Chapter 13 #3
Toren took a bite. His scales flushed with pleasure. "This is better than anything our cooks have made in my lifetime."
"Don't tell them that. I'm trying to collaborate, not compete."
"Too late," Auren called from the next table, already on his second helping. "I've told everyone you're a genius, and I'm not taking it back."
Patel, naturally, never formally moved in because she'd never left the research caverns.
She and Melessra had established a permanent joint workstation, their collaboration expanding from atmospheric science to a comprehensive survey of Dobromian biology, geology, and energy systems. Patel slept on a cot beside her instruments and ate meals brought by Weredragon research assistants who'd become her devoted support team.
"She's happy," Athena observed, watching through the research cavern entrance as Patel and Melessra argued about crystal formation patterns with the passionate intensity of two people who genuinely loved the same questions. "I don't think I've ever seen her this happy."
"Having a partner who matches your intellect changes everything," Marina replied. She glanced at Toren beside her. Through the bond, she felt his quiet amusement at the parallel she was drawing and his agreement with it.
"Speaking of partners," Athena said, and her voice shifted to the careful tone she used for topics she'd rather avoid but couldn't. "I need to tell you something."
"You're staying."
Athena stared at her. "How did you…"
"You've been cleaning your weapons less. That's how I know you've made a decision. When you're undecided, you clean obsessively. When you've decided, you stop."
"That's either very perceptive or very weird."
"It's twenty-six years of being your sister." Marina turned to face her. "Tell me why."
Athena was quiet for a moment, and the quiet was different from her usual silences. Her usual silences were tactical: loaded, strategic, the silence of a soldier choosing her moment. This silence was personal. Vulnerable in a way Athena almost never allowed herself to be.
"I found something here," Athena said. "Not Auren, although he's a factor whether I admit it or not, and don't you dare tell him I said that.
I found a purpose. The Colony needs a security advisor who understands both species.
I know their warriors. I've trained with them.
They respect me, and some of them even like me, and this place needs someone standing between it and everything that's coming.
The suns, the collapse, the political fallout.
Someone needs to be here." She paused. "I want it to be me. "
"It's going to be dangerous."
"Everything I've done since the Vulcana crashed has been dangerous. At least this time I'm choosing it."
Marina looked at her sister; blonde hair, blue eyes, shoulders squared, jaw set.
The same posture she'd held since they were children and Athena had decided at age six that she was going to be the person who protected everyone.
She'd spent her whole life being that person.
Now she was choosing to do it on a scale that dwarfed anything either of them had imagined.
"Dad would've been proud of you," Marina said.
Athena's composure cracked for exactly one second. A flicker in her eyes, a tightening of her jaw, the grief of a daughter who'd lost her father too young and who still, at twenty-six, measured her choices against what he might have thought.
"Mom would've told us we're both insane," Athena replied.
"Mom would've been right."
"She usually was." Athena straightened; the crack sealed, the composure restored.
"I'm filing my formal request with Boradrith tomorrow.
Ambassador, liaison, security advisor, whatever title makes the bureaucracy happy.
The point is, I'm here, you're here and between the two of us, this alliance has a fighting chance. "
"Between the two of us, this alliance has something better than a fighting chance. It has the Livingstone sisters."
"That sounds like a terrible marketing slogan."
"It sounds like a promise." Marina hugged her. Athena hugged back; briefly and fiercely, with the intensity of two women who'd been each other's only family for a long time and who were about to add an entire planet to the family tree.
When they separated, Auren was standing at the end of the corridor, trying very hard to look like he hadn't been watching. He was failing.
"She's staying," Marina told him.
Auren's grin could have powered the Colony's bioluminescent systems. "I know. She told me yesterday."
Marina looked at Athena. "You told him before you told me?"
"He asked first."
"Since when does Auren ask questions before exploding things?"
"He's growing," Athena said, and the way she said it, with a reluctant warmth that she probably wasn't aware of, told Marina everything she needed to know about where that particular story was heading.
It was heading exactly where Toren and Marina's story had already gone. Different characters, different timing, same destination. The universe, it seemed, had a pattern.