Page 24 of Stealing Mercury
Mercury nodded as he reached through the bars and held out a hand, palm up. She flicked a cautious glance at Lo as she stepped forward. Everything inside him settled when her warm palm pressed into his. “You’re hurt.”
She pulled her hand back and pressed her fingers to her temple. They came away wet with crimson, but she shrugged it off. “I’m fine, but those idiots have wrought havoc on theDove.” She rubbed her fingers along her dark brown trousers, smearing away the blood as if she could hide it from him. “It’ll be okay. I just had to make some adjustments to the plan.”
“Plan?” He resisted the urge, the need, to touch her again, but he could feel it building in him like a thirst gone too long unquenched.
“We were supposed to rendezvous with a ship eight days ago. They were going to help you guys get away from Roma. But things have gone straight to hell and—” She was talking fast and her eyes were everywhere but on him.
“Sam.” Her name came out more bark than he intended, so he said it again softer. “Sam.”
She frowned and he wanted to smooth away the lines that appeared on her forehead. He reached out and touched the side of her face. Her wince threw fuel onto the embers of his anger and he couldn’t hold back his snarl. She flinched and he grabbed her wrist before she could move away. “Never. Be. Afraid. Of me.”
She frowned. “Maybe if you didn’t growl like that—”
“It’s part of me,” he ground out. “Deal with it.” The words felt right when he said them, but grim pessimism rushed in to wash the feeling away and he wondered if shecoulddeal with it—with him—an unnatural creature with the instincts of a beast.
Her arched brows shot up over wide eyes.
He pulled her closer and pressed his face against the bars. He drew in a deep breath, letting her fill his lungs. She didn’t scent of the whip-master. That cooled his rage enough to relax his hold and allow her to put a few inches between them.
“Speak slowly.” He nodded encouragement. “You made a plan?”
She started to shake her head, but the movement was aborted, pain etched into her features. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t my plan. I was hired to get you to the rendezvous and look the other way when they freed you. Sorry I couldn’t tell you before. They told me not to.”
Mercury heard Lo and Carn shift in their cages. “Who would—”
“It doesn’t matter now. They aren’t here and we’re going to have to improvise a plan B.”
“Another plan?”
Her small teeth bit into her plump bottom lip. “Yes, and actually it’s probably more of a plan C now.”
He waited for her to continue, his joy that she would try to help them escape overshadowed by the dread of what cost she might pay.
“The rendezvous ship might still come,” she said. “But they’re over a week late. I’m taking that as a bad sign. TheDoveis badly damaged, so we’re not going far. If we wait here, the help that comes might not be on our side, but I managed to put us in orbit around a small undeveloped world.”
“Plan C.”
“Right.” A quick grin flashed across her face like the flicker of a glowbug, there, then gone. Its loss left his world darker, bereft after that tiny moment of light. “The ship is a mess and I think I can make Drake and Resler believe we’re losing the environmental controls. I’ll convince them to use the emergency escape-pod to go to the surface until help can arrive.” She pointed to a hatch at the back of the hold. “There’s another emergency drop-pod back there. It’s meant for freight, but I think you can survive getting to the surface that way.”
He nodded, shocked at the boldness of her plan.
“I need to ask you a question.” She held his gaze, but her lips trembled and her jaw was tight. “Drake and Resler. I know you hate them. When you get out of these cages?”
She let the question hang between them, but he saw in her eyes that she knew what his answer would be. Cold washed across him as he realized how she might view the violence, the brutality, that had made him. He was a product of the arena. “I don’t know much of your world, but my world offers only two choices. Kill or be killed.”
She closed her eyes, shutting him out, and took a deep breath in through her narrow nose and out across soft, full lips. Her lashes fluttered, then she was staring him down again. “They forced you to kill, but it doesn’t have to be all you are. It isn’t all you are.” She reached a hand tentatively through the bars and he turned his face into her touch.
Even as he reveled in the gentle warmth of her fingers, he worried she’d only done it to test him. To assure herself he wouldn’t bite her hand off. That, given the chance, he wouldn’t kill them all.
“I’ve done what was necessary to survive and keep my brothers alive.”
She pulled her hand back and a tiny hint of her smile returned. “Are you going to tell me to deal with that, too?”
His fists tightened around the bars of his cage. “I’dneverhurt you.”
“If you could be free?” She motioned toward Lo’s cage with a quick tilt of her chin. “If you could all be free.”
“We all wish for another life, but we cannot change what we are.”
