Page 30 of Dark Space
‘Why we …’ Alcide’s cheeks flushed dark blue before he gave me a fierce scowl. ‘Dread gods take you, starling.’
‘Whydidyou stop?’ I persisted, grinning as I remembered the way their lights had intertwined, the way their heat had flared in a way that was unsurprising, unmistakeable, and unaccountably arousing. ‘I was enjoying the show. Your heat signals suggested that neither of youwantedto stop, so –’
‘Anna,’ Cal said pointedly.
‘Yes,’ the Prince said, drawing himself up. ‘We need to go.’ He turned his back on me and left, giving the motionless human one last glance along the way.
‘No, I meanAnna,’ Cal repeated, when he was sure the Prince was gone. ‘Alcide wants to be loyal. To hisclaimed.’
I stared at him. ‘She hasn’t saidyesyet.’
The Roth twisted his lips. ‘You don’t need to remind me.’
‘No. But someone should remindhimwhose arms she crawled into after your healer tore her shoulder to pieces,’ I hissed, my hands suddenly burning with fury.
‘We both know what happened, starling,’ Cal said tiredly. ‘We all know what a fucking mess I’ve made.’ He looked down at Anna, and for a moment his face was tight with longing. ‘And we know I am what you said. A selfish bastard. Because even now, no matter how much I hate myself, no matter how much guilt I feel – I don’t regret it.’
I watched as he walked away. I watched the Roth’s heat signals as they went to the orb ship’s hold, watched the Darnagh craft flare to life. I watched through the cold black of space as they flew towards the asteroid belt.
Watching them made me strangely nervous, so after they landed the ship, I turned my eyes back to Anna, instead.
Callan landed the Darnaghship on the tiny moon in silence. I wouldn’t have been able to fly it – the controls were very different to our scuttlers – but Callan navigated it with ease. I sometimes forgot what a good pilot he was; I was so used to thinking of him as myfriendthat I overlooked everything else.
I glanced across at him as he flicked buttons to power down, wondering whether he’d prefer his life without the complication ofme. Whether he’d prefer to simply be a pilot, without having to also look after a prince.
I had the uncomfortable realisation that while my life would be worse without Callan in it, his life would bebetterwithout me.
‘We need to talk about contingencies,’ he said roughly.
‘Contingencies?’
‘I am an acceptable loss, Prince. You are not. If something goes wrong, you leave me behind, do you understand?’
I swallowed. ‘No.’
‘Yes,’ he insisted. ‘I’m a military orphan, Cide. You’re the Prince of Scytha. If something goes horns-up, yourun. I’ll distract them.’
‘I’m not doing that, Cal.’
‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘One of us needs to go back for Anna.’
I stared at him, blood rushing in my ears. ‘You’re asking me to choose between you.’
His voice was flat as he pushed himself out of the pilot’s chair. ‘You’ve already done that.’
I didn’t know how to answer him, so I followed silently. We cleared the hold, arranging some crates so we’d have something to hide behind, and Callan activated the ship’s distress signal.
‘Now we wait,’ he said.
I buttoned my uniform up to my chin, then stretched my fingers, letting my body push its protective scales through my skin. I watched Callan do the same thing. The shimmering scales crept up his neck and around his face in shades of pearl white and the palest blues and purples, his opaque second eyelid shuttering, making his black eyes a filmy grey.
The Roth were almost unique amongst organic species in the universe in that we could survive in space for several hours without any technological intervention. Our scales regulated our temperature and the pressure from the vacuum, along with protecting us from radiation and space dust, and our second eyelids acted as tiny shields, saving our vision from unfiltered solar rays. We couldn’t stay in space forever, though. A special membrane would block our nostrils and throat to remind us not to breathe, but our lungs would only hold enough oxygen for acouple of hours, and after that, we’d have to replenish it or face suffocation.
We wore our scales to war, too, and essentially became almost impossible to kill. There were only a few known materials that could cut through them – Kjidja iron, Illisae crystal, Dvensk titanium – along with our scales themselves.
I took a long last breath, hoping the Tirians would take the bait quickly.
I gave Callan a sharp nod when I was ready, and he pressed a button. The hold of the small Darnagh ship opened, to make it look as if we reallyhadrun into trouble; the Darnagh couldn’t survive in space the way we could, and there was no way they’d open their hold to such a harsh atmosphere. For a moment, I battled to stay standing as the artificial gravity inside the ship flicked off.
