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The look there bordered on detached, nearly clinical, but I felt the emotional undercurrent there, even as it grew increasingly distant from his actual appraisal.

In some ways, that look scared me more now, and not only because I could see the man I loved in it fully that time. He knew me in that stare. I watched as he stripped away the emotion from his thoughts, replacing all of it with logic, with a strategic distance hovering alone on the surface of his clear eyes.

My jaw hardened as I returned that look.

I didn’t avert my gaze, however.

Eventually, he did.

He bowed to me in the same handful of seconds, lowering his head deliberately and making the sign of the Bridge with one hand. He executed the salute flawlessly, without a whisper of sarcasm or rebellion, or even irony.

I didn’t miss the flavor that wafted off his light, though.

Nor did any of the seers in that station.

Every one of them backed hastily from his path, the instant he began walking towards the door to our shared cell. They moved hurriedly, in a near-panic, and that time, I felt the fear on all of them, not only on Jon. I clamped down my own whisper of nerves as I watched him go, using the stronger currents of my anger to tamp down the rest of it where he wouldn’t feel it.

Oh, we’d be having words, all right.

Indeed we would.

But I had a few other things I needed to take care of, first.

Chapter26

Taking Command

Ididn’t face the rest of them until the hatch door cycled shut behind my husband’s retreating form.

When I did, I refused to flinch under their collective stares.

I could see Jon, Neela, Chandre––even Wreg––looking at the door of the tank compartment with jaws hanging, but no one made so much as a sound when they shifted their gazes back to me.

The seers who remained in the security station stared at me, too.

Realizing I wouldn’t be able to talk to any of them here, even if I wasn’t getting death stares from Raddi and Oli from the doorway of the security station, I looked at Balidor. My mouth hardened when I caught him watching me, worry etched in his chiseled features, a worry even more prominently reflected in his light gray eyes.

“Is there a place we can talk?” I looked at Wreg and Jon, then back at Balidor and Chandre. “You four. I want to talk to you. Now.”

They all seemed to shift uncomfortably, exchanging looks that infuriated me, if only because I could so easily read behind them.

They thought I was acting irrationally.

They were expecting some kind of blow-out fight between Revik and me that might set the ship on fire, and they didn’t want to be in the middle of it.

They assumed whatever I wanted to talk about would involve me asking for their help in controlling Revik, or punishing Revik, or even trying to get them “on my side” in whatever confrontation between us they expected to follow.

While I couldn’t entirely discount their fears that Revik and I might blow up the ship, the rest of their assumptions pissed me off royally.

Truthfully, they angered me a lot more than Revik had, and more than Raddi had when he openly defied me in front of the others.

“Now,” I said. “That wasn’t a request.”

That time, Balidor nodded.

A single nod, seer-fashion, he followed it with a deeper bow, making the sign of the Bridge by his temple as he lowered his other hand.

It was the old school way of saluting me, just like Revik had done.