I thanked him, which earned me another grunt, and I followed his directions, finally reaching the stairs and understanding his cryptic words. I did know it as soon as I saw it. The double doors were huge and imposing, with the shape of a battle axe blade embossed in the metal. I hesitated, rethinking my plan, before they slid open with a delicate hiss.
The room inside was even more intimidating. Spacious and dark, with a wide wall of glass overlooking space, the Vandar command deck was unlike anything I’d seen before. Raiders in leather kilts with straps across their bare chests stood at high consoles as computers beeped and hummed.
I had made it only a few steps inside before Raas Wrexxon himself materialized from somewhere to my left. He seemed both surprised and confused by my presence. “Are you lost?”
“I am looking for your battle chief.” I matched his tone as best I could, which was probably not very well.
He turned without a word and walked, which I took to mean I was supposed to follow. He led me to a door at the far end of the deck and stopped in front of it, giving me one last assessing look. “He’s in hisoblek.”
I swallowed as the door opened, bracing myself to see Kolt again. But it wasn’t Kolt that was the shock.
The room on the other side was unlike any I’d seen. The walls were hung with sharp-edged blades and spiky maces, leather straps and iron chains. There was even less light than there was on the bridge, although the space had a wall with a view of the stars. It was less an armory and more a shrine to violence.
And there was Kolt.
He stood with his back to me at the far wall, looking out into space. His shoulders were stiff, and his stance was wide. It hit me that he was not the same Vandar who had slept curled around me in a secret room. He was not the raider who’d touched me with exquisite tenderness.
He was a battle chief of the Vandar. He belonged here, in this room, on this ship. The kindest thing I could do was pretend he’d never been anything else.
My chest hurt, but I made myself speak before the hurt could constrict my voice. “You don’t have to worry about us.”
He turned slightly. Not all the way. I kept going because stopping felt worse.
“What happened on Kashara happened because of the situation. We were in an impossible place and under a lot of pressure, and neither of us was exactly ourselves, and that’s—that’s fine. That’s what it was. I’m not going to hold you to anything you said or did before you remembered who you were. It would be insane to do that.” I was talking too fast. I knew I was talking too fast and I couldn’t seem to stop. “And we don’t have to tell anyone. I won’t say anything. There’s noreason for anyone here to know. What happened on Kashara stays on Kashara, all of it, and you can—you don’t have to?—”
He had turned now. His face was in profile, and I saw a multitude of emotions flicker across it, but I didn’t let myself look at him long enough to read them.
“We’re good,” I lied. “I just wanted to tell you that you don’t need to worry about me. I’m good.”
Before he could speak, I pivoted on one foot and left. I didn’t look back at Kolt, I didn’t glance at Raas Wrexxon as I crossed the command deck, and I didn’t slow down as I barreled through the doors and down the stairs. The warbird swallowed me up, and I let it, turning corners without knowing where they led, stumbling aimlessly but continuing to move, which was the only thing I knew how to do when I was trying not to feel something.
Don’t, I told myself as tears stung the backs of my eyes. Not here.
The engines hummed through the soles of my boots, and I didn’t think about what I’d just done and the look on Kolt’s face before I’d run. I couldn’t.
Chapter
Fifty
Kolt
The drink we calledsorvekwas not made to be savored.
It was made to do a job. It burned going down and settled in the chest like a smoldering coal, and after two tankards, the edges of things softened enough to forget about even the worst pain. I held my third tankard, cupping it in my hands and turning it slowly.
The bar on the lower deck was not crowded at this hour. A few raiders sat in clusters at the far end, low voices and the occasional bark of laughter threading through the hum of the ship. This was what I had come for, the buzz of a place that was not my quarters or even myoblek, where the silence was torturous.
I took a long swallow ofsorvekand stared at nothing.
She had tracked me down to tell me that none of it had mattered. That was the part I kept circling back to, the part Icould not seem to get past no matter how many times I turned the conversation over in my mind.
What happened on Kashara stays on Kashara.
I set the tankard down harder than I intended.
The more rational part of me knew she was right. We had been thrown together by impossible circumstances. We had been afraid and hunted and forced into a proximity that neither of us would have chosen under ordinary conditions. What had grown between us in that hothouse of crisis was not necessarily what it would have been anywhere else. Feelings could be manufactured by extremity. Every warrior knew that. You bonded with those you fought beside.
She had simply said what I should have said first.
