She’d smiled without realizing it, it seemed, because a moment later, her demeanor changed again. He heard her breath hitch and her gaze darted. Her smile dropped and Cruxan’s stomach dropped with it.
Not ready for her to lapse back into silence—he didn’t know if he could stand another stretch of it, not when she’d willingly walked beside him, not when she’d smiled at him—he hurriedly asked, “How are you finding Luxiria during your time here?”
“This is the most I’ve seen of your planet,” she admitted.
Cruxan looked around thepillervaforest, observing how melancholy and quiet it was. “There are more beautiful places than this.”
“I like the view from the city,” she commented. “It’s hot there, but where I’m from, it can get hot too. I don’t mind it so much. I like the sun. And there aretwohere.”
“You only have one sun?” he asked, frowning.
“Shocking, I know,” she said lightly.
During the cold season, one of the suns rose faster than the other. It was the only time of the rotation where one sun was absent, but they were bitterly cold spans and not relished by many Luxirians, Cruxan included.
“The Golden City,” Cruxan started, “is beautiful in its own right. But compared to the regions of coastline nearLopixa, to the mountain ranges of theOtylia, to the lush forests nearKroratax, I find the Golden City isolating, though it has the largest concentration of Luxirians on the planet’s surface.”
“It’s isolating? Being surrounded by that many people?” she asked, quirking a brow. Cruxan was relieved to see that she wasn’t as guarded as she’d been before. “You strike me as the type that likes to be around people, so what you’re saying is surprising.”
“Are you trying to read me, female?” he asked, his tone gentle.
“It’s just a guess,” she said quickly. “I mean, I don’t know you. Maybe you like to be alone for all I know.”
Cruxan didn’t know what to make of that, but he found himself asking, “And you? Do you like to be alone?”
Her gaze was startled when she looked at him. She bit her lip before admitting quietly, “No. I don’t.”
Her words unleashed something him. His protective instinct. His need to comfort her. Whatever it was…it made determination course through his body.
“Were you alone?” he asked next, his voice dropping low. “On your home planet?”
“No,” she said. But then a moment later, she said, “Yes. I mean, I had my sister, but she’s married and she works a lot. I had a couple friends I saw on a somewhat regular basis, but…I guess I was alone most of the time. I stayed in at night. I like drawing. It tends to be a solitary activity, I guess. And—sorry, I don’t know why I’m blurting this all out right now. To you.”
She seemed embarrassed by what she revealed. Though she kept her eyes straight forward, he saw her eyes peek over at him.
“You make many apologies, female,” he told her, “for things that do not require one.” She blinked. “Now tell me, what is it that you draw? Schematics?”
He was eager to learn as much about her as possible. Any scrap, he would gladly take and store away for another time.
“No. Like…art. Landscapes and people.”
“Art,” he repeated. Something wiggled loose in his mind and he murmured, “Ah, you are a creator.”
That granted him a small smile and he felt that smile deep in his chest.
Yet, she waved away his word and said, “I just draw. Things I’ve seen or want to see. I…draw these characters sometimes. Krane and Jron. I want to write and illustrate a series of children’s books with them one day. I was going to school, studying that…illustration, I mean.”
Frustration at his language implant, at not knowing what these things were—things that were obviously important to his female—ate at him.
“You will have to explain these things to me,” he told her, a little sheepish over his lack of knowledge of her culture and society. “I do not know what—” He spied something in the distance, something that shouldn’t be there and something that was missing. “Vrax!”
“What?” she asked, her voice climbing higher in her startled alarm.
Jaxor’an—that scheming bastard—had stolen Cruxan’s hovercraft and left his steaming pile of uselessjunkin its wake.
Vrax!
Chapter Ten
