Page 56 of Enslak

Now, feeling Enslak's massive body relaxing under my touch, hearing that deep, rumbling purr, I understood it differently.

This wasn't just comfort. This was need.

He'd been drugged, tortured, broken down to something barely sentient. And through all of that, some part of him had been screaming for this—for the simple comfort of a gentle touch.

"We're going to be okay," I whispered, more to myself than to him. "We're going to figure this out. I'm going to help you find your way back."

He rumbled in response, his massive shoulder pressed against mine, his breathing slow and steady and content.

And sitting there in the mouth of that cave, on an alien planet filled with dinosaurs and impossible beauty, with this broken soul purring under my touch, I felt something I hadn't felt since the moment I'd been shot in Hell's Kitchen.

Hope.

Chapter 12

Enslak

Seven days.

I counted them by watching the sun. Up over the trees. Down behind the mountains. Dark. Light. Again.

Seven times.

My head felt less heavy. Like someone had been sitting on my skull for a hundred years and finally stood up. Not gone. Just lighter. Light enough to think without everything sliding away before I could catch it.

No drugs here. No needles. No handlers with their chemicals that turned my thoughts to mud and made the world go gray at the edges.

Just this place. Just her.

Avalon. That's what she called it. I liked how the word sounded when she said it. Soft. The way her mouth shaped it.

I sat at the cave entrance, watching the forest. Behind me, she moved around the interior, tending to the supplies with quiet efficiency. She hummed while she worked. I'd never heard that before, someone making sounds simply because they wanted to, because the sound pleased them. Not screaming. Not orders. Not the wet noise of the pits.

Just humming. A small melody that drifted through the cave and settled somewhere in my chest like warmth.

I turned my head slightly. She was kneeling by the water containers, checking the seals, her dark hair falling forward over one shoulder. The morning light caught the angles of her face, the curve of her cheek, the way her jaw set in concentration when she was focused on something.

She was... I turned the word over in my mind, testing it. Beautiful. It seemed too small. Too ordinary for what I meant. But I didn't have a better one yet.

When she'd first come to my cell wearing Zarlak's face, I'd only known her by her scent. By how careful her hands were. By the quiet steadiness of her voice when she spoke to me in my own language and told me she'd come to take me home.

Now I could see her. Really see her.

Small. Much smaller than me, maybe five feet and a little more. But she moved through the world like she'd forgotten she was small, with the easy confidence of someone who'd never learned to make herself less. Her face had elegant lines, high cheekbones and a delicate nose, skin that looked warm even in shadow. She'd told me she was from a place called New York, on a planet called Earth. She'd told me a great many things in these seven days, talking in that constant, easy stream that had initially bewildered me and now felt as necessary as the sound of water.

Her eyes, though. Dark. Almost black in certain light. Large and expressive, framed by thick lashes, and I had learned to read everything in them even when her words outpaced my understanding. Fear. Relief. Sadness. Joy. A quick flash of humor before the laugh came. All of it visible there, open as water reflecting sky.

I had spent a great deal of time watching her eyes.

She laughed often, and that still startled me each time. The first time she'd laughed, that bright, genuine sound ringing off the cave walls, I'd gone completely still and stared at her. She'd noticed and laughed harder, covering her mouth with both hands.

Laughter had become one of my favorite things.

She talked constantly. A steady, unbroken current of words that filled the cave, filled the silence, filled the empty spaces in my head where the darkness used to crowd in and stay. Sometimes I understood her clearly. Sometimes the words slipped past me, meaning incomplete, and I could only catch the shape of things. But even then, the sound of her voice was its own kind of anchor. Like rain when you're already inside and dry.

I wanted to talk back.

The want was a physical thing, this pressure in my throat, words forming and dissolving before they could reach my mouth. I could feel them in there. Complete thoughts. Things I wanted to ask her, things I noticed about this place that I wanted to name aloud, things about her that I wanted her to know.