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He glanced up at me when I sat down next to him. “Bored already?”
“There’s not really anything I can do to help until I learn the language, or like... literally learn anything. I’m pretty useless as I am.” I drew my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them and leaning my chin on top. “Not that it’s not interesting, I just hate feeling useless. It’s like when my dad got sick. It doesn’t matter what happens, or how bad it gets, all I can do is sit here and wait.”
“Endure,” he said, nodding. “Sometimes that is all you can do. Among my people, the ability to endure is seen as a great strength.”
As though hearing the words and not liking them, Jax turned to look at us, shooting Marex a daggered glare, and then me a look that was much more soft and concerned.
Far from offended, Marex smiled. “The young Thorzi adores you.”
“We’re trapped alone. I’m his only ally.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “It is the way of Thorzi. Our people used to be the same on the homeworld, but the Zathki have become a somewhat less... passionate people, during our stay on Zathkar. And with the constant dangers and uncertainty of their new homeworld, the opposite has happened to our Thorzi cousins. They are even quicker to become attached, choose a mate, and merge their lives.”
Merge their lives? Was he talking about getting married? Holy crap.
I looked back over to Jax, who was listening intently to the engineer, engaged and interested in what he was saying, but he still glanced up at me, flashing me that trademark grin of his.
It was kind of unavoidable at this point, wasn’t it? The moment we had crashed together, Jax’s life and mine had been merged. Maybe not in the way Marex was talking about, but in other, equally important ways.
Even if we were rescued the next day, Jax’s life would be intertwined with mine forever, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’d seen the heart of the man, knew what he most cared about in the moments when he thought he was going to die. Nothing more was necessary for me to know that he was someone I could trust completely.
I leaned back, sighing and letting my eyes drift shut. I’d gotten plenty of sleep, but sitting out there in the cold really made me want to curl up and take a nap. Maybe grab a few blankets and the heater from the ship first, and—
An ominous creaking sounded from somewhere in front of me, and my head flew back up, eyes whipping open just in time to see the already-listing ship fall even farther onto its side with a resounding crash. The cracking of ice beneath it sounded like a tortured scream.
Standing next to it with a horrified expression on his face was the engineer Jax had been talking to a moment earlier.
Because Jax wasn’t standing next to him anymore. I leapt to my feet and ran.
CHAPTER24
JAX
Iwas no engineer, and as much as I hated to admit it, the Zathki were knowledgeable. Yes, even about my ship. Yes, about Thorzi technology. And yes, I might have to admit that perhaps we were not so formidable and advanced as I liked to think.
On Thorzan, things were simple. Take from the planet. Survive. Indulge when possible, because there was always something waiting in the jungle that might take your life.
Here, even staying warm, simply walking outside of the tunnels or my ship was dangerous. So to get off this doomed moon, to get Wesley off it, there was no choice but to work with the Zathki, who had offered us aid and who knew how to survive on this planet far better than I ever would.
“Your starboard engine was damaged,” Thox informed me, scowling at the singe marks from Crux’s plasma gun. As if it were my fault we had been shot. It was only Wesley’s quick reflexes that had saved us from worse.
I stared at Thox straight, my arms crossed over my chest, eyebrows inching up until I could feel the wrinkle just below my hairline. “Indeed. Much was.”
The Zathki had given me a coat. For one of their people, it was large, but it still strained across my back, trapping my shoulders, the thick fur-lined leather threatening to split. In the front, it barely closed, held together by straps that had been attached to accommodate me.
He huffed, his nose flaring and puffing out a rush of steam. “It needs to be replaced. You can remove it?”
That was what these Zathki trusted me with—removing parts that were too damaged to fix. The grunt work of unscrewing things. And I told myself it was because I was strong and not because they thought I was particularly incapable.
And fine. I did not mind my Wesley seeing me heave an engine overhead. I could show off my strength for him, because when this day was over, it was me he would come to. Not Marex. No matter how they spoke, Wesley fit inmyarms and inmybed. I would not soon let him forget it.
Disassembling the engine from the rest of the ship was awkward, grueling work. The Zathki had some tools, but they did not put them readily in my hands, and in truth, they were less impressive than the tunnels they had carved or the miraculous tubes they had crafted for Crux’s lab.
They lacked large machines to roam the landscape. Perhaps they did not need them. More likely, they saved their resources for ships to raid other planets, knowing that there was nothing on Zathkar to save them.
It did not matter much, but I would have liked some of the resources we had at home—ladders and lifts and jacks and the like.
I had detached the left axle when I heard the first groan.
