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Her face burned fiercely. She wanted to cry. She wanted to shrink into herself. She wished he would do something—anything. Anything was better than him dismantling her with these judgmental looks.
“Whatever you were doing here,” he said, “you should give it up now. It’s hopeless. Ifthisis the best humans can muster”—he gestured at the ruined ships—“it’s not going to get you anywhere. We’ll destroy every ship that comes through.”
He met her eyes frankly, snagging her into his stare. His irises were lavender with flecks of blue. He was more attractive than she’d been mentally prepared for, and it was sending her for a loop.
Something occurred to her.
A choice she’d delayed as long as she could.
She had knowledge that Caligher didn’t, and withholding it any longer would be another betrayal against him. Sharing it would spell betrayal against the human fleet.
But humans had bombed the Astral Reef unprovoked. It hadn’t been self-defense. They’d targeted the fuel bay… targeted resources.
Humans had done worse than that. There was a reason for Caligher’s fury. They’d hurt him, taken him prisoner, separated him from his friend. The signs of lingering trauma were obvious to her… and she feared it ran deeper than that.
So whose side was she on? She kept coming back to the same answer.
Whichever side kept Caligher out of their hands.
“That’s… not…” she started.
His gaze sharpened, cinching the voice out of her throat. It seemed impossible to speak without choking on her words. But she cared about him and needed to tell him the truth, so she pushed through the shame.
“That’s not all there is. Something bigger is coming.”
“What’scoming?” he asked.
She turned to her console, flames crawling down her back, and pulled up a 3D model of the Aerinus warship, rotating slowly on-screen to show off its guns.
It was an enormous construct. A slow-moving cube the size of a city, engineered to be indestructible.
“What the fuck is that?” he asked.
“That’s what’s coming. I don’t know where it is, but now I’m fairly sure I know what it’s here to do…”
She gave him room to look at the model, gauge the scale and come to terms with what he was looking at. She couldn’t stand the rage pouring off him in waves. When he called on Morwong, Lucca let herself out of the cockpit. Caligher ignored her retreat, but she heard his voice echoing through doors, into the rest of her meager ship.
She couldn’t sit there and listen to them discussing her betrayal.
Making for her cabin, she fell onto the covers, buried her face in the pillow, and burst into tears.
CHAPTER10
LUCCA
Lucca tiptoed around Caligher for the two longest days of her life.
The Selkie’s ambiance was as familiar as the rhythms of her own body, so she could pinpoint where he was at any given moment.
Caligher was a force of nature. His footsteps were heavy enough to tilt her light ship off its axis. He was the type of person she could absolutely see rocking the gondola, suspended above the county fair, as his companions held on for dear life. She wished the thought didn’t make her want to cry.
Sometimes his tail beat against things in his path. That was how she learned from several rooms over that the kitchen layout was too narrow for him. He constantly sent chairs spinning. She found this habit so endearing that she wanted to sink into a black hole forever.
To deepen her misery, she sometimes heard him muttering a curse or apology under his breath to the furniture he’d sent flying.
His sudden outbursts of laughter squeezed her heart in a bitter vice. She felt like the scum of the universe for wanting to be involved in whatever was amusing him.
She missed him. Desperately.
