Chapter 49
Chapter
Forty-Nine
Skye
Now I was alone in the quarters they’d assigned me, sitting on the edge of a bed that was wider than anything I’d slept on in weeks and staring at my hands in my lap and replaying the moment in the cockpit.
The way Kolt had gone still when the warbird filled the viewport. I’d watched his face change, and I knew. Even before he turned to look at me, I’d known. Everything that had slipped away from him had come rushing back.
I remember all of it.
I’d smiled at him, even as I’d known that it changed everything. Because what else do you do? You tell him you’re happy for him, which I genuinely was because he deserved to be whole. He deserved to know who he was.
It was just that who he was and the Kolt I knew were apparently not the same person.
I’d seen it happen in real time in the shift in his posture and the set of his shoulders.
He hadn’t been cold, exactly. But he hadn’t been warm either.
The man who’d held me through the dark hours on Kashara and said things I was still trying not to think about had stepped back into himself like slipping on armor, and I was left standing there wondering if any of it had been real.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until I saw stars.
This was always how it was going to go. I’d known, on some level, that whatever existed between us had an expiration date stamped on it the moment he started remembering. I understood that the real Kolt was a warrior who’d spent his whole life believing humans were weaker and less trustworthy.
Another thing I knew was that I didn’t want to sit around the warbird waiting for a conversation that might never happen.
I hated loose ends and things left unsaid.
I needed to be the one to end things, and I needed to do it before he tried to give me some emotionless speech that would break my heart.
I jumped up and hurried out of the door before I could talk myself out of it, but once I was outside the room, I stopped.
The warbird was massive in a way that made me feel like an enormous metal beast had swallowed me whole. I craned my neck and stared at the criss-crossing bridges above me as I walked, squinting at the tiny figures moving across them at heights that made my stomach lurch.
After a while, it occurred to me that I didn’t know where I was going.
A Vandar rounded the corner ahead of me and slowed to a stop, cocking his head at me.
“You are lost,” he said. Not a question.
“I’m looking for the battle chief.”
He grunted and pointed upward. “Command deck. Up that ramp, then across the swinging bridge, then up the wide stairs at the south end. You will know it when you find it.”
I thanked him, which earned me another grunt, and I followed his directions, finally reaching the stairs and understanding his cryptic words.
I did know it as soon as I saw it. The double doors were huge and imposing, with the shape of a battle axe blade embossed in the metal.
I hesitated, rethinking my plan, before they slid open with a delicate hiss.
The room inside was even more intimidating. Spacious and dark, with a wide wall of glass overlooking space, the Vandar command deck was unlike anything I’d seen before. Raiders in leather kilts with straps across their bare chests stood at high consoles as computers beeped and hummed.
I had made it only a few steps inside before Raas Wrexxon himself materialized from somewhere to my left. He seemed both surprised and confused by my presence. “Are you lost?”
“I am looking for your battle chief.” I matched his tone as best I could, which was probably not very well.
He turned without a word and walked, which I took to mean I was supposed to follow. He led me to a door at the far end of the deck and stopped in front of it, giving me one last assessing look. “He’s in his oblek.”
I swallowed as the door opened, bracing myself to see Kolt again. But it wasn’t Kolt that was the shock.
The room on the other side was unlike any I’d seen.
The walls were hung with sharp-edged blades and spiky maces, leather straps and iron chains.
There was even less light than there was on the bridge, although the space had a wall with a view of the stars.
It was less an armory and more a shrine to violence.
And there was Kolt.
He stood with his back to me at the far wall, looking out into space. His shoulders were stiff, and his stance was wide. It hit me that he was not the same Vandar who had slept curled around me in a secret room. He was not the raider who’d touched me with exquisite tenderness.
He was a battle chief of the Vandar. He belonged here, in this room, on this ship. The kindest thing I could do was pretend he’d never been anything else.
My chest hurt, but I made myself speak before the hurt could constrict my voice. “You don’t have to worry about us.”
He turned slightly. Not all the way. I kept going because stopping felt worse.
“What happened on Kashara happened because of the situation. We were in an impossible place and under a lot of pressure, and neither of us was exactly ourselves, and that’s—that’s fine.
That’s what it was. I’m not going to hold you to anything you said or did before you remembered who you were.
It would be insane to do that.” I was talking too fast. I knew I was talking too fast and I couldn’t seem to stop.
“And we don’t have to tell anyone. I won’t say anything.
There’s no reason for anyone here to know.
What happened on Kashara stays on Kashara, all of it, and you can—you don’t have to—”
He had turned now. His face was in profile, and I saw a multitude of emotions flicker across it, but I didn’t let myself look at him long enough to read them.
“We’re good,” I lied. “I just wanted to tell you that you don’t need to worry about me. I’m good.”
Before he could speak, I pivoted on one foot and left.
I didn’t look back at Kolt, I didn’t glance at Raas Wrexxon as I crossed the command deck, and I didn’t slow down as I barreled through the doors and down the stairs.
The warbird swallowed me up, and I let it, turning corners without knowing where they led, stumbling aimlessly but continuing to move, which was the only thing I knew how to do when I was trying not to feel something.
Don’t, I told myself as tears stung the backs of my eyes. Not here.
The engines hummed through the soles of my boots, and I didn’t think about what I’d just done and the look on Kolt’s face before I’d run. I couldn’t.