Chapter 26 #5
I climbed over the edge of the deep, barrel-like tub that gleamed in bronze, and sat down on the little bench inside of it.
I propped my arms up on the edge, looking at Araxis as he hovered in the doorway, a pleased pink.
"Here's what I've got to know," I said after doing some rough estimates in my head.
"This is structural work. It's not just finishing touches.
How long have you been keeping this under wraps?
" Was this what Val had meant back when she'd asked if he was treating me right and spoiling me?
Was this what it felt like to be spoiled?
But as Araxis blinked at me, his pretty blush drained away.
"I – You are right that I was presumptuous," he began.
"When I finalized the planned changes, I hoped that you might...
forgive me. It was early on, before we had even arrived on Sozamia.
You said we would take a short break, and I hadn't truly considered –"
I pushed myself up and out of the bath, closing the space between us. "I'm not upset. I think it's sweet."
"It is not," Araxis said, eyes narrowing with discomfort.
"It was presumptuous. I thought, as I seem to always think, that if I could make things nice, I could fix everything.
Once we arrived on Sozamia and I began to…
process the breadth of what I had done and the likelihood that the damage I caused was irrevocable, it would have been difficult to stop the changes that were underway.
I… did plan on preparing another room for you.
I thought at least that way, you might have some space where you didn't need to continue to pretend to care for me. "
I loved him so much that I almost swayed under the sheer tidal force of the feeling.
There he stood, apologizing for doing something kind for me because he was worried it would make it seem like he'd been expecting me to forgive him, demanding it.
Even after I'd offered him whatever absolution I could, he refused to overstep the boundaries I had drawn months ago.
"I never stopped caring for you," I said, gentle. "And I was crawling into your bed every night. Why would you assume I'd want to be apart?"
"You were having nightmares, Sashen." His dark eyes were gleaming in the soft light of the hygiene room as he stared down at me. "Why would I assume that you wanted more than a temporary reprieve? The sound of someone breathing to keep out other imagined sounds."
That was what I had said the first night I'd relented, knowing Araxis was somehow a balm for the worst of my nightmares.
"I could have just put on some music if that had been the case," I admitted.
"I wanted to listen to you breathing. I wanted to smell your skin and feel your body next to mine and just to be with you, and it was so incredibly frustrating because I wanted to feel nothing and I felt everything with you.
You make me feel safe, you've made me feel safe, even in our worst moments.
You make me feel hopeful. You know that.
I've never felt that before. I've never felt – safe; I've never felt like there was anything worth hoping for. "
And saying it made my chest tighten and ache, but in a good way: like I was using a new muscle. Like I was making it stronger.
Araxis reached and curled his hand around the back of my head, pulling my mouth to his in this sliver of tranquility he had created for us.
This gift he offered on a platter, mine for the taking if I so wished.
His lips were soft against mine, his tongue insistent; I felt the scrape of his teeth against my lower lip, his fingers running down the back of my scalp.
A shiver ran down my spine, skin tightening as his other hand slid to the curve of my ass, drawing me firm against him.
It was pretty awful timing for a display in the bedroom to start chiming in an unsettling, urgent tone. Then again, we could have found out about the people who'd broken into the cargo bay when we were in the middle of fucking on our new bed, so – it could have also been worse.
Araxis drew away, startled, and strode out to the bedroom, flashing the display panel on as I followed after him.
I watched a flicker of shock pass over his features as he tapped a couple more times.
“We have visitors,” he said, voice low. He tapped again, bringing up a series of camera feeds from down in the hold.
Threading their way through the maze of containers were three figures, lit up by the new panels overhead.
The cargo bay doors hung open into the empty hall beyond.
“Not the Unbound?” I asked. One was abaya, a tightly bound crest trailing down their back.
They said something to the others – a brin, who was bundling up a small device with a tangle of wires, and a gray ketaari – both of whom then split off in different directions.
As they shifted, the light glinted off something in their hands.
Blast rifles.
“No,” said Araxis. He touched another part of the interface, using the biometric scanner to turn on the audio.
“– finish clearing the cargo hold, and then begin on the second floor. He's here somewhere.” The abaya spoke in a crisp, haughty accent, chin lifted up.
Araxis enlarged the video feed, focusing on the abaya's face. The abaya stood, arms crossed, scanning the cargo bay and blinking slowly. Next to me, Araxis inhaled, sharp. “You see the bronze mark on her jumpsuit? There on the pocket? Creche Naival.”
“Motherfuckers,” I hissed. And then, a moment later, “But they shouldn’t know we’re here. We’re only here because –”
"Yes,” said Araxis, grim. “Either the Unbound has fed them information, although they are directly at odds with one another, or –” He pulled the arc lance from his thigh, twisting the barrel hard as the segmented pieces unfolded the lance to its full length.
“Or there is a spy,” I finished, sick. “Vivith was right. But – Araxis, you don't think... I mean, Vivith wouldn't –”
“Vivith would never work with Creche Naival, even indirectly, nor would Naival work with Vivith. But it does not matter, not now. What matters is eliminating the threat.” The camera tracked the abaya who wandered up one of the aisles, her head tilted as the ketaari strode out of the training room.
“All clear,” said the ketaari; they were wearing armour, hard and gleaming and expensive. Well-funded. Professional, maybe. “It looks like the lights are on upstairs, so odds are good he's on the upper decks.”
“Lots of places to hide, though,” called the brin from the farther edge of the hold.
“Lohuru, guard the exit," said the abaya to the brin. "Slow Drift, you're with me. Take point. And stay alert, both of you. There's a nice bonus if you do this tidily."
The ketaari threaded through the alleys between containers and toward the stairs to the second level, the abaya following with her pistol drawn as the brin drifted back toward the doors to the cargo bay, falling into a rest position and looking for all the world bored.
Araxis opened up a series of menus in the display with one hand, holding his arc lance with the other. "Sashen," he said, although he wasn't looking at me, "I am going to ask if you will consider waiting here while I deal with this."
"Alright, consider it considered." I drew my own lance, which felt foreign and heavy as it glittered in my hand, clicking it out to full length and running through a preliminary check, like Araxis had shown me at the range.
Thank fuck I'd had a refresher before we left the station. "The answer is no."
On the screen, I could track the progress the ketaari and abaya were making toward the second deck.
Araxis was doing something with the complex internal systems of the ship, no doubt to help us, even though right now it mostly looked like he was pressing buttons while a couple of armed assailants got closer and closer to where we were.
"I will be able to maintain better concentration and focus if I know you're safe," Araxis countered, his stare darting to me before it went back to the screen where he continued to rifle through layers of sub-menus.
"And you will be safe if you stay here. If something were to happen, an official representative of a creche would never harm a declared virra. "
"And if something happened to you while I was tucked away safe and sound, I'd never forgive myself," I snapped.
I checked the charge on the lance; I upped the output to a range that would drop a ketaari and might kill an abaya.
"I've done it once, Araxis. I nearly watched you die on those sands while I stuck on a shuttle, useless, and I thought it might actually kill me – so no, I'm not going to wait here.
I'm going to have your back like I should. "
He finished inputting whatever he was doing, flicking away the stream of complex abayan code that had been skimming beneath his fingertips.
Some sort of sequence I couldn't read was glowing on the screen as he turned to me, eyes bright with emotion.
"And if anything happened to you because of my carelessness –" he started.
"Stop." Fury lit me up in a sizzle of electricity, and I stepped in close, fisting the front of his jumpsuit as I looked him in the eye.
"I'm with you all the way. I've worked for weeks to make sure I'm not a liability, not any more.
Araxis, I can do this. You know I can do this. I'm – We're equal in all things."