Page 74 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“We’ll bring Sneed so he can lecture the wind,” I offer.
“It will repent,” he deadpans, and I snort an unladylike snort that makes the telescope wobble imperceptibly.
I don’t fall asleep so much as glide into it. I wake once to the faint sound of someone (CynJyn, surely) singing badly in acorridor and Kaspian shushing her in a tone that suggests he’s losing on purpose. I wake again because Rayek shifts and the cloak slides and cool air kisses my shoulder before his hand chases it away.
“This is right,” I say into the dark, because I can’t keep it to myself or I’ll burst.
“It is,” he answers, and the word lands heavy and holy between us, a little stone we both decide to keep in our pockets.
I sleep.
Morning finds us where night left us, which is a love letter I plan to reread for the rest of my life. The observatory is full of a soft, buttery light that coaxes color back into everything; dust motes have graduated to angels; the telescope blinks exactly like a cat that refuses to pick a side. We dress slowly, because rushing is for people on someone else’s clock. When I open the door, lemon and coffee rush the threshold like puppies; somewhere downstairs, Mama is bullying breakfast into being and Sneed is using diplomacy on an egg.
“Ready?” I ask, smoothing the seam of his sleeve because it gives my fingers something to do other than shake with happiness.
“For what,” he says, that small smile waking up again.
“For all of it,” I say. “For the kettle that lies. For the windows facing the rings. For you hating music at our housewarming because CynJyn will hire a band.”
“I will survive,” he says solemnly.
“You’ll do more than that,” I answer, and he leans his forehead to mine for a breath we didn’t have last week and now can’t stop taking.
We walk back into the house like a tide that forgot how to leave. No one stops us. No one asks for a speech. Daddy hollers that the soft-boiled eggs betrayed him; Mama tells him to hush and hands him toast. Sneed looks up from a list and does thatthing with his mouth again—the almost-smile he denies—and then sets a small, folded napkin by my elbow, as if he can’t help adding symmetry to a world that insists on being lopsided. Inside, later, I find a single jasmine petal and a scribbled notation:Windows, east-facing, approved.
I almost march back and kiss his smooth, fussy head. Almost.
For now, I sit. Rayek sits beside me, huge and ridiculous and careful pouring tea. The house holds all of us without complaint.
My heart is full enough to leak light.
And for the first time in my life, the future feels like a door I’m allowed to open with my own hand.
CHAPTER 18
RAYEK
The map room smells like paper that survived a storm and decided to be wiser for it. Vellum spreads over the long table in ripples, corners weighted with old brass compasses and a chunk of river stone somebody smuggled in from the cliff path. The tall casements are cracked to let in lemon and sea; sunlight pools on the floor like honey that forgot to be sticky. Martin Chambers—Baron, father, the laugh that rearranges the room—stands with his hands leaning on Chamberland’s coastline as if he could pull the bays closer if they misbehaved. He pours tea, not whiskey, into two cups and passes one to me as though he hasn’t just armed me with my least favorite weapon.
“Sit, son,” he says, and I obey because manners are a kind of armor.
The porcelain is thin and looks like it would scream if I held it too hard. I don’t drink. I cradle. The steam curls up with a smell that thinks it’s medicine. My cutlery scars itch like they do before a fight. I have faced down assassins in hallways that kept secrets for a living; I have slid a blade under the ribs of men who wouldn’t notice until they tried to tell a lie and found nothing to push breath over. Tea finds me unbrave.
He studies me without making me into a specimen. “I expected you’d bolt clean into the horizon,” he says, then shakes his head at himself. “No. That’s not fair. I expected you’d wait in shadows until she walked there with a match.”
“I don’t like tea,” I say, because the wrong sentence comes out first when a man’s gut is tied in knots. His laugh arrives in the room like a healthy animal.
“Then pretend it’s penance,” he says. “And quit looking like you’re about to ask for a map to my liquor cabinet.” He tips his head, the amusement easing to something that has seen me do sentinel duty in storms. “All right. Go on.”
“I’m here,” I start, then let the sentence fail and try again without the part of me that worships protocol, “to ask for permission to court your daughter properly. Not in corridors or culverts or under the eyes of duty. In daylight. At your table. With your blessing.”
He rolls that around in his mouth like a good bite of pear. “Properly,” he repeats. “Words we don’t use a lot around here unless Sneed is standing over our shoulder with a ladle.” He takes pity on my tea and replaces it with something that smells like burned sugar and heritage. “Try that instead.”
The whiskey makes my throat behave. I set the cup down with care I reserve for explosives and sleeping animals. “I will protect her,” I say, and it’s not the thing I came to say, but it’s the only hinge the rest will turn on. “With my life, with my thinking, with every plan I know how to build and every quiet act that doesn’t make a speech. I will not make her smaller to fit my fears. I will not make myself smaller to spare polite rooms. I’d die before I let her be hurt again.”
He doesn’t say anything for a beat that’s long enough for me to count the ring fractures in the glass paperweight on the shelf. Then he slaps my back with a palm the size of mercy. It’s the sort of blow that two days ago would’ve triggered a reflex I’d beapologizing for to the minister; today it just relocates a rib and makes me respect his aim.
“Then we’re good,” he says simply, soft and loud at once. “Because I don’t need poetry. I need a man whose first language is ‘keep her safe’ and whose second is ‘let her set you on fire when you need it.’ You two’ll make Sneed old before his time. I regret nothing.”
