Taken to Lemora by Elizabeth Stephens

16

Essmira

A soft grunt, and then silence.

“Gorman? Is that you?”

I look up from the fabric swatches I brought into my chambers to work on — a good distraction from worrying about the Egama and the human that may or may not be with them.

One fabric swatch is for a new dress for myself. Three are for similar dresses I’ve been asked to make by Asgid workers. They’re smaller in stature than the Lemoran and often dress fully covered, even the males, and have flocked to me for the designs I’ve been making for myself since they’re made from durable wego fabric, wick water somewhat and, more importantly, dry quickly in the ever-present rain.

I’m thinking of customizing a couple styles to fit the Rekkaru, too, but I notice that they tend towards brighter fabrics. Perhaps, I could even hand dye some patterns. The Walrey dyes came out beautifully. I wonder what Lyla would think. I could even dip them in wax to create stark shapes…

My mind is racing and I smile as I look up as I hear another soft moan and then a stranger sound, like water dripping. “Gorman, you don’t have to babysit me, you know. I know that there’s a lot to prepare with new guests…Oh. Hello.”

I perform the Lemoran greeting at the male who walks through the two-story high doors into my chambers. I’d left them open for Gorman, but this is definitely not Gorman. In fact, it isn’t anyone I’ve seen before here on Lemora. He isn’t even a species I’ve seen before. I’m not sure, he’s even flesh and blood, there’s so much metal covering him. And the first thought that hits me, hits hard.

“Who did this to you?” I whisper, not having meant to say the words aloud.

His one eye widens in surprise and I feel terror pierce me down to my toes. And then the moment passes when he takes a step forward.

The male stands tall, just taller than Raingar if you removed his horns and he has on what has to be the strangest garment I’ve ever seen. Black, it covers his chest from his right shoulder to his left hip. It molds to fit his body so tightly, I can see the definition of his many muscles through the thin, matte fabric.

His right arm is covered by the same fabric that coats his chest, but his left arm, pectoral, and some of his abdomen is concealed by metal. It sparkles bright, looking like freshly minted stalyx. Only…it isn’t covering him, is it? It looks like it is him. The way his arm bends at the elbow…I can see metallic joints connecting the upper arm to the lower. A similar metal vein shoots up the left side of his neck.

The left side of his face is also partially constructed of metal. He has a metal plate contoured to where a cheek would be, but above that, there’s no eye, there’s just a flat dark grey sheen. It moves freakily, like black sand is shifting beneath it, forming patterns and swirls.

That metal brow curves over his forehead, over his crown, to form the bulk of his skull on the left side. On the right side, however, above his forehead, straight, white hair grows. It cascades over his right shoulder, halfway down his back, the tips touching the tops of his pants, which are covered in the same black fabric. He wears flexible black boots that mold to the shape of his large, flat feet.

And everywhere that isn’t metal? Well, it’s red. His skin is red. Drakesh colors, like mine, they’re familiar to me. He even has a red tail. It lazes behind him, bored, its coated tip hovering just above the ground. He looks like he was cut down the middle and everything on his left side that was once red skin and flesh and bone beneath it was swapped out for metallic parts.

Who did this to him? Did it hurt? Was he injured? Did these modifications save his life? What did he look like before?

A daring thought crosses my mind as something powerful shifts in my heart. I know him. I know this male. “Do I know you?” I whisper, throat and lips suddenly dry. I’m backing away from him without knowing why. “You seem familiar to me.”

He doesn’t speak. He just takes another step into the room. In his eyes — in his one eye that looks so strangely similar to mine, a dark brown ring surrounding a black dot floating in a white pool — there is no recognition. There is nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, even as I stumble back with one hand raised. My body knows he is a predator even if everything else about him pulls me forward, wanting to comfort this male I know from another life. “I’m so sorry,” I say, feeling somehow like I failed him.

I don’t know why, but I am sorry. Deeply. From the bottom of my soul.

All the goodness of Lemora can’t compete with the blind indifference of his gait. Like nothing matters to him. Like he is nothing. He sees nothing. Like he hardly even exists.

His full, vermillion lips don’t so much as twitch. They don’t open. His expression is blank as he carries himself silently across the room, stopping directly in front of me. He raises his metallic arm in front of my face and I don’t know any better, so I don’t hold my breath. I just breathe in the light, citrusy scent. Then I fall into the void of his gaze where there is no light, where there is no happiness, where there is nothing at all. Not even grief or pain or longing.

I wake up what feels like a moment later, but I know it hasn’t been, because my environment is entirely changed. Everything that was the earthy, nurturing taste and feel of Lemora’s soil and the strength and stony love that was Raingar’s keep has been stripped away. What’s left is so bare it makes my bones ache.

I can feel the lovelessness of this place radiating through my conscious mind. It doesn’t feel nice and neither does my skull. It’s pounding so hard I can barely breathe. Was that citrus scent a gas? A poison? It must have been…

“At least I’m still alive,” I mutter to myself, caught by the realization that I haven’t spoken to myself in a long time.

On Lemora, I always have someone to talk to.

But I’m not on Lemora anymore, am I?

I cough into the glassy, glossy white floor. It feels oily to the touch even though nothing comes off on my hands, and shines with all the bright lights reflecting off of it. Everything is so white it hurts. Everything is so bright and soulless, including the male who sits at the small stool in front of what I must assume are controls but that don’t resemble anything I’ve seen before in my life.

A large table forms a circle around him that’s three-quarters complete. It’s tilted towards him and, from where I lay on my belly, it’s possible to see only a mercurial surface that undulates in waves, cresting and arching beneath his deft touch. It’s like the liquid sand that lives in his left eye. It’s like he’s playing an instrument except there is no music. There is no sound at all. It’s terrible. I haven’t been in silence like this since I was property of Tyto and Igmora.

But I’m not that female anymore.

I am miriga and this male has no right to cage me.

Even still, I’m not a fool I know I’m no match for him, either, and that I’ll need to be careful. My thumb rubs over the scar on the inside of my palm. This is a new adversary but the mission is still the same. Freedom. Return to Lemora. Return to Raingar and his wild and grumpy ways. But first, I will need to be patient.

Jerky movement beneath me makes the ache in my skull more intense. The male gets up and moves to the wall behind me. He passes right by me to do it and he doesn’t even look at me or acknowledge my presence in any way. It makes me feel like a ghost. Like I’m already dead. Nob. I shudder violently as the entire carrier beneath me sways.

Nob, not a carrier. A ship. It’s a small one. At least, this chamber is small and there are only two openings. One is a round circle in the wall that looks in on what I assume is a wet room judging by the clear, circular tube that falls from the ceiling to the floor. There’s a hole in the floor behind it where, if I had to guess, the poop goes.

The other opening is sealed with a white hatch. The male extends his wrist toward some sort of scanner and a red light fires from his wrist to the white surface. There’s a hiss and then the male spins a physical handle mounted in the center of the round hatch. Next, he swings it open inward.

I panic, worried about the air pressure and hold my breath, but when nothing changes, I release it. I glance at the control panel, but I know I won’t be able to figure it out in the time it takes for him to come back, so I lunge for the hatch instead. I throw it closed. I’m surprised when it seals shut beneath me…too surprised. It was too easy.

I look at the handle and try to spin it closed but it doesn’t move beneath my touch. Panic grips me.

I stagger up onto my feet and fall. My head…it hurts. I can’t focus. The little ship that is my new cage doubles around me and then triples. Somehow, I manage to drag myself up onto the stool. It spins. Pagh! Pagh? Did I just say pagh, like Raingar? The thought makes my lips twitch, despite the circumstances.

My hands settle on the controls. Well, the non-controls. Rather, my hands fumble over the sand. It’s cold to the touch and feels strangely like liquid. My fingers fumble around on top of it, but no matter where I press, nothing happens. There are no markings, not in any language, and I’ve never been introduced to technology like this, so I don’t know where to begin. So I touch everything.

Feeling defeated, I slump and turn around on the stool, trying to see what I might use in this austere environment as a weapon, but before I can get up and move to one white cabinet built directly into the wall, out of nowhere, an orange light turns on in the ceiling over my head. It blankets everything in a creepy orange glow. And a breath later, the hatch explodes open.

The half-male, half-machine — my captor — bounds up into the white room with a female in his grip. He’s holding her by the shock of red hair cascading around her bare body. She’s completely naked and screaming. She’s crying, too.

I straighten up to the best I can and square my shoulders to face him. “What are you…”

But he barely even registers me before he takes his metallic hand to my face first and then to my stomach. He backhands me before his open palm forms a fist and finds my stomach. He punches me hard, grabs me by the hair and tosses me and the other female into the corner.

We land heaped on top of one another, my red and brown skin clashing against her skin, which is a far lighter color. Her hair…she has so much of it. It’s all I can touch. It’s in my mouth, underneath me, waves and waves of orangey red that’s a much rougher texture than my own curls.

“Are you…alright?” I ask her, coughing as I try to speak through the pain spreading through me. My face feels like it’s been hit by a lightning strike. I cup my right jaw and cheek and chin. Already my eye is starting to swell shut.

She says things in a language…but it isn’t one I speak. Igmora always said that the males want their females to speak to them in their own language without the use of a translator — that translators are unnatural and that males should always feel at ease. So I was never equipped with one. Instead, I spent my whole life learning dozens of languages, with particular focus on Meero, Lemoran and Egama. None of that helps me now.

“Shoooareeyooo!” She shouts, scrambling madly to get away from me, like I’m the bad guy.

I groan, trying to roll onto my knees, but the ship lurches wildly beneath me as its engines power up. I brace myself, but the female beside me must be unused to small space crafts such as these because she flies into the wall, her skull crashing against it with a loud thunk.

I crawl to her, trying to get her to calm herself, but she’s got her hands up and is panicking at my nearness. And then a horrible screech fills the chamber and I look back up at our captor to see that the male has returned to his seat but he isn’t sitting. Instead, he’s standing with both hands braced on the edge of his control dock staring at the black sand which rises and falls in time to the screeching.

The female with me claps her hands over her ears and though every instinct I have tells me to do the same, I try to resist because the longer I listen, the more I think I can make out word patterns in the chaos.

And it sounds Eshmiri.

“…don’t…what…” Another painfully loud screech, but then words rocket through in clarity all at once. “Tintin, get those shields back up right shroving now!” The voice is female and sounds distressed. “How could you lose them! Gibli, get over here…” And then the sound screeches out again.

Our captor’s hands fly over the control dock and the ship takes another wild turn that sends the female crashing into me. I try to steady her, but she’s terrified — beyond terrified. It’s like she’s a youngling completely inexperienced with creatures outside of her own species.

Perhaps, I briefly consider, she’s from another planet where there is no access to inter-Quadrant travel. The thought horrifies me — the poor thing must be in shock and I know what it’s like not to have freedom. I know what it’s like to be submerged all at once.

I had Raingar to hold my hand, though. Even if he let go once or twice, he always came back to steady me. Because he’s the mate I never knew I could have. I squeeze my eyes shut tight as a foreign and unfamiliar sensation washes over me. I miss him. I’ve never missed anyone. I’ve never had anyone to miss.

A green light comes on overhead and a voice I recognize in every one of my bones radiates throughout the small chamber. The sands shift, forming pictures that bounce to life with color. I don’t expect to see his face. I never expected to see his face again, but…there he is. Tyto, in the flesh. Not quite, but far, far too close for comfort.

“Where are you?” He hisses, his forked tongue sliding out between his small, sharp teeth as the sand comes together to form his shape with devastating accuracy.

My — our — captor doesn’t respond. I know I should be more worried about the female hyperventilating beside me, but since his voice was conjured into existence, I haven’t been able to move. I’m plastered against the wall, like my co-prisoner, but unlike her, I’m not breathing. Meanwhile, she’s breathing far too hard.

“I forgot your Sky rules about speaking,” Tyto huffs, sounding livid. “Do you have her with you?” Sky? Our captor is Sky!

My skin loses all feeling. The pain recedes, becoming nothing in the face of my terror. Sky. The stories Igmora told me. That’s where Igmora threatened to send me if I didn’t behave. She told me that on Sky, I’d be butchered or used for breeding new monsters in this world. And even though I did everything they ever asked, she and Tyto have sent me there anyway.

Why here? Why now? Why are they doing this? Why didn’t I try harder to escape from the beginning? From the moment I was a youngling and I began to understand the differences between right and wrong? The moment I knew that the way I was being treated wasn’t right, so it had to have been wrong? The first time I was denied food, I should have tried to escape. I should have run the first time Tyto beat me with his tail.

Our captor nods and when Tyto licks his lips, I look away. “Let me see her.”

A few switches of the controls and a black spark flashes, blinding me momentarily. Tyto hisses louder, his tail emitting a faint rattle that I can hear all around me. “You’ve punished her?”

The nameless male nods.

“She was misbehaving?”

Another nod.

Tyto’s voice thickens with lust. “She will need more correcting when I receive her, then.”

Even though it wasn’t a question, my captor — the male who beat me — shakes his head. He only shakes his head once, though. Perhaps, he misunderstood the question.

Tyto doesn’t seem to notice. He says, “You’ll meet me this lunar in Wasteland, as planned?”

Wasteland? I hope to the stars that isn’t a place…and I hope against hope that he doesn’t mean to take me there even though I know he does. Maybe I always knew. The moment I cut my hand on the window, I knew I’d never really escape him.

I touch the cut across my hand, fingering it for strength, as I watch my captor nod. Just as quickly he brushes his fingertips over the controls and the sands fall down, taking the picture of Tyto with them.

A few touches later, the sounds of that distressed female voice returns. The male above the controls closes his eye. His nostrils flare. He takes a deep breath in and on his exhale, his shoulders relax down his back just a little bit. Relief or something more maleficent? I’m not sure. I don't know who she is, either. Is she another victim for Tyto and Igmora? I wonder why Igmora isn’t doing the talking with this Sky savage. She always does the talking.

“Any luck, Tintin?” Banging, loud clanging, and what sounds like metal boring against metal. “Shrov! Don’t do that. Give it here. Wait, wait, wait… Do you have my stash?” Our captor flinches. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen any emotion in him at all.

“Ontte, I want it…ontte! The timing does call for it. You see this dot here? That means he’s closing in on us! Shrov!” The female’s curse cuts out at the same time that the ship beneath us smashes into something else. Or latches on.

I don’t know much about ships or space travel, but I know that this must be a rare piece of technology for it to move as quickly as it does and to be able to fly undetected. It must be, otherwise Raingar would have found me by now. Our captor goes to the hatch. He will come for me. He throws it open. I’m his Xiveri…

“Hey, Jer,” comes the friendly quip in a female voice before…BOOM!

A beam of green light flashes into the chamber, hitting the male in his metal shoulder and taking him off of his feet. He spins through the air and hits the ceiling before falling down just a few paces from me. He ambles slowly onto his feet, almost lazily, like he doesn’t care at all about the Niahhorru pirate bursting through the port hole in the floor or the Lemoran male that follows him in.

And that Lemoran is one I know with every fiber of my being.

“Raingar!” I scream.

He turns to me immediately and, seeing me, his eyes widen. Some of the fight that had inflated the bloated muscles in his arms and powerful thighs deserts him. He pivots away from the half-metal, half-Drakesh threat and stomps angrily to me and, before I know what’s hit me, he’s crouching at my feet and slamming both palms flat on the wall on either side of my face.

“Khaneyetooshyo,” he says in a voice too gravelly to understand. He chokes to clear it. “Can I touch you? Are you hurt? Where did he touch you? Did he hit you here?” His fingers are so delicate, so soft as they stroke my forehead, leading down to my injured cheek. I don’t wince, not at all, and I recognize this for what it is — a departure from the male who once wanted only pleasure from me.

This male is, just maybe, ready.

And I am more than ready. I’ve been waiting.

I throw myself into his chest and wrap my arms around his neck. In the meantime, more and more creatures have flooded the space and they’re of all kinds.

The first Niahhorru pirate is joined by three more and Raingar is joined by Merquin and Tana. They form a protective barrier around us, so I only spy through their legs, spread in defensive stances, the Eshmiri reaver horde that floods what little space that’s left. There must be over twenty of them even though this ship clearly holds no more than one creature comfortably — or three, if two are imprisoned and ignored.

I glance over to my mystery co-prisoner, certain that she’d be screaming by now at the onslaught of seeing so many interstellar faces…and I’m not wrong. She’s shaking violently, tears wetting her cheeks, her pink lips are quivering and there are goosebumps all over her pale body. But she’s also in the cage of a pirate’s arms.

He’s whispering to her frantically, but she just keeps shaking her head again and again until eventually, she gasps one more time and faints. The pirate catches her and the heat radiating off of him is only rivaled by the heat flashing off of Raingar’s skin like solar flares.

“Look at me, Essmira,” he whispers, grazing just one finger along my jaw to turn my attention back to him. I meet his gaze, suddenly remembering the pain in my head, left cheek and right ribs. I try to uncurl myself, because the terribly condensed way I’m wedged is no help. “What are you…”

“Help me stand, please? My ribs. They hurt in this position.”

“He hit you,” he whispers so softly and so darkly he strains the language.

I cringe, pain exploding through me in small doses. “Yeffa.”

Raingar bites his teeth together and closes his eyes tight. He plants both hands back on the wall beside my face brutally, but when he touches me again, this time my shoulders, his grip is soft. He gently pulls me onto my feet, making sure to keep my entire body beneath the cage of his. Shielding me, like a clan chief would do for his miriga.

“Raingar, I love y…”

“Is he contained?” Raingar barks over his shoulder. He doesn’t hear me and my cheeks burn hot. This is clearly not the time for bold pronouncements of love.

“Ontte,” comes the Meero response from a pirate I do know. Rhorkanterannu. Everyone knows the pirate Rhorkanterannu of Kor.

He owns the trading port. He commands the pirates. And he’s here. I never thought the pirates would assist the Lemoran with anything. And what’s even wilder? The Eshmiri! They’re known to lie, cheat, and steal and never out of chivalry. I wonder what Raingar offered them in kintarr and a flash of new guilt ruins me.

“Ontte, my ass,” comes a female voice. I recognize this one, too. She was the voice on the other side of the screeching that my captor was listening to so intently.

I strain around Raingar to get a glimpse of her and, when I do, I’m floored. Meanwhile, she doesn’t look half so stunned as I am. Instead, she dismisses me with her bright white gaze just as quickly as it settles on my face.

She dismisses me even though she has the same dark brown skin I do and none of the red. Her hair is a shock of white curls that frame her face and her eyes…her eyes swirl with color, but only fleetingly, before that color dies and returns to a blank white slate. Stunning. Fascinating. I can’t decide if the female terrifies me or if I find her terrifyingly beautiful. In either case, she’s fortunate that Igmora and Tyto never got their hands on her. They’d have pulled the fire right out of her and there’s no doubt that she’s an open flame.

She lifts a weapon — some kind of blaster — and points it across the tiny chamber. I follow the motion and my gaze locks on the male who took me from my home. He has his arms locked in a type of manacle that I’ve never seen before. Radiating blue energy pulses and zaps. It looks like a live wire, like it should be causing him physical pain as it encircles each of his wrists and links them together.

Similar shackles hold his feet apart and nail them to the floor. But he just stands there without an ounce of anything at all concerning him. He just stands there like this is already over and he’s won. Or like…he doesn’t even care if he loses.

And still every weapon in this tiny chamber is trained on him.

“Jerrock is contained,” Rhorkanterannu says.

But something gives me the impression that I should believe the female, rather, when she laughs, “Right. Yeah right…” I wonder, distracted, if she’s a hybrid…if she could be human? Her skin is just like mine. But then, maybe not? She didn’t look at me like she recognized me among her same species. Maybe, I’m just looking for humans everywhere now.

“I want his head,” Raingar seethes, turning so that his back is to me. He keeps his arms spread to either side, like the male Rhorkanterannu called Jerrock still might be able to get through all of the others to find me.

The Eshmiri reavers all start speaking at once. Short, squat creatures with thick, muscular chests, they wear rags, leathers, and hides draped all over their ruddy brown forms and speak in a way that sounds like high-pitched giggling.

The white haired female joins them and I’m shocked because she speaks Eshmiri like an Eshmiri. She’s one of them. “Eshmiri are only male,” I whisper.

Raingar chokes out a bitter laugh, “All except Ashmara. But don’t let that fool you. She’s one hundred percent reaver. More psychotic than the rest combined.”

“Well, you can’t have it.” The female — Ashmara — swivels her blaster around to point it at Raingar. Tana and Reyna flash blasters of their own and the Eshmiri all start trilling. “We had a deal, Raingar. First Tyto’s kintarr and then heads will roll. Any head you want.” She shoves her blaster into the leather on her belt and holds up both hands.

She brings something to her mouth and chases whatever it was with a swig from a hard leather flask hanging on her belt.

The chains on the opposite side of the tight, hot chamber, sing. A horrible smell fills the space and it comes from the sizzle around his wrists. Burning flesh. But then Jerrock settles just as quickly.

But not quickly enough.

“Awww,” Ashmara croons in a cloyingly sweet voice that I don’t like at all. It makes her sound monstrous. Heartless. “Are you worried about me, Jerry Berry?” Jerry Berry? I’d bet my red stripes that is not the bounty hunter’s preferred moniker.

He doesn’t reply. He just stares straight forward at nothing.

A moment of silence. Nobody moves. All in all, the situation starts to feel rather unnecessary. Tana breaks the mounting tension and the quiet, “So…what now?”

“Now,” Rhorkanterannu says slowly, “we need our new friend here to tell us where the rendezvous point is with Tyto.” He whips out a lightning stick and spears the male’s stomach without warning.

Jerrock twitches, but doesn’t even buckle. Ashmara, the psycho, laughs, “Rhorky baby — is it alright if I call you that?”

“Centare.”

“Rhorky baby,” she says, not really listening as she picks her way forward around the crowded Eshmiri to reach Rhorkanterannu’s side. I notice as she walks that she’s swaying slightly even though the ship isn’t in motion. “Jer bear has been getting used to torture for longer than you’ve been marauding. Pain is his best friend. You’re not going to get through to him like that.”

Rhorkanterannu sighs, as if exasperated. He pivots towards Ashmara behind him, but doesn’t let Jerrock out of his sight. “Then, what do you suggest?”

She sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth and squints. Her eyes slit, but I still make out the bright flare of blue that swims across her eyeballs fleetingly before it vanishes. “We could tickle him.” She shrugs one shoulder.

“TICKLE HIM!” Raingar, in front of me, roars so loud the ohring ship shakes. “You suggest we tickle the Sky assassin to extort information from him?”

All of the Eshmiri start talking at once. I glance at the female clutched against the pirate’s chest beside me. She’s still out like the dead. I worry for her, but the male with his arms around her doesn’t seem to be willing to release her for anything.

“Raingar,” I say. I tap him on the shoulder. He’s still shouting though, waving both arms now, so he doesn’t hear me. “Raingar…RAINGAR!”

All of the pirates in the room buckle slightly, but gratefully shut up. I clear my throat. “Thank you. I was going to say that Ashmara’s um…inventive methods of interrogation won’t be necessary. I know where they’re going — where they’re supposed to meet. Tyto and Jerrock communicated and I heard Tyto tell him to meet him at Wasteland. Does that mean anything to you all?”

“Wasteland?” Ashmara grins, leaning one elbow on top of a nearby Eshmiri’s head. He doesn’t seem to mind and trills with what I think is true laughter. “Isn’t that your female’s territory, pirate?”

Rhorkanterannu laughs, deep and from the belly. “Wasteland. It’s one of her favorites.”

“What is it?” I ask.

His silver orb eyes flick to me, pinning me in place. It’s a stare difficult not to whither beneath. I touch Raingar’s back, planting my palm beneath his right shoulder. He tenses, stiffening even straighter, like he’s gathering more strength to give to me. It’s working.

“It’s on Kor. It’s a casino.”

A short while later and Rhorkanterannu and his pirates have managed to connect their mothership to the entire mangled mess that is this white chamber of terror and Ashmara’s charcoal and rust chambers of terrors.

Inside Ashmara’s ship, I sit on top of a rust-covered crate full of discarded glass bottles, trying not to touch anything. Raingar kneels in front of me, stroking my legs, holding a damp and hopefully clean cloth to the side of my face while Tana and Reyna wrap a bandage around my waist.

“This should hold until we’re back on Lemora.”

I thank them, but it doesn’t ease the discomfort in my stomach, a discomfort that has nothing to do with pain. “What is it? What’s wrong, miriga?”

I smile at him and then wince as the Eshmiri throw some more rusty tools around, or really just try to make as much noise as possible on this terrible ship that could not be more opposite the white, glossy, sterile cruiser I’d been contained on before. Based on looks alone, I wouldn’t be able to say which ship is worse.

But luckily it isn’t based solely on looks. Because that ship was tinged in the thickest veneer of sadness. This ship? This ship is painted in rusty neglect and savage love. There is love in this place.

I look at Raingar and lean in close. I press my mouth to his and he kisses me back tentatively, in a way I never want to be kissed by him. “I’m not a delicate flower,” I whisper against his cheek, our breath mingling, the scent reminding me strongly of home.

“Nob, you’re a rock, tougher than I am, but you’re a bruised rock. I don’t need to hurt you unnecessarily. Now tell me, what’s wrong?”

Satisfied with his answer, I kiss him more fiercely before pulling back. Quietly, only to him, I whisper, “This doesn’t feel right. The Sky hunter gave up far too quickly. This all feels too easy. Like a trap.”

Raingar frowns, his nostrils puffing out. “We’ll retrieve the kintarr owed to the ohring pirates and kill Tyto, thus killing your contract with the Sky. They won’t come looking for you and we’ll go home, let these bloody reavers deal with the rest.”

I nod, wanting to share in his optimism. “You’re sure that Jerrock can’t escape his chains?”

“These are ion iron ionyx’ix-reinforced Droherion. The strongest known elements in the galaxy combined. There is no way he can escape those chains.”

“You’re sure?” I say, voice wobbly.

He nods, firm, “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”