Chapter 14 #2
Her hand on my arm was innocent. Comforting. She had no idea what it did to me, how desperately I was working to keep myself still and careful.
"They look for me?" I asked. Partly because I wanted to know. Partly because I needed to focus on something, anything, other than the heat of her palm.
Niki nodded. "Your whole family did. Your mother, the Alliance Prime, she never stopped hoping you were alive. When they finally found out where you were, she was desperate to get you back."
The words triggered something. A flash, quick and sharp. A female with kind eyes and a voice like music. Singing. A lullaby, maybe, low and rhythmic.
Gone before I could hold it.
"Why we away?" I asked, struggling to shape the full question. "From family?"
Her expression shifted. She set down the tubers and turned to face me fully, which put her even closer. Close enough that I could see the gold flecks in her dark eyes. Close enough that her breath ghosted warm across my chest when she exhaled.
I swallowed hard.
She took a breath. "When we brought you back to the Bardaga, the ship where your family was, George fixed your body.
Reversed most of the augmentations. But your mind...
" She paused. "Your mind was still fractured.
When they tried to wake you, you had rages.
You couldn't speak. You couldn't recognize anyone. "
I listened, something cold and heavy settling in my chest.
Another memory surfaced, hazy and distorted at the edges.
Waking up. Bright lights overhead. The sharp antiseptic smell of a medical bay.
Thrashing. Restraints on my wrists and ankles. Panic consuming me in a wave, the absolute certainty that I was back in that place of pain and darkness, that the collar would come back, that it would all start again.
Roaring. Faces appearing above me, concerned and frightened. The violence of tearing free of the restraints. Attacking anyone who came near because I couldn't tell friend from enemy anymore, couldn't hold onto anything long enough to know.
"I saw faces," I said slowly, working through it. "Males. Warriors."
"Your brothers," Niki confirmed, her voice gentle. "Charick and Kavak. They were both there."
The shame settled deeper. I'd attacked my own brothers without recognizing them.
"You weren't there," I said, the realization arriving with sudden clarity. "When I woke. You weren't in the room."
That was why I'd raged. The desperate animal need to find her, to protect her, had had nowhere to go.
"No," she admitted. "I wasn't allowed in the medical bay. They thought it was too dangerous." Her hand tightened on my arm. "I tried to see you every day, Enslak. They kept telling me no."
Something cold settled in my gut at that. I might have hurt her. Turned these claws on her without knowing what I was doing.
But beneath that fear was something fierce and warm and entirely involuntary.
She'd tried anyway. Wanted to be near me even when I was dangerous. Had kept fighting to reach me.
Mine, something whispered, deep and certain. She is mine.
"Your family thought your mind was gone," she continued. "They believed the torture had destroyed who you were." She touched her own temple briefly. "So they decided to grant you a mercy death. A warrior's death. They thought it would be kinder than letting you suffer."
The words settled over me slowly. My family had looked at what remained of me and thought I was too far gone to bring back.
A flash of memory came then, sudden and sharp and more complete than most.
A battlefield. Smoke thick and acrid. The smell of burning metal and something worse underneath.
A warrior, one of ours, pinned beneath twisted wreckage. His lower body destroyed. No medic could reach us. No healer was coming.
He'd looked at me with eyes that weren't asking to be rescued. He was asking for something else.
I'd knelt beside him. Put my hand on his chest. Spoken the ritual words.
Your honor remains. Your spirit flies free.
Then I'd ended it. Quick. Clean. The most merciful thing I had to offer.
He'd thanked me with his last breath.
The memory faded, leaving me hollow and certain at the same time.
I'd done it myself. Granted mercy to warriors too broken to save. I'd always understood it as an act of love, of respect, a final kindness given when nothing else could be given.
My family had tried to give me the same thing.
"But I knew better," Niki said, and the fierceness in her voice made me look at her again.
"I knew you were still in there. You protected me on Merisalle.
You spoke to me. Broken or not, you just needed time and space and someone willing to stay.
" Her eyes held mine steadily. "So I convinced my friends to help me escape with you. We stole a ship and came here."
I stared at her, trying to take in the full weight of what she'd risked.
She'd stolen me. Defied my family. Put herself in danger for months because she believed something in me was worth believing in.
"Don't be angry with them," Niki said quickly, searching my face. "Your family. Please don't blame them for what they wanted to do."
Angry?
I turned the word over carefully.
"They were heartbroken, Enslak. Your mother—" Her voice caught for a moment. "They thought they were doing the right thing. The merciful thing. They thought the Enslak they knew was already gone, and all that was left was pain."
Something shifted in my chest. It wasn't anger at all.
It was understanding, arriving slowly but completely.
"They love you so much," Niki continued, her thumb moving against my cheekbone in that way she had. "They couldn't bear watching you trapped, unable to be yourself. They thought they'd already lost you."
They hadn't wanted to lose me. They'd believed they already had.
"Not anger," I said, needing her to hear this clearly. "Family did right thing. Thought right thing."
I reached up and covered her hand with mine where it rested against my face. My hand was so much larger, but I was careful with her. Always careful.
"Mind not gone," I said, the words coming slowly but with intention. "Just buried. Deep."
"I know," she whispered.
"Every day with you," I continued, pausing to find the next words, "clearer. Better."
"You're healing," she said. "Really healing, not just your body but your mind. Your spirit."
Spirit. I didn't fully understand the word, but I felt the truth of it resonating in my chest where the constant cold had started to loosen.
Something in me was mending. Something fundamental that I hadn't known could be fixed.
Because of her.
My heart did that strange thing again, skipping and then racing, and my body responded to her nearness whether I wanted it to or not. I didn't understand all of it yet. Didn't know what to do with any of it.
But that quiet voice at the back of my mind was getting harder to ignore.
Important. She is important.
"Niki," I said. Her name came easily now, naturally. "Thank you."
She smiled, that full, unguarded smile that went straight through every wall I'd built.
"You don't have to thank me," she said. "I couldn't let them kill you. I couldn't let you go."
The words settled into that warm place in my chest where she seemed to live now, permanent and welcome.
I pulled her closer. Carefully. Always so careful with the difference in our sizes, the strength I was always holding back.
She came without hesitation, settling against me with her head on my chest like it was simply where she belonged.
Sitting there by the river. Her in my arms. Memories slowly returning, pieces fitting back into place one by one. Words coming a little easier each day.
For the first time in longer than I could calculate, I felt something I'd forgotten entirely.
Peace.