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Oh.

Was that why he stabbed her with that needle so quickly and carelessly, without any pain relief? He'd felt her knee with his hand so roughly that Alina was convinced he was trying to agonize her. Was that all the uhyre had needed to detect the risk of further damage?

No. The speed at which he treated her was a convenient side-effect of his cruelty, nothing more. The uhyre weren’t thoughtful. They weren’t considerate. The memory of Threxin standing there and watching the ordeal with calm indifference was proof of that.

“He then injected shrinking resin into the fractures to secure them as they healed. Do you remember that?” The medic turned to Alina, and she shook her head.

“That must’ve been after I fainted…”

“Fainted or sedated?”

Alina couldn't remember. “I don’t… He stuck something in my neck, I think.”

The doctor nodded. “Sedated. It would have been excruciating otherwise.”

Ithadbeen excruciating. Alina examined her knee. “Will there be any long-term damage?”

“No. The resin was precise. It tightened as it healed, bringing the bone back together securely. You’ll limp and be in pain while it heals, but that’ll pass. I can prescribe pain relief.”

“No,” Alina said. “I don’t need it.”

They were rationing.

“Fine. Let’s see the hand.”

She exhaled with relief when the medic told her the hand hadn’t been broken. “When I saw the cast, I thought… I thought it may be worse than the knee.”

The hand hadn’t been fractured, but two ligaments were torn. They had been cauterized back together. Alina hadn’t even realized just how bad she’d hurt herself until the doctor explained it to her. When it happened, everything moved so fast, there’d been bigger things to worry about.

He shook his head, inspecting the x-ray of her bones on his tablet. “The hand is much harder to stabilize and prevent movement without casting. That would’ve been why he did it… If you’d moved it too soon, the ligaments would tear again. You’ll need physical therapy to regain full range of motion. The ligaments lost tissue during the cauterization. You’ll find it hard to make a fist. Try.”

Alina's hand shook at the wrist as she tried to bend her fingers, and a little over halfway there it was as though she hit an invisible barrier.

The doctor nodded, unsurprised. “We don’t have any physiotherapists available. I’ll document what you can do on your own.”

In the corner of her eye, Kaia bristled, shifting.

“It’s okay,” Alina reassured her. “I’ve supervised someone’s physio before. I know how to do it.”

Her mother had been a horrible patient.

Once it was done, Alina was cleared to try walking. It was a strange sensation to lean on her leg again. At first her knee buckled beneath her, but she found her balance quickly.

Outside of the exam room, Alina tried not to look too curious as Manda took Kaia aside.

Alina's pulse jumped—she was surely telling Kaia about running into Threxin.

What would Kaia think about Threxin loitering near her cabin? What else could she think other than the obvious fact that something had been going on?

CHAPTER 31

THREXIN

It had been three days since the jump and nearly one ship month since his arrival on hisColossal. Time dragged, especially now that they were simply traversing human space—the most dangerous place for them to be—with no end in sight. By all accounts, the jump had been a success.

Colossal’ssignature would not register on any transceivers; Threxin made sure of that. They would navigate cloaked, which meant it was up to them to keep wide-range quantum radar on at all times and avoid other ships and major navigation routes. In the meantime Threxin had instructed his own engineers to find a way to jump through human space and avoid this manual navigation. Orion Halen’s timeline of one year before their next jump was unacceptably long.

For one, they were running out of rations.

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