Page 287 of Reaper Said Mine

“No.”

She pulls back enough to stare at me.

Despite everything, despite blood and smoke and the enemy vessel still locked outside, something like pride lights her exhausted face. “You didn’t?”

“I need them alive to answer questions.”

“That is infuriatingly responsible.”

“I am experimenting with personal growth.”

“Hot.”

A startled laugh tears from Rana across the cabin. “I cannot believe I almost died protecting this relationship.”

Ursa looks past me. “You’re welcome.”

Drokk’s voice cuts through my comm. “Lord, hostile reinforcements approaching. We need to move.”

The war returns.

Of course it does.

I cup Ursa’s face with one hand, thumb brushing ash from her cheek. “Can you stand?”

“With help.”

“You have it.”

“I also have the evidence.”

“I assumed.”

She holds up the cracked cartridge. “Nearly lost it.”

“But you did not.”

“No.”

“Good.”

I help her to her feet, keeping one arm around her as she sways. Her pain flickers through the bond, not as a thought but as a sharp pressure under my ribs. I hate it. I carry it because hating it helps nothing.

Rana tosses me the toolkit. “The cartridge stays with her. If you lose it, I’ll haunt your spikes.”

“She has gathered alarming friends,” I tell Ursa.

“I have excellent taste in dangerous people.”

“Yes,” I say. “You do.”

We move toward the assault tube as my warriors carry the wounded and drag prisoners behind us. The cabin groans around us, Hestia-Seven’s systems failing in cascading little deaths. Sera refuses to leave until the last medical container is secured. Dane helps her with a look of stunned devotion that suggests surviving a boarding action may have rearranged his romantic priorities.

At the hatch, Ursa stops and looks back at the ruined transport.

For a moment, I know what she sees. Not only metal. Not only damage. A place where the story almost died. A place where she nearly did.

“I got the signal out,” she says.