“Yes. Is there something else I can help with?”
Lily straightened, projecting innocence.
“What a short, charming name. Among the Mokra, the shorter the name, the lower the rank, or the simpler the mind.”
Lily swallowed her reaction and replied evenly.
“I see. Did you need anything else?”
Silomarila opened her wide, lipless mouth and produced a wet, coughing sound. Lily’s translator informed her it signaled amusement, though her spine prickled at the sight. She felt Khar tense beside her, silent but imposing.
“Vegrun told me you chose my gift. Such a clever little game. On real paper, no less. Very antique. Of course, we cannot judge other species by our own values, can we?” She gestured toward Vegrun. “As the saying goes, even broth boils in cold water. In any case, I only wanted to thank you. It was the best part of my trip.”
Without waiting for a reply, Silomarila turned and left, Vegrun hurrying after her.
Lily and Khar exchanged a baffled look, then returned to their duties.
Docking protocols kept them busy enough to push everything else aside. Vitro’s robots handled the cleanup, sparing them the task of scrubbing blood from metal plating. The surviving vukri and the bodies were already gone.
Nothing remained of the incident except Lily’s memories and the unsettling way Khar’s skin continued to darken from granite gray toward something deeper wherever it showed beneath his uniform.
“Khar, are you sure you are all right?”
He answered with a low grunt, his usual response when he did not want to talk.
Lily shrugged and returned to the control center, running diagnostics and reviewing results. Once she was satisfied the ship was stable and all necessary replacements ordered, she allowed herself to browse information on solar collectors.
Maybe Vegrun would allow her to order something better than the cheapest model. She gazed dreamily at the device, imagining crossing the galaxy at a fraction of the cost.
“Greedy female.”
Lily flushed to the tips of her ears when she heard Khar laugh and instantly cleared the data from the main display, as if she had been caught watching something obscene.
Even though Khar had not used the same words as in her dream, and his intonation had been entirely different, she could not stop her mind from connecting the two. Her traitorous body reacted immediately in response, and she made sure not to look at him directly.
Stupid dream.
Khar settled into his comfortable armchair, and Lily silently thanked every known force in the universe that it was not thesame chair she had seen in her dream. That would have been far too much.
Still, the longer she looked at her colleague, the more her concern for his condition outweighed her embarrassment.
“If you say everything is fine, I believe you,” she said carefully, “but what is happening to you looks ominous. With humans, a drastic change in skin tone is never a good sign. I know I cannot measure you by human standards, but I cannot help thinking about it.”
The Divani avoided her gaze with deliberate care, focusing on the main display as if it demanded his full attention.
“This is natural among Divani,” he replied. “It does not happen often, but it does not signify anything harmful.”
Lily let out a breath she had not realized she was holding.
She hesitated, unsure how to answer, and a foolish saying escaped her before she could think better of it.
“On Earth, there’s a saying that once you go black, you never go back.”
She giggled at her own joke and failed to notice how Khar went utterly still beside her.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing important,” Lily said quickly. “Just something darker skinned men sometimes say to women. Mostly a joke. It is not meant seriously.”
