“Stah-bee,” I repeat. The title she gave me.
Heat floods her cheeks. It is fascinating. The dark skin over her cheekbones warms even though she has no glow. She looks down at her hands, fidgeting with a scale on her tunic.
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “That’s… that’s what I call you. In my head. And out loud sometimes.”
She looks up again, and this time her eyes hold something I have never seen in them before. Something soft. Something that makes every instinct in me go even more alert.
“It was the knife.” The words spill out fast in a long, rushing stream of Een-gleesh. “Your, uh, what is that Drakavian word again? Your vral? You were always sitting in that dark corner, staring at me with those red eyes, sharpening that terrifying blade. Scritch, scritch, scritch. Just sharpening it forhours. I honestly thought you were planning to peel me like a fruit. I thought you were a monster.”
I tilt my head, trying to catch the meanings in the flood of sound. I catch vral. I catch ai-ees. I catch mohn-ster—and thatis a word Jus-teen was forced to teach us after we heard it many times.
It is not a good word.
It means Mih-kay-lah is afraid of me. That she thinks I am something that should be feared.
The thought stings, and I shrink back a little.
But then she lets out a long breath, and her shoulders drop.
“But you aren’t,” she says, voice softer now. “A monster wouldn’t have caught me. A monster wouldn’t have turned himself into a shield against the rock. I… I guess I judged you too fast.”
She offers me a small, crooked flash of her teeth, and I blink a few times, unsure what this all means.
“You’re actually… gentle. For a giant, terrifying alien.”
I do not understand all her words, but I know the tone of her voice. It is soft. And for the first time since she woke, she does not look ready to flee.
My chest expands. The ache in my groin fades, replaced by a different kind of heat. One that sits in my dra-kir and makes me feel ten feet tall.
“Stah-bee,” I say, tapping my chest. I search for the word I used earlier. The important one. “Safe.”
Her flash of teeth widens, just a fraction. “Yeah. You kept me safe.”
“Good Stah-bee,” I state firmly.
She laughs then. It is a rusty, surprised sound that bounces off the cave walls. “Sure. Let’s go with that. Good Stabby.”
Silence settles again. But Xiraxis does not stop for us. The water is still bad. The others are still waiting. And we need to move. The rock above us is holding, but it has already shown it can lie.
“Move…soon,” I force my throat to form the Drakavian. “Stone…still angry.”
Her lips twitch. “Yeah,” she says, glancing toward the open drop and very deliberately not looking down.
I watch her for a moment.
Her woven strands are messy with stone dust. There is a smudge high on her cheekbone.
And yet, my breath stalls in my chest.
I have looked at the other human females. Jah-kee, Jus-teen, the loud one called Eh-ree-kah. They are soft. They are… acceptable. But looking at them is like looking at stone. They are just there.
Mih-kay-lah is the only thing on Xiraxis that is in focus. She is rare. She is vital. She is the most beautiful thing to ever walk the dust.
“Mih-kay-lah.” Her name rumbles through my throat, and when she looks at me, I forget what I even intended to say. “You…me.” I tap my chest. “Teeem.”
Her lips twitch again. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Team.”
I want more than that little syllable. I want to mark this plainly, in both our languages.
