Page 95 of Tempting Cargo

I couldn’t quite read his face, but he cleared his throat with a grating cough, his voice husky as he said, “I’m sorry for intruding. That was... beautiful. What was it?”

I allowed myself a long, slow inhale and exhale. “Prayer.”

He concealed the surprise in his eyes quickly. “I didn’t know you were religious.”

The word didn’t translate perfectly, but a sense of it came through. “I’m not.”

His face wrinkled in confusion, and for the first time in days, the hint of a smile lifted my lips. “This does not make sense to you?”

“Frankly, no,” he said. “Praying is for religious people.”

“Is it?” I appreciated the ritual of it. “I don’t need to believe in the gods.” But if they did exist, I hoped they’d guide me.

His frown deepened. “That is… alien to me.” He paused, brows furrowed, before shaking off his introspection. “Did it help?”

I angled my body away from his. “It did.”

I’d wanted to find that place of calm security, of mental control. And in the ancient chant for conviction and virtue, I found it. A calming sense of foundation, of support, thrummed in my bones.

“I will see you later,” I said.

I didn’t meet his eyes, but I couldn’t ignore the warmth of his body as I brushed past.

I found I didn’t mind.

PAIATA HAD HISirritatingly-wise-pilot look on when I entered the bridge.

“You have something on your mind,” I said.

“We all do.”

“Whatever you want to say to me, just spit it out, Paiata.”

“Fine, Cap. You want it to be perfect, but you’re not letting us use everything we have to our advantage. What gives?”

This again. Nobody had raised the issue of theCrownsince the other night, but I suspected they’d been speaking about it when I hadn’t been around.

I clutched the hem of my tunic. “I will not stoop to their level.”

“You won’t kill them, you won’t blackmail their enemies, so what will you do? Wave a magic wand? Offer a prayer to Kri? Ask them skykking nicely?” Paiata’s typical calm tone took the same sharp edges as his spines.

“You overstep, Paiata. I am your captain, and you speak out of turn.”

“Kri’s hairy arse, Shohari, I’m your friend, and I want you to succeed.” He huffed and started unwrapping a protein bar. “I would quite like to bloody get out of this alive too. But just as much as that, I want you to wipe that smug smile off your skykking mother’s face, and I want you to leave Orith with your brother and never have to return, never have to give them a second thought.”

I swallowed round my too-thick throat. The future his words promised tasted so good, and I wanted to drink them down and make them a part of me.

“I want that too,” I said. “But I have to be able to live with myself afterwards. If I’m just as bad as them, what does that make me?”

“Kri’ith.” He swung round in his chair and steepled his fingers. “We’re none of us perfect. The original Orkri’ians said‘skyk this’ and left Orith. They couldn’t afford to care about the consequences for those left behind because they did what they had to do. Are we bad people?”

I set my jaw, letting the familiar sounds of the ship lull me. “I was taught to hate you.”

“But you don’t.”

“Of course I don’t. It’s only… The galaxy is supposed to be the rough, ruthless place. Not Orith.” The words ricocheted off my bones, another homeworld truth crumbling.

“Because Orith is so civilised? Genteel? Kind?”