"We should stop."
"We shouldn't."
Neither of them moved.
Tula laughed shakily. "This is insane. You know that, right? Up until a few days ago, I hated you with a passion, and I'm pregnant with another man's child."
"None of that matters."
He expected her to argue.
"So, why does this feel so right?" she whispered instead.
Esag pulled back just enough to look at her, to see the confusion and hope and fear warring in her expression.
"Because it is right," he said. "I don't know how or why or what it means for the future. But this is real."
Tula searched his face for a long moment. Then she nodded.
"Okay," she whispered.
"Okay?"
"Okay, let's see where this goes." She managed a tremulous smile. "With the full awareness that we might be heading into disaster."
"A beautiful disaster," he qualified.
They still had so much to figure out, but right now Tula was here, and she'd kissed him, and she was willing to see where this thing between them might lead.
38
NAVUH
Consciousness returned in fragments.
First, the sound. Beeping. Rhythmic and relentless, a mechanical heartbeat that wasn't his own. Or was it? Was that machine tracking his pulse, confirming he was still alive despite feeling so disconnected from his body?
Then, sensation. Or the lack of it. A peculiar numbness that extended from his extremities inward, as if his body had been wrapped in layers of cotton wool. He couldn't feel his fingers. Couldn't feel his toes. Couldn't feel anything below his neck except a distant, abstract awareness that yes, there was a body attached to his head, but it might as well have belonged to someone else.
Panic clawed at him.
Was he paralyzed?
The thought brought a surge of adrenaline that should have sent his fingers twitching, his legs convulsing, should have donesomething. But nothing happened. Or if it did, he couldn't feel it.
Navuh tried to move his right hand. Concentrated every ounce of will on making his fingers flex. Did they move? He thought maybe they had. A microscopic twitch. Or maybe he'd imagined it. Everything felt rigid, locked in place, as immobile as if he'd been encased in stone.
His throat was dry. Painfully dry. Like he'd swallowed sand and it had scoured everything raw on the way down.
Where was he?
The ceiling above him was painted some shade of white that wasn't white. Cream, maybe. The lighting was dimmed so he couldn't tell for sure. What he knew for a fact was that it wasn't any place he recognized.
A door swung open, he heard the hiss of hydraulics, the soft whoosh of air pressure equalizing, and then footsteps approached. Light footsteps. Feminine. The soft click of spiky heels on stone.
Was he in the brothel?
Why would he be there? He never availed himself of the services provided there. That was reserved for the guests of the island and the soldiers.
