Page 129 of Alien Burn

Sereya nodded, looking ahead into the crowded hold.

“She thinks Dhomhes is interested in her.”

Or she had decided he ought to be, and would keep rearranging people until the room looked the way she wanted. He had declared himself to Sereya. They were in Courtship. Roemary knew that, however often she behaved as though the choice remained hers to make.

“She wanted to prove it. Told me to sit elsewhere so he'd come to her instead of⁠—”

She stopped.

“Instead of you,” Adryel finished.

Sereya didn't answer.

Across the hold, Roemary shifted in her seat. Sereya kept her eyes forward. She could feel Adryel studying her, and she made herself endure that too.

“And you went along with it,” Janae said.

“I always go along with it,” Sereya said.

The answer came so readily that she hated it. She had refused the packet. She had left the rooms. This morning she had walked toward Dhomhes when fear wanted her to walk past him.

Yet here she sat, precisely where Roemary had sent her, explaining their friendship with the sentence she had used to survive it.

There was something else she could do here.

“Be careful.”

She leaned close, her voice low enough to stay between them.

“I don't know what she's planning. But she's planning something.”

Adryel held her gaze.

Sereya waited for disbelief. For the reasonable question of why she hadn't said something sooner. She could have answered with a name and a grave and the memory of telling a kind woman too much, but she wasn't ready to put those things in the hold of a transport full of listening people.

“Thanks for the tip.”

It was enough.

She looked away before her face could reveal how much.

The transport rocked. Somewhere forward, someone called to the last staff coming aboard. Sereya folded her hands and tried to slow her breathing. It seemed impossible that she had said so little and felt so exposed.

Beside Adryel, Janae suddenly straightened.

“I have to go,” she said, already rising. “Khalzin⁠—”

She squeezed Adryel's hand and hurried toward the ramp. Sereya caught a glimpse of Khalzin there, Janae reaching him as the ramp began to rise, and then the closing hull took them out of sight.

Air washed through the passenger area. It smelled as though it had been saved from the transport's previous occupation.

“They need to clean their filters,” Adryel muttered.

Sereya glanced at her and almost smiled.

Then she saw Roemary watching across the seats. The smile went away before she could keep it.

She stayed where she was.