You’re wrong. She signed, as her voice was stolen from her again.
“I’m not.” He scoffed at her, and Cassie found herself unsurprised that he knew how to read passeri hand signs. “What do you know about being a person? It matters little. We’ve reached your expiration.”
“Cassie!” Örim’s voice rang out through the dock house. Her stomach flipped. She was out of time. In a single motion, she lifted her stolen pulsar gun and aimed it at the Aviarist. The shot missed his head but hit him square in the shoulder. He cursed, and the distraction was enough to make him drop her hard. He pulled out his own weapon, and Cassie was certain he would not miss.
She closed her eyes. Two blasts sizzled in the air around her. Cassie’s eyes flew open on instinct. Örim was in front of her. Light fractured blue. The sound of glass shattering. Heavy footsteps. Silence. The Aviarist lay in a crumpled pile on the ground with his head blown off while S’samph loomed over him, still holding his pulsar gun. But there was something else.Something else in front of her that her brain couldn’t quite piece together.
CHAPTER 47
Cassie
Cassie screamed. No one could hear her, but she screamed all the same. Örim lay shattered around her feet in a million tiny shards. The Aviarist’s plasma blast meant for her had gone through him at high impact. She collapsed to the floor, as the pieces of him, of the person he had been, lay in fragments around her knees. It wasn’t possible. It should be her sinew and deep red blood stained on the ground of the storage barn. It should be bone dust and burning hair. Not powder blue. Not faintly shimmering aquamarine. There was nothing to hold. There was no body to clutch against her as she sobbed.
A single dense, tangible crystal pulsed with a dull hum in the center of everything. Cassie snatched it from the ground, cradling it to her chest as she wept. It was still warm. It was still him. Even if he was not. She could still feel him. The lean, solid form of his body wrapped around hers, holding her while she slept. Comforting her when the world was too much and she lacked the skill to cling to it herself. But now he was dust. And all she could feel was the crushing pressure of her spirit cracking.
A pair of heavy hands clapped around her shoulders, trying to raise her to her feet. She would not be moved. Not while the faintest ghost of him was still here. The Aviarist was dead. Rhea was dead. Örim was dead. But her heart still beat. Her heart still beat. And she wished it didn’t.
After everything, she had no idea how she would go on without him. He had promised to hold her life for her until she was ready to hold it herself. She wasn’t ready. There was nothing left to hold.
“It’s time to leave, Cassie,” someone said. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”
But she wasn’t. She would never be again. “Cassie, you can’t stay here.” Another voice. Another face her eyes were too blind to see. Eventually, someone picked her up as if she weighed no more than a pichari and threw her over their broad, scaled shoulder.
She was on a bike. She was not. She was in a room. She was not. The world was in grayscale. Every color sucked away into a swirling fog of ash.
“What’s wrong with her?” Someone asked.
“Can you take whatever she’s holding?”
Cassie screamed and clawed and kicked until they relented and let her keep the pulsating shard tucked against her chest. It wasn’t until the lights were dim and the world was still that Aglao approached Cassie’s bed. In all her grief, she’d at least puzzled out that they’d brought her back to the clinic.
“Can I see what you have there?” Aglao asked. “I promise I won’t take it. I just want to look.”
With reluctance, Cassie peeled herself away from the humming aquamarine crystal. She held it out just enough for Aglao to see, but not enough that she couldn’t snatch it back to herself at a moment’s notice.
“You have his energy core.” Aglao leaned closer, but kept true to their word and did not touch the shard. “It’s still active.” They moved back slightly, giving Cassie space as she pulled the crystal closer against herself. “I will admit, teösian biology is not my specialty. So few of them ever leave Teös.”
Cassie stared blankly at Aglao until she finally gained the will to speak.
“What can we do?”
“Let me speak to some other senior healers and see if they can give me more information.”
“Now?” Cassie asked. Aglao rippled their arms.
“I can send the inquiry now, but it might take some time to get a response. You are welcome to stay here or in the room upstairs as long as you like. I can also have someone bring you back to your home if you would rather be there.”
“I’ll wait.” Cassie pulled the thin blankets up around her neck, taking limited comfort in the continued pulsation of Örim’s energy core. Eventually, she must have fallen asleep because she woke to Aglao’s atonal humming as they moved around the clinic. Disoriented, Cassie scrabbled around for the energy core to find it had slipped off her chest and lay beneath the blankets next to her. Only once it was back in her hands could she breathe again.
Aglao must have noticed she was awake because they came over and floated beside the end of the bed. “I have heard from one of my colleagues on Ita Ita. It’s the closest IA planet to Teös. They said, unfortunately, a full attempted reseeding won’t be possible unless you have a significant piece of his original crystal composition. I asked S’samph, but there were no sufficient remaining pieces left at the dock house.” Their tone was even, but Cassie could tell they were anticipating her despair.
“I have.” Cassie said. She would not hope. Not yet. “A piece. He gave me a piece of him. I have it back at our home.” She letthe core down gently onto the cot and used her hands to show Aglao the size. “This big. Is it enough?”
“It might be.” Aglao hummed, their skin turning a shade of purple. “I’ll need to measure the electrical output from the core first to see if it can sustain a reseeding attempt.”
“Ok.” Cassie couldn’t prevent the sharp tears from springing in the corners of her eyes. She had to try. She had to apologize for running. She had to tell him that her heart was his.
CHAPTER 48
