"The form does not have a box for 'returned by an idiot,'" Theeodus said, in the tone of a man explaining gravity to a fish.
"That's a design flaw. Jot that down." A cold draft licked across the back of my neck, and I turned in time to catch the office door banging shut behind something enormous. I didn't get a good look. Just a wall of muscle in a hurry to be anywhere I wasn't, which, honestly, mood.
But something strange tugged in my chest when he went. I rubbed the spot.
It had to be heartburn. Space travel wrecks your digestion. Nobody tells you that in the brochure.
The brochure has a lot of nerve, frankly.
It's all glowing fruit and big handsome monsters gazing into the misty distance, and it fails to mention that the gravity's a hair heavy, everything smells like wood smoke and makes your throat scratchy, and that you will spend your first week here reaching for counters built at the exact height of your own collarbone and feeling like a toddler who wandered into a furniture showroom for giants.
"Who's the cheerful one?" I asked and glanced back toward the door.
Theeodus had gone the color of skim milk. He was a thin, pale human in an Agency jumpsuit two sizes too big, and he had the specific haunted look of a man who flinches at horns for a living. "That's Lorkin. He runs the forge. You should not, ah, bother him."
I knew the name the way you know names from someone else's stories. Maisie had mentioned him on our calls, fond and a little wary. He was the town's blacksmith. Near as I could tell, he was the closest thing Kazan had to a brother. I'd never put a face to him.
Technically, I still hadn't, I guessed. I’d only seen his shoulders.
"I wasn't going tobotherhim." I absolutely had been going to bother him. Bothering large men is a core part of my personality, right behind 'loyal' and 'will say the thing everyone's thinking at the worst possible moment.' "I was going to admire him from a respectful distance."
"He's not… " Theeodus lowered his voice as if the soot-stained mountain might still be listening through the wall. "He has no wish for a bride. The mayor put him forward. Most of themen are glad to come. Lorkin has been avoiding our summons for weeks."
The back door opened before Theeodus could say anything more, and Nezara came out with my paperwork in one hand.
I liked Nezara, which made it worse, because what she said next made me want to climb out the window. She was the only minotaur woman I'd met, dusky gold with her horns jutting out and an expression like she'd watched the universe try its best and come up short, and she talked to spooked people the exact way you'd talk to a nervous horse. Slow. Even. Hands where you could see them.
She'd had to use that voice on me twice now. You'd think I'd resent it by now.
"Chloe," she said. "Sit, if you like."
"I'll stand. Lay it on me."
She didn't soften it, which I appreciated, because the soft version is always worse. "This is your third placement. By the Agency's terms, it is your last. If this trial period ends in a return, I cannot keep you on the rolls. The next outbound transport will take you back to Earth, and I will not be able to bring you out again, though the Agency may be able to find a different colony looking for brides."
If they're desperate.She didn't say that part out loud.
There it was.
I'd known. I'd read the same fine print everybody reads and ignores, but knowing a thing and hearing Nezara say it in that careful, gentled-animal voice with her eyes steady on me were not the same thing. The floor did the thing floors do. Stayed exactly where it was and somehow dropped out from under me anyway.
"So no pressure," I said.
"There isconsiderablepressure," Nezara said. "I would be lying to tell you otherwise. I'd rather you go in knowing." She setthe file down on the counter and squared it with two fingers. "I will be honest with you. There are not many women who try a third time. Most give up after the first failure and take the next ship home to some smaller life that fits. You have failed twice and you are still standing in my office asking me for a third. That tells me something about you, whether or not you want it told."
"That I don't take a hint?"
"That you are braver than anyone sees."
I had to look at the filing crates for a second. They were full of hard-copy forms, actual paper, this whole bureaucracy of want, every file a woman who'd run from something and a man who'd lost something, all of it sorted into crates by an Agency trying to make a business out of love.
"You're a terrible cheerleader," I told her when I trusted my voice. "Has anyone told you that? You'd ruin a pep rally."
She let me have the deflection. "Kazan and Maisie are having people out to the orchard tonight. The unmated males will be there. It is as good a place as any to begin a third trial." A beat. "Try to let one of them see you. The real you. Not the act."
That's not what they're looking for.
I bit the thought back before I said it. "I'll do my best," the words were too bright, but it was better than the alternative.
