Page 61 of Reaper Said Mine

Ursa turns her head toward him with startled outrage. “I absolutely do not.”

The hall loses itself.

I should laugh with them.

I almost do.

Instead, I watch her.

She stands amid heat, blood, noise, and the delighted judgment of monsters the galaxy taught her to fear, and she does not preen. She does not perform disgust for distant viewers. She does not pretend the moment has cost her nothing. She wipes the blood from her hand with a cloth Rikka tosses her, lifts her chin, and takes her seat with the stiff dignity of a person who intends to survive embarrassment by making it useful.

Something shifts under my ribs.

I do not welcome it.

Skahar’s voice comes quietly beside me. “There is your variable.”

Down the table, Ursa Ramone looks toward the high seats.

Not searching wildly. Not begging for approval.

Simply looking.

Her green eyes find mine across the firelit roar of the Blood Hall, and the room that has belonged to me all night suddenly feels far less obedient.

CHAPTER 9

URSA

The Blood Hall becomes sharper after I kill the skitterling.

Every color seems to deepen beneath the hanging fire baskets, from the black gleam of the long tables to the red lacquer of the ceremonial bowls and the pale flash of bone spurs rising from shoulders, jaws, and forearms around me. Smoke blurs the banners overhead, softening the painted names of dead ships while the flames below keep catching on knives, cups, armor plates, and watching eyes. The heat presses through my jacket and prickles along the back of my neck. My hand still stings where the skitterling caught me, a thin line of pain beneath the cloth Rikka threw me, and the table under my palm vibrates with the pounding fists of Reapers who have decided my humiliation is entertaining enough to become approval. The food in front of me steams with broth, spice, and something sharply mineral, and beneath it all lingers the copper tang of blood that makes every breath feel ceremonial.

The roar around me does not feel kind, exactly.

Kindness would be the wrong word for this room.

The sound feels like a door opening under heavy protest.

Rikka stands beside my bench with her arms folded and her mouth pulled into a savage grin. “You did not scream.”

“I thought about it.”

“Thinking is permitted.”

“That is generous.”

“Do not grow sentimental. Your cut was ugly.”

“My cut got the job done.”

Her grin widens, and several Reapers nearby hoot approval. Across from me, a gray-skinned warrior with carved beads woven through his beard pounds the table hard enough to jump the bowl beside his elbow.

“She speaks like dock iron,” he says.

“I have no idea what that means,” I say.

“It means ugly, useful, and hard to break.”