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“Quickly.”
She was already up and moving, padding out of my room and down the hall. I watched her duck into the lavatory and pull the door closed behind her. And not a second too soon. A moment later Torgus came around the corner, stalking toward me with a sour look on his face.
“Where is she?” He asked, scanning the cabin behind me suspiciously.
My eyes slid to the closed door without a word and he looked over his shoulder before coming inside and pulling my door closed behind him, blocking my exit. I sighed, already knowing what would come next.
“What are your intentions?”
“My intentions are to return her to her people,” I answered innocently enough.
He looked around the room again, wrinkling his nose. “You better make sure she gets there.”
“I don’t recall asking for your advice.”
He shot me a glare, snorting his disapproval before turning to go. When he pulled the door open, Cosma was standing on the other side. She looked up at him in surprise, stepping out of the way just enough for him to push past her with another huff.
“What’s his deal?” She asked, shooting him a wary look over her shoulder as she came in.
“It’s Torgus. He’s always like that. Are you ready?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. Lead the way.”
I locked my cabin door on the way out and we walked together down to the docking port where I’d left my ship. As I opened the top hatch and offered my hand to help Cosma into the back seat, I was aware of a certain disappointment that she would not be in my lap this time around. Still, that was probably for the best.
I dropped into the front seat and pulled the hatch closed around us, handing her a headset so we could communicate in flight. When she put it on, her voice came through, tinny and distorted and I gave her a quick wave to show that her microphone was working.
A moment later, I flipped the switch on the ignition, and my ship stuttered to life. Typing in the code on my console, I opened the docking bay doors and steered us out into wide open space.
Darkness closed in around us and there was something deeply intimate about being here with Cosma. I’d never had a woman alone in my ship like this. Not that it mattered. I couldn’t even turn around to see her, much less touch her. But that didn’t change the fact that her presence seemed to fill the entire cockpit, reminding me of all the ways I’d touched her the night before. It was distracting to the point I worried I might steer us astray. A man could get lost out here with such a distraction at his side.
And that’s what she was, too. A distraction. Something to take my mind off of my struggles and sadness. But it meant nothing. It couldn’t mean anything. She wanted to go back to her people. I had work to do. I would not stop until I had recovered Mia’s ashes, and even then, I was not sure what I would do next. This had become my whole life, and there was no room for anything else, even if it might have been nice to imagine it for a little while. What it would be like to have a partner who truly believed in you and wanted to be close to you.
“How far to the outpost?” Cosma’s wobbly voice cut through my thoughts, reminding me she was real, not just a tantalizing thought.
“It’s not far. At our current speed, we should be there within four hours.”
“And what are we going to do when we get there?”
“Search for Mia.”
There was a long pause, and when Cosma spoke again, she sounded unsure of herself. “Malik… are you sure they have her? Torgus said-”
“I don’t care what Torgus said,” I snapped, cutting her off harshly.
She did not speak for a while after that. Instead, we rode in tense silence and I stared straight ahead, losing myself among the distant stars so I would not have to face the guilt that was growing heavy in my belly like a rock.
“I do not know if they have her,” I admitted quietly. When Cosma did not speak, I continued. “I know it is unlikely. But I promised I would keep her safe. If I allow myself to think that they threw away her ashes, I will have to suffer her loss all over again. I do not think I am ready for that.”
I hated the weakness in my voice. I hated she had brought the truth out of me after all this time. Torgus and I had fought over Mia so often, but even he knew to let me have my obsession. Not Cosma, though. With one simple question, she wreaked havoc in my head, shining a bright light on the things that I was too afraid to see before.
“You are a good brother,” she whispered, and her words nearly took my breath away.
How could she be sure? She knew nothing of my past. She didn’t know the way I tormented Mia when we were little, or the way I teased her through our adolescence. In truth, I did not become a good brother until everything went wrong, until they chased us from our home and forced us to settle aboard the Vaclanheim. And I did not deserve Cosma’s sympathy now. Not when it was so obviously misplaced.
“What about you? Do you have any siblings?” I asked, eager to turn the conversation away from myself.
“Not really. I mean, my mother was a working woman on Kychek, so there’s a good chance I have some biological connection through one of the men she was sleeping with. But I was raised alone. That’s the only life I know.”
