Kesh
The Excalibur hung cloaked in the sky above Faerie, the only tek-ship to ever spend time close to the planet without being shot down. While we were technically hidden, I knew we’d be safe as long as we were trying to right all the wrongs of the past. If we veered off course, Faerie would reveal us.
Tek gleamed and rang every time my boots hit the catwalk gallery over the enormous weapons bays below. Every surface shone. Walls ended in sharp corners, unlike inside the smooth, undulating Faerie knolls or Shinj’s interior.
Thinking of the ship’s demise further darkened my already shadowed mood. Eledan was on board, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge or him. I’d tried so hard to escape him, but he kept coming back into my life, likely because it wasn’t my life at all. His life wasn’t his either, since Hapters’ people had spliced tek and a fragment of polestar into his chest to make him a heart. We were two parts of a star. We finally had all the polestar pieces we needed.
Before I dealt with all of that and what it meant, I entered the med-bay and found Hulia fussing over Sirius. The guardian was seated on the edge of a high med-bed. She stood beside him with a datapad, trying to log his readings, while he grumbled and groused about being fine as he latched the hook-and-eye fastenings on his shirt. His tek-hand and arm appeared to be working perfectly. The rest of him was a mess of ragged hair, dirt smudges, and exhaustion.
He saw me in the doorway. “Will you tell your friend if she continues to hover around me, I’ll not be held responsible for her wellbeing when I finally lose my patience.”
I smiled at his gruffness and approached Hulia.
Her lips twisted. She handed over the datapad. “He’s as stubborn as a Calicto drunk. He won’t let me scan him for injuries and insists he’s fine.” Barking a laugh, she threw a hand his way, making him flinch. “Look at him. He’s a mess.”
His scowl cut so deep it must have hurt. “Technically, if he says he’s fine, then he is fine,” I said. “We’ve all been through a lot.”
She rolled her eyes and flounced toward the door. “If he gives himself an aneurysm, don’t blame me. Oh, and honey… you don’t pay me enough to go within a mile of Eledan. He can rot in his room.”
If Eledan was awake, he likely wouldn’t be in his room. Kellee had argued to restrain him, but there wasn’t enough rope or chain in the worlds to hold Eledan for long, and tying him up would only piss him off.
“I don’t pay you,” I reminded her with a smile.
“That is also something I’ll be bringing up at the next meeting, along with the fact Talen’s zombie mind-slaves are freaking me the fuck out.”
“Duly noted.” Zombie mind-slaves were better than conscious Earthens who couldn’t handle the fact they were orbiting Faerie. He wasn’t hurting them, just easing their minds. Given how Captain Pierce had attacked Kellee to get her hands on the polestar, and how she’d executed a number of Sirius’s fae crew from Hapters, the Earthens were lucky to be alive.
Hulia was gone with a flick of her dreadlocks. The door whooshed shut behind her.
“She is a feisty namu,” Sirius remarked, wincing and rolling his shoulder, shifting his tek-arm.
I set the datapad down on the end of the bed. “Are you all right?”
“I would prefer to be on Faerie, where I can replenish my strength.” He flexed his tek-hand and rippled his fingers.
“Is the arm causing you discomfort?”
“Some,” he admitted. “I almost forgot it on Faerie, but here, surrounded by all this, it aches.”
Before I could talk myself out of it, I planted a very Talen-like kiss on his forehead and ran a hand down the side of his face, marveling that I could get so close to him without him threatening to murder me.
He froze, gulped, and looked up. The honesty in his eyes stripped us both raw. Like this, he was just Sirius, my silent guardian. I was only beginning to understand what that meant and knew we might never be able to explore where these feelings could take us. If he still had those feelings. He seemed to, but even now, he was restrained.
“Rest,” I said. His face was so warm, his skin fae-smooth. “We’re safe here.”
“The book. Eledan—”
I pressed a finger to his soft kissable lips, which tried to move around my touch. “I will handle Eledan, and the book can wait.”
Switching my thumb with my fingers, I checked his gaze to make sure he wasn’t about to fly into a fit of rage over a saru violating him, and brushed my mouth over his, trading soft breaths. His arms folded around my lower back and pulled me snug between his knees. The kiss deepened, turning slow and surprisingly gentle for my guardian. But he was already wrung out, and I had others waiting on me. Breaking away, I eased from his grip.
His hand snagged my wrist, pulling me up short. “Stay with me.” It sounded like an order, but the softer request reflected in his eyes.
For someone who didn’t know how to convey his emotions, he was doing a damn fine job of it. There was no way I could walk away from that low-lashed pleading look, not when it came from the honest heart few had seen.
His chest expanded, and his glare shifted away. “What we started in my library, I know the memories were not good ones for you, but I would not change that kiss—”
“Is that what you think? That I don’t want to remember it?” I laid my arms gently over his shoulders, smiling down at my vulnerable guardian. Beneath all that armor, he was a complicated soul. When I kissed him, it turned into a heated, hungry thing, as though our time were running out and this might be our last moment together. I knew that feeling. I felt it with them all, like each conversation could be our last. How could I leave them? Why did it have to be me?
A cool tek-hand claimed my back while his other sought my face, his fingers smearing the tears he found there. Then my fingers were working at the shirt fasteners he’d done up, opening them so I could feel him beneath my hands and soak up every precious quiver and tremble I ignited.
“I wanted you to say yes to Ailish…” The words brushed my ear. His fingers sank into my hair, holding me close as though afraid to let go. “I still do. Is that wrong?”
“I wanted it too, but I’ve come too far to surrender now. I have to see it to the end. We have to see it to the end.”
“You are brave… braver than I am.”
Wrapping him in my arms, I held him close and listened to the beat of his immortal fae-heart, to the rhythm of his breathing, committing his soft hardness to memory. Maybe he’d listen to my heart, and hear my breathing, and he’d remember me. Perhaps, in his memories, I could live forever.