Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
AIRIK
Airik collected Nora’s bathing items from her bag on the shelter’s stairs. He had tended to her so well since morning that she needed a reprieve. And he needed an excuse to keep his hands on her.
Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered.
The words were carved into the shelter’s floor, beside instructions for accessing the distress beacon beneath them.
Only a morazir had the authority to declare a state of distress.
There would have been several more beacons in the city, and one would have been ripped apart to call for assistance in the early days of Ed’un’s failures. Presumably by Aelior.
Of all the places for them to rest, it had to be here.
But Nora had been right—it was the safest place with a roof and distance from the buildings.
So he had grit his jaw and lay on top of it for the past three nights, with her in his arms. All while kissing her, telling her how much he adored her, and lying to himself and to her.
You are breaking more than oaths now. You are breaking her trust.
Lucky, who sat curled against the stone railings, gave him a look and grunted.
“We have food,” Airik said, annoyed he felt compelled to explain himself to the ooshi at all. “We aren’t starving.”
Yet.
Lucky lay his tail over his face, letting out a long sigh.
Airik stalked back to Nora, who stood beneath the fountain’s waterfall.
The water hit just below her knees, letting him see most of her bare.
Like one of the ancient goddesses of Voraki legend, whose images had all been destroyed after the Veynari had come into power, save for what remained in the vault.
Superstitions would not be tolerated in a society based on science and objective truths.
She pushed the hair out of her eyes and smiled at him as he approached. By Ulliel’s grace, he felt her warmth in his bones.
There was only one objective truth left in his mind: that he was entirely at Nora’s mercy.
They sat in the pool, he behind her, she between his legs. He carefully combed out all her hair. A delicate task that calmed his nerves. Nora hummed, resting her hands on his knees.
Never in his life had he washed another’s hair, but Airik suddenly remembered that when he had been small, someone had done it for him.
So, in this moment, he knew how to be gentle.
How to rub her scalp with the tips of his fingers.
How to use the slippery cream that she said was made for wavy hair like hers.
How to carefully pour water so it didn’t get into her eyes.
How to kiss her cheeks before cleaning her body, leaving more kisses on her shoulders.
And then, finally, how to lead her out of the stream so he could attend to all that hair.
Using his sword in a corruption of what it had been built for, Airik set its gravity specific to water—one of the few substances his sword could isolate in small quantities. He drew moisture out of her hair until she said—eyes wide with awe watching the droplets float away—that it was dry enough.
His heart pounded as he split her hair into three even sections. What if he touched her wrong?
She tilted her head back, looking at him upside down. “When did you learn how to braid hair?”
He nipped the tip of her nose—she liked it when he used his teeth anywhere on her body—earning him a laugh. He could do this. He could make her a beautiful braid. “Since my focus is always on you, I’d be a fool not to know how…with how much I watch you.”
Chuckling, she turned back, letting him resume crossing the sections, over and over, in the correct pattern. He’d do this for the rest of his life if allowed. Could there have been any higher honor in this universe than braiding Nora’s hair?
After a few moments, she asked, “Have you found a call box?”
His hands froze, crossed over one another—a blunt pressure built, pressing on his chest.
“I guess you wouldn’t have had time,” she mused. “I’ve been keeping you with me, getting in the way of your work.”
“I like you keeping me,” he said, grabbing the bucket they had found in the agricultural fields and the yellow puff she used to clean her skin.
Thankful for her explanation, he stepped in front of her to wash her.
She had already done this on her own, but she indulged his need to do it himself.
“I like my time with you. While you are only mine.”
Nora smiled but covered her breasts, inadvertently squeezing them together.
Airik’s cock twitched, tempered only by his suspicion that someone in her life had taught her to be ashamed of her body, which was why she hid herself.
This was something she did often, but he’d learned the right words to say.
He took her hands to clean her arms, wanting her breasts free. “Don’t hide from me,” he said. “You starve my eyes when you do.”
She bit her lip and nodded, then noticed the marks on her chest. “They’re already healing.” She sounded disappointed, tracing the round circle around her nipple—his bite marks.
His heart thrashed against his ribs.
Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered.
But he didn’t want his marks to fade. He wanted to be part of her life, for as long as she’d allow it.
“What are you going to do after all of this?” he heard her ask.
He paused. “After what?”
“You know, when we get back? Surely even an evil empire will give you a break after the hell we’ve been through here.” Her brown eyes gave away all the hope in her thoughts. “Even if we can’t be together, maybe at least…you can be close?”
It was as if his brain stuttered. Morazir did not have an after—their entire purpose fulfilled in their duty to the Veynari.
Airik had always expected that, like most morazir, he would die in the starfields when his body had aged beyond use or the Madness had taken him fully.
The regeneration chambers had limits, even for those designed with tagion codes.
And morazir always crossed them. To him, death was preferable to the other fates—being isolated in the Garden of Solitude to heal the Madness, or being dragged into training small forgelings and dumping the ones who didn’t survive into incineration chambers.
He had only known two who had deviated from the morazir’s path—and one of them was dead.
Is that worse than living without the possibility of Nora?
He wanted an “after.” And he wanted it to be Nora’s.
“I am…going to change what I do,” he suddenly told her. “When we go back to Vorakon. I am going to stop what I do—helping the Veynari to take worlds. So…you can be mine.”
Nora looked up. “I thought that you said that you can’t stop—that there’s no choice in it. That…your body belongs to the Veynari.”
“Morazir have stopped before. My father did.”
She opened her mouth before closing it again. “Is he the only person you know who…stopped?”
“No. I know one other. She is now a leader. In the Veynari.”
“So…she hasn’t really stopped anything. The only person who has really stopped…was punished, and then he was—” She scooted away. “I think I’m clean enough. I should get out.”
He grabbed her foot, pulling her back.
Nora kicked hard, but he held her harder. “You said your father was killed. Because he made mistakes. Stopping was one of them, wasn’t it? I don’t want you to get hurt to be…with me.”
Airik went stiff. “He made many other mistakes.”
Her finger curled tight around the yellow soapy puff, her knuckles white. “You said they’ll burn you—punish you. Because you belong to them and so do I.”
“You do not belong to them—you are mine.”
Nora kicked her leg again and finally freed herself. She stood, splashing him as she rushed to the fountain’s edge. “They’ll burn you! You said you might die!”
“I don’t care if they burn me,” he said, going after her.
“They can do whatever they want with me. I will pay any price to keep you. I would give the universe for you.” He had expected resistance—Nora always did when she thought she caused pain.
But he hadn’t expected rejection. He tried to think of something to say to make things right.
“There is more they want from me—other than to serve as a morazir. You don’t understand my world.
I have something, a place, that is filled with things they want. But I can’t open it right now—”
Nora stomped her foot, her hands clenched into fists, caught in her own battle he hadn’t meant to start. She couldn’t understand. How would he explain the vault to her? His inherent value as the last heir of the Jortag clan?
She stepped toward the fountain’s lip, then spun to face him instead.
Her eyes were red and wet. “I understand everything you’ve told me so far, including that your father made the same mistake, and it killed him.
And your mother. And it hurt you. So you’re going to do the same?
I’m not okay with that. I don’t want anything like that to happen to you over someone like me. ”
Airik’s ribs went tight. “Someone like you?”
She ignored him, stumbling out of the fountain. Her falling pushed him to move.
“Nora, what is in your mind? Why are you…worried about pain for me? I’ve felt it since I was a child. There has always been pain. Until now. With you.” He had almost forgotten it until this moment.
When she didn’t respond, he pulled on her braid, desperate to keep her.
“Stop doing that!” she cried, tearing her braid from his grasp.
Airik stepped back, a sharp and sudden void collapsing in his chest.
“I said—we said—a little while. Until help comes. Not forever.”
She grabbed her shirt—Airik’s shirt with the Veynari insignia—and pulled it over her head, hiding her body from him again.
Resisting a growl, he jumped out, standing over her. “A little while is not going to be enough for us anymore, will it? Nothing will be enough with you. I want you. Every moment of your life, and I will give you mine.”
He grabbed onto her braid again, challenging her to take it away.
She tried pushing away, and he trapped her hand on his chest. “You have broken me, demon eyes. And I love it—I know that word. I love what you’ve done to me.
I will break every oath, every day, over and over to keep you. Do you understand?”
He waited several breaths for a response from her. Had he read everything wrong?
“Nora.” He pulled her close. “What is happening? I want your words. Right now.”
She made a miserable, strangled sound and shut her eyes tight. “I want you to let me go.”
Cold folded over him, suffocating. His fingers twitched around her braid, but he held on.
“You’re right. I don’t understand everything about your world,” she said, with her eyes still closed. “But your father made this same mistake, and it got him killed, and if that happened to you… I don’t want you to go through pain—ever—because of me. It won’t be worth it. I’m not worth it—”
“You are worth it,” he whispered. How could the distance between the only two people in the world be so vast? “Worth everything.”
“No. I’m not. I know why you might think that.
Because I’ve been happy here with you. I was—” Her voice cracked, and she dropped her head.
But she could not hide her tears from him.
“I was lucky that it was you who found me. But eventually one of us is going to die. Or maybe you’ll be so covered with marks and in so much pain that you’ll forget what we had here—”
“Die?” He drew back, shocked that she still spoke of death when he had proven countless times it would never touch her. “No—”
“Airik,” she said, with a terrible gentleness that cut deeper than blades. “It’ll be okay. We said a little while, and that will have to be enough.” She tried again to pull her hand against his chest free.
This time he let her go, stunned by the incredible pain breaking inside his chest. He had suffered so much in his life—nothing compared to Nora smiling at him and telling him it would be okay while she wept.
He had done this.
“I want to teach you a word,” he said, frantic to make her stop. “It doesn’t exist anymore in the Veynari words, but my parents used it. It means—”
“I don’t want to learn it,” she said softly, her eyes flitting up to his.
He felt something warm slide down his cheeks.
Not again.
“I’m sorry.” She lowered her gaze. Her hands covered his fingers, still clutching her braid. Slowly, she uncurled them, one by one. Once free, she turned from him, and her hair slipped out of his grasp.
Airik stood at the edge of the fountain, unable to move. She walked toward one of the streets branching from the city square.
“Nora,” he whispered—a plea. “Don’t leave me. It’s dangerous.”
She must’ve heard him because she turned slightly.
“I’ll be back. I just want a little space.
I think we both need it. We’ve been together for days now—weeks, maybe.
But…it’s not real life. We should remember what it’s like to be alone.
” She stepped over the slippers he had made for her and continued barefoot.
Airik let her go because he did not have enough words to make her understand. Did he understand what was happening to him?
As she left him, her braid—the one he had just made—swung side to side, like a noose.