Chapter Twenty-One

“Like the monsters that tried to murder you?” V’kyrri demanded, rage in every sharp word. “The ones she dispatched in your defense. Like those?”

Edie translated.

Jonas stared at V’kyrri for several seconds, then turned and walked away. The villagers followed, giving the electrified and still-sparking field wide berth.

Edie set a hand to V’kyrri’s shoulder. He vibrated. Indignation, seething fury, towering impatience. All on her behalf.

She drew a deep breath and allowed herself to nestle into the warm shelter of his outrage. Sighing, Edie straightened and put on her SEM.

“Let’s move.”

“They’re out of their minds. You saved their lives.”

“We did.”

The ire grumbling in his mental presence quieted. “Thank you, but you—”

“You don’t have to patch me up,” she said as they trudged into the deepening evening. Awareness blossomed in her chest.

She’d believed V’kyrri had forced her to change her view of the Claugh. He had. But he’d somehow forced her to look at herself from a new perspective, too. Self-acceptance hadn’t settled in yet, but she could almost taste the smooth sweetness of it on her tongue. “If I became a monster, it was to protect something I believe is worth protecting. I won’t ignore that anymore.”

He stopped her, his palms cupping her shoulders. His delighted grin stretched her own lips. “You know I have to recruit you now.”

“Maybe we should survive this invasion first.”

He laughed, froze, and looked up.

Ship signatures flashed in her data field.

“Searching for us,” he said.

“You,” she corrected in a hush. “Those soldiers. What were those things? The soldiers and bugs were focused on you.”

They ran out of the fields into a line of foothills that turned rocky and steep. Nothing looked the way she remembered. Ten years of plant growth and the sweet line of little trees that had once bowed their heads to the rain squalls had turned into a forest. Tracks and paths had vanished, which had been part of the plan. But trying to remember how to get from point A to point B when the goal had been to prevent anyone from finding point B turned into more guesswork than Edie wanted.

She finally found her point B. A supply cache the last surviving resistance fighters had set up when it became clear the war had been lost.

Edie edged behind a decade of foliage growth.

“More caves?” V’kyrri’s plaintive question drew a laugh from her. She stooped to climb into the deep dark of a tunnel.

“Shelter. Food. Water. Medical supplies. Weapons.” Six steps in, half the number of gods. Straighten. Face left and demonstrate trust. Reach into the darkness. Grab the light.

Religious colonies and their liturgical metaphors.

She switched on a lantern.

V’kyrri, blinking in the light, raised his eyebrows. “The resistance has a stockpile. After all these years? I don’t think my commanding officers knew what kind of danger they were in on this world.”

“Always have a plan,” she said. “Not that ours mattered. No one ever rose against the occupation.”

For the first time in her life, it occurred to Edie to wonder why. Standing amidst the neatly stacked cargo containers holding everything from food to explosives and decade old weapons, she met a Claugh captain’s eye without reservation and accepted that the resistance had died because it hadn’t been needed.

Until now.

“You’d better learn the language,” she said, tapping her forehead. “You’re going to need it.”

He took her hand. V’kyrri crept into her brain and poked whatever part stored symbol and meaning. She caught glimpses of herself as a child learning not just the language but forming emotional and contextual associations.

She frowned. He’d forever walk around knee deep in her reflexive, unexamined emotions surrounding words and concepts. He wouldn’t have the opportunity to forge his own.

“Limits of the ability,” he said.

Her frown deepened as she contemplated the value difference between knowing something and learning something.

“Done. Thank you,” he said with his hands. His first signs were slow and clumsy, but readable.

“Okay.” She scanned the symbols on the cargo containers. “Help me get at this one?”

They shifted containers until Edie could break the seal.

“Dry clothes? You guys thought of everything.”

“Not entirely,” she said. “The ones I put in here are the size I was as a hungry nineteen-year-old.”

He laughed and his mental presence expanded, suffusing her with good humor.

She dug out clothes, shut the lid, and led him deeper into the cave. “Let me show you the best part.”

“A shower? A real water shower?” he marveled.

“Spring fed,” she said. “It’s cold. But we’d dealt with chemical attacks…”

Comforting good humor iced over, chilling her. His brows lowered. “What the Three Hells went wrong on this world? The Claugh brought all kinds of worlds into the empire before and after Nol Jakze, without the kinds of brutality your slips of memory slice into my brain. What you’re describing goes against everything the empire stands for.”

She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I can only speak our experience.”

“It should never have been your experience,” he bit out. His shoulders fell and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. I am aching to be clean and dry and in clothes not stained with the blood of my crew.”

Edie set clean clothes and drying cloths to one side, shut down her SEM, tucked the glasses into a pouch on her belt, took it off, and set it with the clothing. She wrestled free of her sodden boots. “Go right ahead. I’ll find food while you—”

“What’s your hurry? You’ve been dying to have me out of this uniform you hate. Here’s your chance.”

He grabbed hold of her and ducked them both, fully clothed under the frigid fall of water, laughing and yelping at the icy shock.

Edie shrieked and gasp-laughed, captive both to his arms wrapped around her waist and to his contagious laughter. Teeth chattering, she retrieved a single cleansing strip from a canister standing beside the little waterfall serving as their shower.

They flung away filthy, torn clothing. Any lingering amorous intent shriveled in the chilly water. They washed and rinsed as fast as shivering allowed.

Edie stepped out of the water and shook out a pair of drying cloths. She hugged one to her chest and offered the other just out of V’kyrri’s reach both in retribution for dunking her and so she could get her fill of admiring the long, lean—still too lean—lines of his body. Her face, and anatomy much lower, warmed.

Grinning, he snatched the cloth from her, dried swiftly, and pulled on clean clothes that weren’t khaki. He pulled his insignia from his uniform, curled his fingers around it, then tucked it into a pocket.

“You’re the demolition expert,” he said as she yanked on clothes and tucked her glasses into place. “How do we warm up?”

“This is a religious settlement, Captain,” she informed him with mock severity. “If you’re cold, you aren’t working hard enough.”

His smile shifted. “Challenge accepted.”

She laughed while he pressed, frowning, at the buttons on his shirt.

“That’s not how those work. Stop pushing them. Here.” She sidled close, batted his hands away from his shirt, and buttoned it for him.

He settled his hands on her hips.

Sparks traced her nerves.

He tugged her into contact with him. “Sorry. Did I fail to specify my preference for the two of us undressing one another?”

“We did. In the shower.”

“Stripping while numb with cold?” he mused. “I don’t think it’ll sell.”

She patted the final button on his shirt with one hand and tapped her SEM to life with the other. “Hold still.”

Edie rose to her toes and kissed him. Every fiber of her lit. A little like Sensory Enhancement. Infinitely better. Her entire body stirred, focused and intent upon V’kyrri and the contact of his lips on hers. He’d wanted warmth? Between them, they’d kindled a fire.

She drew back and opened her eyes to meet his gaze. Normal SEM data flow to focus past. One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Edie’s chest constricted. She froze.

V’kyrri was instantly in her head. No questions. Only his gaze staring through hers at a third heartbeat that should not be in the cave with them.

She slipped into the labyrinth of cargo containers that had been arranged long ago to provide exactly the cover she needed.

A light switched on in the front of the cave. Seated atop one of the boxes, lounging against the stone wall, boots propped on top of a second crate, Rhydian Trente met Edie’s gaze. His thick, black hair fell across indigo eyes. His face was set and cold as the glacial fields on Chemmoxin.

Edie stared.

“You going to tell me where the tracker is, or do I dump everything and start over?”

“Are you that naïve you think IntCom only vaccinated for disease?” Trente asked.

“Spawn of a Myallki bitch.” She rounded crates and sat across from him. “You aren’t here for the bounty or I’d be dead already.”

At the faint curve of his lips, Edie shrugged. “It didn’t escape me that you teaching me to spot assassins also taught you how to get at me. I’d tell you to take a number and stand in line for your shot, but the whole of my people seems to be ahead of you.”

“How dare you remind them of what they once were,” Trente said, flashing a mean grin. His dark gaze moved past Edie to V’kyrri. His brows lowered. “Eilod Saoyrse’s life is in danger.”

V’kyrri sat beside Edie, relaxed. Unmoved. The muscles in his leg against hers didn’t even flinch. A faint smile appeared on his face, and his presence in the room increased. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Edie sat back. Trente had something in play, something that affected the Claugh, apparently the queen, herself. He’d sworn vengeance against Eilod Saoyrse long before Edie had met him. Whatever his ultimate plan, Edie wasn’t a part of it.

“Her political opponents are gaining ground,” Trente said.

“Assessment?” V’kyrri asked, an officer recognizing a spy and cutting straight to risk.

“Assassination.”

V’kyrri straightened. “Any specifics?”

“Only that it’s someone close. Someone trusted.”

She lifted her chin in question. “Who’s running you?”

Trente met her gaze for several seconds, his own unreadable. And that meant no one had sent him on a mission. He’d come to warn V’kyrri about the Claugh queen’s safety—a Claugh queen he professed to loath. Suddenly, the meaning of every time Edie’d caught him monitoring anything and everything to do with Eilod Saoyrse shifted. Maybe he’d started out plotting revenge, but somewhere along the line, he’d softened. He wanted her alive. Maybe, so deep down he couldn’t even admit it to himself…he just wanted her.

His brows lowered.

She smiled.

“Have you seen the TFC pipeline?” he demanded. “Such a nicely worded invitation for the valued mercs to c’mon home to the bosom of the people who understand and love them.”

She snorted. “A bosom that looks an awful lot like a black box?”

“Yeah.” Trente rolled to standing. “Clear skies, Edie. I’m getting off this baxt’kal planet. It’s making me insane. If either of you has a brain, you’ll do the same.”

Edie lifted her chin.

“Commit or hit the lanes,” Trente said, strolling out of the cave. “They’ll eat you alive otherwise.”

“What the Three Hells was that?” V’kyrri demanded. “Who’ll eat you alive?”

“You. The Claugh. The Chekydran. Nol Jakze.” She hunched her shoulders. “The monster wasn’t supposed to come home.”

“Stop calling yourself that,” he ordered. “Monsters don’t save the lives of their enemies.”

“You aren’t my enemy.”

“I know. How long will it take you to realize it?”

“Dammit, V’kyrri. I’m Firestorm. How can you trust me?”

“Because you’re more than worthy of trust, and you certainly aren’t going to do the job for yourself.”

His gaze went past her to the cave entrance. His expression tightened.

Footsteps on the trail up the hill.

A sensation like he’d put a finger against the back of her hand though he hadn’t actually touched her. “May I?” sounded in her head.

She didn’t particularly want him inside her brain, but it made tactical sense. Counting heartbeats in her data feed, she nodded, and ignored the warmth spilling down her breastbone simply because he’d asked.

“Villagers,” she said inside her head. Couldn’t be bugs. No hum. Not Trente returning. Too many of them.

“Going to need a brief on your friend,” V’kyrri noted, tucking Trente’s image into her gray matter.

Right. The one obsessed with his queen.

She crept behind a cargo container and drew. V’kyrri’s shoulder contacted hers. He held his pistol at the ready, as well.

The lantern sat where they’d left it, illuminating a yellow circle.

The first person emerged into the circle of light, squinting, one hand half lifted to shield his eyes. Broad shoulders, dark hair silvering at the temples, and work clothes stained with blood.

“Jonas.” Edie rose and rounded into the open. More villagers filtered into the cave.

Jonas caught her by the shoulder and yanked her into a bear hug.

She laughed. When he released her, she slipped off her SEM lenses and concentrated on his hands as he said, “I’ve waited a damned long time to welcome you home, Altheas.”

“Edie,” she corrected. “I’ve buried a lot of past. It’s the name least likely to get me shot on sight.”

He chuckled.

She looked past him to the woman standing behind his left shoulder, arms crossed, a scowl on her lovely face. She’d thickened with the years. Her shoulders and hips had broadened, as if her body had decided she belonged to the rocks and soil of Nol Jakze rather than the air and clouds. In youth, she’d been slight. Her clan had liked to say you could see the wind blow through her. That was gone. Her eyes were still ethereal blue—one of the impossible shades Edie passed through on her way out of atmosphere.

“Gallena,” Edie said. “Not happy I’m still alive?”

“No.” She glowered.

Jonas grimaced.

“It was too much to hope you’d made your peace somewhere, and if you hadn’t that you’d died the way everyone said you must have done,” she said. “Cause the thing about you, little girl, is that you expect everyone to give their lives for your causes.”

Causes? Edie shifted her shoulders to unseat the word. “I only ever had one.”

“Yet, here you are,” she accused. “Activating a cell like we don’t have families. And farms. At least, we did. Until you.”

“You didn’t have to come,” Edie said.

“You didn’t have to start killing civilians after the war.”