“You have terrible timing,” Baralt said when he answered. “Izzie has just handed me a list of things I am forbidden to say at the resort inspection. It is a long list.”
“A ship put down here in the last two or three days,” he said. “Sounds like some kind of private vessel. It carried at least one human captive. She escaped. We have her.”
The humor left Baralt’s voice at once. “Alive?”
“Barely. She’s half-frozen, but she’ll live.” He glanced towards the cave, hearing the murmur of soft voices within. “I need to know whose ship it was and where it went.”
“I’ll call you back.” Baralt ended the call, already giving orders. He remained outside the healer’s cave, listening to the soft within and the wind moaning outside the caves. When Baralt called back, his voice had gone flat and cold. “There are a couple of possibilities but I think we’ve identified the most likely one. Private registry, put down at the northern end of the field, filed a stop for provisioning, and departed nineteen hours ago. That’s the good news.”
“And the bad?”
“The bad is that the registry is false. The identification the ship filed traces to a scrapped freighter that was broken down forparts eleven years ago in an entirely different system. Whoever these people are, they built themselves a clean-looking skin and wore it through my port, and I let them, because it looked clean.” Something crashed to the ground on Baralt’s end. “They’re gone, Njkall. Nineteen hours ahead, into open space, under a name that never existed. I can put out a flag on the profile, and I’ll let the Imperial Fleet know. But I’ll be honest with you—I don’t expect to find them. Unless they’re extraordinarily stupid, they’ll already have switched identities.”
He stared at the stone walls around him. This was the cost of the doors they’d opened. Legitimate traffic, and beneath it, slipping through in the same current, the carrion. A universe that took what it wanted and left the bones behind. That could take a female from her home, use her as though she was an object, then discard her and leave someone else to piece back together what remained.
“Flag it,” he said. “Talk to whoever will listen. And let’s look at increasing our security checks. If they came once because it looked easy, others will come.”
“Already done.” A pause. “Njkall. This female. Where is she now?”
“With Polly.”
The silence on the line said everything Baralt was too diplomatic to say aloud.
“I know,” he said, before his friend could. “I know exactly what it is.”
He put the communicator away. Inside the healer’s cave, the voices had gone quiet, and after a moment Polly came to join him, her small face pale and set.
“Cera is tending to her injuries. Her feet are pretty bad.” Her chin came up. He knew that particular angle of her chin. It meant she had already decided something, and was daring the world to argue. “She’s going to stay here with us.”
“Polly.”
“She stays.”
He looked down at her, then gently tucked a strand of hair back from her cheek.
“Little one,” he said. “I want you to hear me. Not because I’m telling you no. Because I love you too much to lie to you.” He watched the wordloveland in her eyes, watched her breath catch, and set it aside for later, because now was not the time. “This female carries what you carry. You know this. When you sit with her, when she tells you the things she’ll tell you, they will not stay in her mouth. They’ll get into you. They’ll get into your nights, and you’ve fought so hard for them. I’ve held you through enough of them to know what this could cost you.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t look away. A year ago she could not have held his gaze through a hard truth. Now she did.
“I know what it’ll cost me,” she said. “I’ve thought about it. I thought about it the whole walk out there.” Her voice shook and steadied. “When Cera came to me, I almost said no. Ialwayssay no. It’s the easiest word I own.” She swallowed. “But she needs someone who understands, and that’s me. So I have to. Don’t you see? I have to.”
He had spent his whole life learning patience. He had learned it hunting in the frozen wastes, and in the long council sessions of his clan, and across a year of nights spent lying still while abroken human female learned that a monster could be safe. He had believed patience was always the answer.
But now, looking down at the small, brave, unyielding female in front of him, he felt a rush of pride so intense it was nearly painful. His mate was so much stronger than she knew. He carefully put his arms around her, and she leaned into him as she always did.
“All right,” he said, the words rough in his throat. “She stays. You sit with her. You help her.” He stroked her back gently. “But listen to the rest, and give me this in return. You can stop. Any hour, any day, if it takes too much from you, you can stop, and Cera or Yasmin or I will carry it from there. You don’t have to save her alone, and you don’t have to save her at the cost of yourself. Promise me that, little one.”
She looked up at him for a long moment. Then she nodded.
“I promise,” she whispered. “I can stop whenever I want.”
“Whenever you want,” he agreed, and the knot in his chest loosened a little.
She came to his bed early that night. Most nights she came in the deepest part of the dark, drifting to him half-asleep as though her body found him on its own and her waking mind never had to admit it. She would curl against his side, small and warm, tuck herself under the curve of his arm, and be gone again into sleep before either of them could speak of it. And he would lie still, awake, breathing in the scent of her, letting himself have that much and nothing more.
But this time the glow crystals had barely been covered when she came to him. He knew her step in the dark the way he knew his own heartbeat, and he sat up, his eyes already adjustedto the dimness. She stopped at the entrance, and he could see her outline against the faint glow from the main cave. She had listened to his request to wear clothing, but the short thin gown drifting around her slender curves was just as enticing as her naked body. His own body immediately reacted, but he forced it under control.
“Are you awake?” she whispered.
