Page 70 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“Fine,” he echoes, and for a heartbeat we are just two people in a courtyard too full of witnesses, making fun of the fact that it took us this long to speak.
The officiant clears his throat, a dry twig snapping. “By the power vested?—”
“No,” Mama says pleasantly, almost conversational. “Not today.”
“Wedding’s off,” Daddy announces, like a judge and a beloved idiot. “Someone get the band to play something happy before my wife starts tearing down arches with her bare hands.”
“Play ‘Run,’” CynJyn calls to the orchestra, and the concertmaster, God bless him, nods like he’s been waiting all his life to take an unsanctioned request.
Kaspian steps up beside his mother, offers her his arm. She refuses it with the disdain of a queen and then takes it because the body likes kindness even when the brain is stubborn. He leans in, says something low; her mouth tightens; her shoulders loosen by a centimeter. He turns back and tips his head to me, to Rayek, to the day. It’s not forgiveness, not exactly. It’s permission to go live.
Sneed exhales, a sound only people who love him hear. He taps his slate. “We will need to make three calls and one apology,” he says to the air. “Possibly four apologies.” He glances at me, then at Rayek, and adds, in a voice that could almost be called fond, “And one or two thank-yous.”
The orchestra finds a key that sounds like sunlight. People stand awkwardly and then start moving in the way humans always do after a miracle: picking up chairs, hugging the wrong people, pretending they knew it would end like this. Elise bursts into tears of relief and adopts a hydrangea as an emotional support plant. Someone uncorks a bottle too early and sprays a dignitary by accident; the dignitary laughs and the sound breaks the last of the tension like a wave hitting rock and turning into lace.
I hand the bouquet to a little girl in the third row, the one with the coils and the too-stiff dress. “For you,” I say. “It weighs less with smaller hands.”
She takes it like I’ve made her a knight. “You look like a hero,” she whispers.
“So do you,” I whisper back.
Rayek and I stand for another second in the center of everything, letting the new world settle. He leans just closeenough that the air between us remembers the shape of yes. “We should—” he starts.
“I know,” I say.
“Not disappear,” he says.
“Not yet,” I agree.
“Together,” he adds, and I nod, because if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that together is the only way I want to learn anything else.
The minister, forgotten, closes his book and decides to become a person again. Kaspian’s mother whispers “impurity” a final time and realizes it sounds silly in the face of an orchestra playing joy. Daddy claps a hand on Sneed’s shoulder and says something that makes the seneschal roll his eyes so delicately I almost miss it. Mama walks toward me like a woman heading for her favorite fight.
The wedding is over.
CHAPTER 16
RAYEK
We leave before the music remembers which key joy chose.
CynJyn is already on her feet when the first chair scrapes. She claps twice, looks at the orchestra like she owns sound, and hollers, “Play something with teeth!” The brasses laugh; the strings oblige; people turn toward the unexpected song. Sneed is a shadow with extremely good manners to my right; he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t look at Star. He looks at a point in space four inches to the left of both of us and says, very pleasantly, “South colonnade. Now.” His hand doesn’t move, but the crowd shifts as if a current changed direction. Star tips her chin once; I fall into her wake.
We thread the aisle while the world tries to decide how to metabolize an honest sentence. The jasmine is loud; the marble is cool; the heat off Star’s arm reaches me through silk like a vow. We pass the Feldspar matriarch mid-gasp, a journalist recalibrating her headline, two child cousins wide-eyed with the look of witnesses who’ll dine off this for years. Kaspian’s mouth tilts—relief with humor’s shadow. CynJyn flashes a slashed-V grin and bumps her shoulder into mine as we pass like a benediction delivered by a brawler. “Go,” she breathes.“I’ll juggle the nobles.” Sneed has already drifted toward the minister, a man about to shepherd a ceremony into becoming a statement of accounts. The chess tree throws its dapple across the far stones and for half a heartbeat I imagine it bowing.
The south colonnade is shade and stone and citrus. A side door gives to a service corridor that smells like linen, lemon oil, and a century of secrets. We move with purpose; the gown learns how to run without tripping; my cloak remembers being useful. Star’s fingers catch mine for three steps before she releases; the brief pressure brands more thoroughly than any blade.
“North bay,” she says, breath even, voice low and bright. “My shuttle’s fueled.”
“Cameras,” I warn.
“Blinking,” she says. “Sneed’s gift. He’s a tyrant with a terrible heart.”
We push through the last door and heat greets us like a dog that recognizes our stride. The private pad glints. A pair of guards look everywhere but at us with the concentration of men doing the most helpful thing they can. The shuttle’s skin shines, ridiculous and fast, the way a good lie shines; the ramp kisses the stone as we approach, and the cabin exhales recycled air and promise. Star palms the hatch, and we are in.
The bay falls away. The harness bites my shoulder and promises to be kind later. Star’s hands find the controls the way a mouth finds a word it never forgot; the engines spool from quiet purr to hungry hum; CynJyn’s laughter Dopplers through the comm from some other recklessness; Sneed’s voice does not appear—his best blessing. We lift. The estate contracts into geometry and rumor; the river becomes a ribbon; Akura’s coast unrolls like a map drawn by anyone but a cartographer. The atmosphere bows to physics and we ride it up until blue thins to black and the black remembers how to glitter.
We don’t talk at first. The kind of silence that used to be punishment is, for a streak of minutes, the only prayer I know. The planet’s faint rings lift like a pale halo above us; the light here is clean, a surgeon’s light, without dust or doubt. My skin stops remembering the weight of a hundred eyes. I feel too big for my bones and exactly right for the seat that knows my name. It lands on me that there are no titles in this cabin because we didn’t pack any.
