Chapter 7
A MUSCLE jumped in Emmy’s throat. “You make it sound like a choice I can’t refuse.”
“It is a promise I will not break.” Quiet words, silk over steel. He let them lie between them like a blade laid flat, not yet pressed. Her throat moved. Light skimmed her mouth and the small beat at the hollow above her collar. The Valenmark warmed, slow and certain, as if it recognized an oath.
“Maybe the stars didn’t get the message,” she whispered.
Control eased. Hunger stepped to the surface and looked through his eyes without disguise. The Valenmark pulsed once again as if pleased by her defiance.
He rose without hurry. He crossed the narrow space like weather. He stopped in front of her and offered his hand. She put her wrist in it before he asked. The soft cloth he’d given her to brush the light-snow slipped to her lap. Lume murmured and tucked deeper, undisturbed.
He turned Emmy’s hand and studied the band.
Silver-blue lines blazed through her skin as if lit from beneath.
His thumb traced the outer curve. Heat rolled through her, low and deep.
He lifted her hand and set the faintest pressure of his mouth against the brightest edge.
The breath he drew tasted of her skin and the planet’s faint sweetness.
Sound left him that was more exhale than voice.
“I was raised to believe the Valenmark would be a weapon against me and other Intergalactic Warriors,” he said. “I would resist it. I would bend it. I would never let it decide.” He raised his eyes. “But I do not want to resist you.”
She stared at his mouth as if that were the only language left. “Then don’t.”
He let her wrist go and the absence cut.
He gave her more instead. He slid his hand along the underside of her forearm to the bend of her elbow and higher until his palm rested open against the side of her neck.
He held her without pressure, thumb steady along her throat where her pulse beat.
He didn’t pull. He didn’t push. He let her choose.
She leaned the distance of a breath.
He met her. Not with his mouth. With his forehead. He set it to hers and everything inside them tightened and then went soft. The mark flared and settled like a sigh. Light-snow drifted and gathered and slid, too gentle to interrupt heat building under skin.
“I will not take you out of fear,” he said. “I will not take you because the mark demands it or because this world sings and makes you soft. I will take you because you ask me.”
“I’m asking.” Her voice was low and uncertain of the hour. Need didn’t keep time.
His mouth shaped against her temple without touching. “Not yet. Not like this. I will take you when you are fully awake, unafraid, and asking.”
Anger didn’t come. Hunger grew. Stronger for refusal. Cleaner. He rested there with her, the sound of her in his head, the smell of her in his lungs, the mark warm as a secret between them.
He eased back and studied her face like terrain he’d cross in the dark without a map. “Sleep.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.” He took the folded thermal from the pack and shook it open.
Light-snow pooled and slid away as if the cloth refused it.
He nested it in a shallow bowl of smooth roots he’d cut from the clearing’s edge while she watched him work, missing nothing.
He watched her too, noting every small tell.
She lay because he told her to and because he’d made a place that felt like a promise kept. Lume padded from her lap to the hollow her body made and curled with a small sound. Tiny wings rose and fell with a soft, hypnotic pulsation until they matched Emmy’s breath.
He didn’t join her. He moved to the edge of firelight where glass-bright growth met shadow and took a stance that let him watch forest, ship, and the woman in one line.
The planet hummed. Light drifted. His wounds were gone, but the memory of them lived in the way he kept himself balanced, ready to shift at any moment. Ready to kill for her. Ready to deny himself for her. Ready to break the law that made a prison of his lineage and laugh while it fell.
“Tell me something true,” she said to the dark.
He didn’t need to think. “If the Council takes you, I will go to war.”
She drew a slow breath, eyes steady in the falling light. “That sounds like a lot of bodies.”
“It is not a number that concerns me.”
He let the words stand. Light gathered on his shoulders and slid away.
The Valenmark warmed against his wrist as if it recognized the vow.
He crossed the few steps and went down on one knee beside her pallet, the movement quiet and deliberate.
Her fingers had bunched in the edge of the thermal.
He covered them with his palm, warm and steady, and set his thumb to the inside of her wrist.
Pulse met him fast and certain. The band at his wrist answered, heat building in a measured throb that matched her breath.
He didn’t kiss her knuckles. Nor did he pull her to him.
He let the contact speak, a silent strike laid and held.
He watched the small beat at her throat, the soft parting of her mouth, and desire pulled tight and sure under his skin.
Fear did not touch her. The line of her throat stayed smooth, her pulse sure beneath his thumb. “Tell me something else.”
Light drew a long bright line along his collarbone and into the notch at his throat.
“When I first saw you, I did not think of law. I did not think of lineage. I thought of the way your eyes cut to mine as if you already knew me, as if you had been waiting. I do not believe in prophecy. I believe in choice. I chose you.”
Her eyes stung. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know.” No apology. Fact. Heat. A truth he would not put down.
She pressed her cheek to Lume’s soft wing and let her eyes close.
Sleep took her like warm water lifting her, steady hands beneath her shoulders keeping her afloat.
He watched the moment that quiet claimed her and let the world’s hum thread through his bones until his own breath matched the planet’s slow, deep rhythm.
She woke in deep night with need heavy and bright, not shameful, not panicked.
Light sifted over her mouth like breath.
She turned her head. He stood where he’d stood previously, a figure cut from night and haloed by soft snow.
He didn’t pretend not to be watching. She lifted her hand and touched the band.
It answered. Warm. Certain.
He didn’t move toward her. He lifted his wrist and touched the twin.
Light in both brightened and settled. The hum thickened, satisfied.
Her pulse slowed, even while need didn’t fade.
It found a rhythm she could live inside.
She slept with his shape fixed as a vow in the edge of the firelight and in the band around her wrist.
Dawn pressed pale at the clearing’s rim, light laddering through the glass canopy until color pooled on the ship’s skin. A soft chime lifted from the console and Core’s voice followed, meticulous and quiet: “Reinforcement stable. Low-lift test advisable after midday.”
Lume woke Emmy by patting both cheeks with her tiny hands, her name made small in a bright whisper. Then she climbed to crown Emmy’s hair.
Apex had already gone to the leaves where dew beaded like clear coins.
He tipped the narrow flask along an edge and let the cold gather.
He returned and set it into Emmy’s palms, watched her mouth close around the rim and her throat work with each swallow, the Valenmark warming to the same slow rhythm against his wrist.
He didn’t name what eased in him as the water went into her. He only stayed close until she looked up, color back in her lips and a quiet yes answering in his chest.
“You look even better than yesterday,” she said.
“I am,” he confirmed gravely.
“Completely healed?”
“Affirmative.” He added the rest before she asked. “The cycle is complete. The damage is fully repaired. I am functional.”
“You were functional yesterday and last night.” Her mouth went dry. “You just chose not to… you know.”
Heat slid through him. “I chose.” He took the empty flask and his fingers brushed her knuckles. The contact sparked along nerves that had been waiting. “I will choose again. I will choose you.”
“Soon,” she whispered.
“Soon.” The word came rough.
They spent the morning reinforcing what they’d begun. Words reduced. Touch increased. The kind that looks like necessity and becomes language.
“You have good hands,” she said.
“I have killed many men with them.”
“I know.” She meant it. She’d seen it in the way he placed things. Careful. Exact. Never wasteful. Always certain. “They’re gentle with me.”
“They will remain so.” He did not lower his voice.
By late afternoon the ship stood truer in its cradle.
Core offered data and he accepted it. He also registered the way Emmy’s attention dissolved into the heat between them.
When he stepped behind her to reach the upper toggle the mark warmed and she leaned back a fraction and found him along the length of her spine.
“Emmeline,” he said, quiet as heat. Her name tasted like claim and future, a promise held between his teeth.
“Yes.” She angled toward him, gaze intense, breath a little shallow.
“Soon.” The single word carried the energy of a forever promise.
The Valenmark warmed against both their wrists, and her mouth softened. “Soon,” she agreed.
Night came again, soft and luminous. Lume ate something invisible out of the air and crooned to the ship like a mechanic’s familiar.
The rain of light thickened and thinned, a slow tide that made even metal look content.
The hull hummed as if relieved. He stood in the glow and watched Emmy as if the planet had been designed to explain how she could exist here.