Chapter 10 #2
A deep voice in his head whispered, “Sh” makes a special sound, little boy.
He shook his head, trying to rattle that voice out of it. He hadn’t heard it in so long. Not outside the language module.
Try it once more.
“Shhhawnora,” he said again, a little louder, hoping to appease whatever memory so it’d stop.
The human made a little huff.
A profound instinct told him that he’d just said her name.
“Shhhawnora.”
“Shhhawnora.”
“Shhhawnora.”
He waited, but other than a small shiver, she didn’t respond.
Items of luxury, like blankets, weren’t standard equipment, but Airik found one in a supply cabinet, then wrapped her in it, tucking it under her body to trap the little heat she had left.
As soon as he sat back, a hollow pain twisted in his gut. Now she looked shrouded for burning, prepared for death rites while she still breathed.
You’re not meant to offer comfort. Only to kill.
In the starfields, the dying always cried out for touch. For help. To not be left alone.
Confused that he felt anything at all yet certain she’d soon be dead, he moved close beside her and took her hand. In the quiet of the ship, he let his fingers lace with hers—a gesture he knew but couldn’t remember why.
Airik whispered her name, his eyes transfixed on their joined fingers, a distant question in his mind about how many brands this would earn him.
Did it matter? He gave in to impulse and stayed beside her. He watched her nose and mouth until he knew the rhythm of her breath better than his own. He was so close he could feel its intimate warmth on his cheek.
How can you stay untouched with your skin so open to her?
He needed to retrieve his helmet from across the room. Gently, he tried to pull his fingers free.
Her fingers tightened, trapping him.
Slowly, her eyes fluttered open, revealing dark irises with no eye shine. They sleepily searched the room until they settled on him.
He opened his mouth to command the lights to turn off, but no words came out.
She smiled.
Silence overcame all, Airik’s brain perceiving only her.
“Hello,” she said, her voice faint but enough.
Airik went still, struck with a rapturous heat that swept through him from head to toe. Every thought he’d ever had was obliterated by the creature he’d placed in his bed—violating all protocols and oaths.
“Are you…” Her voice faltered. She licked her now pink lips before continuing. “An ayngel?”
Icy cold sweat broke out on his skin. He didn’t want to kill her if she’d accused him of being a fallen ayngel like the humans on Urrth had done to the morazir so many years ago.
“Heaven? Dead?” Her words came slow and slurred, but he could still understand her meaning.
She pressed her lips together as if another unpleasant thought had occurred to her.
“Or…is this Hell?” The strange smile-frown she made confused him.
Or maybe his progenitor had overestimated the importance of humans’ Heaven and Hell as promises of eternal peace and torment.
They’d been wrong about so much—why not their understanding of human superstitions as well?
Airik forced his mind back to Urrthen words.
He needed to reassure the human—fear made one unpredictable, and he didn’t know how to control it except by killing.
But his mouth could not form a single word.
All the syllables from the dozens of languages he knew vanished from his vocabulary, replaced by this human’s shape and her unnerving smile, which widened as she watched him.
“Where are your wings?” she asked.
A sharp rush of air escaped him. How could she have known about the ship’s wings?
Airik pulled back, but she held his hand with a surprisingly strong grip, her fingers digging into his.
His grip tightened on the gun. “B…broken,” he said. “Gone. Lost.”
Her smile faded. “I’m…sorry.”
He had a sudden, painful urge to see his progenitors once more. When was the last time he had wanted this?
I understand her. And she understands me. The words that you found and taught me…they’re the right ones.
Airik stiffened as she lifted up, facing him fully. She looked down at where their hands were joined. She jerked back, letting out a small noise. “Are you…okay?”
Recognizing the word from her ship, which lay in a burning heap, he deduced that okay was in fact negative. Wanting to soothe her, he said, “No.”
She frowned but rubbed his palm with her thumb. His head spun from the swirling sensation. “Your skin…”
“Me,” he said, acutely aware that he should’ve pulled out of her grasp. “How ti’rosi is. Unhuman. Not…o-kay.”
“Un…human?” she repeated. Her eyes went wide. She shot up quickly, the blanket falling away. Her scent hit Airik like a rushing wave, far too pleasant for a creature he was meant to destroy.
Wrong. That had been the wrong thing to say.
Rasping something unintelligible, the human clutched his hand, tugging hard so he stumbled forward. She pinched his pointer finger, then lifted it, bringing it close to her face. “What the fuck?”
Sweat trickled down between Airik’s shoulder blades. Thank all the fates that there was no Watcher system on this ship to witness him being yanked around by a weak, dying thing.
She tapped one of his black fingernails with her pink ones.
Shocks shot up his arm, carrying the same force as full strikes.
Unsatisfied, she brought the tip of his finger to her nose to sniff, her trembling breath scalding on his skin.
She stared at his hand with a deep frown, then pressed it to her nose to inhale more deeply.
Airik held still, readjusting his grip on the gun in his other hand. She tried to push up his sleeve, but the molded suit was too tight to budge.
She pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked up, her face unobstructed for the first time while awake. Airik’s heart stopped as he confronted the deepest brown eyes, struck by a sudden fear that it was possible to drown in her depths.
But driven by the same madness that had plagued him all day, he stared back.
His breath grew shallower every second, yet he didn’t look away, unwilling to lose her attention.
The entire universe could have gone aflame in that moment, and he wouldn’t have moved, so enraptured by that beautiful brown.
“Your eyes… Are you sure you’re not an angel? Are you sure I’m not dead?” Her head wobbled from side to side, but another smile curled on her lips.
Something was deeply wrong with this human, and whatever it was, he was ill-equipped to handle it. But he felt his finger tap the controls of his gun in the complex pattern meant to depower it without risking an accidental shut-off.
“Not…angel,” he whispered. “Your life is whole…with me.” The words felt wrong.
But they must’ve been the right thing for her, because she let out a faint hum of acknowledgment and shrugged—as if a little annoyed that she wasn’t dead—then let her gaze drift over his body.
He wanted to ask if she had heard him—that he hadn’t let her suffocate or burn to death.
That she was alive because he’d made the mistake of saving her.
That her life was now his until he gained the courage to end it properly or decide something else.
All options which would be unpleasant for her.
But he couldn’t do or say a thing. Airik had never been eviscerated before, though it was a common end for a morazir—an injury even regeneration chambers couldn’t heal. But he imagined it would be quite like this, split open despite the shield of his armor, pinned under this human’s gaze.
“Oh no,” she gasped, finally noticing the gun in his other hand.
Her head snapped up, but instead of accusing him of betrayal, she inexplicably burst out laughing.
Airik tore his arm away from her, then scrambled back.
An abrupt mania seized her, and she laughed even harder. Her eyebrows knit together as if in pain. Tears ran down her face, dripping off her chin and leaving large dark stains on her shirt.
Kill her now, while she’s in apparent joy. Let the last thing she feels be something good. What are you waiting for?
He made a strangled noise, unable to bring himself to do it. To resist the temptation, he told himself that killing her in his bed would only bring him more wretched luck. He dropped his gun and opened his hands to show they were empty.
“I’m okay,” she said, clearly suffering. She clutched her sides, gasping between fits of laughter and sobs, repeating “I’m okay” so many times that he was certain it meant a grim state of being.
Just as suddenly as she began laughing, she stopped, her chest heaving with shallow breaths. “Oh, shit.” She turned over the side of the cot and vomited a small amount of fluid onto the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she moaned, pulling a sleeve over her hand and reaching for the puddle. “I’m sorry… I’ll clean it up—” Her cry cut off as she lost her balance and tumbled forward.
He had no choice but to catch her before she hit the floor. She kept talking, but her speech twisted into something too frantic for him to make out.
“Calm.” He motioned for her to lie back down, but she didn’t obey, glaring at him with increasingly terrified eyes. “Be calm.” He drew a deep breath, then touched her cheek with the back of his hand.
It felt wrong. Cold. Dry. But what did he know about how a human was meant to feel?
Thinking it might help, he smiled, letting his teeth fully bare to her. The humans in the recordings from his vault usually smiled when greeting each other. And Torren, who somehow charmed everyone wherever he went, smiled openly as well.
Another wrong thing to do because the human’s eyes fixated on his mouth, pupils somehow wider than they already were. Her gaze went bleary and wild.
“Fuck…” was the last thing she said before her eyes rolled back and she fell back, limp in his bed.