Sophi drummed her fingers against her thighs as Kriikisiii calculated the most efficient and untrackable route to Prospectus Station. Farah sent off her message, asking an audience. Commander Li would give Sophi one; she always did. She was dependable, and they had a good working relationship.
Gamal ducked into the helm, nearing the end of his off shift with a dusting of flour on his sleeves giving away that he'd been baking.
"How is Glesyn?" he asked, coming to rest beside Farah.
Sophi and Farah both shook their heads, grim. They'd guessed wrong, but this stop had not been entirely useless. Parks's warning at the end teased back through Sophi's mind.
"Farah, have you been monitoring the news?" Sophi asked.
"No, we've been keeping off radar." Farah bit her lip, glancing nervously toward Sophi.
"See what you can pick up here," Sophi requested.
Farah's hands danced over her control panel, projecting the broadcasts she found onto the main viewscreen.
"Leaders continue to call for calm and reasoned action as they attempt to reopen negotiations. Protesters, angry about the Imperium's shipping freeze, marched on Quarto, shutting down ground transportation through several major population centers. Demonstrations continue on multiple moons as well, with traders who depend on the shipping routes for their livelihoods claiming the Imperium is attempting to cripple Nidum's economy in preparation for a hostile takeover."
Another one: "His Majesty Magnus Agyeman remains unseen, the Royal Palace Station in lockdown and closed off to all visitors, as Imperial military forces continue their increasingly aggressive posturing along the borders. Fleets of Royal cutters have been seen blinking toward the outer systems. The king has called all available forces to deal with the increased threat."
Yet another feed: "Pod mother Sensitive Be Her Antennae And Clear Her Judgment For The Position Of Her Daughters has blinked her nest. She is no longer in orbit around the asteroid stations. We do not know where she has gone or when, if ever, she and her nest will return. There have been spotty reports of a stray nest here and there through the system, but nothing confirmed as of yet."
Another: "Images of the aftermath of the riot aboard the Ancipes station, showing the damage caused as Imperial peacekeepers who came in to help following the breakdown of the governance treaty were forced out by Royal loyalists. The injury of several blatta workers in the chaos has been suggested as a possible cause for the sudden disappearance of the pod mother with the most contracts in the asteroid stations."
Sophi leaned back, swallowing hard as report after report rolled in on the various screens. There were tensions, always, but she had never seen it so bad. Nidum was falling into chaos around them. Parks had not been overestimating when he warned of war.
"Gamal..." Farah reached for him, hand shaking. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.
"We will be all right, my eyes," Gamal whispered.
"We will." Sophi shut down the broadcasts. She'd seen enough. "We're here to stop the war from happening." The system was breaking down because the royal children had been taken, but she and her crew were here to get them back. "And if we can't, we still have the Rhyssa," she reminded, as awful as the thought of failure was. "No one's better than us. We'll be all right. Nidum is not the only star system in the galaxy, if it comes to that."
They'd been born of this star, and their families were here, but they might not have a choice except to abandon Nidum if the rest of the pod mothers left. The infrastructure of the entire system would collapse; like any spaceborne civilization, they were completely dependent on blatta workers and the blink. If the worst happened, Sophi had a ship full of blattas who saw her as their pod mother and would not abandon her if they were frightened, and the Rhyssa's cargo segments could be reoutfitted to carry refugees instead of cargo.
Farah bit her lip and pressed herself closer to Gamal's chest. Sophi turned away to offer them privacy, and watched Kriikisiii finish her calculations. Sophi thanked her and set the Rhyssa on their route toward Prospectus. When they were underway, she left the helm to find Cadan.
Cadan seemed to have given up pacing for the moment, and instead of disassembling the ship in flight, she was standing squarely in front of a viewport with her arms folded. She looked solid, strong and sure and unmovable, but Sophi could not forget the look on her face when they'd realized they'd chased the wrong trail. That was Sophi's fault—Glesyn had made the most sense, that was where she would have gone, but she'd been wrong, and Cadan was suffering the most for it. Cadan was unstoppable with a goal, anyone who knew of her knew that, but she needed simple certainty to work on. This kind of guesswork was not kind to her, especially with how important their quarry was.
Cadan was staring fixedly out at the stars, eyes not following them as the ship moved. Sophi stood beside Cadan, leaning her hands against the bottom frame of the viewport. She was not sure if Cadan even knew she was there until Cadan rested her warm hand over Sophi's, engulfing it entirely. Sophi had just seen how dangerous Cadan could be up close, and her hand was held so gently in contrast.
"Thank you for your help," Cadan said, voice low and even—carefully controlled. "I know that angering Parks will make your work harder." Her eyes were haunted with fear, but they were seeing Sophi. She was struggling through the pain that had taken her feet out from under her, but she still was trying to look at things from Sophi's perspective. Sophi turned her hand over to interlace their fingers and squeeze Cadan's deadly hand tight.
"I can smooth that over," Sophi assured her. The fact that Sophi had never managed to get Cadan to work for her would play to her advantage, and she had not actually let Cadan hurt Parks.
Cadan nodded and looked back out at the stars as they blinked again. The silence stretched out between them as the engines recharged.
"We have to find them," Cadan said eventually.
"We will," Sophi promised. She had to believe that herself. "It's going to take us a few days to reach Commander Li, but we'll find them. If they've landed anywhere in space monitored by the Imperium, she'll be able to help us."
Cadan's jaw clenched and she turned her face slightly away from Sophi, but for the second time ever, she did not launch into an angry tirade about the Imperium as soon as it was mentioned. Sophi had expected it. She'd expected the rage directed at her too for working with them, but it had not landed in the helm and it did not land now. Instead, Cadan huffed a heavy sigh and said nothing.
"They're not some unified mass of horrible people," Sophi ventured. "They're just people, like any others. I have part-siblings in the Imperium too. And others like me are recognized by both sides." She was pushing her luck and she knew it.
"My loyalty will always be to my king," Cadan answered. "Nothing will ever change that. And if you say that to find my family we need to see the people who would claim and take away all the Royal Family of Nidum has for generations worked to secure and protect—then I will see an Imperial officer." Her fingers tightened on Sophi's, almost too tight on her hand for an instant before she dropped it and folded her arms again. "I would do anything for them," she continued, voice growing thick. "But I do not have to like it, and I do not have to like your dealings with them."
"No one is taking anything away," Sophi argued. "Nidum was founded and colonized by citizens of the Imperium. It has always been an Imperial protectorate—we even use the Imperium's Old-Latin naming conventions for everything."
"No," Cadan said, as though she could negate an entire history with a single word if said firmly enough. "It is not their protectorate if they failed to protect it. The Imperium sent people, but the Royal Family made it so they could live. They are the ones worthy of loyalty and the rule of Nidum."
"Loyalty to the Agyemans would have made sense back then," Sophi agreed. "But that's ancient history. What purpose does Magnus Agyeman serve now?" The king was pointless and meaningless, there was no reason for loyalty to him.
"He is my king," Cadan gritted through her teeth. "He is my family. He knows our star and our people. He is born of Nidum and he serves Nidum and I will serve him to my dying breath."
Sophi held a thousand arguments with every angle both for and against the Kingdom and the Imperium just behind her teeth. She could have kept going, pushed on with arguments philosophers and politicians had honed into weapons—but they wouldn't make any difference to Cadan. She saw in simple hot and cold, with none of the varying degrees of warmth between. Cadan had her personal loyalty and, as little sense as that made, as aggravating as that was, she did not want or need any answers beyond it. Sophi could have argued, pushed Cadan into her most defensive positions until her hands clenched into fists that threw involuntary sparks. Hands she'd turned into weapons and never once threatened Sophi with, no matter how angry they made each other. The king was the fixed point she orbited, and Cadan would not question her own positions. She would only get angry, and she was already hurting.
And maybe some part of Sophi's motivation to argue was jealousy that she would never be the focus of any of that loyalty.
Sophi turned to look up at Cadan. She looked so tired, with dark circles coming in beneath her deep-set eyes. Her jaw was clenched; she was clearly expecting more argument. She was braced against it, and Sophi did not have the heart to push her any more. She reached up to gently cup the side of Cadan's scarred face, to give her gentleness instead—intentionally taking them further out of their old patterns. Cadan's breath caught in surprise, a little of that tension and pain easing.
"I know," Sophi said. Cadan's loyalty was not a thing that could be changed, not by any conversation under any circumstances. "How long has it been since you ate?" Sophi asked, changing the subject. Cadan had been expending a lot of energy, especially using her combat tech, and Sophi hadn't seen her eat once since she came aboard.
It took a moment for Cadan to follow. She shook her head. "Too long," she admitted.
"Come on then," Sophi invited. She stepped back, her fingertips tracing along Cadan's broad shoulder and down her biceps. Cadan caught her fingers before they reached her elbow, and Sophi led her on to the kitchen. The main galley was in the ship's living segment, along with most of the crew, but the small kitchen was more than enough for the few who were aboard. The anoloids did not go for cooking—they preferred their food raw, whether it was of plant or animal origin. Their food was preserved in a separate pantry, all neatly packaged in boxes that only needed to be opened. The blattas kept their own food supply too, though they were omnivores beyond even humans. They could eat anything.
Gamal was back in the kitchen, and the room was filled with the fragrance of the fresh baked sweet breads he was unloading from a baking sheet. The new pod of blattas had probably never smelled something like it before, and several of them had gathered near the doorway, waving their antennas curiously.
"Those smell amazing, can we have some?" Sophi begged. It was always a treat when Gamal was in a baking mood. He waved them generously toward the warm little breads and Sophi immediately grabbed one each for herself and Cadan. It was tender and delicious, crunchy outside with a sprinkling of sesame seeds, and flavored inside with orange flower water and pungent Tritean peppercorns. Raw ingredients for cooking could get expensive, but the payoff in morale boost was worth it.
"This is so good," Sophi praised, and even Cadan made an appreciating noise with her mouth full. Gamal nodded and left with a few on a plate—off to share with Farah in the helm.
Sophi nibbled on her sweet bread and watched Cadan make herself at home in the kitchen. She knew it well enough, from all the times they'd flown together. Cadan finished her sweet roll so fast Sophi wondered if she'd even tasted it, and went for the nutrient bars next. Two were tucked into a pocket along the leg of her jumpsuit for later, and she gnawed on a third while she threw together a huge shake. She always did it the same way—doubled up on the proteins, a small scoop of algae powder, equal amounts of frozen vegetables and fruit pulp. Only the type of fruits and vegetables ever changed. It was a simple shake, made with basic ingredients found on any human ship. Today Cadan had chosen leafy greens and yellow fruit pulp, so the shake came out a brilliant green.
Cadan politely poured a small cup of it for Sophi, who accepted with thanks, and gulped the rest down right from the blender. Sophi could never have hoped to consume that much all in one go—it took a lot to support the sheer bulk of Cadan.
Sophi drank her glass of green shake. There was nothing wrong with it, it tasted fine, but Sophi could not imagine being content to eat it over and over again. Maybe this was just another illustration of Cadan's nature, content to find one thing that worked for her and stick with it—or maybe it was her attempt at some sort of familiarity, one constant in a life where she bounced from ship to ship across the system. Maybe it came from not wanting to make a nuisance of herself and using only the most basic and plentiful supplies on the loyalist ships that gave her a space.
Cadan finished her shake with a satisfied sigh and put the blender in the washer. Sophi put her emptied glass in with it. Cadan looked a little better for having eaten.
"You're welcome to use anything in the kitchen." Sophi had offered it before, but she wanted to make sure Cadan knew. "Anything that isn't in someone's personal cabinet is fair game. There was a good deal on rice, so we have tons of that in the storage segments. Please use what we've got aboard, we have more. The meat in the freezer is just cheap clone-vat 'poultry' and 'fish,' but it's not too bad if you season it. It's certified halal, if that matters. You're welcome to it," Sophi urged her. "It's going to be a few days before we reach Prospectus, and we don't have the galley with us."
Cadan's hand found Sophi's waist, conspicuously gentle, and Sophi allowed herself to be pulled in and held tight against Cadan's chest, smooshed into the softness of her breasts. It felt so good to be cradled close with Cadan's hand rubbing slowly up and down her back. She could be small and safe in Cadan's arms. Protected and treasured. Loved.
"A few days, and we'll find them. We have to find them," Cadan said. Her mind was a galaxy away from Sophi, off with the missing royal children. The ones she actually loved.
It was not fair. Sophi bit her lip and pressed her face tighter against Cadan's chest. "We'll find them," she promised.
*~*~*
The Rhyssa was a well-maintained ship. There was nothing truly wrong with it to fix, but Cadan still found things to work on. There were always things that could be slightly better, things that would need maintenance eventually.
They didn't really need to be done, but they were things Cadan could focus on to distract herself. She made sure to eat, to keep her strength up and help her combat tech recharge the small amount she'd used in the pointless fight on Glesyn. She worked, and paced the hallways, and worked, until she was tired enough she tried lying in her assigned bunk. Her head ached with exhaustion, but she could not relax. She could not rest. Her mind was all tied up in knots around the children. Cadan gave it a good try, but she was back up and wandering the hallways in search of a new project before she knew it.
She hardly noticed her pacing had disturbed Sophi until she took Cadan by the hand and led her to the captain's quarters. Sophi was dressed in only a long, silky robe, already in her own off shift.
"I won't be able to sleep in here either," Cadan protested as she ducked into Sophi's room. The children were still missing—a different bed would not change that.
"Dr. Hanne would be more than willing to give you a sedative, if you need," Sophi offered.
"No." The last thing Cadan needed was clouded judgment. She needed her wits about her, ready to react at any moment. She did not trust herself to drugged sleep.
"Then just stay with me and try to relax a little?" Sophi asked.
Cadan sighed and lay down beside her. The bed was cozy, but that was not nearly enough. Sophi made herself comfortable, leaning against a few pillows and the headboard. She was reading something on her communicator, and Cadan shifted closer to her. She threw an arm across Sophi's thighs, pressing her face against her hip. Sophi rested her hand on Cadan's shoulders, rubbing lightly and affectionately across them.
Cadan almost thought she might relax enough to drift off when her communicator pinged with a message from Magnus. She snapped upright and opened it.
"Please," she breathed. Please have found them. She knew as soon as Magnus's recording loaded that he hadn't. He looked as haggard and exhausted as Cadan felt.
"I found the leak, but no lead," Magnus opened without preamble. "It was a child—Devin's friend. They had agreed to meet at a certain place and pilot the rest of the journey in convoy. I taught Devin to be more careful with his information, but nobody ever taught her better. She was excited and talking about it with another friend in public. When a stranger asked her for details, she gave them." Magnus shook his head. "She gave my children to them. She did not know. Her shuttle was sabotaged, and she was late to the meeting. Devin was sitting waiting for her, that's how they caught his shuttle. We are searching for the strangers his friend talked to, but with the number of people whose biosignatures have passed through Tserere, what chance do we have? They could be anyone. Anywhere.
"The council knows, of course, but they are no help at all," he continued. "Inés LeRoy had the nerve to suggest I have another heir. As though my children could ever be replaced." Cadan's teeth gritted at the very suggestion. Inés was ruthless in pursuit of her goals, but the suggestion of replacing the royal children was cold even for her. "I was a hair's breadth from exiling her from the system—she and her whole family. She is on borrowed air in the Council, and she knows it. If she had any decency, she would take herself away to live in disgrace with that nephew of hers... and it still would not bring my children back.
"What will I do? No one is finding anything." Magnus's voice broke, tears shining in his eyes. "Not even Senan has discovered anything. My children have been taken from me. My line is broken. We've kept it quiet so far, but it will get out. The king, protector of Nidum, cannot even protect his own children. What will I do without them? My babies..." He curled in on himself, hands covering his face to hide his tears. Cadan's throat made a choking sound of its own, petting the recorded image with her fingertips as though she could offer Magnus comfort over the time and distance that separated them.
"Please." Magnus begged, tears on his cheeks as he looked at Cadan through the screen. "Please tell me you've found them. Please tell me you have good news, Cadan."
Cadan took a deep breath, rubbing hard at her eyes with her sleeve before she answered—audio only, he did not need to see what she looked like right now. "My lead was false, but I'm still looking. I may have a new lead soon. I'll do whatever it takes to find them and bring them home safe. I'll never stop. I will bring them home to you, you know that. And they know that too. My niblings know their Aunti Cadan will come for them."
Cadan stopped the recording quickly, before she could cry into it, and sent the message. She would give anything to be able to give Magnus better news. She coughed on her sobs, tears and exhaustion aching behind her eyes. Sophi touched her shoulder lightly, stroking it in an attempt to offer comfort, but Cadan could not have it. She was cracked open, breaking apart, and she could not have someone else mixing her pieces up.
She pushed away from Sophi, stumbling as she fled to the washroom. She hit her shoulder hard against the doorframe and barely managed to avoid hitting her forehead against the top of the frame too with tears fogging her sight. She slammed the door shut behind her, jaw clenched tight against the ragged sobs that tore their way out of her throat.
Finding the children was the most important task Magnus had ever given her, and Cadan could not do it. She was failing, failing everyone. She choked on her tears and shuddering gasps as she tried to make her body breathe. She floundered and found the sink, running cold water to splash on her face. It didn't help.
Her hands closed on the rim of the sink, her thick, scarred brown fingers against cold white porcelain. She could have torn the sink out of the wall with a single heave, broken everything in his room in a matter of seconds. She had the power to destroy, but not to find.
She couldn't stop trying, no matter how long it took. It was never an option, no matter how impossible the odds were. If she couldn't do this one thing, what was she even good for? She held on to the sink, braced herself in place with her shoulders bowed under the weight of the sobs that wracked her body, until she got her mind and her breathing back under control.
Her eyes were hollow and haunted in the mirror when she straightened back up, her face blotchy and red. She turned quickly away, blew her stuffy nose, and braced herself to step back out of the washroom.
Sophi was still sitting on the bed. She looked worried, but she did not reach for Cadan when she sat on the bed too.
"Are you all right?" Sophi asked.
"No," Cadan admitted, her voice rough with her throat sore from crying. "Not until I find all three of them, Devin and Erica and Kofi, alive and well." The alternatives to those conditions were too awful to contemplate.
"Their father does love them," Sophi said, quietly. "And you love them so much too."
"More than starlight," Cadan agreed. "More than breath. I could not love them more if I'd birthed them myself. They are the most important thing in the galaxy."
Sophi nodded, hugging her knees to her chest. "I know. I see that," she said softly. "They're very lucky children, to be so wanted."
Cadan was too tired, too raw, for the implications of that to sink in quickly. She blinked several times at Sophi, so small and huddled in on herself. "Were you not?" she finally asked.
"Don't look at me like that. I was not a neglected child." Sophi's voice was sharp, accusatory. She tucked her toes under the hem of her robe to look even smaller. "I was liked well enough. They just took a more communal approach, in the community I was from. All the children were dumped in together, half of everyone not even sure who we were related to. We were taken care of, but…" Sophi rested her head on her knees with a faint sigh, not looking at Cadan. "You learn early on you're not special to anyone. Good lesson for life, I guess." She shrugged one shoulder.
That did not sound fair at all. Cadan had always had her mother and fathers and Senan, whom she knew loved her and each other best. She'd always had Magnus's back and he hers, and her aunts the Queen and Consort had treated her as a daughter. They were family. Cadan had never had to doubt that she was important to any of them.
There was probably something Cadan was supposed to say or do to make things better, but she didn't have enough mental or emotional energy left to figure out what. She was drained, and Sophi was sad.
"Let me hold you?" Cadan asked, wrapping her arms around the little ball Sophi had curled herself into. "I slept last time holding you." She might finally be exhausted enough to sleep, and it always felt good to hold Sophi.
Sophi turned her face in to nuzzle against Cadan's chest. "Okay," she agreed.
*~*~*
Cadan managed to sleep a few hours, at least. She left Sophi sprawled in her bedding to keep sleeping and returned to walking the hallways. She didn't want to wake Sophi by tossing and turning in her bed.
There was nothing to do on the Rhyssa anymore, no real tasks that needed to be performed. Cadan walked for hours, a tired circuit through the ship. The ship blinked, a millisecond of physical disorientation, and Cadan glanced out a viewport to see the enormous curve of a planet. It was tan and beige, mainly, with bands and swirls of white and gold. Cadan turned the lights off in her section of the hallway to see better. She had rarely been this far into the outer systems, and never so close to Septimo. The gas giant pulled them in, building the Rhyssa's speed. It was not the biggest planet in the system, nor the one with the most habitable moons. It was far from the warmth of Nidum, but it was beautiful.
The Rhyssa sped into its orbit, falling toward the planet's shadow. The bright pinprick of Nidum Star lit the edges in lines of fire. Cadan was not sure how long she stood mesmerized before Sophi slid into her arms to watch with her. Her off hours must have been over. She'd showered and smelled fresh and clean—slightly like flowers. Cadan pressed a brief kiss to her temple and held her close and gentle, Sophi's back against her front. She did not know any more now than she had at bedtime how to respond to Sophi's sad revelation of a childhood where she had not been cherished the way she should have been. Cadan only knew that she wanted to hold Sophi, and for right now, she could.
They were nearly entirely in the planet's shadow. The light of Nidum shone through the edges of Septimo's thick atmosphere in brilliant reds and yellows, Sophi's favorite colors. It lit Sophi, too, when Cadan looked down at her. She had washed her hair and applied one of her iridescent overdyes. The strong black rope of her braid gleamed beneath Cadan's fingers, fire and gold in the filtered light. Cadan smoothed her braid back down over Sophi's chest, lingering briefly over the tiny softness of her breast. Sophi's golden-brown skin glowed in the soft light, her cheeks warm and smooth under Cadan's fingertips. She traced the edges of Sophi's delicate jaw, her slender throat to the top hem of her shirt. It unbuttoned easily enough to expose more of her to the faint planet light. Cadan traced the divot beneath Sophi's collarbone, the shadows smoothed out and barely discernible, then slowly down her sternum centimeter by centimeter.
Sophi shuddered in Cadan's arms, whimpering a faint moan, and Cadan abruptly saw what she was doing. She had not intended anything sexual, but would it be so bad? Sophi was limp and relaxed in her arms, beautiful in the light. She felt good to touch, to hold, to pleasure—she shuddered again as Cadan teased at a nipple through the soft fabric of her shirt. Sophi was a far better distraction than doing unnecessary ship maintenance. Cadan didn't want anything herself, but she'd always been good with her hands.
"Do you want me to keep going?" Cadan murmured, pausing.
"Yespleasedon'tstop," Sophi breathed out like a single word. She pushed into Cadan's touch with another soft moan, and Cadan didn't want to keep her waiting. She kept it slow, a gradual exploration of Sophi's body. Cadan held Sophi secure against her front and unbuttoned her shirt slowly, adoring everything she could as she went. She felt out the divots beneath Sophi's collarbone, the pectoral muscle stretched across her chest and the faint ribs beneath it. She rubbed little circles down Sophi's sternum, and then gradually worked back up to her breasts.
"So perfect," Cadan murmured, cupping one tiny breast in her hand. Sophi's nipple was already hard, a firm nub to play with. She gasped as Cadan began rolling it slowly under her palm. "Sweet little mouthful to suck, and give you so much pleasure." Sophi only whined in answer, arching her chest toward Cadan's hand and petting her forearm where she could easily reach. Cadan teased at her first nipple for a while before switching to the second.
Cadan held her close and flirted with Sophi's pleasure, abandoning her breasts entirely to stroke other parts of her occasionally, but always coming back to them. She undid Sophi's shirt completely, unzipped her pants to expose the top edge of her black panties. The corona of starlight that reached them through the planet's shadow lit them in the softest warmth, the darkness of this section of hallway giving them an illusion of privacy none of the crew shattered. Cadan alternated firmer rolling and pinching Sophi's nipples with delicate feather-light touches that had Sophi gasping for more. She kept at it until Sophi was squirming in her arms, until her grip was the only thing keeping Sophi upright, and she guided them down to the floor instead with Sophi lying back against her chest.
Cadan played with her, teased until Sophi started rubbing her legs together, trying to get herself off that way. Cadan reached down and grabbed Sophi's thigh, spreading her legs open to deny her that friction. She kneaded at the muscle, hand moving slowly upward.
"Don't tease!" Sophi whined, nails biting into Cadan's arm, and Cadan took mercy. She slid her hand to Sophi's groin, cupping her sex through the layers of her clothes. Cadan could feel the pulsing heat through everything. Cadan rubbed and Sophi groaned as she rutted against it. It did not take long before her body arched and shuddered through her orgasm in Cadan's arms.
"There," Cadan breathed. "Beautiful." There was nothing else like it.
Sophi sagged against Cadan's chest, laughing slightly as she trembled in aftershocks. Her eyes shone, looking up at Cadan as though she'd done something wonderful. The Rhyssa swung around the planet, out of the shadow, and Sophi was lit in pure starlight, flushed and happy in the wake of her pleasure. Cadan pressed a kiss to her cheek and just held her. They basked together in the closeness for a moment before Sophi twisted in Cadan's arms and climbed into her lap. Her hands were everywhere as she kissed Cadan, all teeth and tongue and demanding need.
Cadan pushed Sophi away and surged back to her feet, everything in the back of her mind screaming wrong. She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, and her eyes fell to Sophi, disheveled and lost on the floor. It was just kissing, and it was just Sophi. It should not feel like an attack, but it did, and there was no helping it.
"I'm sorry," Cadan said. She helped Sophi to her feet, not quite able to meet the hurt in her eyes. "I can't, right now. That was good. I hope it was for you? But I can't give anything. I can't feel anything." Nothing beyond the fear for the children, the stress that was breaking her. If she opened up, she'd fall into a thousand pieces. Cadan's arms wrapped around her own torso, as if holding it together would help.
"It was very good for me." Sophi's voice was gentle as she buttoned her shirt back up and hesitantly leaned against Cadan again, not pushing for anything, just present. "I should have asked."
Cadan leaned back against Sophi, just a little bit. It was nearly pathetic, how grateful she was for Sophi's acceptance—that she was not hurt and angry about it. In a few more deep breaths, Cadan could let go of herself and hold on to Sophi again. She buried her face in Sophi's smooth, rainbow-gleaming hair.
"Thank you," she whispered.