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Ialmost ask Lochdon why he paid for two seats. I know the answer… but he’d pulled me into his lap before we left the station dock, and he hasn’t let me go since.

Not that I’m complaining.

He’s more comfortable than the seat, anyway.

The transport taking us from MiNo to Galanta is nice but even in what translates to first class, I’m very aware that Phantom’s Earth shuttles are an absolute luxury.

A loud thwacking sound comes from the door at the back of the compartment, and I flinch, but no one else seems to notice, or care.

The attendant rolls her eyes—all six of them—before standing with a beleaguered sigh to go back.

“Someone’s grav ball got away from them.” Lochdon says quietly against my hair. “It happens. She’ll go scold them, but it’s no big deal.”

The cargo hold beyond that door has another dozen or so passengers. We’d passed them to get up here and it had made me uneasy.

“You’re sure it’s safe,” I ask him again. “It feels like it should violate some safety standards.” Space OSHA?

“They have fold down seats for gravity landings. And in transit, there’s more space to move around than we have… they’re fine.”

When I look at him skeptically, he says, “I’ve done longer trips back there several times and I’m fine. When I was much younger, my friends and I would hop on a random ship headed who-knows-where, just for the hell of it. We all survived.”

“Well, I hope they’re getting a deal.”

He laughs and kisses my forehead before telling me, “It’s free.”

That doesn’t feel real and my face must say it, even though I don’t, because Lochdon says, “They ride for free and the spaceline gets kickbacks from an intergalactic tourism conglomerate.”

I don’t think any of those words are directly translated. “Sounds a little too good to be true.”

“I mean, sometimes the other passengers are nosy, or get space sick, or try to pick your pocket… It’s not the ideal way to travel.” He shifts me in his lap and holds me closer. “I wouldn’t have been able to keep a hold of you this whole time if we were down there.”

The attendant comes back through and pauses beside us. She isn’t clan, so the words don’t translate.

Lochdon nods and says, “I understand. Thank you.”

“What’s going on?”

“We’ll be landing soon. You have to take your own seat now.”

I pat his chest and kiss him before sliding into my own seat. “You can bear a few minutes without me in your lap.”

“I’m not going to enjoy them.” He crosses his top set of arms and scowls toward the display in front of him detailing our impending descent.

I reach out and take the lower hand closer to me and when he looks down at where our fingers are twined, I ask, “Better?”

“A little.”

Buckled in and waiting for the lights to go green, I lean on him and close my eyes as the strange sensation of new gravity takes over.

We’re almost there.

I hadn’t realized how much being held by him had kept the jittery nerves at bay. Now that we’re landing… All I can do is squeeze him tight and breathe through the oddity of the sensations coursing through my body. Pressures change, sounds I don’t understand assault my ears…

Whatever Phantom does to their ships… I’m going to need them to install it as standard on any others I set foot on in the future.

Lochdon rubs my back while the ship judders just a little bit and the ordeal is over quickly enough, I shouldn’t complain.

Everything settles after a moment of stillness, but I don’t let go of Lochdon when seat buckles start to click open. He doesn’t move when others start to get up and collect their bags.

“How do you feel?” He asks.

“I’m fine.”

His brow raises and he asks, “Are you sure?”

I move my arms, stretching out my limbs as a show, but…

He’d warned me that Galanta’s gravity might be strange. Phantom wouldn’t tell either of us what the difference was between it and Earth’s gravity, but the fact that Phantom let me come at all tells me I’ll be fine. Even knowing that… “My muscles do feel a little heavy, but I’m okay.”

It’s the kind of weight that reminds me of post-gym exhaustion.

He stands, and holds my hand as I do too. “If that changes. You let me know.”

I nod, a little too anxious to get off the ship to worry about whether or not I’m going to feel like I’ve been lifting weights the entire time I’m here.

Lochdon grabs our bags and slings them over one shoulder,only letting go of my hand while we make our way down the steps and out of the now-empty cargo hold.

The passengers left a mess behind, but there’s no sign the free riders met with a gravity-related accident.

And when we step out…

“Welcome to my homeworld,” he says, sweeping his free arm out in front of us.

I look around us and try not to seem underwhelmed, but he sees it. Luckily, he laughs.

It’s startlingly similar to MiNo… except I can’t read any of the signage, and a good ninety percent of the people around us are Glantanians.

On the station, they’re few and far between.

“It’s… an airport—a spaceport.” I say, correcting myself immediately. “Am I going to get to breathe fresh air while I’m here? Or are you going to keep me indoors the whole time?”

In all of my—limited—reading, I hadn’t been able to find many pictures of what the planet looks like… at least. Not the inhabited parts.

He chuckles and holds my hand more tightly as we make our way along a wide corridor and out of the terminals… something starts to prickle at my nose as we reach the bright square of open doors, but I ignore it when my eyes finally adjust.

“Oh!”

The doors open out into an enormous terrace and he leads me straight across to the ledge and my first glimpse of his actual homeworld takes my breath away.

I can’t imagine how he would ever want to leave.

It’s like a tropical paradise, with a crystalline mountain range in the distance, and enormous birds soaring overhead.

There’s so much to see… I wish I had six eyes, too.

“Okay, that back there was rude.” I pinch his arm. “This is amazing!”

“Do you like it?”

“I do.”

I take a deep breath, filling my lungs and my eyes go wide. Oh no.

The tickle in my nose is worse. So much worse.

It’s too much to clear with a simple huff. It’s too much to—

I sneeze

Lochdon’s grip on my hand tightens. “What’s wrong?”

Another breath, another sneeze.

And another.

“It’s sneezing,” I tell him in between two of them. I don’t think I’ve ever sneezed in front of him before and I hope the translation in his language makes sense.

Each inhale makes the tickle worse.

“I can’t stop,” I say, managing to laugh instead of making the frustrated sound I want to. “Oh no. I’m allergic to your planet.”

He looks concerned as he leads me away from the strolling groups of people who have definitely turned their full focus to me.

I don’t stop sneezing until we’re in what he calls a taxi, but it looks like a hard bubble, and he’s fiddled with the air filters.

“Well,” I say, feeling like I’ve gotten an extra workout. “That could be a problem.”

Even in here, my nose tickles.

Lochdon studies my face like it might have been rearranged by one of the sneezes. “We’ll get it figured out before tomorrow.”

Tomorrow.

“I’d hate to sneeze all the way through the ceremony.”

“You won’t.” He kisses me and then pulls me back into his lap, pointing out landmarks on the other side of the window.