Page 46

Roslyn

I should call him.

The Severin suns have set over the tallest of the capital city’s buildings, leaving a stain of light on the far horizon and a rose-tinted glow to the sky.

Way up here on the roof, the tiles are still sun-warm. If memory serves, they’ll hold their heat for another hour before the desert night steals it away.

Soon enough, the creeping cold will chase me back inside. Severin only offers a few fleeting moments of mercy between the oppressive heat of day and the bone-rattling chill of night, and tonight I’m determined to enjoy them.

My thoughts drift from Savvie to Zan to Terra Spei and back again. Every impossible thing that’s happened in the last few hours and every unknown I’ll be facing tomorrow swirls and blurs and bleeds together until I have absolutely no idea what the right thing to do in this situation is.

Regardless, I should call him.

The thought almost makes me want to laugh.

Call him? Like this is some casual thing, and it makes total sense to just give him a ring through comms?

No, what I should really do is figure out where exactly the Aux has him stationed and hitch a ride across galaxies. I should find him, kiss the hell out of him, and refuse to leave his side until he sees the light. Until he realizes we should be together, damn the rest of the universe and whatever it wants from us.

Only… I can’t do that, can I?

What he did for Savvie was wonderful, and kind, and unbelievably selfless.

Maybe it was meant to be a parting gift.

One last bit of kindness to make up for the way we left things.

But I can’t know that for certain, can I? I can’t know a damn thing about what he’s thinking or why he did what he did because I’m here and he’s… on one of the billions upon billions of planets out there, so far away I can’t even fathom it.

So maybe I should just call him.

Evening falls over Thervor, and with each passing minute the heat from the tiles leaches away, bringing sweet relief from the sweltering afternoon, but I can’t make myself get up, move, do a damn thing. Over and over, the questions circle. The frustration. The joy. The possibility of what this might all mean.

I’m still sitting there, paralyzed with indecision, when I hear it. A door opening and closing, a few heavy footsteps on the tiled roof. I scramble to my feet and turn to see who’s there, even while my whole body prickles with awareness and some part of me already knows who I’m going to find.

“Zan.” His name is barely audible in the low hum of evening noise from the city below, but he takes a step forward, then another, and another, until we’re nearly touching and he’s staring down at me with silver galaxies swirling in his eyes.

“Ros.”

I could sink into that voice. I could lean in just a few inches and press my cheek to his chest, right where it belongs.

But I don’t. Not yet.

“What are you doing here?” He recoils a little at the question, shifts like he’s going to move away from me, and I grab his hand. “Don’t—I mean—I’m glad to see you. I just…”

“You spoke with Savannah?”

Silently, I nod, and my chest tightens at the small smile that lifts the corners of his lips.

I drink him in, greedy and shameless, eyes roving over his face, his broad frame, his… hair. I have to stifle a small noise of protest when I realize how short it’s cut. Not surprising, given that he’s gone back into full Aux service, but I’m still a little sad to see all the soft, messy length of it cut away.

The haircut throws the rest of his face into even starker, more dramatic angles, and I take that in, too. I try to square all the hard-edges of him with the softness in his eyes and in his smile, the wonderful contradiction of him, so achingly familiar.

“I’m glad,” he says, squeezing my hand where I’m still holding onto him before letting it drop.

Another noise of protest rises in my throat, but I swallow it back.

I’m still not sure… what this is.

Maybe he just came back to see if everything with Savvie went alright. To make sure whatever hoops he had to jump through to get her name cleared weren’t all in vain.

Maybe nothing has changed for him, for us, for what comes next.

But… maybe not.

What am I doing? What am I thinking ?

He’s here.

God.

He’s here .

And I’m… what? Questioning it? Wasn’t I ready to throw it all away and chase him across galaxies just a few minutes ago?

“It’s incredible, what you did for her,” I say softly, not about to let the moment pass without acknowledging the magnitude of the gift he’s given her.

His brow furrows. “It was the right thing to do. But… but I knew…”

He trails off, something a bit abashed in his tone.

“You knew what?”

He lets out a short, self-deprecating laugh.

“Don’t think I’m entirely altruistic. I thought of you every moment, Roslyn. I thought of your heart breaking the last time you spoke with her, and I thought of the smile that would be on your face when you saw her again. I thought of you, first and foremost. Always, I thought of you.”

My whole body aches with the need to step closer, to wrap myself around him and beg him to stay.

The moment stretches long between us. Evening noise filters up from the city below, the sound of distant voices, the occasional passing of a craft, a din that leaves us both cradled in its protective cocoon. A hundred different things I want to say, to plead, to demand, but Zan speaks again before I can decide on one.

“I’m not active Aux anymore.”

My breath catches. “You’re not?”

He shakes his head and runs a hand over the back of his neck. “No. I’m not. Technically, I’m still part of the organization, but in a different capacity. I’m heading up a regulatory board looking into recruiting practices and implementing the changes it will take to ensure no other kids will be brought into this life like I was.”

“Zan,” I whisper. “That’s amazing.”

He shrugs. “It’s a start.”

“It’s more than a start,” I say with enough conviction to shake a little of that damned modesty off his face and turn the corners of his lips up in another smile. “It’s massive, Zan. Massive. I’m so proud of you.”

A wobble, in that smile, a deep, indrawn breath as he accepts the praise he’s more than earned.

“It’s also work that will let me have a home base almost anywhere, so long as I have a good comms link. They’ve outfitted me with a ship for when I need to travel, and…”

His words trail off, gaze tracing back and forth across my face.

“What else does it change?” I ask, barely allowing myself to hope. “Leaving active duty? Does it mean you can have… a partner?”

“It does,” he says solemnly. “It also means I won’t be fighting anymore. I won’t be running missions.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

Zan falls silent, considering the question for a few moments before answering. “I… I don’t know. I’m glad, I think, but some part of me still doesn’t know if I can be… more than what I was. If I’m built for anything but war.”

His words are vulnerable, a little stilted, and I know they’re an effort for my stoic Revexoran.

“I think you can be whatever you want to be, Zan. We’re not tied to one single path or purpose.”

He nods, but doesn’t answer, looking away from me to the stars above like he’s contemplating just how many paths might still be waiting for him out there.

Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. More.

In the unending sprawl of the universe, there are more paths for both of us than we could ever hope to count. So many individual choices and twists of fate that could have meant we never met each other at all. The innumerable, unknowable billions of ways we could have missed each other steal my breath in a sudden wave of panicked certainty, and I know I can’t let this one infinite moment pass us by.

“I’m moving,” I say. “To Terra Spei.”

Zan goes still, eyes darting back to meet mine. “Are you? I’ve never been.”

“It’s beautiful. And peaceful. I’ve heard it’s a lot like Earth. Or, well, what Earth used to be.”

He takes a step closer and curls an achingly gentle hand around my jaw. “I hope it is. I hope it’s everything you’ve dreamed of, everything you’ve wanted for yourself.”

My heart is too big for my chest. My skin is too small for my soul. I lean into his touch.

“You might like it, too.”

The hand he has on me tightens. “Would I?”

“I think you would. I mean, if you wanted… If you don’t have any other…”

When my words fail, Zan moves closer and fills the remaining space between us with the low, soft rumble of his voice. “Would you like me to come with you, my warrior?”

“Yes.” It’s a breathless plea, a promise. “I want you to come with me.”

Zan lifts his other hand and cradles my face. The depth of emotion shining in his silver-threaded eyes reaches in and tugs at the tender, vulnerable thing in the center of my chest, and I hear his answer before he says it.

“Of course I’ll come with you, Roslyn. Wherever you are in this vast universe, that is my home.”

I don’t know who moves first, but our lips meet a moment later. It’s searing, this kiss, hungry and wanting. A vow.

In it, all those infinite possibilities become one.

Just one.

Just us, with the cosmos stretching wide above and certainty settling into our bones like stardust fallen from the heavens.

But it’s not just stardust, this feeling. It’s not ephemeral at all.

It’s visceral and earthy and the embodiment of need itself. It’s all the months we’ve spent apart distilled into the singular want to be together again. Heart, soul, body. All of it and more.

We’re a graceless mess of hands and lips and need as we tug at each other’s clothes and sink naked to the roof, its tiles carrying their last bit of warmth from the unforgiving Severin suns. Zan sits back against the wall where I’d been waiting for him and pulls me down so I’m straddling his hips. He rises to meet the damp, aching place between my thighs, but before I can sink down onto him, he takes my face in his hands once more.

“Look at me, Ros.”

Holding his steady gaze, I relax into his body, melt into his touch, and take him deep within me.