“We made it.” He slumped back in his seat, his head falling against the headrest. For a moment he just breathed, his chest rising and falling as the pressure eased. Then he turned to look at her, and something in his expression made her stomach flip. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.” She looked down at Ari, checking for any signs of distress, but the baby seemed perfectly content. “We’re both okay. Are you?”
“I’ve had better days.” He ran a hand through his mane, and she noticed for the first time that his fingers were trembling slightly. “I’ve also had much worse ones, so I’ll take it.”
The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken questions. She waited, giving him time to collect himself, while she tried to process everything that had just happened. Twenty minutes ago she’d been sitting in this same seat, watching the empty docking bay and trying not to imagine all the terrible things that might be happening to him. Now they were hurtling through hyperspace, fleeing from reptilian religious fanatics who wanted to kidnap a baby for reasons she still didn’t fully understand.
“How did they find us?” she asked finally.
“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to cost him something, his voice stripped of its usual confident charm. “Someone might have made a lucky guess. Bragar’s Rest is the closest station where someone might go to hide. Or they might have resources we don’t know about. Or...” He trailed off, his eyes going distant.
“Or?”
“Or they’re tracking something on this ship.” He straightened abruptly, his expression sharpening. “I need to run a diagnostic and look for any signals we might be broadcasting.”
He turned back to the console and began entering commands, his movements quick and precise. She watched him work, feeling useless and out of her depth. This was his world—ships and sensors and hyperspace jumps—and she was just a passenger, carried along by forces she couldn’t control.
Ari squirmed against her chest, and she automatically adjusted her hold, murmuring soft reassurances. The baby’s small fingers curled around a strand of her hair, tugging gently.
“Hey, little one. You okay?”
Ari burbled something that might have been agreement.
“I’m going to take that as a yes.”
“Diagnostics are running,” he announced. “It’ll take a few minutes. In the meantime...” He swiveled his chair to face her fully. “We need to talk about where we’re going.”
“I thought you wanted to find the other Keys.”
“I do. But first we need to make sure the Grorn aren’t following us. We need to go somewhere they can’t go.”
“Do such places exist?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “So far they’ve been careful to avoid any direct engagement with the Kaisarian Empire. They stay on the Outer Rim and the fringes of occupied space. I think we should go to Sherae. It’s deepin Kaisarian space and I have... friends there.” He didn’t seem entirely confident about the term, but she let it go.
“You really think it’s safe?”
“I think it’s safer than anywhere else right now.” He stood abruptly, moving toward the back of the cockpit. “I’m also going to need to retrieve my own ship. TheVagabond. I left her there when I took the job with the Ithyians.”
“You have your own ship?”
“Did you think I made a habit of working for slavers?”
The sharpness in his voice made her flinch, and he immediately softened.
“I’m sorry. That was... I shouldn’t have snapped.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. “The job with the Ithyians was supposed to be simple reconnaissance. I’d discovered information that the Grorn were interested in something they were transporting, and I wanted to find out what. I didn’t expect...” He gestured vaguely at her and Ari. “This.”
“Neither did I,” she said quietly. “I didn’t expect any of this.”
Their eyes met, and for a moment the air between them felt charged with something she couldn’t name. Then Ari made a demanding sound, breaking the spell, and she looked down to find the baby grabbing at her robe.
“Someone’s hungry,” he said.
“Someone’s always hungry.” But she smiled as she said it, adjusting Ari into a more comfortable position. “Can you...?”
“Already on it.”
He went into the back room to prepare the bottle. She watched him, struck again by how natural he looked doing something so domestic. This was a male who flew spaceships and outran religious fanatics, who carried concealed weapons and didn’t hesitate to enter a lawless space station. And yet here he was, warming formula for a baby like it was the most normal thing in the universe.
