Chapter 26
ADRYEL
The medical facility at the refinery was nothing like the ones on the light side.
Functional. Utilitarian. The kind of place built for miners who'd had accidents with equipment, not for Gol-Vetts and their mates.
The walls were bare metal, the lighting harsh and white, and everything smelled faintly of antiseptic and ore.
Adryel sat on the edge of the medical table, her shirt pulled up on one side while a medical droid worked on the gash along her ribs with quiet mechanical efficiency.
It wasn't deep. She'd been right about that.
But it was long, and it had bled more than she'd let on, and the droid's assessment had included the phrase "delayed treatment" in a tone that managed to sound accusatory for something without vocal cords.
Stron stood with his arms crossed watching the droid work.
He hadn't said anything since they'd gotten here.
That was somehow worse than if he had.
"You can stop looking at me like that," she said.
"Like what?"
"Like I did something wrong."
"You told me you weren't hurt."
"I told you it was nothing," she corrected. "Which it nearly is."
He looked at the droid. At the wound. Back at her.
"It bled through your dress," he said quietly.
She didn't have an answer for that.
The droid finished its work with a soft chime and rolled back, leaving a neat line of closure strips along her ribs. She pulled her shirt down and sat there for a moment, not quite ready to move.
Stron crossed to her. He didn't say anything. Just reached out and tucked a curl behind her ear, his fingers trailing along her jaw after.
She let him.
"I should have told you," she said.
"Yes."
"I didn't want to slow things down."
"I know." His hand dropped to her shoulder. "That is not going to work for me. Going forward."
She looked up at him. "You're going to have to get used to the fact that I don't always lead with the bad news."
"And you're going to have to get used to the fact that I need to know when you're hurt." His voice was even. Not angry anymore. Just certain. "That is not negotiable, Adryel."
She held his gaze for a moment. Something settling in her chest that she didn't quite have a word for yet.
"Okay," she said.
Just that. Okay.
He looked slightly surprised. Like he'd expected more of a fight.
She smiled. "Don't get used to it."
He exhaled something that was almost a laugh. His hand moved to the pendant at his chest — that large, ornate family crest that she'd noticed the moment she'd seen him, heavy and significant against his skin. He lifted it over his head. He held it out to her.
She looked at it. Then at him. "You don't have to—"
"I know." He took her hand and folded her fingers around it. "But the chip belongs with you. And so does this." His fingers stayed over hers for a moment. "When you're ready to carry it again."
She looked down at the pendant in her hand. The ornate metalwork. The place where she'd hidden the most dangerous thing she owned and handed it to someone she'd known less than a week.
Someone who'd kept it safe without even knowing he was doing it.
She closed her fingers around it.
"I think I'm ready," she said.
He watched her for a moment, something moving behind his eyes that she was only just learning to read.
"You know," he said. "When I agreed to Khalzin's program, I told myself it was just a favor. Nothing personal."
"I remember. You mentioned that."
"I was wrong."
She looked up at him.
"It was the most personal thing I have ever done," he said. "And I did not know it yet." He reached out and touched the pendant, still in her hand. "I know it now."
She didn't have a smart answer for that. For once in her life, she didn't reach for one.
Instead she reached for him.
He pulled her in carefully, mindful of her side, and she let herself be held in the harsh white light of the refinery medical bay, the antiseptic smell and the distant grind of the ore processing all around them.
It wasn't romantic.
It was real.
Which, she was beginning to understand, was better.