Page 89 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

She is balancing between understanding that I am dangerous and that I am here. I do not want the second one to matter more. Now is not the time for those thoughts. Those feelings. They do not belong.

“You’re not a spear,” she says.

Syin makes a sound under his breath. Not quite agreement. Not quite disbelief.

Adran reacts the way he always does when someone threatens an order he already decided was necessary.

“He offered,” Adran says.

“He offered to die if we make it sound useful enough,” Kessa says without looking away from me. “That is not the same thing. I refuse to be a part of it.”

Relief hits me hard enough that I have to look away. The beacon under old scars and newer burns does not cause it. Kessa does.

No, this is something much, much worse. It is mine. I recognize it, but will not acknowledge it. Not now and probably not ever.

Rosalind rests one hand on the copper sphere. Her expression is carved flat, but her eyes keep moving. Door. Guard. Me. Kessa. Source-side wall. Back to me. Arcan told stories of her and I know that she has survived the arenas. That alone means she knows how quickly a room becomes a pit.

“We need a plan that does not rely on noble stupidity,” she says.

She speaks softly, not loudly, but her voice carries in a way that reminds me of Arcan. He was nothing like the masters. He did not shout or inflict pain to get obedience. People gave it to him because he was who he was. Calm in a storm of chaos. Aware, thinking, and never asking without knowing the cost, not only to himself but to the person he was asking.

Now I understand why he spoke of Rosalind as he did.

Kessa lifts one finger. “Thank you.”

“Noble stupidity has saved lives before,” Syin says.

“Dead men don’t update routes,” Kessa snaps.

A faint pulse answers beneath my skin.

Once.

Pause.

Again.

Every gaze in the room drops to my throat.

The hook has learned to enjoy attention. That is not a thought with sense in it, but my body believes it. The green line shifts under my dark plates like a thing turning over in sleep, and the salt packed into the cracks whispers against itself. Fine grains. Tiny movements. A dry hiss no one else hears until Renn’s head tilts.

He hears it.

“What did it do?” Renn asks.

I flex my fingers slowly.

“It listened,” I say.

Kessa’s eyes sharpen. Hurt becomes calculation so quickly I almost miss the hurt underneath. Almost. “To what?”

“To the word dead.”

Silence scrapes the room. Adran exhales through his nose.

“That is convenient.”

“It is accurate.”