Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,83
crashing this spaceship.”
“Oh no, that part definitely doesn’t matter. We’re crashing the spaceship, unquestionably.” He laughed again.
Her brow furrowed. “Sting, are you all right?”
He shook his head, trying to make the whirl of his thoughts fall into place. “No,” he decided at last. “Because you have not said that you will date me, but I can’t force you to answer. Because you are stronger than me, and because I only want what you want. And so I will wait for your answer as we fall.”
Straining against her harness, she reached across the space between their chairs to lay her hand on his arm, and he realized for the first time that the laser overload had shredded his tough Earther clothing. He was glad to be mostly bare again, because her fingertips on his skin were warmer than seemed possible in the failing life-support even though the touch sent an ache deeper in him than seemed possible.
Her dark gaze was liquid with tears. “You said we were a match because we are both monsters, but…” She withdrew her hand and curled it into her chest, as if she too were holding the memory of touching him. “I’m not anymore. The Cretarni took the zaps out of me.”
The borrowed warmth drained out of him. “Took your power? How?”
She shook her head. “They used the water purification system on the Atlantyri to separate components in my blood. They called it a light switch and said that the Tritonesse stole it from their developers to make it into a biogenetic weapon.” She gazed up miserably. “Me. But I couldn’t fight them off, and they took it. And now they’re going to use it to electrolyze the sea on Tritona and kill everything in the deeps.” She looked away from him. “And worse, there was a moment when I wanted them to do it. Not poison your world, but just…take away the zaps, let me be…”
“You,” he said. “You are still you, even without the power.”
But if she was no longer the mate to his monster, why did she need him at all?
He tried to focus on the ship controls, though the panels in front of him made even less sense than the suboptimal numbers would indicate.
“Lana, I think you need to fly the ship.”
She grimaced. “I thought you said I was bad at it. Doesn’t that make us less of a match?”
It made her even more precious in his eyes, when his protective lenses were down and when he pinged to the very truth. “Since we’re crashing anyway,” he murmured. “And I think I will do no better.” He touched the back of his head, and the webbing between his fingers came away slicked with his blue-green blood.
“Sting!” She jolted against the restraint harness again as if she’d forgotten about the straps as she tried to get to him.
He waved her back, with his not bloodied hand. “The blast… My catastrophic failure is imminent.” He tried to smile at her.
But from the way she flinched, he failed in that too.
She tightened her jaw. “Together,” she said between gritted teeth. “That’s the ideal. That’s a match.”
As they plunged downward, his vision narrowed and his arms felt shackled with heavier weapons than anything he’d ever carried. “Stay to the IDA lane,” he warned. “You stray, and automated planetary security will vaporize us, and then we’ll have no chance of…anything.”
He already had no chances left, not if she didn’t need a monster anymore.
His vision swam as if he were underwater. Were these…tears? The blast had rattled him harder than he’d guessed.
“Diverting resources to life support and nav,” she announced. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Transfer priority for life support to structural integrity,” he told her. “We can hold our breath, but we can’t survive reentry without a ship. Or at least most of it.”
Her hands flew across the controls, and the way she flicked and adjusted the controls made him tilt sideways in woozy wanting for her hands on him instead.
He might be dying.
“You are good at flying a spaceship,” he noted. “It’s the spaceships that failed you.” As he had. He’d been sent to retrieve her—and failed. He’d vowed to protect her—and failed. He’d tried to win her… Maybe he hadn’t entirely failed at that—her words through the vacuum while she stood on the bridge of the Cretarni ship would ring in his ears—but he couldn’t keep fighting for her now, not when she was finally free of her curse.