Page 27 of Needed in the Night
“And yet,” he said with a sigh, “we’re still here.”
Brae groomed his belly fur while I sipped my wine. Despite working in a bar and frequently enjoying a glass of brandy after I finished my set, I didn’t drink much off the clock. Everything about the night’s events had driven me to open a bottle of Tocanian wine. It was sweeter than I usually liked, but full-bodied and velvety enough to enjoy.
“I love singing at Zaa’ga,” I said, my shoulders sagging. “I love making enough money to feel secure for the first time in my life. Nubo aside, I feel safe in this building. I’m lucky to have this job and an apartment when it’s so difficult to get them in this city. I love Fortusia. It’s the first truly beautiful place I’ve ever lived, and the first place that ever felt like it could be our home. Ycari is watching over me. And it’s not like there’s any place in the galaxy that’s completely safe.”
“All that is true.” Brae curled his tufted tail around his body. “But you and I both know Nubo wants you as more than his singer. Sooner or later he’ll act on that.”
“Ycari says he’s got people digging into my identity.” My stomach, already uneasy, began churning, so I set my wine glass on my bedside table. “He wants to know who I am before he does anything. You know how people like him operate. He’sgreedy and possessive and a thug, but he’s not dumb or reckless. If he was, he wouldn’t be where he is. He’d be dead.”
“So you’re living on borrowed time and you know it.” He nailed me with a glowing, angry stare. “Isla, there are other cities, other bars. Other places you can sing. Nubo might think you belong to him and that you owe him for giving you a job, but you don’t. You aren’t obligated to stay here.”
My temper, already shorter than normal, flared. “I know I’m not,” I snapped. Not because he deserved my ire, but because he was right and I didn’t want him to be. “I’m tired of running. JustonceI don’t want to be the one running. I don’t want to be the victim anymore.”
Those words all but hung in the air in the long silence that followed. My chest rose and fell with ragged breaths.
“I’m sorry,” Brae said quietly. “I should have understood that without you needing to say it.”
He went back to grooming his belly as I curled up with my back to the headboard, my arms around my knees.
Should I tell him the thought of leaving Mikas behind made my stomach hurt? I wasn’t sure I could explain why in a way even I could understand.
“Mikas thinks we should go, though,” I said, my voice quiet. “Both of us. All three of us.”
His wings fluttered. “You told him about me?”
I pictured the earnestness in Mikas’s expression when he’d sworn my secrets were safe with him and smiled. “He already knew.”
I told him what Mikas had confided in the privacy of Ycari’s sampling room, what else we’d talked about, and how much I’d enjoyed our trip to the market despite its abrupt end and Mikas’s dark mood on the walk back. Brae licked his belly and listened quietly.
“So Mikas thinks he can get you both away from Nubo?” Brae asked when I finished.
“He said he wanted to.” I gazed absently out my window at the grassy rooftop of the building next to ours. “No definite plans, but goals and dreams. His words.”
“Goals and dreams, you say,” he mused. “He dreams of escaping Nubo with you?”
“Not like that,” I said with a chuckle. “As a friend. He’s so kind beneath that grumpy exterior. He worries about me.”
He made a snuffly chuffing sound—the shadowbat equivalent of a snort. “That makes two of us.”
Talking about Mikas made my chest hurt, but for an entirely different reason than talking about leaving Onat’ras. It was more of a heartache.
“He’s so unhappy,” I said, “but he doesn’t want to say why. Tonight he was more grim than I’ve ever seen him and it wasn’t just because of that Atolani female who showed up at the bar. He seems miserable.”
“I think your friend needs someone to talk to, if he could bring himself to open up,” Brae observed. “The man’s sealed up tighter than an airlock.”
I sighed. “I tried at the perfume shop, but before we could say much, Nubo demanded he come back and that was the end of that. Even if we hadn’t been interrupted, though, I’m not sure how far I would have gotten. He doesn’t trust anyone.”
“Sounds familiar.”
I bit my lip. “I think I could trust him, though.”
Brae paused mid-lick and eyed me. “Enough to tell him how we ended up here?”
“Maybe.” I rubbed my knee. “Not the details I’m bound to keep secret, of course, but the story in general terms, and the identity of the Erotovo who might be hunting for me. I know to you it probably seems like a bad idea, but I really do feel like Mikas is trustworthy. He’s already been keeping some of my secrets without me knowing.”
“You have good instincts, for a human.” He licked his bellyfor a bit, then added, “I feel the same about him, for what it’s worth. I didn’t say so because I wanted you to come to your own conclusions. I haven’t spent as much time around him as you have, obviously, but he seems honorable.”
Honorablewas high praise coming from Brae.
