Chapter 22
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
I heard Captain Ruciyah outside my door long before he ever spoke.
It was the sound of his breath, distorted by the respirator.
Or maybe it was the pacing. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t knock, yet he seemed content to stalk the hallway outside.
But I’d known from the moment I woke he was waiting for me.
I didn’t answer the door, unsure how I would face him knowing what I did now.
Though the male outside was a murderer, he was also something else.
I couldn’t shake the memory. I’d seen it too long in my dreams. But now there was also the memory of that night in the control room—Captain Ruciyah kneeling beside me, bare hands soothing against my skin.
Stay still, j’ska mahsi. I didn’t know the term.
When we had returned from Lesephous’ ship, I’d looked up the first endearment he’d used: ly’anen.
It was a Quinzyr term of endearment for something precious and could be used for both beings and inanimate objects.
And though j’ska mahsi sounded familiar, I couldn’t find the definition anywhere.
Kal had stayed with me for a long time in the med bay before Rhiaon came in to check my vitals.
Turned out they were the resident doctor on board and, despite their size, they were exceedingly gentle as they prodded my back and hooked up a monitor to my chest to check my lung capacity.
They’d murmured that I needed to take it easy the next few days, but I wouldn’t have any lasting damage from the broken pipe that had been jutting out from the shelf.
Greabes had left it there days ago to be thrown out after repairing one of the cooling units.
Rhiaon had watched with sharp eyes as Kal leaned in to press his forehead to mine, whispering more words of comfort I wasn’t sure I felt. I didn’t quite know how to navigate this new discovery.
“Are you two…?” Rhiaon had pointed between us as Kal straightened.
He’d visibly shuddered. “Maker, Rhi—that’s my sister.”
And then had promptly left the bay to find Greabes.
I’d been cleared to return to my room not long after.
Rhiaon had offered to help me, but I’d declined with a wave and hobbled down the halls.
They’d been mercifully empty and I’d guessed from the dimmed lights it was sleeping hours.
In space it was difficult to tell, but the Federation had created a space-time system over a hundred cycles ago to keep order within quadrant travel.
Now here I was the next morning, playing with the edge of the bedsheet and listening to Captain Ruciyah breathe in the hallway outside.
“Juniper…will you open the door?” he finally rumbled, a thud from what I guessed was his fist landing on the metal.
I rose from the bed, pulled on one of the more comfortable sets of clothing I had and slipped on my boots. But I hesitated on the other side, palm pressed to the door, bracing myself. Surely he would be angry, furious even, at losing his navigator and tech.
Taking one last breath, I touched the control panel and the door hissed open.
The top half of the captain’s helmet was off and, though his hair was haphazardly pulled back from his face, most of it spilled over his shoulders and down his back.
There were dark blue smudges beneath his eyes and the moment he saw me, his wide shoulders relaxed just a fraction.
We stared at each other for longer than was comfortable, the silence curling around us until he sighed. “Hello.”
I nodded, crossing my arms over my chest to hide my hands that I refused to acknowledge were trembling.
There was something different about him here on the threshold of my room.
Or maybe it was me who was different, some of the haze of long years of hatred cleared from my vision, but he appeared softer, a little more unsure as he looked me over.
“I see Crux has finally left your bedside,” he commented.
My shoulders slumped a little. “Why do you call him Crux?”
As I waited for him to answer, I tried to sort through my feelings.
I didn’t want to go back to the Daskquah.
Regardless of what happened all those years ago, Captain Ruciyah was a threat now.
I hadn’t had the stomach to broach the subject with Kal yet of the stone or what the captain planned to do with it, but I couldn’t forget this male still threatened the lives of so many others.
He did, didn’t he?
Captain Ruciyah blinked. “When Kal joined my crew, he wanted to separate himself from who he had been on your home planet. Call it an alter ego. The Kalsyun you know is thoughtful, considerate—I’d even go so far as to call him kind. Crux is…”
He trailed off. But I’d seen enough of that alter ego to fill in the blanks. Crux was harsh, the antithesis of the male who had been with me in the med bay.
“It’s easier for him to separate the work that must be done from the male he truly is.”
My jaw tensed and Captain Ruciyah’s silver gaze caught the movement. Though it was silent in the hall, the screams of my people dying echoed in the space between us, the heat of those flames seared across my face.
“If I had found you—”
I raised a hand to stop him. I didn’t need to hear how different things would have been if he’d seen me lying in the brush.
He hadn’t found me and I had spent the last twelve cycles tormented until I could barely recognize myself in the mirror.
Kal had said it himself: he could barely see who I’d been back then, just as I’d struggled to see him.
“I will not ask for your trust,” Captain Ruciyah said after a moment.
“I have done nothing to earn it. And I won’t be so selfish as to ask for your forgiveness, not when so many of your people died at the hands of those I surrounded myself with.
Kal’s forgiveness sits so heavily on my shoulders sometimes I don’t think I can bear the weight. ”
His voice cut off quickly and he blinked. I could only see the upper half of his face, but it was still the perfect expression of guilt, grief even. And I wished it was enough to dispel the anger I harbored toward him.
“What are you asking for then?” I whispered, throat raw.
Captain Ruciyah searched my face for a long moment before taking a small step forward.
He was so tall I had to crane my neck back to keep him in sight, shoulders wide enough he blocked out the light above.
But I caught his throat bobbing beneath the bottom half of his helmet. “Time. I am asking for time.”
Time for him to build my trust only to break it again. But what choice did I have? We stared at each other for a long moment before I nodded.
“Will you come to the mess? We need to discuss how the plan has changed now that Maxtalen is dead.”
I fell into step beside him without another word and, from the corner of my eye, his arm twitched before he grabbed his gloves from the waistband of his trousers.
My steps stuttered when I realized why the plan had changed.
I stopped and he turned immediately, one glove clutched in his hand, eyes wide as they skirted over my face, my torso.
“Do you need something? The med bay? I can call—”
“The plan has changed,” I repeated.
I must have shown some sort of surprise, because in the next moment he stood closer, crouching low to catch my gaze. Calloused fingertips skimmed the inside of my wrist before they fell away.
“That is not your fault.” The statement was so fierce that I reeled back, even as it softened the dread pooling in the pit of my stomach.
Captain Ruciyah pulled on his other glove and there was something about the set of his shoulders, or maybe it was the way his eyes narrowed on the cuff of his glove as if it had personally offended him, that made me speak.
“I won’t apologize for what I did.”
He was already turning away from me, just enough to hide his face as he stared down the hall. “Nor will I—it was a pleasure to watch the life leave his eyes. I only wish I could have done it sooner.”