Page 83 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

Syin’s jaw is set so hard I can almost hear his teeth grinding from three paces away.

Adran says nothing either, which is rare enough to make the air feel stranger than the phrase itself.

Rhazek is the only one who looks as if the words have no particular meaning. Just some facts that needed to be acknowledged.

He sits on the low stone bench against the far wall, his damaged wing half-spread behind him because folding it would pull at the wound. He’s not bound, but he doesn’t have to be. Syin stands near the door, Renn near the window slit, and Rhazek keeps both hands loose on his knees as if stillness is a bargain he is choosing every breath. A cage without rope still knows what it is.

A ring of salt dusts the floor around him. Merra made three passes with it while muttering that every person in this room has the sense of a heat-drunk guster, which is not inaccurate and also not helpful.

Rhazek’s throat plates glow faint green beneath the black armor lines of his skin.

Once.

Pause.

Again.

My pulse skips as if it’s trying to answer it. Heat flushes my skin as anger surges. I hate that my body is taking notes from the thing inside him. I’m still angry at him. Or maybe it’s not him, or just him. I’m angry at everything.

We’d finally found a glimmer of hope with the epis. The heat wasn’t killing us, at least not the way it was. And just when things began to get better, here he comes. A warning and a problem at the same time.

It’s easy to blame him, but I know damn well he’s only partly at fault and damn it I’m not going to let myself give in to my own worst nature.

“We are not calling him that,” I say, filling the silence.

Syin’s gaze cuts to me. “Kessa.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. It’s a struggle, but I manage to keep my voice calm. I’m honestly surprised because I’m one sharp touch away from becoming deeply inconvenient. “He is standing right there. Stop calling him a weapon.”

Rosalind is watching me. She has hard eyes, but they’re not lacking in compassion or understanding. Not that that keeps me from wanting to squirm under her unblinking stare. I can’t hold her gaze so I look away.

Adran folds his hands, which I’ve seen him do too many times. It’s a thing he does when he wants to look reasonable, but it’s never worked on me.

“Kessa,” he says, “we are not comfortable with the word, but with survival. There is a difference.”

“Usually the difference is whether the person paying the cost had a choice.”

Rhazek lifts his head, locking his one unswollen eye onto me.

I narrow my eyes, trying to stop the spinning sensation. This is the problem with him. One look and the room rearranges itself around what I’m trying not to feel. He doesn’t plead or soften. Doesn’t make himself more harmless to help me argue. He watches me with that black-and-gold focus like every word matters because he understands what happens when words become orders.

“I have a choice,” he says.

I glare at him. Of course the person in the room I’m trying to help is the one person making me want to throw something heavy at a wall. Or at him. Better at him.

“Do you?”

A tiny flicker crosses his face. I can’t quite read it. It’s not hurt or even surprise. It looks like something older and smaller. A door closing before anyone can see what room is behind it.

“Yes.”

“Well that’s convenient.” I point at the salt, then the green pulse under his skin. “You’re glowing, accused, terrified of being the trail that led the enemy here, and surrounded by people deciding if your body can bait the thing trying to verify we’re here at all. Forgive me if I don’t trust the purity of your options.”

Merra makes a low sound in her throat. Approval, maybe. Or indigestion. With Merra, it could be either one. Rhazek doesn’t look away.

“The choices are bad. They are still mine,” he says.

“They need to be more than ‘be useful or die’, which is all you’ve got right now.”