Chapter 10
A'Vanti
The day begins at dawn, and it does not stop.
Cody flies our assessment team to four sites before midday.
A solar array facility on the city's northern edge, where L'Zaen's engineers manage to bring two of the twelve panels back online, creating the first new electricity generated on Ceraste in a decade.
Next, we visit a water pumping station in the southern outskirts that needs new filtration membranes but is otherwise intact.
Then, a grain storage silo whose sealed chambers were supposed to protect thousands of tons of seed stock, but climate infiltration has ruined nearly everything inside.
The agricultural team goes silent when they see the damage.
Our last stop before a quick lunch break is a medical center whose solar panels are still viable, but the wiring has corroded and will need to be completely replaced.
At each stop, I deploy the analysis bots, review their structural reports, and walk the buildings myself. My tablet fills with measurements, photographs, and assessment data.
It is good work. Important work. And I lose myself in it gratefully.
But in the quiet moments – when I'm waiting for the bots to complete their scans, or sitting in the shade of a crumbling wall while Cody flies back to fetch replacement parts for L'Zaen's team, or standing alone in a corridor of the medical center where the dust lies so thick my footprints are the first in a decade – my thoughts drift.
I think about last night.
About the dinner beneath the open sky and the way Cody listened when I told him about Brishar.
About the walk back to my quarters, and the kiss that pinned me against the wall beside my door.
The heat of his mouth. The careful strength of his hands at my waist. The way he pulled back before either of us lost our heads, and how that restraint, that deliberate choice to slow down, undid me more thoroughly than recklessness ever could.
I also think about D'Vorak.
Not with anger. That has passed. But I think about what I said to him, that when I took a mate, it would be someone I had chosen freely. Someone who knew me. Who had earned my trust through patience and kindness, not obligation.
I said those words with absolute conviction. I meant every one of them.
And now I must ask myself: is that not exactly what Cody has done?
The question is not whether I want him. I answered that the moment I watched him hold up the gho'ba carving while a real one wheeled overhead.
The question is whether what I feel is deep enough, certain enough, to bear the weight of the word I keep circling but have not yet allowed myself to speak. Or even really think.
On Ceraste, choosing a mate is not a casual matter.
A mating is not a human "relationship" that can be entered and exited, renegotiated or dissolved.
When a Cerastean chooses a mate, it is for life.
The bond reshapes you, emotionally and biologically.
You become part of each other in ways that cannot be undone.
D'Vorak wanted that bond after knowing nothing about me beyond my fertility. The thought still makes my stomach pulse with revulsion.
But Cody.
Cody has spent months learning me. Not just the surface.
Not just my appearance or my caste or my usefulness to the species.
He learned my silences. He learned which smiles are real and which are armor.
He learned that I need space after therapy but that I also need to know someone is nearby.
He learned that I love architecture the way some people love music, as a language that speaks when words fail.
He brought me a book about buildings because he understood that what Diamalla stole from me was not only freedom, but purpose.
He has never once asked me for anything in return.
That is not recklessness. That is months of patience arriving, all at once, at its destination.
I am not rushing. I have been falling for a long time. I am simply, finally, allowing myself to land.
The realization settles over me like a shroud, and I let it.
I am still turning it over in my mind, still testing its weight and shape, when Cody's voice crackles through the comm.
"Last stop's done. Heading back to pick you up."
I close my tablet and wait for the shuttle's familiar hum.
Cody has been strange today.
Not in any dramatic way. He has been competent and professional at the controls, as always. He has made his usual jokes, flashed his usual grin, and bantered easily with the other team members during pickups and drop-offs. To anyone else, he would seem perfectly normal.
But I am not anyone else.
Months of observation have made me fluent in Cody. I know his genuine smile from his performing smile, his comfortable silence from his thinking-hard-about-something-he-won't-share silence. I know him.
Today, he has been wound tight in a way I cannot read. His gaze keeps drifting to me when he thinks I am not looking. He bounces his knee when we are idling on a landing pad. He checks the time more frequently than the flight schedule requires.
It is not worry. I would smell that on him. Something else is eating at him. And he is doing a terrible job of hiding it.
I file it away and say nothing. But my patience is not infinite; if he has not told me by the end of the day, I will ask.
The afternoon passes in much the same way as the morning: more sites, more assessments, and more data filling my tablet.
By the time the shuttle sets down in the main hangar, the larger sun has begun its descent toward Spire Mountain.
The other team members file out – L'Stourn with his soil samples, and Dr. Petrova clutching her tablet and already dictating notes.
I gather my own things, rolling the tension from my shoulders as I stand.
Moving slowly, I am the last to exit the ship.
It has been a good day. My body aches, but it is the satisfying ache of work well done. The kind of tired that comes with purpose.
I descend the ramp and find Cody waiting at the bottom, propped against the landing strut with his arms crossed. That restless energy is still there, humming beneath his casual posture like a current beneath still water.
I stop in front of him and tilt my head.
"Cody."
"Yeah?"
"Are you alright?"
He blinks. "What? Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"
"You have been distracted today. Checking the time constantly. Fidgeting." I study his face. "Something is on your mind. You have been holding it in all day, and you are doing a poor job of hiding it."
He stares at me for a moment. Then a laugh escapes him. Not his usual easy laugh, but one almost sheepish. He runs a hand through his hair, and the tips of his ears go pink.
"You're scary, you know that? Nothing gets past you."
"You are not exactly subtle, Cody." But I let the corner of my mouth curve, just enough to blunt my words.
"Okay. Fine. You caught me." He straightens up, the sheepishness burning off like fog. That barely contained energy rises to the surface, and his eyes are practically glowing. "I have a surprise for you."
I narrow my eyes. "What kind of surprise?"
"The kind where you don't ask questions and trust me." He grins. "I've already cleared it with D'Rett. We're good to go."
"Go where?"
"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise." He's bouncing on the balls of his feet now, completely unable to contain himself. It is endearing. "Wait here. Give me one minute."
Before I can protest, he turns and jogs into the hangar, disappearing through a side door. I stand at the base of the ramp, arms folded, caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation.
Cody returns moments later with a full bag slung over his shoulder. It is not a standard utility pack. It is larger and rounder, and whatever is inside clinks when he moves.
"What is in the bag, Cody?"
"Supplies." He says this with a completely straight face while adjusting a bag that is clearly packed with non-essential items. "Very important mission supplies. Classified."
"Classified."
"Top secret. Need-to-know basis." He gestures up the ramp. "After you."
I give him the look. The one that usually makes junior engineers confess whatever mistakes they have made, but Cody is immune. Instead, he grins wider and waits.
I shake my head and walk up the ramp.
When I settle into the co-pilot's seat, Cody is already running through the pre-flight sequence.
There is a lightness to him that was not there during our work flights today.
Whatever he has been holding in all day has been set free.
He is excited, purely and simply, and watching him makes me want to smile.
We lift off and clear the hangar, rising into the late afternoon sky. Cody banks the ship eastward, away from the capital, and I feel the first flicker of recognition.
East.
"Cody," I say slowly. "Where are we going?"
"Patience."
The landscape of Ceraste spreads out beneath us. The beauty of Ceraste never fails to undo me. During my captivity, I had lost faith that I would ever see my homeworld again. And yet here it is, rolling beneath me, golden and enduring.
As we gain altitude, the terrain begins to change.
The rolling sand dunes give way to rocky outcroppings, their surfaces carved by millennia of wind into strange and beautiful shapes.
Stone columns and spires rise from the desert floor.
Natural arches span between rock pillars, some delicate and narrow, others wide enough to fly the shuttle through.
"Wow." Cody leans toward the viewport. "It looks like Arches."
"Arches?"
"A national park back on Earth. In Utah." He shakes his head slowly. "This is incredible."
"This is the Wind Gardens," I say, pointing to a particularly striking cluster of formations. "The stone here is softer than elsewhere, and the constant winds have sculpted it over thousands of years."
"It looks like art."