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“Oh…” I tuck my hands behind my back. “I understand. Well, it was nice seeing you again, Vala. Thanks for thinking of me.”
He bows his head. “I am glad you will have company for the night. How long will you be staying?”
Kalla watches his brother closely with brows furrowed. “Only tonight. I made the trip specifically to see to the issue with Kaye’s safety. Since you’ve so graciously dealt with it, I’ll have to return to business as usual tomorrow.”
My stomach bubbles up with dread. I suspected this wouldn’t be a long visit, but a single night?
“All the more reason I should leave you this time with your female,” Vala says, leaning forward to hand me the dumplings. “You will have to help me with the speeder first.”
He limps toward the door to the balcony, and Kalla moves to follow. But I toss the dumplings on the tabletop and tug on my mate’s sleeve. He turns toward me with that light smile he reserves for my eyes alone. His palm finds my cheek with a tender stroke.
“I know you’ve been waiting a while to see me, but I’m right here. It’ll only take a moment to help Vala. I might’ve squished his speeder a bit…”
“It’s not that,” I whisper, watching Vala step onto the balcony and peer over the edge. “Aren’t you going to say something to him? After all this time?”
His jaw tightens. “I would if I knew what to say. I wasn’t expecting this. I’m still in shock.”
“Don’t let him walk away without at least telling him you care about him,” I say.
He blows out his breath. “These Deadheads… They don’t understand such things.”
“He’s your brother, and he’s more than that. He’s been looking for you. You know that, right?”
“I knew that.” He admits. “But what is there to say?”
“The truth,” I say, shooing him. “Go.”
With a dazed nod, he turns to follow his brother out onto the balcony. I watch surreptitiously as I open the dumpling bag. This will do for dinner. They’re leftovers from the restaurant, and since they’ve already begun to defrost, we might as well eat them. Lakkavi’s recipe is magical, the black dough melts in your mouth, neatly folded around a secret mixture of spices, herbs, and whatever good quality meat he has brought in recently.
Kalla rests his hand on Vala’s shoulder and speaks. Vala pauses, stiffening as if he’s not sure how to respond. But soon, he finds a reply and the brothers are exchanging more words. Whatever it is, it relaxes me, even if they’re swapping statements about the weather. What was I expecting? An outpouring of love? They’re still two traumatized boys who became soldiers. They’re still healing. But maybe this can be a new beginning.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX
KALLA
“I knowyour mate might be waiting, but there are things to be said between us.”
Vala stiffens at my touch on his arm. I nearly tear it away. I can’t forget what they made him; it’s in every interaction. His eerily calm expression, his strange reactions to a touch of affection.
“I had words in my mind for such an encounter, but now they are all flying away from me,” he says. “I have been looking for you. And your own mate thought that I was dead, although I find it difficult to believe that you thought the same, Ashbringer.”
I snort. “You should know that rutting name is nonsense to frighten Azza soldiers.”
“Do you deny it, though? You knew I was alive, likely heard through your pirate comrades that I was seeking you out. So, do you wish to speak with me, or are you only doing it because your kind-hearted mate directed you to?”
“I was rushed when I told her of you. We haven’t had enough time together, my mate and I… She assumed you were dead from that attack. What does it matt—”
“Am I dead to you?”
I startle at the look on his face, not the face of a Deadhead soldier at all. Teeth gritted, jaw clenched, eyes slit with hurt—Funny, how that misery makes him resemble me more closely.
“Tell me that one more time, and I will never find myself in your presence again. I will make it easier for you to mourn me.”
“What I said that day was unforgivable,” I rasp. “I see it hasn’t left your mind. Well, it hasn’t left mine either.”
He nods, casting an anxious glance out at the city lights and the bustling lanes of sky traffic in the distance.
“I regret everything I said to you then,” I tell him. “I regret it so deeply that I think about it every day, wondering over and over how I could have left that planet with you. And I never come up with a solution. But I beat myself over that loss just to reopen the wound.”
