Page 81 of Fighting Gravity
“Are you the oldest?”
“No. Kaar is the oldest.”
“But he’s not urok?”
“He is not urok because he did not win the title.” He slid his hand across his forearm and over the underside of his bracer, unsheathing what looked like ivory carved into a blade with a bone handle. The very dagger I stabbed him with. It seemed old-fashioned and primitive. Nothing like the other weapons I’d seen him and his crew use. “There was a competition to decide the strongest candidate to claim a ship like the Argos. Three of my siblings competed. Kaar yielded. Veron was injured and surrendered.”
“And the third?”
“Dead,” he said, sliding the dagger back into his bracer. “The winner receives a Sylvar as a symbol of his position. They’re old only those worthy have them.”
“So that thing is just a badge?”
“It’s more than that. It’s made from the bones of a long-extinct creature from our home planet.” He paused for a beat. “Syferion." The name made me blink with surprise, but I wasn’t allowed time to ponder it before he continued. “Harder than stone. More resilient than metal. Engraved with a dead language used by our ancestors. It’s our history carved into a weapon.”
I had never been much of a history buff, but I had to admit that the way Rhone talked about the Sylvar was beautiful. Perhaps because I had never owned anything so meaningful. No heirlooms. No antiques.
“The only things like that on Earth are in museums,” I said. “Behind glass so people can’t touch them.”
“There are very few things like this remaining in our society. When the valerians took Syferion, much of our history was lost. Perhaps your relics are better behind glass.”
For another prolonged moment, we stared at each other and I couldn’t help feeling like we were approaching a dangerous understanding.
It made him seem less like an enemy and more like… I didn’t even know.
I felt the door to my heart click like someone had picked the lock and I really didn’t want it to be Rhone. Hell, I’d made a substantial effort to make sure no one could open that door and now a big green alien was tiptoeing toward the threshold. And he didn’t even know it.
“Your cheeks are turning pink,” he said, catching me off guard.
I turned my attention to the stars and took a deep breath, trying to will the color out of my face.
“It happens,” I brushed it off.
“When your blood is rushing?”
“Huh?”
“Your pulse has picked up, too.” I glared at him to see a cocky grin forming on his mouth. “Do you want to fuck?”
“Wow,” I narrowed my eyes. “And here you were getting so close to being different from all the other guys in my life.”
“Oh, I am different.”
“Not as much as you think.” I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms defiantly. “You’re all simple and you’re only capable of thinking with your dicks. You see me as a warm body and that’s that. Fucking typical.”
Rhone’s eyes captured mine, fastened to me like I was a pile of treasure.
“You are those things. Unfortunately, I’ve gone and complicated the situation.”
“Yeah? How’d you do that?”
He paused, his gaze reaching deep inside me and setting fire to my pulse.
“Despite my best efforts, I see much more than a warm body,” he said softly. “I see much more than an irritating human with soft skin and brittle bones. I see—”
Rhone’s wrist com beeped, drawing his attention. I felt tortured by the way his eyes left mine and he lifted his wrist toward his mouth.
You see what? Tell me, dammit.
