Our fingers touched. Both of us holding the casing. Both of us still.
Her hand was warm against mine. I could feel her pulse through her fingertips, quick and steady. I felt the slight tremor she was trying to hide, the same tremor I’d seen in the kitchen.
I didn’t take the sensor. Didn’t pull back. Just stayed there, my fingers against hers, feeling her warmth and her pulse and the way she wasn’t retreating.
One second. Two. Three.
She looked at our hands. At the place where we touched. Her lips were parted slightly. Her breath had gone shallow.
I took the sensor, let my fingers drag across hers as I pulled it away.
She exhaled. Soft. Controlled.
I buried the sensor in the soil and didn’t look at her because if I looked at her, I would stop thinking about traps and start thinking about all the other things I wanted to bury my hands in.
The comm unitchirped as I patted down the last of the soil.
I pulled it from my belt, grateful for the distraction. Checked the display. Long-range scan data from theTuretsala, automatically updating every few hours.
The numbers made my jaw tighten.
“What is it?” she asked.
“New ship. Just entered the system.” I scrolled through the data, hoping I’d read it wrong. I hadn’t. “Transport vessel. Troop carrier configuration.”
“How many?”
“Based on hull size, twenty more fighters. Maybe more.”
She went still beside me. I didn’t look at her, but I felt the change in her body. The way her breathing stopped for a moment. The way her hands went rigid on her knees.
“That’s a lot of them against not very many of us,” she said.
“And Turnip.”
“And Turnip.”
She almost smiled. I saw it from the corner of my eye, the slight curve at the edge of her mouth.
The math was terrible. We both knew it. Against two people, a creature that was vicious but not invulnerable, and a farm full of traps that only worked once.
I could contact Rylos. Update him on the situation. But the team was days away, and they wouldn’t reach us before the second assault. It wouldn’t make any difference.
“You could take theTuretsala,” I said. “Run. The ship’s fast enough to outpace anything they have. Especially if I keep them busy here.”
She turned to look at me. Really look, the way she’d looked at me that first day when I’d appeared on her doorstep with Torek’s name.
“No.”
“Anhara.”
“I said no.” She stood, brushing soil from her knees with sharp, deliberate movements. “The Regalia is here. Torek’s work is here. Everything he spent his life protecting. I’m not running.”
“It’s not running if you’re the only one who can complete the mission.”
“Then you take the ship. I’ll stay.”
I stood too. Faced her across the narrow strip of grass between us.
