleared his throat, and Davik shot the broad Icthian medic a sheepish grin.
“Glad you two are in good spirits. The mystery prince here is finally coming to. Fia?” Theos said, gesturing towards her with his medical datapad in-hand.
With one final squeeze of the hand, she got up and stood next to Theos at the head of the table, whispering quietly in Teelish as the commander stirred.
Davik took the cue that this was a “give them space” sort of moment.
So he took the opposite post, pulling up a chair at the other end of the room.
The commander’s chest rose and fell with a sudden and urgent motion, and Davik watched in awe as a surge of bright and vibrant light shimmered across the purple markings along his body. He had seen Fia’s markings occasionally glimmer like that, but that was a dim fizzle compared to this.
With a thrash of movement, the man arched off the table and sat bolt upright, whipping his gaze around the room with pupils blown so wide that his eyes were black pools with a narrow ring of violet.
Those murderous eyes locked onto Davik.
The edge of his vision grew hazy. Fuzzy. Like he had fallen behind a curtain that swallowed all the light away. His world fractured, reflected at him from strange perspectives.
The hulking, dark form of the commander reached towards him in triplicate from all angles. Jaws wide, teeth bared, claws sharp. The lights in the room swelled and faded until all he could see was a writhing mass of dark scales and purple light.
Davik kicked back from the table as fast as he could, scrambling to get out of the way, but there was no safe quarter. Everywhere he whipped his head, he met another silhouette.
He felt a clamp around his throat.
For once, he was grateful for his augmentation as it kept the grip from crushing his windpipe outright, but it didn’t stop the pain. He kicked out as hard as he could towards the figure, but met nothing but air.
He could barely make out the sound and shape of any movement behind him, around him.
It was as if he were stuck in a hall of mirrors.
No direction made sense, and none of his wild strikes lessened the hold on his throat.
It was like being trapped in a nightmare where your running feet never touched the ground.
Unlike a nightmare, this hell carried with it the potential for actual injury. The white-hot pinpricks of pain that bloomed on his cheek felt like needles. He could feel claws creaking into the bones of his sinuses.
Something wet and hot surged down his neck and flowed across his lips. He could taste it, nearly choking on it as he struggled to gasp through what must have been his own blood.
The world is moving so slow. Am I falling? I think he dropped me. Where am I? Why is Theos yelling? And where is Fia? Oh, god, no. Not again, I just got her back, I can’t…!
The commander’s body made a terrifying thud as he crashed against the wall. The bright purple lights on his scales pulsed with an intensity that matched the surging green of—
Fia.
She was standing behind the purple-scaled commander, holding her vertiblade taut against his neck with one hand and cranking his head back with a vicious grip on his tendrils with the other. The blade was rigid, formed into a straight edge rather than the flexible whip he had seen before.
That sharp edge bit into the commander’s jaw and drew a vivid orange streak of blood as he thrashed and clawed back at her in retaliation, his tail slicing through the air so fast that Davik could hear the air whistle in its wake.
She was vibrant, crackling with energy, intensely bright lines of green flaring along her scales. Every muscle in her body rippled with a strength he had never seen before.
All to protect him.
Davik wasn’t sure if it was the blood loss, the adrenaline, or the strange indulgence of feeling rescued, but it made his heart ache. The way he could see her claws digging into the man’s flesh also made something else ache.
Are you jealous of a man being assaulted by your lover? God, maybe. Wait. What is she to you now? Partner? You need to process all of this when you are not actively bleeding.
He blinked, and the world took a long moment to return. Another blink, and it took even longer. Another familiar sensation. Hands on his chin. A loving voice. The easy pull into sleep called to him, borne from a body and mind pushed to the brink, retreating into desperately needed darkness.