Once they were aboard the
Castel
, the mist disappeared, withdrawing into Romir and leaving him standing whole, once more clad only in loose pants. He brought her straight to her cabin, not releasing her until he laid her on her bunk.
Her limbs prickled, a barrage of excruciating sensation as the stunner’s effect eased, her nerves protesting the return of mobility. Gasping, she squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to hold back tears of relief. But they leaked out in spite of her.
“Asrial? What—” The dismay in Romir’s voice forced her eyes open. His hands hovered above her, hesitant and trembling. “I have no skill with healing weaves. You must tell me what is wrong.”
“I’m fine.”
“Do not say that when even a blind man can tell you are in pain.” The furrow between his slashing black brows deepened, his eyes glinting silver amid all the white.
A soft, breathless laugh escaped her at his fluster. He had suffered untold pain and loss yet worried over a minor matter like this. “This is normal.” Volsung must have blasted her more than once, but stunner hangover wouldn’t kill her—it only felt like it should.
Grimacing, Romir left her side to disappear into the bio unit. Her heart skipped a beat at his absence.
Spirit of space, keep him free.
He returned with a wet rag and used it on her face, removing any evidence of tears. The dampness was welcome, as was the cleaning. From the black muck, Volsung’s men must have stashed her some place dirty before they dumped her in that cabin.
Romir was gentle, his touch light, handling her as though she were some precious artifact he feared to scratch. He stripped her of her T-top with equal care and turned his attention to wiping her throat and shoulders.
“How’d you find me?” she finally thought to ask when he returned from rinsing out the rag yet again.
“This.” He tapped the enameled square between her breasts.
Heat rushed to her cheeks at being discovered. Hopefully he’d think she wore it as a memento of her mother. “That’s how you found me? How?”
“A weaver’s badge is wrought with the blood of the weaver. This was mine, so I can sense it.”
“You knew . . . I was wearing it?”
Romir nodded absently, intent on cleaning her. “It is good you wore it.”
He’d known all this time? He hadn’t said anything.
She stared at his impassive face, searching for a clue to interpret that
good
. Did he approve? Or was it merely convenient? Did he want her to continue wearing it? But he kept his attention on what his hands were doing, not once meeting her eyes, so she couldn’t tell.
Flat on her back, Asrial shivered, suddenly beset by an uncomfortable sense of fragility, chilled and hollow to the bone. She fisted her fingers to stop their trembling, but that did little for her hands despite her tight knuckles. Crap, she hated being so weak. Where was the Rim rat who flew the space lanes and explored ancient ruins alone without a qualm?
The slap of the wet rag hitting the deck snapped her attention back to Romir. “You are cold. If I touch you, will that hurt you more?”
“I’m more sore than anything else. I just need to get my blood flowing.” She wasn’t dying; she just felt like it. Encouraging her circulation was the fastest way to recover from stunner hangover.
A sigh greeted her answer. Romir proceeded to chafe her arms as he muttered scathing phrases under his breath, a steady flow of growled outrage that made her smile through the pain. His hands felt solid enough as his biceps bunched and flexed with hypnotic regularity.
Asrial clung to the sight, unable to look away for fear his prison would steal him away in that moment of inattention. He had used so much power she didn’t want to risk it.
“Hold me. Touch me. Make love to me.” She raised trembling arms to Romir, relieved she could manage that much. During that agonizing captivity, she’d been so afraid she’d never see him again. Even now, she could lose him so easily.
“You need to speak with your mother’s cousin.” Kneeling, he pressed his face against her, his lips busy with heart-stoppingly gentle caresses over her breasts. “He was worried when you disappeared.”
Amin would have to wait; Romir couldn’t. If he faded, she couldn’t give chase. It pained her to realize she hadn’t hesitated. Faced with a choice between the two men, the one not related to her by blood was the clear winner, not the man who was like an uncle to her. The decision had taken less than a heartbeat. She soothed her conscience with the thought that her present condition was unlikely to reassure Amin of her safety. She still couldn’t sit up without Romir’s support.
“I’ll talk to him later.” She fought the icy weight of her limbs to pull him closer. “I’m so cold.”
Concern narrowing his eyes and creasing his brow, Romir took her hands and held them against his shoulders, sharing his heat and making her fingers tingle. He growled wordlessly in a tone fierce enough to sport claws and fangs. “Leave it to me.”
He turned her so that she lay with her legs hanging off the edge of the bunk. He disposed of her boots and pants with a thorough solicitude that brought tears to her eyes. No one had cared for her like this in such a long time, not since her childhood. Being the recipient of it now undermined her determination to be strong.
“Not on my back.” She might be on her own bunk, but it was too reminiscent of her time in Volsung’s hands, heightening the feeling of vulnerability.
“Here.” Romir twisted around until he lay on the bunk and she was sprawled on top of him. The new position let her touch him more easily: no longer did she have to fight the pull of gravity.
His body warmed her, his chest beneath her cheek, his belly against her breasts, his pelvis cradling hers, his legs tangled with hers, his arms embracing her. Such welcome male heat. She basked in it, an unspoken, unsuspected fear releasing its coils from around her heart. “Better. Much better.”
Slowly, a sense of well-being seeped into her, even a measure of security. Though she hated to admit it, that was because of Romir. Because he was there. Because he was willing to risk his freedom for her.
She pressed her lips to his skin and licked. Her tongue found warmth . . . and nothing else—another reminder of his djinn state. He didn’t sweat, didn’t have dead hair or skin cells to lose, didn’t ejaculate.
“Are you not too tired for that?” His hand combed through her hair with restful repetition. What expression he wore, she couldn’t tell, too tired to raise her head to look.
No matter. Her answer remained the same.
Asrial kissed his chest again, ignoring the difference as part of what he was. “It’ll make me feel better. I need to feel you inside me.”
He took such exquisite care, making sure she was wet and ready for him, then filling her slowly. So comforting. But the aftereffects of the stunner blast left her nerve endings so sensitized that she gasped at the steady pressure. He rocked her to a gentle, undemanding release that sprinkled bliss through her veins like starlight.
She could only lie there accepting his ministrations, but she hoped the intimate contact was enough. She couldn’t lose him, too.
Heaving a contented
sigh, Asrial rested her head on his shoulder. Her heart drummed against his ribs, a rapid tattoo assuring him of her eventual recovery. “You’re still here. That’s good.”
She fell silent, doing nothing for long enough that Romir thought she must have fallen asleep. He cherished her slight weight on top of him, the display of trust that let her share her bed with him. He even welcomed the painful ache in his loins, the insistent throb further proof of her return.
During the search through the station, when he thought he would not find her, he feared he would never know this pleasure again. He had feared he would fail yet another one who had placed their confidence in him. If that had happened, if he had failed, he did not know what he would have done.
The heart he did not have shuddered at the thought of losing Asrial.
As though she could read his mind, her next words were “If anything happens to me, you should take your prison and escape.” She had not fallen asleep, after all. Even now, her thoughts were for him.
He smiled, his heart bleak. “I cannot. To touch it is to be captured. It will draw me inside.” Back into the mists, into nothingness.
“You can’t?” Asrial went still, holding her body so stiffly that he started to worry. Clearly she was thinking, and her thoughts did not seem to bring her any comfort. “So that cryptic inscription ...” Her voice trailed off into a mumble. Her eyes remained stubbornly open, though her lashes tried to flutter shut.
It seemed that she needed more incentive to rest. Romir gripped her shoulders and pressed down firmly, discovered knots of tension and set out to circle them to submission. “Go to sleep.”
When the nightmare
came, Asrial knew she dreamed, but that knowledge did nothing to change what she dreamed. No matter how much she wished she could change it.
Because it was past.
Immutable.
The nightmare began as it always did: red flashes across the board, the bogey’s sudden appearance and rapid approach, the plasma shields’ catastrophic failure. The scenes came one after another in rapid succession, matching the rhythm of her bounding heart.
Apprehension choked her, dread a heavy weight in her belly and growing to stellar proportions. It didn’t help that she knew what was coming. She wanted to wake up, to escape the nightmare, but she couldn’t break its hold.
Nothing stopped the nightmare once it started. She could only watch as it played before her sleeping eyes.
“Stay here. Stay safe.” In the dream, Jamyl’s black eyes bored into hers, alive with fear and desperation—the knowledge of his coming death. In reality, she must have only glanced at her father, meeting his gaze for no more than a moment, more concerned with breaking the
Castel
out of the pirates’ grab net.
She was the pilot. It was her responsibility to guide the ship to safety.
Nasri was running from the main hold, but it was only in the dream. Asrial hadn’t seen her mother do that; there was no way she could have witnessed that from the piloting chamber. It was simply her subconscious filling in the details based on Patrol reports. But though she knew that, the nightmare rolled on, and she watched as Nasri grabbed a machete from the freight intended for colonists on Vignis in the Brauten sector.
No!
The hatch squealed in protest, forced open with a torsion jack. Pirates spilled through, a swarm of monsters in the nightmare. Her mother charged them, somehow avoiding streams of stunner fire to force them into desperate battle. Asrial didn’t know if that was how it happened—she had only seen the aftermath and the stomach-churning remains of Nasri’s body mixed with the pirates’—but that was always how the nightmare played out. Nasri had died of blood loss from her wounds. The nightmare strung scene after gory scene before her eyes, of the pirates overcoming her mother, each one worse and worse. Her imagination had had more than a thousand nights to refine the horror to nauseating, heart-rending perfection.
An explosion shook the
Castel
, the straps of the shock harness snapping taut around her torso. The rumbling thunder should have been impossible in the depths of space, but she heard it—was hearing it again—as she slammed back against her seat, the board jolting under her hands.
The pirates’ ship dominated her near space screen, looming above the
Castel
like an yfreet over wounded prey. Her maneuvers failed to break the hold the grab net had on her ship. A boarding tube tied the
Castel
to the other ship, a deadly umbilical that spilled more pirates into the corridor outside the sealed piloting chamber.
Buffeted by the crackle of stunner blasts, shouts, and fighting, she remained at the pilot board, tied there by duty. More explosions.
Mother. Father.
Her body was heavy, unresponsive. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t leave her place.
Helpless. Once again, she was helpless. Once again, she could do nothing.
And she hoped. Maybe this time it would be different. Maybe this time it was her turn. Maybe this time she wouldn’t survive.
It would almost be a relief.
Then came another explosion—a much louder one that rattled her teeth. She felt the tremors all the way to the bone.
That was the last one. The worst. The one that had freed the
Castel
. . . and killed Jamyl. He’d armed the mine knowing it would open his compartment to space, and him without a vacuum suit. He’d deliberately sacrificed himself to save her.
Old, familiar grief made fresh dragged her down into the heavy darkness.
If only she had died with them . . .
Sixteen
Patient caresses impinged
on her consciousness. Slow and gentle, they offered comfort and demanded nothing in return. Just quiet strokes over her hair and shoulder. So nice. She’d been dreaming, about what she couldn’t remember, but now she didn’t want to wake. The lethargy pervading her body only added to her reluctance.
Except there was only her to get things done.
Asrial pried her eyelids open, her lashes heavy, and stared at an unfamiliar brown wall. With ridges. The
Castel
didn’t have a surface like that anywhere.
She wasn’t in her cabin?
Her pulse went on overdrive, boosting the rest of her to alertness.
Volsung!
She’d been stunned and abducted, awaiting delivery to some mysterious client. Romir had come to her rescue . . . but had she dreamed the rescue?
Then the wall expanded, rippled. She pressed her fingers against it and found warm, resilient flesh.
“Forgive me. I did not intend to wake you.”