“We should make use of what’s left of the daylight.”
She sighs but doesn’t argue as she stands. “We’re going up?”
I point across the steep incline to a crack. Just above that is a tree. “If there is a tree, there is water.”
“Fuck.”
“That is not going to help us.” Though I would not refuse either. She is not Honey, so there will be no bonding. We aren’t mates. Though I want her to choose me to warm her bed. I never thought I’d have the chance to be with a woman. I know it will be different from the hands and mouth of another warrior. Orik and Vari take things further, using oil to slick their way into each other’s bodies.
Her lips twitch. “No. Probably not, but if I’m going to die out here, I will not do it in misery.”
The whisperer in my ear is much better with shorter sentences. “What does that mean?”
She tears her gaze away. “That you’ve been nicer to me than any of the men I’ve slept with.”
“You are a woman. Without you, there is no tribe.”
She snorts. “And don’t I know it.” The spikiness is back, but it’s not directed at me. She stares across the shadow darkened grassland in the direction where I think the colony is. “They can all go and fuck themselves. Fuck the colony. Every last leader and the people on Earth who made the rules. And my mother for selling my life before I was even born.”
I put my arm around her. She is tense and rigid and filled with anger.
“It will burn you up. I’ve seen other banished fueled by rage. It kills. You need to let it go.”
“Shut the fuck up.” But she turns to me and rests her cheek on my bare chest. “Everything kills here. I miss my ship.”
“Same.” I rest my chin on her head. “Mine is wood. What is yours?”
“Metal, like your sword.” Her body softens.
I try to picture a ship sailing through the stars, blown by a wind we can’t feel on the ground. Are there monsters in the sky the way there are sea monsters?
“I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to have three children for the colony. Even this job was assigned to me based on my grades at school. I want to choose my fate.”
“Sometimes we can’t. We have to accept where we are and make the best of it.”
“We’re stuck on a ledge, in the middle of nowhere, with no water. There is nothing to make the best of.”
“There is a lot that is bad, but I like the way you are in my arms.”
She grunts and I half expect her to fight her way free. She doesn’t move. There is a lot that is good about having someone to hold when things are bleak. The stars know I have spent more than a few nights in the arms of one of my brothers, even without the pleasure of sex.
“And if you do not want to return to the colony, we can make a plan to return to my ship.” I held my breath as I wait for her response.
“You don’t hate me for dragging you all the way out here to figure that out?”
“No…every one of us banished has done something similar. Not all of us survive it.”
“Could you be a bit more positive?” Her breath is warm on my skin and my nipple hardens.
“You want me to lie?”
Her shoulders drop. “No.” She draws back and stares up at me. “If we reach that fucking tree and there is something to drink—”
“We can fuck?” I’m joking. Mostly.
From the look in her eyes, she’s not. “Yes. Unless you don’t want to, given that I’m not Honey.”
“I don’t mind that you aren’t Honey, if you don’t mind that I’m not human.” We will never be mates, but then I was never destined to have one, anyway.
