Chapter 15
Cody
Night falls, or what passes for night in a cave.
The fissures in the ceiling go dark as the suns set above the storm, and our world shrinks to the circle of lantern light around our shelter.
The temperature drops noticeably. Not dangerously, the geothermal heat from the springs keeps the cavern at a comfortable baseline, but enough that burrowing into our nest of blankets feels necessary rather than indulgent.
We settle in together with the ease of people who've been doing this for years rather than days. A'Vanti molds herself into me, her back to my chest, my arm around her waist, and I pull the blankets up over both of us.
"Comfortable?" I ask.
"Mmm." She traces idle patterns on my forearm with her fingertip. "Tell me more. About Cedar Hollow."
So I do. I tell her about the creek behind our house where I used to catch crawdads with my bare hands, much to my mother's horror.
About the giant oak tree in the town square that was supposedly older than the country itself.
About Friday night football games where the whole town turned out, and the diner on Main Street that served the best blueberry pie in the known universe, and the way the mountains looked in October when the leaves turned – a riot of red and gold and orange that lasted maybe three weeks before the wind stripped everything bare.
"It sounds like a different world," A'Vanti murmurs, her voice drowsy. "Green and wet and full of… trees."
"It is a different world. About as different from Ceraste as you can get.
" I press my lips to the back of her neck.
"But I want to show it to you. All of it.
I want to take you to the creek and the diner and the old oak tree.
I want you to see the mountains in autumn.
I want my mom to make you her 'world-famous' pancakes. "
"I would like that." Her voice is fading, sleep pulling her under. "I would like all of that."
"Then it's a date." I tighten my arm around her, feeling her body slow and soften against me. "The second we're back on Earth, I'm taking you to Cedar Hollow."
She doesn't respond. Her body has gone heavy and limp, her body surrendering to slumber. Sleep has claimed her mid-conversation, and the trust in that, the willingness to let go while held in someone's arms, makes my heart ache with tenderness.
I lie awake for a while, listening to her breathe and the distant rumble of the storm. The lantern light flickers over the cave walls, casting shifting shadows that dance and sway.
Eventually, I sleep too.
I wake to screaming.
Not screaming, exactly – the noise is too strangled for that. It's a horrible, choked sound of pure terror.
A'Vanti is rigid beside me, her body locked in a full-body spasm, every muscle drawn taut as a bowstring.
Her eyes are open but unseeing, fixed on a horror that only she can see.
Her hands claw at the blankets, and the sounds coming from her throat are not words in any language.
They are the raw, animal sounds of a creature fighting for its life.
I've seen this before. Fellow soldiers caught in memories that the sleeping brain can't tell from the present.
"A'Vanti." I keep my voice low and steady.
I don't grab her or try to restrain her.
Dr. Singh's advice from months ago surfaces in my memory, from the briefing she gave all of us who interacted with the rescued captives.
Don't touch without warning. Don't loom. Make yourself smaller. Use their name.
"A'Vanti, it's Cody. You're safe. You're in the springs at Brishar. You're not in the facility. You're safe."
She makes sharp, shallow sounds, each one catching in her throat. Her eyes dart around the shelter without seeing it. I can smell her fear, sharp and acrid, cutting through the mineral scent of the cave.
"You're on Ceraste," I continue, keeping my voice even. "You're in a cave near the springs. I'm here. It's just us. No one is going to hurt you. It's me, Cody – your mate."
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the rigidity begins to leave her limbs. Her breathing stutters, catches, and then changes rhythm. Her eyes blink, and the glazed, distant look fades by degrees as the present reasserts itself over the past.
"Cody?" Her voice is a cracked whisper.
"Right here."
Her eyes find mine in the dim light, and the raw terror in them nearly breaks me. She looks younger somehow, stripped of every defense and every wall, and for a moment I see the woman she must have been in that cell; alone and afraid and convinced that no one was coming.
"I was—" She swallows hard. "I was back in—"
"I know." I reach out slowly, giving her time to track the movement, and rest my hand against her cheek.
She flinches at the touch, and I start to pull back, but her hand comes up and covers mine, pressing it harder to her face. Her fingers are trembling.
"Don't," she whispers. "Don't let go."
"I won't. I'm not going anywhere."
I shift closer, still moving slowly, still giving her the choice.
She makes it for me. Closing the distance and pressing herself to my chest with a shuddering exhale that I feel through my whole body.
Her face presses into the curve of my neck, and her arms wrap around me in a tight grip. I hold her back just as fiercely.
She's shaking. Fine tremors that run through her frame like aftershocks, her body still processing the adrenaline of a threat that isn't here. I wrap my arms around her and tuck her head beneath my chin and do the only thing I can do. I hold on.
"I am sorry," she says, and her voice is small in a way that makes me want to find Queen Diamalla's corpse and bring her back from the dead so I can put her in the ground again myself.
"Don't apologize. Not for this. Never for this."
"I thought I was past this. It has been more than a month since I had a nightmare this severe."
"Hey." I press my lips to her hair. "You spent years in that place. Years. The fact that you're here at all – that you're doing the work you're doing, rebuilding your planet, living your life – that's incredible. A nightmare doesn't erase any of that."
She's quiet for a long moment. Her trembling begins to subside, though her grip on me doesn't loosen.
"It's the walls," she says finally, her voice steadier. "Of the shelter. When I woke in an enclosed space, in the dark, my mind could not distinguish between here and there. It took me back to the cell."
"Do you want to move? We can sleep out by the pool, under the open cavern. No walls."
She considers this. Then shakes her head. "No. I do not want the nightmare to dictate where I sleep. I am here. With you. And this is not that place."
"Okay. But if you change your mind, just say the word."
"I will." She pulls back just enough to look at me. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her expression is raw and open in a way that makes me physically ache.
She stares at me for a long moment. Then she presses her forehead to mine and exhales, and the breath comes out shaky but steadier than before.
"Thank you, mate," she whispers.
The word undoes me. Not with desire this time, but with a feeling that reaches into the marrow of my bones.
"Always," I tell her. "I've got you. Always."
We don't sleep again for a while. Instead, we lie in our shelter, face to face, and talk in soft voices.
She tells me about the first weeks in the facility, about the terror and the confusion and the painful experiments.
She tells me things I suspect she hasn't told anyone, not even Dr. Singh.
Dark things. Hard things. Things that settle into my gut like stones.
I don't flinch. I don't look away. I hold her, and I listen, because that's what she needs.
When she's finished, we lie in silence for a long time.
Then I tell her about the worst night of my dad's illness.
I've never told anyone this. Not my mom or my sisters.
Not my squad. Not Dr. Singh, who would have a field day with the fact that I watched suffering no son should see at sixteen and spent the next fifteen years pretending it didn't affect me as deeply as it did.
I told myself I'd dealt with it. Moved on.
But the words come out now like they've been waiting behind a door I forgot I locked.
"It's not the same," I say. "I know that. What happened to you… I can't even begin to compare—"
"Do not diminish your grief to make room for mine." A'Vanti's voice is firm. "Loss is loss. Love is love. They do not require the same scale to be equally real."
That breaks open a vault inside me that I've been keeping sealed for a long time.
And I'm terrified, because once it's open, I don't know if I can close it again.
But A'Vanti's hand is steady in mine, and she's looking at me like I'm worth holding together, and for the first time, I let someone else carry the weight.
Just for a moment. Just long enough to breathe.
I pull her close, and she pulls me closer, and we hold each other in the hazy blue glow of an underground spring on an alien planet. We're two people who found each other across the vast, unlikely distance of space, carrying their grief and their gratitude like twin flames.
Eventually, she falls asleep again. Her breathing deepens, her grip loosens, and the lines of tension in her face smooth away.
This time, I stay awake. I watch her face in the dim light, the gentle flutter of her eyelids, the slow rise and fall of her chest. I keep watch, because that's what a vel'shar does.
Sometime later, I sleep too.
The next day passes like a gift.
I wake to A'Vanti already up, crouched at the edge of the main pool, splashing water on her face.
She looks better, more rested, despite everything.
The shadows under her eyes have faded, and there's a looseness to her posture that wasn't there yesterday.
The springs are working their ancient magic, or perhaps she's more at peace. Maybe both.