The desire to keep her is strong… stronger than the desire to protect her from this life we lead and this outpost that was never made to be a home.
Arc isn’t ready for Shock or I to touch her. He doesn’t have to say it for Shock to know too.
Casting a sidelong glance at me, Arc grits his teeth and moves to the side.
“I don’t know why,” he says, answering a question I hadn’t intended to ask.
“You don’t have to.”
“Do you?” Arc asks and for once…
“No. I can guess, but I don’tknow.”
He doesn’t like that answer, but his attention turns back to Chrys almost immediately. He smooths a piece of hair away from her face, the diagnostic lights glinting off the hoop in the center of her lower lip. Two others on either side of it… Snake bites, they call them on Earth.
She is soft… but Arc can be softer when he wants to.
I’ve never met another man so large and yet so gentle. He cradles her head like an infant as he lifts her from the diagnostic table. “I don’t want her to wake up in this horror show, especially if something happens and one of us can’t be there.”
He means, if we have to head out into the snow to deal with one of the cavrinskh… a monster that would have killed her in an instant if it had found her before Arc.
She was lucky.
I can’t help but wonder if we were luckier.
“We’ve already set up one of the rooms.”
Arc’s brows twist and I know he heard the truth in Shock’s thoughts.
We got his room ready for Chrys while he was out doing laps of the caldera.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Shock says.
Because all three of us know that Arc wouldn’t have accepted anything else.
“There’s a mountain of blankets, the fire is going in there, and I put a makeshift curtain over the door. It should be warm enough in there for her already.”
Arc doesn’t look convinced. He looks at me. “What temperature should it be in there?”
“To be comfortable forher? Somewhere around seventy degrees.”
Shock holds up his hands. “I promise it’s nearly there. Her body heat and the blankets will do the rest of the job.”
I nod, because he’s right.
“Okay.” Arc carries her back through the house, and Shock and I fix the blankets, helping him tuck her in, but as soon as I’m not needed anymore, I take a step back.
I lean against the wall, watching the two of them negotiate over what will keep her warm but not too warm, and whether or not anything will pinch in this position.
When he’s satisfied, Arc stands back, looking down at her and concern flashes in his eyes.
“You can sleep with me tonight,” I tell him before he can panic.
For the first time in years, he isn’t going to spend the night patrolling the caldera.
She’ll keep him here instead of letting him run away from whatever it is that has made him avoid us even more these last few months.
We stand around her in silence for a moment, and I’m glad that she isn’t going to wake up for a while yet. I can’t imagine what she would think if she opened her eyes to see us watching her sleep.
