Page 20

Zandrel

Coming up through the ranks in the Aux, I learned the fine art of getting my ass in and out of a shower in two minutes flat. No fuss, no extravagances, just a quick scrub before heading off to whatever training or mission was waiting.

But standing under the spray in what might just be the most luxurious bathroom I’ve ever stepped foot in, I’m sorely tempted to stay here for hours, days, maybe the rest of my life.

Coward .

The word echoes through me as I rest my forehead on the damp tile wall.

I’ve already been in here far longer than necessary, but somehow I can’t make myself shut off the water, towel off, and face what’s waiting for me.

I didn’t mean to walk in on Ros.

A careless mistake, but an honest one. I should have asked before I entered her space, shouldn’t have gotten so lax after the progress we’ve made over the last few days.

I didn’t even register her scars and tattoos at first.

My eyes had been otherwise occupied.

By miles and miles of soft, pale skin and long, lean muscles. By the curve of her hips and the gentle swell of her breasts when she turned to face me. By the thatch of dark, curly hair between her thighs.

She looked so fucking touchable.

I shouldn’t be thinking it, shouldn’t be running every detail of her over and over in my mind, but it’s impossible not to dwell on what it might be like to get my hands on… all of her. All those curves, all that softness, what I already know will be the impossible warmth of her.

Despite my best efforts, a rush of low, insistent warmth floods through my lower abdomen, hardening my cock in its protective slit.

Fates, I need to get a handle on myself.

Walking in on her was a careless mistake, but she might have thought it was deliberate. Even now, she might be stewing in well-justified anger and making her plans to kick me out of here and call this whole damned farce off.

Talk to her. I need to talk to her. I need to apologize and explain.

Gathering the scraps of my paralyzing shame, I toss them away and turn off the water.

I can’t hear any noise from the bedroom as I pull on my clothes, and a soft knock on the inside of the bathroom door receives no reply.

“Roslyn?” I murmur as I ease it open, met only by silence and an empty room when I risk a look.

Unease knots my gut as I walk slowly into the living space. How much of the progress we’ve made did I just dismantle in a few careless seconds?

The last few days have been… good, in some ways.

An absolute mess in others.

I can’t shake my lingering guilt over assuming the worst of her, can’t forget the sound of her tears or the blame that still sits heavy on my shoulders for my part in making her feel that way.

It’s made it damn near impossible to know how to move forward.

I haven’t been able to forget the taste of her on my lips, the warmth and the strength of her beneath my hands, the dark thrill of fighting with her and kissing her and using all that animosity as an excuse to be close to her.

But now it’s all muddled, a mess, and I might have made it even worse.

Roslyn sits at the kitchen counter, hands folded in front of her. She doesn’t turn or say a word as I approach and hover awkwardly behind her, clearing my throat.

“I’m sorry. I—”

“I’m guessing you didn’t mean to do that?” She cuts in. “See me naked, I mean?”

Her posture is stiff, words even stiffer, and my discomfort doubles.

“No. I did not.”

“And I’m guessing that’s not all you saw. Me naked. I’m guessing you saw my… scars.”

Instead of answering, I sink into the chair next to her. She shoots me a sidelong glance, but I can’t read it. I can’t make it past the closed-down, guarded expression on her face, so I simply nod.

“Yes, I did.”

Roslyn lets out a tight breath. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I nod again. “You don’t have to. I wouldn’t expect you to—”

“It was… a military thing. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Alright,” I murmur.

Just like I shouldn’t be thinking about what it would be like to touch her, I shouldn’t feel a stab of soul-deep concern over what she’s not saying.

Roslyn doesn’t owe me anything.

She doesn’t owe me any explanations or details about her past. There’s no reason for her to lay herself bare and share her pain.

But… I want to know.

If I were any less honest with myself, I could chalk it up to my obsessive, unrelenting need for information. To know and catalog and hoard each detail like they might help me figure out a universe that so very often makes no sense at all.

But that’s not the only reason.

Even if I’m not fully able to admit what the real reason is.

Not yet.

I think she’s done, that she has nothing more to say. I think we’ll leave here with this added layer of tension between us and make the prospect of facing the evening all that much more difficult.

But then Ros speaks again.

The words are a surprise, and seem to be to her as well as they come out in stops and starts, like they haven’t quite formed before they leave her lips.

“It’s just… something I haven’t… talked about. You know? One of those things that I… I…”

She huffs a frustrated breath through her nose and shakes her head, hunching into herself as she rests her forearms and elbows on the counter.

I hate it. Seeing her make herself smaller, watching her disappear into whatever memory is attached to those scars. I hate it enough for my own half-formed words to escape before I can think better of them.

“I think I… I understand what you mean.”

She glances over, expression still guarded, but with a sliver of something that keeps me talking. Hope, maybe, for someone to know. For the unspoken to be heard.

“The scars I carry are not physical, but…” I pause, trying to find how best to say it. “They feel very… present. Every day, I feel their weight.”

Even that bare bit of information feels like a file wedged beneath my nails. An arm twisted behind my back, demanding surrender. Demanding I stop talking, stop thinking about it, stop before I say something truly idiotic.

“Yeah? In what way?”

Ros’s question is soft, searching. It loosens my tongue, shakes forth confessions that rasp from me in a rush of dusty, ill-fitting vulnerability.

“It’s more than my position I hope to regain with the Aux.”

Ros’s keen emerald eyes scan my face, her brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”

“I joined the Aux when I was barely more than a boy.”

Ros sucks in a sharp breath, but doesn’t speak, giving me the space and time I need to sort through my thoughts.

It’s time I need.

As hastily as I entered this conversation, I find I can’t continue it without effort. A strange tightness in my chest and a thickening of my throat. A wall of some fatesdamned emotion I can barely speak past as I continue.

“Revexor… the planet where I was born, it fell to war and ruin when I was a child. My parents, too, they were… they were soldiers who…”

More tightness, a sharp sear of memory that steals my breath.

Ros lays her hand over mine.

“It left me alone. An orphan.” I let the warmth of her touch bolster me as I continue. “I was scraping by in some group home the Seventh Sector Council put together for younglings like me, when I was approached by an Aux recruiter.”

So many promises, that recruiter made. Training and prestige and glory. An entire universe of possibility opening up before me. So much better than the situation I’d found myself in.

“Fucking monsters,” Ros seethes. “Preying on kids like that.”

A bit more of the tightness in my chest loosens. Enough for me to breathe as I flex my fingers under hers and try not to let myself examine too closely the way her grip on me eases that tension even further.

“Regardless, I accepted. And I excelled in my training. I became… valuable to them. An asset. I rose quickly through their ranks.”

Ros’s gaze is softer now, the edge of her indignant anger melting away as she turns my hand in hers and soothes her thumb over my palm. Steady, unerring strokes that have me spellbound, relaxing even further under her touch.

“But I didn’t want anyone else to be… to be like me. I found out it was still happening. Recruiting younglings from desperate situations. Making it seem like the Aux was the best choice for them when… when…”

“When fighting and war were the absolute last things they needed.”

Ros’s words hit too close to something aching and broken at the core of me. Something I’ve set far to the side while I’ve done what I needed to survive. The control I wrested from an unfeeling universe that stripped any semblance of stability and security from me when I was too young and too powerless to do anything to stop it.

“I tried to bring it all to light.” My voice is quieter now, reticent, like the confession might still have the power to damn me, even after everything I’ve sacrificed and every risk I’ve taken to land myself here. “I spoke up against those recruiting practices. And it cost me everything.”

“It’s why you’re here. Working security,” she murmurs, and I nod.

A few seconds of silence pass as that information, that shame, sinks in.

So fresh, those wounds, though if someone had asked me yesterday, I wouldn’t have thought so at all. I would have thought myself beyond it, able to focus entirely on the mission at hand rather than the failures of my past.

I’m still lost in the tangle of it, drowning, when Ros chuckles softly. Not humor, exactly, but something more rueful as she shakes her head.

“Sorry,” she says quickly when she catches my eye. “It’s not funny. Really, I shouldn’t have laughed. It’s only…”

“Only what?”

Strangely, if feels like exactly what I need, this change in direction. A reprieve. A rope tossed overboard to keep me from going underwater completely.

She shakes her head again. “If you only knew what I was thinking that day I landed on the beach.”

I arch a brow. “Oh? And what were you thinking?”

Roslyn shifts, resting one elbow on the counter and propping her chin in her hand. “I shouldn’t say. It would only stroke your ego.”

“By all means, stroke away.”

She laughs again, brighter this time. “I was thinking how utterly fucked I was, having to contend with a guard like you. You, uh, stand out a little from the rest of the team, and I guess now I know why.”

A brief wave of guilt twists my gut, but Ros is still smiling.

Maybe this is… alright.

Maybe we’re at a point where joking about it is permitted.

I take another risk.

“Well, then I hope your own ego would be at least a little gratified to know I had similar suspicions about you.”

She rolls her eyes. A little disconcerting, given the way it exposes more of the strange, milky white that surrounds her irises, but it seems to be another human expression of good humor.

“Really,” she drawls. “I never would have guessed.”

“Making such a methodical study of the crew and perimeter, standing up there in your military clothing. I’d be a poor excuse for a guard if I hadn’t noticed.”

Roslyn groans dramatically and rubs at her temples. “God. The fatigues. Maybe if it wasn’t so damn impossible to find anything passing as beachwear on Severin, I would have stood a chance.”

“Never,” I tell her with mock-solemnity. “I would have had my eye on you, regardless.”

We both pause for a beat, long enough for the implications of what I just said to settle between us.

Fates, why am I even allowed to speak?

But—whether because she doesn’t know how close to truth that statement is, or she’d rather ignore it—Roslyn stands and brushes it aside with another exasperated, good-natured shake of her head.

“Keep that energy going into tonight, yeah? Eyes on me. All focused and intent, like I’m the hottest thing on the beach.”

If she only knew.

I don’t know when it happened, but the idea of looking anywhere but at Roslyn tonight seems like it might actually be impossible.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Apparently satisfied with that, she heads back toward the bedroom. “I’m going to finish getting ready for tonight.”

“Anything in particular you’d like me to wear?”

“The tan shorts looked good on you. Maybe with a black shirt this time?”

I must not be entirely able to cover my grunt of dissatisfaction, because she turns on her heel to face me with her hands braced on her hips. “Problem?”

“No,” I grumble, standing and crossing the room to find the shorts where I’ve been keeping my luggage stashed in the entryway closet so Sella won’t see it when she comes in. “I’ve always wanted the opportunity to dress like a child again.”

“What? You’d rather walk around in your Aux gear?”

“Better than whatever these are.” I hold up the offending item. “Truly. A crime.”

“I think you’ll live.”

With that, she heads into the bedroom, and I’m about to get to the arduous task of donning my costume for the evening, when she speaks from the bedroom doorway.

“Zandrel.”

I’ve never given much thought to my name. It’s a name. Not particularly uncommon or notable amongst Revexorans. Serviceable, sturdy, if a bit boring.

But when Ros says it?

And when she says it like that? Soft, in a tone I haven’t heard it spoken in as long as I can remember?

I like it far too much.

“Yes?”

“Thanks,” she says, still so achingly gentle. “For telling me about what brought you here. And by the time this is over, we’ll get you back there so you can finish what you started.”

I nod.

I’m not sure I’m capable of doing anything more than that, of saying anything more than that, and when Roslyn finally disappears into the bedroom to prepare for the evening, it takes a long, long time for me to move from where I stand.