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Banna sees my panic starting and offers me a change of clothes. I nod slowly. It would be silly to refuse, right? Even though I don’t want to look away from Niko, not for a single second. I let Banna tend to me while the little medical bot does its work on Niko.
It’s a blur.
She takes me to a bathroom, the details of which I don’t remember. There are some towels and wipes to help get the blood off my skin. There’s a pot of healing cream that she applies to the bruises quickly appearing on my throat and my temple. She gives me a black dress, apologizing that it’s just a uniform for her waitresses that she had lying around. She makes sure to hand me Niko’sikani, which I stow away in my boot once again.
We return to the room where Lakkavi is kneeling beside Niko.
“The bot stabilized him,” he explains, “but the internal wounds call for a surgeon, and I can’t be sure whether he’s been hit with a poisoned blade.”
The world seems to slow as I wait for a determination on what that means.
“He might need a regen bath. I’m taking him home so he can see our best doctors and recover at the palace,” he says. “Quickly, follow me.”
I blink.Palace?
“How do we get there?”
“We don’t speak of that,” he warns, exchanging a glance with his wife. “Just follow. My personal ship is fueled well enough to make the trip. Banna, stay here. The staff should be able to finish tonight’s service without me.”
Banna nods and gets on her tiptoes to bid him goodbye with a kiss on his chin.
“Be safe.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY
RAINA
Lakkavi’s shipis small but luxurious, with even less space than Rossa’s “Gemstone.”
We enter straight into the bridge, which is not much bigger than the cockpit of a commercial airline. The Kar’Kali spares no extra time. He sets Niko down on a hard bench and straps down his limp body. Once I’m safely seated beside my mate, he starts up the vehicle. The only words he utters are to call the station’s traffic control for off-planet flight clearance.
We launch as soon as we’re given the go-ahead, and Lakkavi slams us into a forkline without warning once we break out of Station City’s atmosphere.
Between the rooftop launch pad access and the fact that this civilian ship is outfitted with a fork drive, I can tell business is booming at Traditions of Kar’Kal. Lakkavi is a wealthy man.
Which reminds me . . . we’re supposedly taking Niko to a palace. My head is spinning, and I start to think I simply misinterpreted the translation.
We switch forklines three times before I start to feel nauseous. Space travel has never bothered me this much. Moving this quick in such a small vehicle can’t be good for the fragile human equilibrium.
When we finally exit the forklines, I take some deep breaths while Lakkavi sets the system to a new setting.
“I can’t make the next segment of our journey any quicker,” he tells me apologetically. “We’ll be on this course for ten intervals, so I suggest you get some sleep. Now that we’re on autopilot, I was going to settle Niko in the cabin area.”
“I want to stay with him,” I say. I don’t want him to wake up alone.
Lakkavi nods as if he assumed nothing less.
The cabin is tiny. There’s just enough space to crabwalk inside and climb onto a queen-sized bed. It’s somewhat cramped for Niko’s body, but Lakkavi carries him in and lays him flat on his back. The older male doesn’t linger there with me and doesn’t say much else.
When I’m alone with my mate, I crawl into the crook of his arm and press myself gently against him. For a moment, I imagine what it would be like if he were awake. He would fold me in an embrace, insist the bed was the perfect size, and immediately slip his hands down my pants. I hold on to that fantasy and squeeze my eyes shut, willing time to move faster. And perhaps through that willpower alone, I fall asleep.
I wake up in darkness,hearing only hushed voices. I strain my ears to tune into the whispered conversation. It’s the lilting sound of Kar’Kali and knowing that language by its musicality soothes away any lingering fears brought on by my uncertain whereabouts.
All I know is that Niko is still beside me, but now I’m squashed against him in what feels like a hammock. We bounce gently, and I realize we are being carried.
“The female is fine, but she must be exhausted. There might be some minor wounds to check on . . .”
I can’t quite make out the second voice, but Lakkavi is explaining what happened to us.
