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“Kye,” I say. “What did you do?”
“I may or may not have gotten into asmallElixir smuggling operation.”
“Elixir?” I ask, my eyes widening.“Kye—you were only gone for two hours.”
“We still need to…I still have to…fuck,” he says, shaking his head. He sounds a little drunk–not much, just a little. I’ve gotten used to hearing his speech like this, slightly slurred, and I’m not sure if I like it. But he’s talking to me, and I definitely like that. He puts his hand on my leg, and picks his head up to look at me, his multicolored eyes narrowing as he does. “I had to help them.”
I shake my head. “Smuggling Hyperborean Elixir puts a target on our backs.”
“Carrying the future queen of Homeworld and her consort puts a target on our backs,” he snaps back. “Who cares if I took a little detour to help some people who need it? It’s not like we’re doing anything other than saving Homeworld, right?”
I don’t know how to answer him. We’re coming up against this more and more often, and I think there’s no way to solve it until we get to Homeworld. Until Fiona rules. “She’s going to be a good queen,” I say. “When she’s in charge, we’ll be able to help other people.”
“And she’ll declare war on the Hyperboreans?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Because she’s an expert at foreign policy,” he says. “And this is just an extension of that, right?”
I crook a finger under his chin, tilting his head up until his face is level with mine. “She will keep us alive,” I say. “She will save my entire species.”
He sighs, throwing himself back on the bed. It makes the mattress shift under his weight. I lie back next to him. “How do you figure it out, Ner?” he asks.
“Figure what out?”
“Which species are disposable,” he says. “Which people are disposable.”
A knot forms at the pit of my stomach. I wish I could explain to him that it’s not like that. That she doesn't think of it like that either.But I’m not sure if I can disagree with his analysis, even if the way he’s posed it makes my heart ache.
So we lie there in silence.
It isn’t a comfortable silence either; there are clearly things that both of us aren’t saying. I close my eyes and try to feel like this is normal, like we aren’t about to fight, when Kye abruptly rolls onto his side and tilts my chin toward him.
“I kissed her,” he says.
I want to smile, but the expression on his face tells me that I probably shouldn’t. I trail my fingers over his human arm, his skin soft and warm under my touch. He shudders.
“When we were trying to sneak the Elixir out, I needed help, and she was the first person I called,” he says. “I shouldn’t have…I just knew she was on world and I thought she might be able to do something. And I guess she’s still the first person that comes to mind when I need her.”
“So did she? Help, I mean.”
“Yes,” he says. “She helped.”
“Good.”
“And then I kissed her.”
I don’t know what to say to that—I don’t know what he wants me to say—so I just wait, instead.
“And it was fucking amazing,” he mutters. “Like…exactly how I remembered, except maybe even better.”
“Thatsoundsgood.”
“It’s not good, Ner,” he says, closing his eyes. “Fiona…”
“What?”
“There’s something I’ve needed to tell you for a long, long time,” he says. “When this all first started, I asked her to run away with me.”
