“No, no,” Esti said. “No apology necessary.”
“What just happened?” Cora asked me quietly.
I pressed my lips to her forehead. “I’ll tell you later. Are you almost done here? I’d like to take you somewhere today.”
Her face lit up. “You don’t have to work?”
“I do not.”
Cora clapped her hands excitedly. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Her bottom lip rolled into a pout, and I leaned in to grab it between my teeth. When I let her go, I hovered my lips next to her ear and whispered, “When you sulk, it makes me want to spank your bratty ass.”
She sucked in a little breath and her zibe nectar scent intensified. “We can go now. Qhev is in good hands with Esti.”
Ditching Zoddie and Xokat for the day, I took Cora to the market first. I bought fresh zibe and some spices, and several lengths of pink sellah silk that Cora liked. Then we took the cruiser out to my private lagoon. Cora sat in my lap again as we flew, and I showed her some of the controls, teaching her the first steps of operating the cruiser. She was an eager student. If anyone was distracted, it was me.
She gasped, leaning forward to peer out at the pink sand bordering the lagoon as I landed in the shallow water.
“It’s so pretty here! I heard some of the beaches were pink, but this is… it’s…so pretty.”
“It’s ours,” I said, kissing the side of her head. “Before you arrived, I kept the cruiser here most nights.”
“How did you get back to the house?” she asked. “It’s a long way to walk.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “It was just me. I have everything I need on the cruiser. I rarely spent more than a few nights at a time at the house.”
Cora blinked. “That explains it then.”
“Explains what?”
She twisted to look back at me. “When you called me, you were always in the cruiser. When you showed me the house, I wondered why I’d never seen it before. Butthisis your house, isn’t it?”
“It was, I guess.”
“You miss it.” Her head tilted to the side, concern filling her winged eyes.
“I want to be where you are,” I said.
Standing, Cora sighed. “Okay, but I could be here?” She gestured at the stairs leading down into the cruiser. “I know there’s only one bedroom here, but I thought were were past that whole separate bed thing.”
“We are. But?—”
“But nothing,husband,” she said. “I want to be whereyouare. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you aren’t busy today. The market was great. But I’d like to see you moreevery day. What am I going to do after Qhev’s Eissoi tour is over? I’m gonna be so bored, Yiri. You said you’d teach me to fly this thing. I want to do that. You take the cruiser everywhere, right? You zip off in it every morning. If I were in bed down there, I’d be zipping along with you. We could have lunch together. I could maybe see you before you come crawling home in the middle of the night covered in blood.”
“Aneah—”
Not entertaining my interruption, she fisted her hands on her hips. “I could patch you up!” she said. “I could zap you with your little laser thing and kiss all your bumps and scrapes better. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Yes,Aneah.That would be nice.”
“Okay then.” She blew out a breath, frowning down the steps. “But we’re going to have to get rid of that awful couch. I hate it.”
I gave a single nod. “It will be gone by tomorrow. Yours should be here this week anyway.”
Her face lit up. “Really?”
