Page 139 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“That is?”

“What happens when Merra stops threatening your spine and the council stops arguing long enough to ask whether you are staying.”

He’s silent for a long time. I listen to the scrape of a broom in the corridor outside and try not to demand an answer before he has one. I make it about thirty seconds.

“I have thought of little else.”

“And?” I ask, hardly able to take a full breath.

“I want to stay.”

I stare at him. I thought I knew what he would say, but hearing it is different. I need him to say the rest.

“Because of me?”

“Yes.” I forget every objection I planned, but he continues before I can make one. “But not only because of you.”

I close my mouth.

“I want to know what became of the signal. I want to teach your people what I know before someone else comes through the sky carrying a better cage. I want to learn this world when it is not trying to kill me every few breaths.”

“Tajss will take that personally.”

“I have noticed.” He squeezes my hand once. “And I want to stay because you are here. That is part of my choice. It is not the whole of it.”

There it is. The difference I needed him to understand.

I don’t have to make myself less important so his choice can be free. He doesn’t have to make me responsible for every choice he makes because I matter to him.

“You really are learning,” I say.

“I have a difficult teacher.”

“You’re welcome.”

He turns our joined hands until my palm rests against his.

“Kessa.” He says my name differently this time, and I stop smiling. “I do not know what comes next.”

“Neither do I.”

“But I know what I want.”

I grip his hand tighter.

“That’s usually where trouble starts.”

“Yes.”

He says it so seriously I laugh. Then he keeps looking at me and the laugh fades.

“I want you,” he says. “Not because the command anchor learned your name. Not only because my blood recognized you before I understood why. Not because Arcan sent me here. Not because I mistook the first safe place for something it was not.” His voice roughens. “I want you, Kessa.”

I can’t joke my way around it, and for once, I don’t try. I have wanted him for so long while pretending wanting was another problem to solve. There is nothing left to solve.

“I love you,” I say.

The words are so simple after everything else that they almost surprise me. Rhazek stares at me. Then he closes his eye, breathes out, and looks at me again.