Chapter 18
A’Vanti
The shuttle feels smaller on the return journey.
Not literally, of course. The cabin dimensions have not changed. But with the Ostium refugees huddled on the rear bench seats beneath foil blankets, and the medical team monitoring their vitals, the space feels crowded.
I sit across from Drev and Joln in the narrow cabin.
It is a deliberate choice. I know what it is to be surrounded by strangers who tower above you, who speak a language you barely understand, whose intentions you cannot read.
I know the particular terror of being transported to a place you have not chosen.
I will not let them feel that terror alone.
"We are going to the Cerastean military base," I tell them in Ostium, keeping my voice low and even. "You will receive food, water, and medical treatment. No one will harm you."
Drev nods. His luxen pulse with faint, exhausted waves of tepid green, which implies resignation more than fear. He has passed beyond fear into the numb territory on its far side. I recognize that place. I lived there for years.
His companion still has not spoken. He sits hunched beneath his blanket, staring at his own hands, his silver eyes vacant. The medic has cleaned and bandaged a nasty wound on his forearm, but he did not flinch during the treatment. That concerns me more than the wound itself.
Cody glances back at me from the pilot’s seat. Our eyes meet, and I see the question in his. Are you okay?
I incline my head slightly to let me know that I am fine.
He holds my gaze for one more beat, and the tenderness in those blue eyes steadies me. Then he turns back to the controls, and the desert scrolls past beneath us, golden and indifferent and vast.
The base is a controlled upheaval when we arrive.
D'Rett has mobilized every available resource.
The medical bay has been expanded with field equipment, cots lining the walls, and supply cases stacked in orderly rows.
Armed guards stand at the entrance. Their stance is not aggressive, but present, a quiet reminder that compassion and caution are not mutually exclusive.
Warriors and scientists are working together to coordinate search grids for the scattered remaining Ostium survivors.
I stay with Drev and Joln as they are transferred to the medical bay, translating for the medics, explaining procedures before they happen, so the males are not startled.
The healing beds could mend them fully, but they are calibrated for Cerastean and human physiology only. The medics work quickly, scanning Drev and Joln to map their biology so the beds can be reconfigured.
Finally, they have the healing bed calibrated. Drev volunteers to go first.
I explain to him what will happen as the medics guide him onto the bed. He stares up at me with wide silver eyes as the dome lowers over him, and I place my hand on the glass until fog fills the pod and his body goes slack.
"Dehydration, malnutrition, UV damage, and what looks like early-stage infection in the shoulder wound. I'll heal his wounds now," Healer L'Varen reports to D’Rett. "However, he’ll need sustained care for the malnutrition, but he should recover. Physically, at least."
The qualifier hangs in the air.
The infection and the wound on his shoulder are minor work for Cerastean medical technology, and the damage from the suns is healed almost as quickly.
When the fog clears and the dome lifts, Drev's skin has lost some of its ashen pallor, and his breathing has settled into a deep, even cadence.
He blinks up at me, disoriented, and I tell him in Ostium that he is safe. That it is done.
Joln goes next. He trembles as the dome lowers, his hands clenched at his sides, but he does not pull away
I stay until both males are settled and eating. I make sure they eat slowly, the way I remember having to after my own liberation. The stomach forgets how to process food when it has been denied for too long.
It is evening by the time I finally step out of the medical bay and into the corridor. The moment the door slides shut behind me, I sag against the wall and press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
I will not cry. I have spent enough tears on Diamalla’s legacy. But the pressure behind my eyes is enormous, and my chest feels like something is sitting on it – something with claws.
I hear footsteps. Familiar ones. I do not need to look up.
"Hey." Cody’s voice, quiet and close. "You’ve been in there for hours."
Has it been that long? I lower my hands and find him standing in front of me, still in his flight suit, his brown hair mussed from his helmet.
He looks tired. There are shadows beneath his eyes and a tightness around his mouth that were not there this morning.
He also looks like the best thing I have seen all day.
"They needed me," I say.
"I know. But you need something too." He extends his hand. Not demanding. Just offering. The way he did in a prison cell, a lifetime ago, when he was a stranger with sky-colored eyes. "Come with me."
I take his hand.
He leads me through the base and up a narrow maintenance stairway I did not know existed, through a hatch, and onto the flat expanse of the hangar roof.
The Cerastean sky opens above us.
Both suns have set. Without their glare, the sky has deepened into a sweep of indigo and violet studded with stars so bright they seem close enough to touch. The night air is cool on my overheated skin, carrying the clean scent of cooling sand and sage.
Cody has already been up here, I realize. A bedroll is spread nearby, along with a canteen and a container of something that smells like chariom. He planned this. Found time between his own duties and his own processing of today’s horrors to prepare a place for me.
He had the same day I did. He stood beside me in that mine shaft and learned the same terrible truth. He watched me kneel beside Drev and Joln and translate horrors that no one should have to hear, let alone repeat.
And instead of sitting with any of that, he created an oasis for me.
I study his face, and a realization crystallizes that I have been sensing for weeks. The way he deflects with humor when conversations turn toward him. The way he always, always turns his attention outward – toward me, toward the mission, toward anyone who needs him.
He does for others what he will not do for himself. And he has gotten so good at it that no one thinks to ask whether the man doing the holding might also need to be held.
I cannot speak for a moment. My throat is too tight. Not only from gratitude this time, but from the ache of watching someone pour out everything they have while running on empty themselves.
Finally, I clear my throat. "You did this for me?"
Cody shrugs in answer, looking bashful. "L'Tarne helped me find the roof access," he explains, rubbing the back of his neck. "Chelsea said that on really bad days, she likes to stare at the stars. She said it always makes her feel better."
"She's right," I manage.
We settle onto the bedroll side by side, our shoulders touching. The stars blaze above us. In the distance, the silhouette of Spire Mountain cuts a jagged line against the sky.
For a long time, neither of us speaks. Cody does not try to fill the silence with words or questions. He merely sits beside me and lets the silence do its work. I am grateful for this.
It is I who finally breaks the stillness.
"When I was translating for Drev," I say, and my voice sounds distant to my own ears, "he described the moment the pheromone wore off.
How he woke up and did not know where he was or how he had gotten there.
How his last clear memory was of being in his home.
Then suddenly he was on an alien planet with years missing from his mind. "
Cody is very still beside me.
"That is not so different from what happened to me," I continue.
"Oh, the mechanism was different. I was never chemically controlled.
But the disorientation – the theft of years – the waking up one day and realizing that the life you had is gone and you are someone else entirely…
" I swallow hard. "I understood him. In my bones, Cody, I understood every word. "
His arm comes around me, drawing me to his side. I lean into him and let my head rest on his shoulder.
"I keep thinking," I whisper, "what if no one had come? For me, I mean. What if the rescue had taken another year? Two years? Would I have become Joln? Silent, with vacant eyes, unable to find my way back?"
"But someone did come," Cody says. His voice is rough at the edges. "And you found your way back. You’re here. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known, and I’m not just saying that because you could probably beat me in a fight."
A startled laugh escapes me. Small and watery, but real.
"Probably?"
"Definitely. You could definitely beat me in a fight."
I turn my face into his neck and breathe him in.
He smells like salt and sand and the particular musk that is uniquely his.
Beneath it, I catch the scent of his emotions.
The rich, steady undertone that I have come to associate with the way he feels about me.
Not the sharp spike of desire or the sour note of worry, but something deeper.
Something that smells like sun-warmed earth and spice.
But there is another layer beneath it tonight. Something I have scented before in fleeting moments and never been able to name. It is faint, tucked beneath the warmth like a stone at the bottom of a clear pool. Now, with my face pressed into his throat, I can finally identify it.
Grief. Old and heavy and carefully contained.
"Today was hard," I admit. It costs me to say it so plainly, but Cody has earned my honesty. "Seeing them reminded me of what I was. And part of me, the part that survived by refusing to feel anything, wanted to shut down. To retreat behind the walls and be the ice queen everyone expects."
"But you didn’t."