Chapter 24
Felicia
The savage Naga only twitched toward me, but seemed to control the impulse to attack at the last moment.
That didn’t matter to Levant. He roared with such fury that the walls trembled and snow rained down silently on us.
It felt like a quake rumbled beneath my feet in response, but that could have just been the echo playing tricks on me.
My pinned, injured mate lunged beneath the slab of ice that held him down, fighting to get free, to rise and protect me.
His sigils lit all over his body. Though much of it was covered by the warm furs he wore, some of them were still visible—like along the very tip of his tail, which lashed furiously through the air, cracking like a whip toward the savage white Naga.
I held out my hands, hoping to look like I was no threat.
“Easy! Easy, Levant. He’s not attacking.
Right, big guy? You’re not going to attack me, are you?
You’re going to help me get us out of this mess, aren’t you?
Like a good savage Naga.” He cocked his head, then tilted it to look at Levant.
I didn’t see him move, but his hand snapped out so fast it blurred.
He caught the tip of Levant’s tail in his fist, and I screamed and lunged forward myself on instinct before I could stop.
“No! Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt my mate! ”
Auby was right behind me, and I heard him translate, calling out what I’d said in the native Naga language.
It was a very dumb move on my part to throw myself at a savage alien who wanted nothing better than to tear me to shreds.
I’d done it now, though, thrown myself between Levant and him, arms spread wide as if that was going to protect my mate.
“I don’t think he understands what I’m saying, Felicia.
I don’t think he has the capacity for speech.
You should get out of there. He will kill you. ”
What was the point? If I couldn’t get to the Future, I could not destroy the ship.
We were all going to die, and even if I did get to my ship, we were still going to die, because the self-destruct would take us with it.
This appeared to be the calm before the storm, but I wasn’t fooled, any moment now, it would engage. Precious seconds were ticking by.
The savage Naga released Levant’s tail so suddenly that I almost missed it.
He moved back right away, out of reach, and then he hunkered down and stared at me.
His eyes were so pale they looked like ice, but his body was doing something that almost, almost, looked like an attempt at submission.
Levant had told me how the Naga females in the other Clans were the ones in charge, that Serqethos was the exception to the rule.
Perhaps this male was used to his females being far more aggressive than he was, and he thought he had no choice but to obey.
Whatever it was, it had kept me alive, and now I was going to make it work in Serant’s favor.
This journey, and Levant’s injuries, weren’t going to be for nothing.
I moved around the savage slowly, keeping him carefully in my sight as I took each shuffling sideways step.
I felt the time trickle by, like each second was going to be our last. It was running out fast. Levant had subsided too, but I heard him panting, clearly in terrible pain.
When I reached the block of ice that pinned the savage Naga’s tail, I flicked on the overloaded laser scalpel and aimed.
This block was big and heavy, but it was not structurally sound the way the slab lying atop Levant was.
A single blast was all it took to splinter it apart and free the guy.
“Please don’t turn on me and kill me now,” I whispered.
“Please help me move the ice. Please, follow me,” I urged.
Except I couldn’t bring myself to leave Levant a third time, here, injured and pinned.
It was physically impossible to make my feet move, not in the direction I needed to go.
I found myself going to his side, dropping to my knees and curling against him, my arms clutching at his neck, my face buried against his cheek.
“Leaving you again—I don’t have it in me, Levant.
It’s impossible. I can’t move that ice only to kill us with the ship’s self-destruct. ”
“Self-destruct?” he hissed, and I saw the rage recede from his eyes, replaced by a sadness as deep as the one I felt.
“That’s the only way?” he asked, and I nodded slowly, clutching at him as if holding on tight could make it not true, make it better.
He didn’t tell me to let go, but I knew he would, because as much as he wanted to make me happy, he wanted to protect his people too. He was right.
The sound of ice creaking came again. It was probably the savage I’d freed, moving around, trying to find a way out of the hole.
I couldn’t bring myself to care; the things I was already feeling were too big.
The ice creaked louder, and then Levant groaned in pain.
I lifted my head and discovered the slab had been shoved clean off Levant like it was nothing.
The savage hovered at our side like it was nothing, though I saw his flanks heave, and blood dripped from his temple.
“He did it,” Auby said. “I didn’t think a single Naga was strong enough, but whatever he’s on, it’s giving him strength as well as rage…
” The Naga snarled at Auby as if he were offended, but he did not attack.
No, he shifted back a little and just stared.
With Levant free, he had to know he’d leveled the playing field, at least a little.
Maybe his thinking process didn’t go that far, and it was just a matter of repaying me for freeing him.
Now I didn’t need to leave Levant’s side, and we had another shot at moving the ice out of the way in the tunnel.
“Can you rise?” I asked my mate, still holding onto his neck like I feared he’d vanish if I let go.
Pretty soon, the whole world might vanish on us.
We had to hurry, but it took Levant a minute to rise to a sitting position.
“Broken ribs,” he growled, but his tail worked, so he got himself upright.
The savage watched us, unmoving, head cocked, a bit like a cat staring at a fly on the wall—as if he were contemplating whether we were worth the effort of pouncing.
I tucked myself under my mate’s arm and helped him move into the tunnel, our pace increasing as he got used to moving.
The savage remained behind, watching, but still not pouncing.
Auby trotted ahead, light beaming from his eyes, and then the sound of his hooves striking the ice as he tried to burrow through came from ahead.
The good boy was already back at it, trying to free a passage to the ship with nothing more than six sharp hooves, his damaged hide, and sheer determination.
When the blocked area came into view, my breath shuddered on a sob.
How were we ever going to get through that?
Just to die shortly after, when the ship’s explosion would take this tunnel down entirely?
A bigger part of me was determined to fix this.
It was my fault the planet was in the state it was in in the first place, my fault it was tearing apart now.
That couldn’t be my legacy. I had to repair this.
Levant and I both pushed and shoved, cutting more with the laser-knife he’d modulated to put out a stronger beam.
It burned my hands even through my gloves, but I didn’t care.
The pieces were too big and stacked too deep.
Once I’d cut and melted a path through one, another would just lie beyond it.
Beneath my feet, the ground trembled and shook.
The drive was doing something again, and I didn’t dare to believe this was over; it was only going to get worse.
I should have destroyed the damn machine when we were here last time, but it hadn’t seemed nearly so dire then.
With a groan, Levant sank to the icy floor of the tunnel, clutching his ribs with both hands.
Blood flecked his lips, which meant he had a punctured lung.
That was bad—really, really bad—but we were about to die anyway.
I kissed him, heedless of the blood on his skin, my mittens wet and cold against his overheated body.
“You rest. I’ll keep digging.” His eyes said he loved me; his mouth said he knew we’d lost, but he nodded anyway.
The ground rumbled even more, shaking beneath my feet and bringing loose snow and ice down from the ceiling on top of us.
Part of the passage I had managed to dig collapsed, and I wailed in despair.
“We just need a small hole. We can do it,” Auby assured me.
“I can engage Felicia’s self-destruct. All you need to do is dig a hole small enough for me to fit through. ”
The little Revenant was nearly white; he was covered in snow that had crusted on his fur and filled the holes the Dushka had made in his flanks.
His lavender eyes glowed at me with certainty, like he believed we could make it.
His entire being focused on completing the task I needed completed.
“You can interface with the ship’s computer?
” Auby rolled his eyes like a pro, which pretty much indicated he thought the Future’s computer was primitive and he’d have no issue.
I hoped he was right, because creating a passage to the ship big enough for just him was a lot more doable than one I had to squeeze through.