Kessa
The morning after the City survives, people go back to work.
Rations are handed out. Braces go up where walls cracked. I barely notice any of it. I only need one answer.
Is Rhazek alive?
I’m standing outside Merra’s workroom with a clay cup of bitter-root tea cooling between my hands.
There are nine new cracks in the wall opposite me.
I’m certain of it because I’ve counted them six times.
When I started to count them for the seventh time, I decided counting them again would qualify as a personal failure and stopped myself.
The door scrapes open and Merra steps into the corridor with blood on one sleeve and dark circles under her eyes.
“He’s alive,” she says, holding up one hand before I can ask.
Relief nearly drops me. I brace one hand against the wall.
“Good.”
“I told you to drink that,” she says, looking at the untouched tea.
“I did,” I say.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar, but the tea is terrible.”
“That’s why it works.”
“That’s what bitter-root wants us to believe.”
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, giving up.
“He will live,” she says. “The burns are ugly. The damaged wing will take time. I got the blood relay out from under his ribs. The command anchor is still inside him, but it looks like most of the active pathways are burned out. I can’t remove what remains without risking his throat, his spine, or several things I only understand well enough to know better than to mess with. ”
Relief lasts about two seconds before the next fear arrives.
“Can it still control him?”
She hesitates. I already know I’m not going to like the answer.
“Not that I can see.”
“But you can’t promise that?”
“No.”
I hate her honesty, but I trust her because she gives it. Merra steps aside.
“He woke a few minutes ago. Try not to make him prove anything.”
“I never do that.” She stares, slowly arching one eyebrow. “Fine. I rarely do it on purpose.”
“Kessa.”
“Fine, I know.”
Merra sighs. “I know you know.”
I walk in.
Rhazek is awake on the low treatment bed, propped against folded blankets. Linen wraps crisscross his ribs and shoulder. The left wing is bound close to his back. Fresh salve darkens the burn along his forearm, and the old collar scar beneath his throat is swollen over the buried command anchor.
He looks terrible, but he’s alive. I have to stop in the doorway and get myself under control before I cross the room. He looks up with his one open eye and finds me.
“Kessa.”
My name is only my name. No accompanying green flare. No machine waiting for either of us to move. I set the tea down before the tremble in my hands causes me to drop it.
“You look awful.”
“Merra said worse.”
“Merra has higher standards.”
“She threatened to remove my spine if I tried to stand.”
“Don’t stress it. That means she likes you.”
“Hmm,” he says, coughing. “I had reached the opposite conclusion.”
I stop beside the bed. He doesn’t reach for me. So I hold out my hand. He looks at it, then at me.
“May I?”
“Please.” He takes my hand so carefully I look down at our joined fingers. “You don’t need permission to hold my hand every time.”
“I would rather ask too often than take once.”
That shuts me up. Annoying male.
I sit on the edge of the bed, careful of his wing and the wraps around his ribs. For a while neither of us speaks.
The City makes enough noise for both of us. Feet in the corridor. Someone calling for fresh water. A child crying and then stopping. Stone scraping somewhere farther down as a brace crew begins repairing whatever tried to fall in the night.
We’re still here. Still us. Rhazek looks toward the wall as if he can see through it to the sky.
“Did it answer again?”
“No. Sky-watch has seen nothing since the pulse.”
“That does not mean nothing was heard.”
“I know.”
He rubs his thumb once along the side of my hand. “I am sorry.”
“For the signal?”
“For all of it.”
“That’s too much to apologize for before breakfast.”
“I can divide it into smaller pieces.”
He looks amused, which is good. I need that too.
“The signal is not yours alone,” I say. “That Gray bastard made the send. The machine was already listening. We stopped what we could.”
“I broke something I did not understand.”
“You also broke the leash.”
He looks away from me and lifts his free hand toward the scar at his throat, but stops before touching it.
“I still feel where it was,” he says.
“I figured.”
“It is quiet.”
“Good.”
“It may not always be.”
“Then if it gets noisy, you tell me.”
He looks at me. “I will tell you.”
“And Merra.”
A pause. He frowns, thinks for a moment, then nods.
“And Merra.”
“Look at you. Learning already.”
“I was told I am starting to know.”
I smile before I can stop myself. He remembers everything. I squeeze his hand.
“There is something else you need to decide.”
He stiffens, uncertain, and I read it wrong until I realize he thinks he screwed something up.
“That is?”
“What happens when Merra stops threatening your spine and the council stops arguing long enough to ask whether you are staying.”
He’s silent for a long time. I listen to the scrape of a broom in the corridor outside and try not to demand an answer before he has one. I make it about thirty seconds.
“I have thought of little else.”
“And?” I ask, hardly able to take a full breath.
“I want to stay.”
I stare at him. I thought I knew what he would say, but hearing it is different. I need him to say the rest.
“Because of me?”
“Yes.” I forget every objection I planned, but he continues before I can make one. “But not only because of you.”
I close my mouth.
“I want to know what became of the signal. I want to teach your people what I know before someone else comes through the sky carrying a better cage. I want to learn this world when it is not trying to kill me every few breaths.”
“Tajss will take that personally.”
“I have noticed.” He squeezes my hand once. “And I want to stay because you are here. That is part of my choice. It is not the whole of it.”
There it is. The difference I needed him to understand.
I don’t have to make myself less important so his choice can be free. He doesn’t have to make me responsible for every choice he makes because I matter to him.
“You really are learning,” I say.
“I have a difficult teacher.”
“You’re welcome.”
He turns our joined hands until my palm rests against his.
“Kessa.” He says my name differently this time, and I stop smiling. “I do not know what comes next.”
“Neither do I.”
“But I know what I want.”
I grip his hand tighter.
“That’s usually where trouble starts.”
“Yes.”
He says it so seriously I laugh. Then he keeps looking at me and the laugh fades.
“I want you,” he says. “Not because the command anchor learned your name. Not only because my blood recognized you before I understood why. Not because Arcan sent me here. Not because I mistook the first safe place for something it was not.” His voice roughens. “I want you, Kessa.”
I can’t joke my way around it, and for once, I don’t try. I have wanted him for so long while pretending wanting was another problem to solve. There is nothing left to solve.
“I love you,” I say.
The words are so simple after everything else that they almost surprise me. Rhazek stares at me. Then he closes his eye, breathes out, and looks at me again.
“Kessa.”
“If you make me say it twice because you are stunned, I will.”
“I heard you.”
“Good.”
He is the one trembling now.
“I love you,” he says.
I believe him.
“Despite all evidence that this is a terrible idea?” I ask, trying my best to not choke on the words.
“Because I have considered the evidence.”
That gets me. I laugh, wipe at the tears I can’t stop, and kiss him.
He lets me set the pace. Warm mouth, careful pressure, his free hand hovering near my waist until I catch it and put it where I want it.
“Here,” I murmur.
His fingers settle against me and the kiss changes.
We have done desperate. This is slower. He waits when I slow down and follows when I pull him closer. No implant. No enemy. No excuse. Just us.
When I pull back, his eye is almost black.
“More?” he asks.
I smile broadly.
“Yes.”
He looks pleased with himself.
“You are very demanding about questions.”
“I am an excellent teacher.”
“So you have said.”
I kiss him again before he can become too pleased with himself, then a knock hits the door and Merra’s voice comes through the wood.
“If either of you tears anything I spent the night repairing, I will become unreasonable.”
I stare at the door, struggling to not laugh.
“You are already unreasonable,” I call.
“I can become even more creative.”
Her footsteps move away. Rhazek looks at me.
“Your healer frightens me.”
“She should.”
“Should we obey?”
I look at the bandages crossing his body, then at the heat in his eyes.
“Mostly.”
His laugh is low and rusty from pain and disuse. I love that sound too.
We do obey, at first.
He sleeps for several hours because Merra returns with food, medicine, and threats sufficient to make even Rhazek accept that his body has limits.
I stay and drink her terrible tea. I answer two route questions through the door and refuse six more.
At some point I fall asleep in the chair with my head against the edge of his bed.
When I wake, warm fingers are combing carefully through my hair. The light coming through the narrow wall vent has shifted. Afternoon.
“You stayed,” he says.
“You asked.”
He stops combing through my hair and I lift my head.
“Don’t make that face. I wanted to.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
He looks better after sleeping. Wounded, exhausted, but some of the gray strain has left his skin.
I stand and stretch until half my body complains. Rhazek watches, not subtly. I raise an eyebrow.
“See something you like?”
“Yes.”
I step closer before I can overthink it.
“Ask.”
His gaze holds mine.
“Come here.”
“That sounded suspiciously like an order.”
He considers that. “Will you come here?”
“Much better.”
I step beside him. He keeps his hands on his thighs, waiting. I touch the side of his face.
“You can touch me.”
“Where?”
I laugh softly. “You’re taking this very seriously.”
“Yes.”
I guide one of his hands to my waist, and the other I place at the back of my neck.
“There.”
He kisses me.
This time I have no doubt that he wants me. The only caution is for the injuries.
He kisses me, then follows my jaw to my throat, stopping whenever I tense for the wrong reason and continuing when I pull him closer.
I learn the places on him Merra did not wrap.
The warmth of his skin between the dark plates.
The old scars at his shoulder. The line of his neck above the old collar scar.
The command anchor is still there, but it no longer owns him.
When my fingers brush the swollen scar beneath his throat, he goes quiet and I stop.
“Bad?”
“No.”
“Rhazek.”
His eyes meet mine.
“I want you to touch what they could not keep.”
I stop thinking about all the reasons to be careful and press my palm gently over the scar. He breathes out slowly. Nothing else answers.
He covers my hand with his, holding my palm against the scar instead of hiding it.
He squeezes my hand once.
I kiss him because I can’t think of anything better.
Soon our clothes are in the way. The bandages make everything awkward. His damaged wing catches once on the blanket, and we both freeze until he shifts it safely against the wall.
“This is extremely graceful,” I say.
“I was promised human mating involved less equipment.”
“Who promised you that?”
“No one. I hoped.”
I laugh against his mouth, and he laughs too. After that, neither of us tries so hard to make the moment perfect.
We undress slowly, working around wounds and wraps, laughing when we have to, stopping when something hurts. There’s no performance in it. No proof. No one watching through a machine.
Just the shock of his skin beneath my hands and the way he keeps watching my face for every answer.
He pauses when there’s almost nothing left between us.
“Kessa.”
“I’m still here.”
“Do you want this?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
I touch his face.
“All of you. The difficult parts too.”
He looks stunned.
“Then I choose all of you.”
He kisses me again.
We find our way to the bed carefully because neither of us has enough uninjured body left for pride. He keeps most of his weight away from me. I keep one hand near his bound wing so I know when the angle changes. We learn how to move around wounds without letting them own the moment.
It should ruin the heat. It doesn’t.
Nothing happens because it has to. We keep choosing what comes next.
When we finally come together, it’s slow, a little clumsy, and so intimate I have to close my eyes for a moment just to hold all of it.
Rhazek stops immediately.
“Kessa?”
“I’m fine.”
“Look at me.”
I do.
His face is inches from mine. No command in the words. No force behind them. Only concern.
I draw him closer.
His forehead rests against mine for one shaking breath.
The bond doesn’t crash through us. It opens.
Warmth spreads through the bond. There is no cold bite from the receiver and no forced rhythm trying to turn us into evidence. Rhazek is simply there in the connection, close and unmistakable, and it grows with every kiss and every answer we choose to give.
I feel his joy first and that surprises me more than anything.
He isn’t feeling possessive or relieved. He feels joy.
Mine answers it.
The connection deepens. I can feel him without losing myself. I’m still Kessa. He’s still Rhazek.
Neither of us disappears into the other. I pull him closer because I want to.
We take our time. For once, neither of us has to run toward the next disaster.
When the moment finally takes us, I hold on to him and he holds on to me, careful even then, and the bond flares warm enough to paint faint light across his throat and chest.
No receiver.
No proof packet.
Nothing sending it to the sky.
Ours.
Afterward, we lie tangled together under a thin blanket while the City creaks around us.
Rhazek’s wing is arranged badly against the wall. My bruises have begun filing formal complaints. Somewhere outside the room, Merra is arguing with someone about boiled instruments.
Perfect.
Rhazek traces one finger along the back of my hand.
“Is this what home feels like?” he asks.
“Usually with more people yelling.”
“That makes sense.”
I turn my head toward him.
“Home is not me.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“But you are in it,” he says.
That is exactly the right answer. I move closer, careful of his ribs, and rest my forehead against his shoulder.
“You’re in mine too.”
His arm comes around me only after I lean into it. No cage and no leashes. No one deciding for anyone else.
Just a ruined City, an impossible male, an uncertain future, and love anyway.
For once, it’s enough.