Page 30 of He Will Always Love Me

I want to say it’s Alana. For some reason, she looks like an Alana to me.

“Maya,” she replies, tying off the gauze. “What about you, Coalition scum?” Though she insults me, it comes across as a formality rather than anything with real heat to it.

“Revnan.” With a groan, I sit up and immediately regret it. The world tilts, and it takes her propping me up on one side to keep me from falling over again. The wounds and blood loss really did a number on me.

“Let me help you get to your feet,” she says, standing up and offering a hand. “I know a safe place that isn’t too far from here. But we’ll have to walk. I can’t carry you.”

I look her up and down. Though she has a strong, wiry frame from surviving in a war zone, she is short and definitely not strong enough to take even half my weight to help me get wherever she wants to go. This is gonna hurt like hell.

With her help, I get to my feet, staggering slightly as the pain threatens to knock me over again. I curse under my breath, and we make our slow, careful trek through the rubble of her town.

Her town. How can I be sure that this isn’t a trap?

The truth is that I cannot be certain. Maya may have treated my wounds, but she has every reason to want to kill me. And I don’t blame her. If our positions were reversed, I’d feel the same way.

Maybe I should kill her, or at least knock her out. I’ll probably be safer if I struck out on my own to look for my missing unit.

She certainly would be safer without me around. If other humans find out that she’s harboring the enemy, they’ll probably kill her.

If I incapacitated her now, she’d have plausible deniability. If I killed her, then we would have one less enemy to worry about.

But then images flash in my mind. I see her bleeding out in my arms, but not here on Armstrong. The landscape, wherever it is, is a place I've never seen, but the image is so vivid it feels real. The sheer agony of these intrusive thoughts shakes me out of any desire to hurt her.

“You okay?” she asks, apparently sensing that I’ve been overcome with pain of some kind. “Need a break?”

I shake my head. “Let’s just get there.”

I’m taking this and whatever happens next on faith, and I pray that I don’t regret it.

CHAPTER 16

MAYA

Itake Revnan to an old schoolhouse that I know no one ever comes to. After all, on our war-torn planet, who bothers with school? And there’s no way I can take him to my house. If anyone knew there was a wounded soldier just lying around, they’d kill him.

If it had been anyone else, I probably would have let them. But not this man. I don’t know why, but I know I have to keep him safe.

I push together a few old desks and use them as a makeshift cot for the soldier. As soon as he’s lying down, I check his wounds to make sure the stitches haven’t reopened.

Still sealed up. Good.

Then I start tending to his other wounds and washing away the dirt and grime. After all, it would be a shame to go through all that work only for his wounds to get infected.

When I’ve done all I can, I sit back on a dusty chair. Revnan gives me an odd look. I frown at him. “What?”

“I am trying to decide whether you are brave or incredibly reckless,” he muses.

I snort. “Somehow I think the two are usually connected. You have to be a bit reckless to do something brave.”

The soldier hums in thought. “Perhaps. Or maybe you simply have the conviction to do so.”

“Which many people would consider reckless.”

“Yes, but recklessness doesn’t always mean bravery. Sometimes it just means stupidity.”

I roll my eyes. “Where was this going again?”

He gives me a deadpan look, and I grin. “Oh, do you mean because I rescued an enemy soldier off the battlefield and am now risking my life to nurse him back to health? No, that seems pretty ordinary to me. Whatever could you possibly mean?”

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