Page 49 of The Alien Noble's Little Human

“Really? Do they?”

“No.” Taurek laughs. “Up here, it doesn’t matter how the planet is angled. It’s always going to be cold this high up.”

“Still. And Hanai will see it one day. You can show her the place where we made sure she got well.”

Taurek’s face turns serious, and he faces toward the skyline of Cygoth with towers that form peaks and spires, mimicking the array of metals and minerals throughout the Kingdom.

“We should be leaving soon. The sun is up.” He withdraws into himself, looking at the capital and narrowing his eyes.

“About how long of a journey is it?”

“Should take about another half-day of traveling from where we are,” Rylan says, coming up behind us and sitting. “If we set out soon, we’ll get there before nightfall.”

“How are you feeling?” I ask Rylan with a tap on the shoulder. Last I saw him, he was dancing naked around a fire in the ridge, a sight I could have gone through life without seeing.

“Fantastic! I’ve been up for hours. Where do you think the food came from?” He holds up his hands, then raises his fork and points to himself.

“I didn’t know you could cook so well, Rylan.” I hold up my slab of meat on my crude fork. “You’ve been holding out on us.”

“Haven’t had much opportunity to cook a gourmet meal. Something kept me occupied.”

I look over to see what comeback Taurek has coming, but he’s so distracted he’s not even taking the bait to ridicule Rylan.

“I’ll start outfitting the chordatas,” Rylan says with a little wave, first looking at me in acknowledgment that the Prince seems to be in a mood. He saunters over to the makeshift pen he fashioned with the nomads.

With Rylan preparing our draft animals, I realize with suffocating anxiety that this might be the last chance I’ll ever have to tell Taurek what this journey has meant to me. It might be the last chance I have to speak with him at all in private.

About how much he shifted everything I thought I knew, and how differently I see everything now. He helped me conquer my deepest fears, and he helped me believe in myself.

He saved my life, several times over. I don’t even know what it is I want to tell him. I just know it feels urgent to do something before we leave this twilight space, where there is no separation between royalty and commoners, Kiphians and humans, and my body with his.

What I want to say is that I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here with him. I can’t say that, though, and I don’t even completely mean it. Hanai is relying on us, and he would be disgusted by the thought.

Taurek is still looking toward Cygoth with the sadness of someone clinging to unrealized hope.

“We’re ready, Your Highness.” Rylan has the chordatas on a lead, and he helps me up onto the saddle. “And Zaya.”

The bubble that’s been dissipating punctures with that contrast in our stations. I’m an afterthought. An accessory. An asterisk.

“Let’s go. What are we waiting for?” Taurek says, half-dazed and already on his chordata before his sentence is done.

“For you to complain about waiting,” Rylan says.

Taurek grunts without returning the banter. As much as I want to believe it’s a hangover, the source seems more internal. If it were a hangover, he’d be joking about it. But now, I feel like he might knock someone off a chordata if they said the wrong thing.

We meander through the rocky foothills in silence, each of us in our own worlds. Rylan leads the way with Taurek in front of me, and I’m homesick for my spot nestled into him on the chordata from before. Before we even knew the roxolite was there, much less found it.

The danger would feel comforting compared to this isolation.

With enough room for our mounts to stand abreast after descending a sloping hillside that obstructed the view before, we stop at the edge all at once. The gleaming palace comes into view, its metals and minerals glinting from the sharp afternoon sun.

I feel my eyes burn with tears, rolling onto my cheeks before I’m even aware that they started to form. The two Kiphians on either side of me, powerful and fearless, wear more emotion on their face than I’m used to seeing.

Taurek’s face is an inscrutable muddle, and I assume he’s thinking of Hanai and grateful to be at the journey’s end. Maybe he’s nervous about whether the cure will work. And I assume he’s always thinking of his wife, whose passing must still feel fresh to him. The loss seems so palpable in him and in Hanai.

As we travel for several more hours to finally reach the palace, I notice a larger crowd than the one that saw us off. I wonder if maybe it’s customary for that sort of welcoming after a journey. I look at Taurek’s face for clues, and he seems just as surprised. A horrible thought comes over me. What if it’s a funeral cortege because we didn’t get back in time to save Hanai?

Taurek digs his crampon talons into the ribs of the chordata, which gallops ahead of the two of us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one move so quickly.

---