Page 94 of Star Marked Warriors

The longer we spent with them, the more apparent it became that the Zathki were in dire straits. One of them was slowly retrieving the tools right next to the collapsed ship. He was risking his life for what amounted to some screwdrivers, tiptoeing over to the edge of the hole to pick them up, one at a time, slow and methodical.

Like bits of metal were worth more than a person.

The Zathki needed resources badly, and at the moment, Jax was their best shot at ever getting them.

Jax looked torn between comprehension and wanting to accuse them of plotting to blow up the ship or plant a bomb in some attempt to destroy Thorzan. Because he’d grown up at war with these people, hating them, he saw shadows everywhere. Plots and schemes and pitfalls to dealing with them.

The only shadows I saw were the ones under their eyes, their cheekbones. Maybe the Zathki were a threat, and maybe they were plotting something awful. But the Zathki were also hungry, and desperate, and they needed help. Needed us.

“Maybe just for today,” I whispered to Jax. “It’ll give nerves some time to cool, and everyone will start fresh tomorrow. Feel better then.”

Marex nodded. “I will have imaging done of the ice beneath, to ensure this will not happen again. Give me one day to attempt to make it safer.” He stepped forward and met Jax’s eye. “I promise you, warrior, for whatever it might be worth. It is not my intention to harm you or your people. We want peace. Trade. Mutual gain. We are capable of producing more of the technology we shared with Crux, and we would be happy to do so.”

Jax’s shoulders, which had climbed up around his ears during the conversation, relaxed, slumping down, and he finally nodded. “One day. And tomorrow we resume work.”

Great. That’d give me a day to demand that he tell me what the hell a mage was.

CHAPTER26

JAX

“You’re upset,” Wesley accused the moment we were alone.

Marex had arranged our return to the tunnels, and the Zathki had offered us space near the entrance, and they were so multitudinous as a people that I had little doubt this room belonged to someone else. There were... things inside. Furniture and the like. But it had been cleared, quickly, for us. Everything barren. I hoped that was for us, and not simply because the people who normally occupied this space had so little that it was always thus.

I dragged my hand across a countertop. Clean of all dust. Excellent.

“I nearly died.” It was a struggle to keep my voice measured, my fear in check. Fear could serve a warrior, motivate and keep him alive, but this was not the same.

This was a fear built around loss, around the idea that I might lose Wesley the same way my father had lost his first mate. I had nearly died, and Wesley had saved me, but who knew the resilience of human mages? He could have tried without thinking and burnt through his body before he knew better.

Humans were so slight, so small. Surely that made Wesley even more susceptible to magic than a Thorzi mage would have been.

He stared at me hard. With his glasses, now wiped clean of icy flecks, he saw right through me.

“You’re a Thorzi warrior. You risk your life regularly. For fun. You’re not upset about that.”

My lips twitched. Too perceptive, my Wesley.

“What’swrong?” he asked adamantly, stepping closer. His little hand fell to my forearm, and I drew in a sharp breath. My body tensed. It was a fight not to pull away.

Because any brush of his skin against my marks could awaken magic that was a danger to him. Perhaps it would have been better if Marex had tempted him. The Zathki had no marks to burn through a mage.

The thought alone had a growl rumbling in my chest, and Wesley’s hand flexed on my arm.

“This is happening to me,” he said, his voice hard as stone all the sudden. “I need you to open your mouth and talk, okay? I have to understand, because we’re in this together.”

I hung my head for a moment—a chance to collect my thoughts without having to meet his ardent gaze—and sighed. He was right. I had to speak, and all this time, the words remained trapped inside me.

Slipping my hand into his, I pulled him over to the low sitting platform in the middle of the Zathki’s living space.

I sat first, and when I gave him a small tug, Wesley relented. His eyes were still hard, his jaw still set, but he folded himself in my lap and wrapped an arm around the back of my neck for balance.

“I really am glad you’re okay,” he whispered after a few seconds passed, his eyes lowered to his knees. He tipped forward, and his forehead bumped gently against my cheek.

I scoffed and reached out to tilt his chin up again. “You are correct, my Wesley. I am not upset about that, though I would not have liked to die here, of all the blistering, empty places.”

Wesley smiled tentatively. “Way better to go out bloody in battle in the middle of a jungle?”

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