40. Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty
I would be under full supervision the entire time I was in the room, Val warned me shortly before I entered. “If you try to help him escape, or do anything but calm him, we’ll find a much less pleasant way to subdue him,” she said.
As if I would ever do anything to endanger Ursa. I could not fully disguise my irritation at being treated like I was a teenager—ruled by passion instead of logic, prone to dramatic outbursts and ill-conceived, idealistic notions.
Maybe it was all in my head, but I couldn’t help but think she must have gotten that idea from Tobago.
Aside from one fight at the dinner table, I like to think I’d behaved with common sense for most of our time on the Trojan Horse.
I suppose back in my adolescent years I had been somewhat prone to melodrama; what teen isn’t? But I’d outgrown that long ago.
That was the trouble when you knew someone growing up, then parted ways, only to be reunited again.
They froze in time for you, and instead of seeing the person they’d become, you could only see the person they’d been.
I’d done so when I’d assumed that Tobago’s loyalty to me would outweigh his desire for money.
It only made sense that he’d done the same for me.
It didn’t matter, though, not really. I didn’t give a fig what those people thought about me anymore, so long as they would let me see Ursa one last time.
He was lying prone on the floor, which I recognized with a pang of familiarity as the pose he’d often taken when he was held captive on the base on Earth.
To my relief, the clothes I’d sent with Zenny seemed to have reached him, and at least these he had not refused, though I saw an untouched tray of food in the corner of his cell, evidence of his refusal to eat.
I began to call out his name, but Ursa must have caught a whiff of my scent, because suddenly his inert body was fully alert. He rolled agilely to a squat, then rose to his feet, his eyes intent upon my face. “Mina,” he breathed, like he couldn’t quite believe I was there.
Even though I knew Val and likely others were watching, I couldn’t hold myself back. I ran to him. We clung to each other in the spaces between the metal bars, an embrace that was both painfully uncomfortable and wholly necessary.
For a long moment, we were both too overcome to do much more than hold each other and say each other’s names, again and again, as though afraid to wake from some bittersweet dream. At last, Ursa pulled back enough to cup my face in his hands and search my eyes. “Hurt?” he demanded.
I memorized his beautiful dusky blue eyes, his handsome face, the beard that had grown out a bit too long, and the long dark hair that was in need of a combing.
Who would look after him now? I couldn’t think about that, though, without weeping, so I shook my head.
“No. I’ve just been held in the room. They wouldn’t let me see you until now. ”
Maybe it was risky, throwing in that last part, if Val was listening and if my job was to subdue Ursa.
I wasn’t trying to rile him up, really. I just needed him to know I hadn’t been staying away from him intentionally.
That I’d come to him as soon as I was able.
Perhaps later, once he realized that we’d been parted, he’d understand that I hadn’t left him of my own free will, and that I would find him as soon as I could.
I had to tell him this without actually telling him, in whatever way I could devise.
“I’ve heard you haven’t been eating.” My voice was filled with gentle reproach. “You must eat, Ursa. Keep up your strength. Promise me?”
When he stayed silent for too long, I covered his hand, still holding the side of my face, and squeezed. “Promise me.”
At last, Ursa nodded. “You stay?” His grip on me tightened as if he could hold me there through sheer will.
This time, I couldn’t keep the tears back. It took me a moment to find my voice. “No. They’re going to take me back.”
Ursa grunted in protest, his eyes roving the room wildly for the unseen enemy that would soon appear to tear us apart. I reached out to take his face, drawing his gaze back to me. “Please, Ursa. We don’t have much time. I need you to hear me. Listen, please.”
With great reluctance, Ursa kept his gaze on mine.
Not, I fancy, because he’d suddenly decided he didn’t like the look of me, but because it went against his nature to stand down.
To give in. He was brewing for a fight, but there was no physical enemy in the room—only our mutual fear, and the clock ticking to when we would be separated again.
“You must keep eating,” I told him. “You must not hurt anyone else on the ship. You must exercise as much as you’re able. You must sleep, and practice your words, and keep yourself strong. Mentally and physically. Do you understand?”
“Mina comes back?” He corrected himself automatically, “You come back?”
I would have rather said anything, anything, than the words I had to force myself to say next. “Not for a long time. They’re going to keep us apart—”
He huffed air out of his nose, his eyes wild with pain as he tried to pull away—not from me, I think, but from the words themselves. As if he could make them untrue simply by physically distancing himself from them.
“And that is why you must stay strong,” I persisted. “So once you get to Haven 3, you can fight. And I’ll do the same, Ursa. I promise you. I’ll do everything in my power to come back to you again.”
His face furrowed—with rage, I thought at first, until I realized it was pain.
There were tears in his eyes, just as there were in mine.
He didn’t know what was about to happen to me, but it was as if he sensed it, as if he could feel in me that this was more than just me being taken back to my room.
Once they abandoned me on Elba, I was going to have to fight for my life.
For my own sake? I don’t know if I could have survived it. But for him? I would do anything, anything, to be with him again.
He touched his forehead to mine, moving his hand to twine in the hair at the back of my head, to hold me as close as possible.
I was the one to turn my mouth up to his, to seek the warmth and comfort of his lips.
Not for the last time, I promised myself.
This was only temporary. It wasn’t goodbye forever. It couldn’t be forever.
The door opened behind me, and someone—Val—rapped on the metal wall, a warning. “Time’s up,” she said briskly.
Ursa tensed, trying to hold me to him. Tears streamed down my cheeks unchecked now, but I didn’t know how to stop them, and I no longer cared to try.
“You have to let me go,” I told him in a choked voice.
It was the opposite of everything I was feeling, but it was the only way.
I had to give him a fighting chance. I had to ensure that when he was delivered to Rawley, he wouldn’t be a man weakened by imprisonment and grief, but a warrior. “Please, Ursa. You have to let me go.”
“No!” But two men appeared to flank me on either side, and he had to release me to prevent them from hurting me as they wrenched me away. He gripped the bars, his eyes wild as he called after me. “Mina!”
I nodded at him, trying to look assured, though I probably only succeeded in looking manic. “It’s going to be all right. You have to stay strong, remember? Stay strong until I can find you. Where Ursa is, Mina is—”
But they shut the door on me before I could finish the sentence.