Chapter Twenty-Three
Elara
I wake up to Seryn saying, “Do not panic.”
Naturally, I panic.
My eyes fly open. My body jerks against the fresh bandage around my arm, and the medical platform on Sarkan’s ship comes back with teeth.
I suck in a breath so sharp it hurts.
Rhazek’s hand is under mine. I clamp my fingers around his.
“Elara,” he says.
The medical bay comes back in pieces.
Black living walls. Gold veins dimmed to a soft pulse. Seryn standing at my other side with a scanner. Nima asleep in a chair with a blanket over her knees and tear tracks dried on her face. Jorren visible beyond the half-open door, facing the corridor with his back to me.
My free hand flies to my stomach, pulling painfully at the injured wrist.
“Seryn,” I rasp.
“Present,” she says immediately.
The tiny rhythm flickers beneath my palm. I nearly sob.
Nima wakes instantly. “Elara?”
“I’m okay,” I say.
Nima laughs once, watery and exhausted. “You scared us.”
“Sorry.”
“You do not owe us an apology for surviving,” Rhazek says.
“How bad was it?”
“Blood loss, strained ribs, a bruised jaw,” Seryn says. “The life-pattern recovered. I am watching for lasting effects from the bond disruption.”
“Can I hear it?”
Seryn turns the scanner toward me and activates the audio. Through a soft hiss comes a small, impossible tap.
I close my eyes and whisper, “Hi.”
I breathe out slowly.
Seryn switches off the audio. Memory comes back with edges.
“The humans.”
“Ben and the six from the cells are alive,” Seryn says. “Two critical but stable. Four undergoing implant-damage treatment. Ben has asked for you three times.”
“The woman from the medical room is awake too,” Nima says. “Her name is Liora Hale.”
“She helped me.”
“Yes,” Seryn says. “And then asked if you survived before asking whether she did.”
I cover my face, and a laugh turns into a sob. “I hate this.”
“I hate that I was relieved about the heartbeat before I knew if I wanted to be. Sarkan knew there was a lever before I did.”
“He pointed a weapon at my stomach.” Rhazek goes silent, his fingers motionless around mine.
“Rhazek.”
“Do not go somewhere I can’t reach. I need you here.”
“I am here.”
His fingers remain careful around mine. “I am sorry.”
“I know.”
“Sarkan is alive?” I ask.
“Yes. Secured.”
“Good. I still want proof. Killing him won’t make me less scared.”
“He knows where I am weakest,” Rhazek says.
“Then we need to make our feelings less useful to him.”
“How?”
“By not lying about it. I’m your weakness. You are mine. This tiny heartbeat is both of ours, and Sarkan knows that. Pretending we don’t care gives him more ways to prove we’re lying.”
Rhazek stands slightly, and panic hits.
My hand tightens around his.
He freezes.
“You moved.”
“I was reaching for water.”
“Oh.” I loosen my grip, embarrassed.
Rhazek slowly reaches to the side table, picks up the water cup, and holds it where I can see it before bringing it to me.
I drink.
Seryn offers a mild sleep aid.
The sleep aid scares me.
“I don’t want to wake up confused.”
“Possibly groggy,” Seryn says. “I’ll use the lowest dose and stay until you settle.”
“Will it hurt the pregnancy?”
“I see no sign of that risk. I’ll keep monitoring.”
I look at Rhazek. “What do you think?”
“I trust Seryn,” he says. “My instinct is to forbid every drug Sarkan ever touched. Don’t take medical advice from that instinct.”
“The tiny sleep dose, then,” I say. “And if I wake up weird, I’m blaming everyone.”
“Accepted,” Seryn says.
She gives it.
The medicine warms me slowly. Rhazek’s hand remains under mine; Nima pulls her chair closer.
I fall asleep.
* * *
When I wake again, the room is brighter.
Not bright-bright. The Black Star does not believe in cheerful lighting. But the gold veins in the walls have warmed to morning levels, or whatever counts as morning when time is fake and space remains terrible.
Rhazek is asleep.
He sits in the chair, head tipped forward, one horn catching the low light. His shoulders are still too straight, but the line between his brows has softened. Our hands remain joined.
I stare at his horns, remembering my fingers at their base and his voice breaking. Heat answers, inconvenient and alive. I am bruised and pregnant and freshly stolen back, and I still want him. That feels like winning.
I press my free hand to my stomach.
“Don’t judge me,” I whisper.
Rhazek’s eyes open, gold and alert. He looks around the room.
“Threat?”
“Just me being embarrassing.”
His body eases by degrees. “That is not a threat.”
“Debatable.”
The other chair is empty. Nima’s blanket is folded. I ask the ship to close the door. We have two minutes of not being a medical exhibit.
“Kiss me,” I say.
He does, careful of my mouth, of everything Sarkan put his hands near.
The kiss is not hungry the way the others were.
It is proof. Warm. Slow enough that I can track it.
I take his wrist and guide it under the blanket, over the soft of my stomach, then lower, until his fingers rest where I put them.
“Elara.”
“I need it to be you. Not a scan. Not a rescue.”
He watches my face the whole time. No rush. Two fingers only, the pads of them, learning where I lean in and where I do not. Heat gathers in a small, stubborn knot. When I come, it is small and shaking and mine, and I keep my eyes open so my body knows who is touching it.
He kisses the wet off my cheek and does not ask to be touched back. Afterward, I ask the ship to open the door again.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Five hours and forty-two minutes. Seryn made a chart.”
“How’s the baby?”
“Present.” His voice roughens at the word baby. I let it stand between us.
“Liora’s implant damage is significant but treatable,” he says. “Ben wants to help if we find other captives. Seryn has ordered him to stay in bed.”
“Grace?” I ask.
“Stable. She and the other Mercy Ark survivors are still at Vonn Akra, under citadel guard and Seryn’s medical team. Asha is with Captain Naylor, who woke long enough to demand a weapon and soup.”
“What about Varesh?”
Rhazek’s jaw tightens. “Council review suspended. Maiven and Therak hold the floor. Varesh is contained politically for now.”
“What does Sarkan want?”
“He refuses to speak except to you.”
“Shocker.”
“He may know where other human women targeted for reproductive compatibility research are being held.”
“Then eventually I talk to him.”
“I cannot bear the idea of his voice near you.”
“I don’t want it either. But if he knows where other women are, I need us to have a plan.”
Rhazek’s face goes bleak.
“You should be allowed to heal before carrying everyone else.”
“I know,” I say. “I should get to sit with the baby thing before it becomes the council thing or the rescue-other-women thing.”
He watches me. “We will find a plan.”
“You need to explain what happened after I was taken. No blaming yourself so dramatically that I end up comforting you.”
His gaze moves to the open door, then back to me.
“I struck The Black Star’s wall until she screamed. Jorren hit me to stop me.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“Not badly.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“No. He told me if I tore through the ship blind, you stayed gone. I listened.”
“We found Sarkan’s cradle frame under Vonn Akra.”
“Did you destroy it?”
“The grafted machinery. I left the cradle’s base.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“But next time, if there is something like that and I’m not actively kidnapped, I want to decide what happens to it.”
“Witnessed.”
“And Varesh?”
He tells me Varesh authorized access to the old sovereign protection routes, hoping to frighten me into custody.
I breathe slowly, for myself as much as the baby.
“What did you do?”
“I put my hand around his throat.”
Nima returns with a startled snort. “Whose throat?”
“Varesh’s,” I say.
She sits down. Seryn arrives with water and stops in the doorway.
“I did not kill him,” Rhazek says. “I came too close.”
“Did Varesh deserve it?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Did that make it okay?”
“No.”
“I don’t want you harmless,” I say.
“Harmless would have left those people on Sarkan’s ship.”
“But I also can’t be the only thing standing between your rage and someone’s throat.”
“You are right,” he says.
He lowers his head. “I do not know how to protect something I love without owning the battlefield around it.”
Love. He seems to realize what he said after he says it.
“Rhazek,” I whisper.
He starts to pull his hand away.
“No,” I say. He stops.
“I’m not ready to answer that.”
“I did not ask you to,” he says.
I keep my hand in his.
“But I heard you.”
“Witnessed.”
Nima stretches, then winces. “I need to check on Ben and Liora.”
“I want to see them too,” I say.
“Not yet,” Seryn says. “You’re injured and medicated. You can record a message after food.”
“Fine. Message.”
After I eat, I record a short message while Seryn watches.
I tell Ben and Liora and the others they are safe on The Black Star.
I tell them Seryn is terrifying but competent.
I tell them the implants are not their fault.
I tell them I am alive, the baby is present, and nobody is allowed to be heroic without medical clearance because I am hypocritically declaring that rule now.
When the message sends, I am exhausted. At least I can give them that much.
A chime sounds.
Jorren appears in the doorway. “Not emergency.”
“Lead with that forever,” I say.
He inclines his head. “Sarkan has given his first useful statement.”
Jorren looks directly at me. “He named a place.”
“What place?”
“Veyl had a research cache beyond the Rill Belt. He called it the Glass Cradle.”
“Can we verify it?”
“The coordinates may be false. He offers verification in exchange for a private conversation with you.”
“No,” I say.
“Check his ship records, his crew, Maiven’s archives. He doesn’t get me as currency for information about people he helped cage.”
“Agreed,” Rhazek says. Jorren inclines his head.
Seryn points at Jorren. “Out. She is done.”
Jorren leaves without protest.
A laugh escapes me at Seryn’s order. It hurts less than before.
The tiny rhythm flickers inside me.
I put my hand over my stomach.
“I think…” My throat tightens. “I think the baby liked that.”
Rhazek looks at my hand on my stomach. The wonder on his face makes my eyes burn.
Rhazek’s voice is rough. “Hello.”
My face crumples.
I cover it with my free hand. “That was unfairly simple.”
He lifts his free hand. I nod, and he touches my cheek with the backs of his fingers, careful of the bruise.
“I do not know how to do this,” he says.
“Neither do I.”
Seryn clears her throat. “Sleep now, both of you.”
Nima kisses my forehead before leaving with Seryn.
The door remains open halfway.
Jorren’s shadow stands outside again, turned away.
I let my eyes close.