Page 75 of Taken By the Alien Killer
I release a breath I didn’t realize I had turned into a permanent house guest. The room loosens its collar; the maps exhale. I meet his eye the way men do when they just traded two vows that weren’t written anywhere and are somehow the only law that matters.
“I asked for permission,” I say, because honesty is an itch you shouldn’t let go unscratched. “I didn’t ask for forgiveness.”
“You wouldn’t deserve it,” he says, no malice in it. “But if you ever do, Wynona keeps a spare for strays.” He grins, claps once like he’s just remembered a recipe, and points at the south wall. “Now give me your best guess: the winter floods. The river’s changed its mind about that third bend; the old levee looks smug. Sneed’s got a proposal, which means it makes moral sense and will bore the river to death.”
We spend ten minutes arguing with blue lines and topography, the kind of argument that makes friends of men who would otherwise circle each other like dogs who respect each other’s teeth. When we’re done, he pours a finger more whiskey into my cup and says, as if he’s ordering bread, “Go on. Find her. Don’t loiter anywhere you’d hate to be photographed.”
Which is when the door opens with a courtesy that has fingerprints on it. Sneed glides in, the smell of lemon and schedules preceding him. He glances at our cups, clocks the whiskey, files it undernormal people being useful,and addresses the room at a three-quarter angle so as not to pin anyone too hard to their own decisions.
“Baron. Commander,” he says. “I took the liberty of reorganizing the afternoon route for the restorative walk Lady Star requested. The camellias on the east promenade are in bloom. The market arcade, by happy accident, is open to the noble court for a charity hour. The balcony above the skycourt is, due to minor maintenance, briefly unavailable to journalists. It would be a pity not to use the cypress walk when the light is so flattering.”
Martin bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. “You old fox,” he says. “You drew a parade route and painted it ‘happenstance.’”
Sneed’s crest spines lift a millimeter, scandalized by the very idea that he could be cunning on purpose. “I prefercivility.The house deserves to make a statement without a speech.”
“What statement’s that?” I ask, aware that he could gut me with a word if he wanted to.
“That we have eyes,” Sneed says, very mild, “and that we use them for more than counting chairs.” He inclines his head toward the hall, as if the floor itself has agreed to shepherd us. “Shall we?”
I find Star by the east doors where the light pours in like forgiveness. She’s in walking linen and boots that were not designed by a committee who hated joy. Her hair is half-tamed, which means it intends to riot in an hour. She loops a scarf at her throat and looks at me with the kind of open that makes rooms stop pretending they have other things to do.
“Prison break?” she asks.
“Parade,” I say.
“Oh no,” she murmurs, delighted. “Sneed?”
“Civility,” he corrects from behind me, the ghost of humor suffusing the lemon air. “You may hold hands. Consider it an experiment in honesty.”
We step into afternoon. The cypress walk is a green tunnel; the trunks lift like pillars in a church I will actually attend. The camellias are obscene, full-faced, pouting in shades that would get you arrested in prudish prefectures. The market arcade beyond has been polished for nobles—stalls with artisans who pretend they aren’t terrified to be seen, cloth that glances, spice in little paper packets that send up hot perfumes you can taste in your teeth.
We don’t sneak. I offer my hand because I have rehearsed a thousand battlefield maneuvers and not once this simple one; she laces her fingers through mine like we practiced it in another life and are due our turn in this one. The sensation is ridiculous: warmth, pressure, the small movement of tendons, the exact way her smallest finger hooks when she’s pretending not to tug me closer. I have carried charges and comrades and the wounded weight of peace; this is somehow heavier and lighter in the same breath, and my center of gravity moves to live just under our knuckles.
The first whispers are sharp at the edges, because rumor likes to cut its own fruit: “There.” “Is that—” “They actually—” “No veil.” “No shame.” Then the next wave of sound comes, lower, longer, curiosity and admiration tied together with a ribbon that saysabout time.An elderly aunt type breathes “well” three ways in a row, making it mean scandal, relief, and envy at the same time. A child in a velvet jacket stares openly at my scales, then at Star’s hand in mine, then at his own bare human palm like he’s discovered biology is political.
A veteran with a pin I recognize from a campaign I’d rather forget steps one pace out of the line of onlookers the way soldiers do when they’re about to embarrass themselves by being sincere. He touches two fingers to the scar at his throat in the old salute and tips it toward me, then toward Star. I return it, not with the flashy soldier’s version but with the small one that saysI seeyou lived.He nods; his wife squeezes his arm as if he just did something both brave and adorable.
Kaspian appears with a book under his arm and a hickey he forgot to hide. He color-coordinates with his embarrassment and recovers quickly, offering Star a small bow and me something almost like a wink—too proper for that, but in the neighborhood. “Good afternoon,” he says, and when a noble three rows back draws breath to scold him for not being outraged, he adds, very politely, “isn’t it lovely when people decide to breathe where everyone can see them.”
CynJyn leans against a camellia as if she planted it herself. “Woooo,” she says, low and obscene, then stages a whisper to a cluster of scandal-moths, “and to think, they held hands without a committee.”
The Feldspar matriarch swallows a lemon whole and pretends it was soup. Sneed walks ten paces behind us, pretending to consult his slate, adjusting nothing and somehow changing the angle of every glance in our favor like a man redirecting a river with a spoon. We make the circuit. By the time we return to the east doors, the whispers have changed tense. The story isn’tWill they?anymore. It’sThey did.
Night folds into the house like clean sheets. Supper is small and loud; the kitchen refuses to let anyone’s plate go empty as if hunger is a sin we can finally afford to banish. After, I catch Star’s eye and tilt my head. She stands, not asking permission from a table that no longer expects it, and comes with me. Instead of the observatory or the cliff, I lead her to the family gardens, the one with the old fig that learned patience from wind. The gravel path gives under our boots like a quiet curse. Fireflies decide to be helpful. The air tastes like cut grass and the sugar of late blossoms that should have been done and refused.
“Why here?” she asks, voice lowered because the night told us a secret and asked us to try not to shout it.
“Because rooms with glass make us loud,” I say. “And I need the dark to teach me how to be quiet in a way that matters.”
She stops under the fig. Her hair rides her shoulder like a red flag that refuses diplomacy. “You’re worrying me,” she says, smiling like she has never enjoyed being worried more.
I drop to both knees. Vakutan-style is not graceful to human eyes; it is complete. I set my hand over my heart not because a ritual told me to but because the muscle under my palm has a name I’m finally allowed to say without consequences. The gravel presses indents into my skin through my trousers; the scent of earth comes up and reminds me I am not stone.
Her breath catches, not the fragile kind, the sort that anticipates flight. “Rayek,” she whispers, which is both a question and an answer.
“I didn’t bring gold,” I say, and the sentence is truer than any vow a minister could trick out with ancestors. “I brought what we killed to get here and what this world gave you for being stubborn.” I open my palm.
On my hand lies a band I made ugly on purpose. Shattered Reaper blade fragments hammered into honesty, edges tamed but scars left as scripture; a single Akuran moonstone set off-center so it catches light like a secret shared and never written down. The metal is dark, pitted, strong the way useful things are strong. It looks like something a man would carry into a fight and a woman would wear into a storm and both would claim afterward as proof that some beautiful things don’t need polishing to matter.
