Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AIRIK
Airik pulled the tight collar of his shirt away from his neck in a miserable attempt to cool off.
The suns’ rays reached through the forest’s canopies as they walked toward Buriji, following the river’s maintenance path, which, other than the occasional overground root, had been kept clear by automatons.
“Are you hot, too?” Nora’s cheeks were painfully red, and droplets of sweat slid down her temples.
His mouth ran dry.
“No.” For a fleeting moment, he considered drowning himself in the river to end the feeling of everything—heat from the sun and from…her.
The ooshi responded to the lie with a chitter, narrowing his eyes at Airik.
He trotted beside Nora, his tail wrapped around her arm for support.
He was an unusual specimen—too large, too colorful, and too annoying.
Ooshis were meant to be portable and docile, a small comfort in a universe that allowed little of it.
But this one’s back came up to Nora’s knees, and he had a strangely intimate way of looking at the two of them that unnerved Airik.
Nora’s eyes were not where they should’ve been—ahead of her—and on him instead. She stumbled.
Before Airik could catch her, the ooshi straightened his tail and then jumped in front of her to stop her fall.
She steadied herself, wincing as her left foot took the weight.
But then she pushed the damp hair from her forehead and smiled.
“Almost died, but I’ve got a good boy with me.
” She laughed, and the ooshi responded with a trill, clearly pleased with himself. “Aren’t we lucky he found us?”
The tip of the ooshi’s tail wove between Nora’s fingers, where Airik’s might’ve been if the ooshi had stayed feral.
He started walking again, not sparing them another glance, horrified at the burning of something in his belly. “Yes, I am so…lucky.”
“I have an idea!” Nora stopped, forcing Airik to turn back again. Then she took the smile that had been Airik’s and directed it to the ooshi. “We should name him Lucky! What do you think?”
The ooshi spun around her in a tizzy of bliss, making short barks. Was it giving its…approval?
“Whatever you want,” Airik said, though he found the name astonishingly ironic, since nothing that had happened to them suggested luck of any kind. He wouldn’t be surprised if the ooshi’s survival streak ended with them. He spun back, plowing ahead. “Keep walking.”
They walked on. For minutes or hours—it didn’t matter because it had been too long. Why hadn’t an extraction team arrived? Why did the human breathe so heavily? Why did the sound of it inflame Airik more than the suns that reached through light-years of space to attack him personally?
“He reminds me of a pet I used to have,” Nora said. “A cat. His name was Stinky.”
Airik could end this now. Just ignore her. Make it clear he didn’t care about her life or her world.
“Stinky?” he asked.
“Yep, my good little orange boy.” Her voice cracked with emotion, forcing him to slow.
“I had to leave him at a shelter because my mom couldn’t take him—” She wiped her face, then turned to the ooshi.
“Never mind—I won’t bore you with the details of Earth…
Unless you really want to know, of course.
” Her nervous laugh felt like a question.
Something thickened in his throat. Words. Ones that didn’t need to be said. Earth didn’t matter here—not to him and not to her. Soon to be as distant in memory as in space.
He glanced at her, wondering if she could sense his heart pounding. “Tell me of Earth, Nora.”
Her cheeks flushed instantly. “Okay,” she said, and then told him of her life.
Of Stinky, the tyrannical cat that had once lived in her home, showing up at her door and demanding food and water.
Of Joe, who had put her in the shuttle to send her to safety from a terrifying event she couldn’t yet fully explain but seemed like reapers pirating civilian craft.
Joe had been her father’s brother—her uncle, she called the relationship—and he had been an identical clone.
Airik verified this twice—how had humans already perfected cloning? Even the Veynari, with all their technology, hadn’t mastered it.
She looked at him, confused, and asked if he knew how breeding worked. And he, clearly still rattled by the impact of the crash days earlier, wondered if maybe he shouldn’t show her how he understood breeding to work.
A mirage of the little pink loop on her undergarment clouded his vision, nearly boiling him alive at the thought.
She is forbidden to you.
And vulnerable. And scared. With wounds far deeper than he could see. Any interest she showed in him would stem from her dependence on him and her ignorance of what a morazir was. She’d soon enough learn how much comfort he couldn’t give her.
Pushing down his darker desires, he kept his eyes ahead as they walked, soaking in every detail she shared about her life. Humans were thought to have closer relations with their progeny—a societal failing that led to war and famine.
But maybe that understanding was wrong. Here was a human who spoke of no close ties to parents, siblings, or relatives, except for her uncle. If not for him—where were her parents?—she would’ve been almost as solitary as he.
“Are all aliens like you?” Nora asked, pulling Airik from his thoughts.
“I am not an alien,” he said. “My kind is ti’rosi. And you are human.”
“Ti’rosi.” She gave him a thoughtful smile. “Airik is a ti’rosi.”
His cheeks went hot as she said his name.
“Airik is a ti’rosi,” she said again to the ooshi, repeating words just as he would when they were new.
Unable to cope with her, with his own name on her lips, and with the scalding heat that would certainly kill him, he grabbed the hem of his shirt and yanked it up. With a painful snap across his back, the fabric tore, leaving the remnants of the shirt in his hand.
Nora let out a gasp, her eyes locked on his chest.
He looked down at his own body, as if he had forgotten he had one.
“S-Sorry,” she mumbled, quickly turning away, glowing and pink.
He watched her walk ahead, brutally distraught at the loss of her attention. Was he truly the only one afflicted with this…curiosity?
Lucky made a little noise, and suddenly Nora’s focus was back on him.
She murmured a few words to Lucky, so softly Airik couldn’t hear.
Jealousy—entirely out of place—shot through him, realizing the words weren’t meant for him. He glared at the horrible little beast walking beside Nora, who earned her affections and words so easily.
He stuffed the shirt into his bag, then caught up to them and came to Nora’s other side. His thoughts scattered, not wanting to speak of the ooshi anymore and wanting her back, he suddenly said, “I want more words from you.” He jabbed a finger toward the trees. “What do you call those?”
Nora looked between him and the canopy.
“Um…you know what they are. You’ve said tree dozens of times so far.” Her brows furrowed. “Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?”
“No—I want you to talk more.”
She rapidly blinked. “Really?”
“I want more words from you. To improve my English.”
She smirked. “You want me to be your teacher?”
The image of her reading him a human book from the Jortag Vault as he lay at her feet flashed in his mind.
Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered. Morazir don’t have teachers. They only destroy. You can’t even get into the vault.
“You would not make a good teacher—you talk too fast and use fuck too much.”
“Then I don’t know why you asked.” She pouted. “Maybe what you need is a fucking dictionary?”
“No. What I need is you.”
If Ulliel struck him now, shattering him into millions of pieces, that’d be preferable to letting Airik ramble on.
Nora dragged a finger over her lip, her eyes lighting up. She bent, Lucky bowing down with her, then picked up a small rock. “This is a rock. A gray rock—its color is like your skin.”
“Rock.” He already knew the word, but the heat must’ve still been driving him mad because he then said, “More.”
“It’s about the size of an egg. Do you know what an egg is? That you eat from a chicken?” She bent her elbows, flapping her arms in and out.
His fangs dug into his lip, suppressing a laugh.
As abruptly as she’d started her dance, she froze. “I’m sorry…that was weird. Of course you won’t know what a chicken is.”
“A type of bird,” he said, falling into step with her. His desire to be near her was as unnatural to him as her slow pace.
“That’s…right.” She considered him. “How did you learn English? Who taught you so well?”
“Books. Recordings of humans talking. Moving pictures. Sometimes there was an old man who talked with Earth animals. He had white hair. A little like me.” Airik scrubbed his hands through his hair, feeling utterly stupid that his tongue had loosened so much.
Nora smiled, tilting her head. “You watched nature documentaries?”
He must’ve said something right. “Yes. An old man, but he did not talk like you. His words sounded different.”
“Because he had a British accent.” She raised a brow, a slow smile spreading across her face. “I can’t fucking believe it—Airik the Breaker of Planets learned English from David Attenborough.” She paused to step over a twisted root. “I watch him too—I mean, I used to watch him.”
When he returned to Vorakon, he’d tear the vault open just so that she could have the recordings. “If you want, I will give him to you to watch because…” He motioned around them, still not enough of a grand gesture for all that had gone wrong. “Sorry.”
She hummed a short, pleasant tune, happy with what he said. “Thank you. Maybe we can watch together—”
“Not together. Only you. By yourself.”
“Oh, right.” Her eyes cast down, her expression faltering.
It was strange—how similar their mannerisms were despite tens of thousands of years separating them, both in evolutionary time and space.
Lucky shot him an accusatory look. You’ve said something wrong.
“My…father,” Airik said, needing to mend whatever he’d broken, hoping that letting her see the deeper parts of him would appease her. “He gave me most of my words. He loved different tongues. Of all worlds.”
As he’d hoped, she turned to him. “Your father seems great—both your parents do. They’ve taught you skills that have helped me out: English and sewing.
” She bounced a little on her good foot in an endearing attempt to show off the slippers he’d made her.
“I’ll have to thank them personally, if that’s allowed. ”
Ulliel save him, how he wanted her to do so.
To have her show his mother he hadn’t forgotten how to stitch.
To have Nora thank her father in English.
So he’d know that at least in this regard, he hadn’t been wrong.
He’d been wrong about so many other things.
But with human words, he’d found them well.
“They must miss you,” she said, quieter. “I’m sorry for everything, too. For showing up…the crash. It’s been days since they’ve heard from you, right? I’m sure they’re worried—”
“They do not miss me.” As soon as the admission was out, his chest broke open.
“Or worry for me anymore.” A nagging voice warned him he’d shared too much and that he should stop.
But he didn’t want to. He wanted her to know where the ugliness inside him had started.
Maybe then that maddening smile of hers—no matter that he’d encouraged it in the first place—would fade. “My parents are dead.”
Nora didn’t see the aerial root looping up from the ground, which trapped her toe. She went down. Lucky jumped back, yanking her up by the arm.
Airik steadied her from the other side, pulling her close, nearly touching his body. He needed her warmth there, to crowd out the chill that speaking of his parents brought over him.
Aelior had been right. The crash had come much sooner than he’d thought.
Nora gave him a stricken look.
“Keep holding my arm,” he told her. “The ground is not good. Your focus is on the wrong things.”
“I’m sorry.” Unshed tears lined her lashes. “I-I’ve… I know what that’s like—”
“I was small. It is finished. Nothing is left. Keep your eyes ahead. Not on me.”
He would not tolerate her tears again. Not here. Not over this.