Page 69

OAKEN

In the blackness of the cellar, the only light came from my eyes. I eased Jaya down to the cool, damp ground. Shaking and silent, my love let me arrange her limbs into a tight ball. Then, I wrapped myself around her, covering both her and Nali with my body as the world tore itself apart above us.

But the cellar was safe.

Jaya was safe. I kept repeating it to myself, over and over again.

She is safe.

I had not ever known a fear like the one that had consumed me outside. When I saw she had not left after all, that she was out there in the storm trying to help.

She was too good. Too brave.

I’d always known she was brave. From the very first day that we met.

Thank the blazes that I got to her in time.

I pressed my face into the beautiful, tangled mess of her hair, breathing deeply of her scent.

When the worst of the wind passed directly above us, and became a dull-yet-deafening roar that seemed to emanate from the very ground we’d taken shelter under, Jaya reached for me. From within the tight circle of my arms, one small, human hand pressed itself to my chest. Right above the place that my heart beat.

We remained that way long after wind gave way to rain, and rain gave way to silence.

It was Lala who eventually spoke first, clawing her way out of Jaya’s pocket.

“I cannot connect with theLavariyato check her weather sensors.”

No.

I scrambled to my feet, thundering up the stairs to the cellar door and wrenching it open. Greyish light poured into the kitchen.

The roof was gone.

The rest of the structure seemed intact enough, if storm-battered. I did not stop to take a full account of the damage. I only had one thing I wanted to check right now.

Jaya’s ship.

But the ship was not there, I realized, horror hollowing out my gut when I shoved through the door outside and saw an empty pasture where theLavariyahad once lain. Absurdly, as if I just somehow could not see it from here, I ran into the grass, not stopping until I stood in the place Jaya’s ship had occupied.

But of course, getting closer to the emptiness did not fill it. Standing where the ship had once been did not resurrect it.

It was gone.

My ship means everything to me.

That’s what she had told me. That very first day, when she’d accepted my proposal.

It was not just a vessel. It contained all her things. Her spiced human tea. Her clothes. Her memories. Her life.

All of it.

Gone.

I had failed her. I had promised her that a marriage to me meant saving her ship.

She’d married me.

And now she had lost everything.