Valiant,” one of the medics remarked. “Let me reach out to Risk. He’ll tell us how to get her stabilized.”
The entire ship started to vibrate, and she blindly flailed for support, grasping onto Cipher’s gloved hand. He leaned over her, pulling off his glove, and stroked her face with his bare fingers. “Look at me,” he commanded. “You’re okay. We’re taking off. It will be a little rough for a few minutes while we ascend and then we’ll level off. The gurney is locked in place, and you have a harness keeping you on it.”
“Stay,” she said weakly. “Please.”
He ran his thumb along her chin and smiled encouragingly. “I’m right here with you.”
A medic reached up over the gurney and snapped a carabiner similar to the one on her climbing harness to an overhead mount. It allowed him to work without sliding around as the ship tilted sharply up towards the sky. Cipher slid a few inches but held onto the gurney with his free hand to anchor himself in place. He had taken his promise to stay with her seriously.
She watched his handsome face, marveling at the way he had come for her. When the skin traders had nabbed her, she had been sure that was it. No one ever escaped them. No one ever saw the girls and boys and young women who went missing ever again. Sick and unable to fight back, she had accepted she was either going to die on that mountain from whatever horrible disease had taken hold, or she would slit her own throat before letting a stranger rape her.
But here she was, on her way to space, safe with Cipher. He had tracked her down and saved her, and she would never be able to repay him.
Looking up at him through her bleary vision, she sensed he didn’t expect any sort of payment. He wasn’t that sort of man. His worried expression and reassuring caresses convinced her that he had come for her because he felt the same pull she did. Their gazes clashed, and she knew in that moment that she had been wrong about what happened between them at the cabin. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Overwhelmed but feeling secure with Cipher at her side, she stopped fighting against her exhaustion and let go. She drifted away to the sound of Cipher’s voice, certain she would wake up to him at her side. Just as she expected, he was right there next to her when she came to in a brightly lit room.
“Brook, my name is Risk. I’m the physician who will be treating you tonight.” Like the other sky warriors she had met, he towered over her and had wide shoulders and muscular forearms. He wore a different type of uniform, a utilitarian sort of top and pants.
Cipher ran his thumb along the back of her hand, drawing her attention. “Risk is the best. He’ll take very good care of you, Brook.”
Overheated and cramping, she nodded. Before she could ask if anyone else saw the thin snakes crawling out of the ceiling, Risk asked, “Have you claimed her?”
Cipher brushed damp strands of hair from her eyes and forehead. His tender gaze helped her ignore the slithering snakes for a moment. “She’s mine.”
“Do I have your authorization to treat her?”
“Yes.”
Risk unlooped a strange device dangling around his neck and stuck two ends in his ears. As he leaned toward her, he said, “When she’s better, we can arrange to put her through the bride protocol.”
Not liking the sound of that but much more concerned about the spiders now crawling on the ceiling, she blinked rapidly. When they didn’t disappear, she managed to speak, her voice rough and dry. “Can we move to a room without snakes and spiders?”
Risk’s expression changed from relaxed to alert. He leaned closer and examined her eyes with a light so bright it hurt. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, his skin covered in a strange glove made from thin material like rubber. “We need to get her fever down. She’s hallucinating. Much more of this and she’ll seize.”
Cipher was suddenly pushed away from her side, and her hand grasped futilely for him. More medical personnel crowded around her bed, and she closed her eyes to avoid seeing the writhing mass of snakes and spiders on the ceiling. Her sick brain was losing its grip on reality, and she couldn’t bear to look.