Page 43 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“Hold her,” he tells CynJyn.
“I’m flirting with gravity and she likes me better than you,” CynJyn says through her teeth.
“Flirt faster,” I breathe.
“Working on it.”
The Bloodseeker looms in the canopy like a cathedral on its side, bone-shroud silhouette jagged against the black. Something ruptures along her flank; a gout of flame rolls like a bad thought finding words. A deeper boom follows, the sound chewing the vacuum like it refuses to die silent. The shock rolls through us as a tremor and a light, then as nothing at all.
“She’s cooked,” CynJyn whispers, awe threaded with horror. “Saints. She’s?—”
“Don’t look back,” Rayek says. “Forward.”
“I am,” I say, but I look, because I’m human, and because the view is… my stomach drops. The Bloodseeker’s hangar bay crumples, then balloons outward in a flower of fire and junk. Something large shears away, tumbling, sparking. The comm panel starts to spit a dozen voices at once and then none at all.
“Good night,” CynJyn murmurs to the wreckage, a benediction as rude as it is sincere, and then she yanks us into a burn that steals our breath and throws Akura’s stars forward like a promise.
Silence arrives in stages. First the alarms stand down to a sulk, then the hull stops complaining quite so loudly, then the air remembers it’s not supposed to taste like a nail. I realize I’m shaking only when my hands can’t find stillness on the dead console buttons. The muscles across my shoulders unclench one by one, each a separate argument. My throat tightens for no clean reason. I breathe and the breath won’t settle.
“Hey,” CynJyn says, softer than anything. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”
“I know,” I say, and my voice breaks. “I know.”
Rayek is there before the second syllable lands. He doesn’t ask permission; he doesn’t hesitate; he crosses the small space in two strides and opens his arms and I fall. The smell of him—metal, salt, heat, the ghost of machine oil—hits me like home I never confessed to. His chest is a wall I finally lean my life against. My ribs stutter, then give up all at once; a sound pulls out of me that isn’t pretty and isn’t quiet and doesn’t want to be either.
“I’ve got you,” he says, and his mouth is at my hairline and his hands are at my back and his voice is the only hushed thing in the universe. “I’m here.”
“I thought—” I try, but the sentence dissolves. “I thought?—”
“I know,” he says. He knows everything that sentence could be.
CynJyn’s hand lands gentle on my shoulder, squeezes once, and then she’s up, giving us space like a good thief. “I’ll watch the glass for a while,” she says, brushing a kiss to my cheek in passing. “Don’t go far. I need a new religion and it’s probably you two.”
“Shut up,” I say, not looking at her because if I do I’ll start laughing in the middle of crying and then I’ll explode. “Thank you.”
“Always,” she says, and slips out of the cockpit, leaving the quiet and the soft buzz of panels and the slow settling of the ship.
Rayek doesn’t let go until my breathing remembers a rhythm that doesn’t hurt. When he does, it’s only far enough to see my face, to frame it in those big, careful hands like he’s afraid the ship might steal me out from between his fingers.
“Are you hurt,” he asks, and when I nod toward the blooming bruise and the split at my lip his eyes darken enough to scare gods. “Elsewhere?”
“My pride,” I say. “My patience. My capacity to tolerate men with bone jewelry. Physically… I’ll live.”
“Yes,” he says. “You will.” It’s not a wish. It’s a fact he intends to enforce.
We move together like we’re pulled by the same tide. The ship has a very silly ceremonial sleeping cabin behind the mid-galley—white leather, polished wood, a bed that’s more show than sense. CynJyn pretends not to see us go that way. I trip once in the corridor because my legs belong to a different Star; Rayek steadies me with a hand at my hip and the heat of that touch goes through the bruise and into something that’s been punched empty for days.
Inside, the room is dim, lit only by the emergency strips and a mercy of soft nav light leaking under the door. The air smells like leather and ozone and the citrus cleaner that refuses to stop trying to make this ship a good girl. The bed looks like a dare. The door seals with a gentle hush. For the first time since the garden, we are out of sight.
“Talk to me,” he says, standing a measured arm’s length away like that discipline chain still wants him to drag it. “Tell me the truth and I will hold it.”
“I never wanted to marry Kaspian,” I say, and it comes out like confession, fast and hot. “He’s… kind. Decent. He built a tiny ocean for a tree and I still wanted it to be you. I tried to be better than that. I tried to be duty and legacy and a good daughter with good posture. I ran because I couldn’t make my mouth say goodbye to you. I ran because if I stayed, I would have turned to salt.”
He closes his eyes like that hurts in a place he doesn’t show the world. When he opens them again, the gold is steady. “I wasn’t going to stay away,” he says simply. “The request was a lie I wrote to make the house feel safe. I was already leaving. If they had not let me, I would have broken my chain and burned this ship to find you. I would have burned the galaxy.”
My laugh is wrecked. “That’s not very professional.”
“No,” he says, and his mouth folds at the edges like he’s relearning how to smile. “It isn’t.”
