The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,31

into the room, practically dragging me with him as he did. Trading his hold on my arm with a hold on my hand, he pointed at Dreama. “Get our people out of the tunnels. See to it that Nox is secured in one of the bedrooms here. He is this hurt because he saved my life. And you, Bianca, I require your assistance. Now.”

He’d no sooner made that proclamation than he dragged me to the back room with the books. One of the men I didn’t know followed us, dropping a bag on the floor with a thud before he exited in a hurry.

Torrin let me go. “You are unharmed?”

“Yes.” I’d never been alone with Torrin before. It was like he took up all the space in the room with his presence alone.

“That is good news. The Reamers have much of your technology. The only good news is that they don’t yet seem to know how to use it. They stumbled upon making one of them work, and Nox is hurt because of it.” He bent over and, with his good arm, opened the bag. “What are those?”

I stared at the contents for a long second. “Weapons.”

He took a long breath. “Forgive me, I was not clear. What kind of weapons are they?”

“They…” I swallowed, forced myself to think. I’d only seen these things on transport security checks and the odd military parade, and I’d never been close to one. I had to remind myself that sitting there, without a delivery system, these couldn’t hurt me. Wouldn’t. My mouth was bone dry when I replied, and I couldn’t stop looking at the bag full of horror. “In space, you can’t use projectile weapons, like guns or crossbows, right? If a bullet punctured a spacecraft, the whole ship could depressurize. The Union security forces had a whole string of botched boardings where they inadvertently killed a bunch of rebels instead of arresting them, so Union scientists came up with this technology. They’re called burrs, and if one gets shot at you, it attaches itself first to your suit or clothing, then secretes a sort of acid, burrows through to your skin, secretes a different chemical, and burrows through that, and on.”

I looked up at Torrin, surprised by the look of agony on his face. “So they’re inside him right now? Eating him alive?”

“All ancients and holies,” I breathed. “No. Not Nox.”

“Do you know how to stop them? Is there a way to stop them?”

“No, they react automatically on impact…” But right at that moment, it was almost like time reversed. Paused. We were here in this room, Astor and me, flirting in and out of that peculiar tension that had developed between us, him staring at me in the most disconcerting way, and me reading aloud, frustratingly unable to pay attention to any of the words. Except, now I heard the words, clear as anything. I handed Torrin the book. “Find the page that says two twenty-one.”

He looked at me like I was insane, but he did as I said. He opened the book, found the page.

“Your world has, or used to have, acid lakes near here, near the mountains, and apparently there are islands within those lakes that produce some kind of protein-rich delicacy called felanthes. They were sources of frustration for many years, and many gatherers died trying to get to the islands. But then the people figured out a way to harvest the felanthes safely. The author of this book describes a concoction that, when smeared all over a boat’s keel, would neutralize the acid and enable a person to reach the islands. He gives a recipe right there, on that page. I don’t know what any of those plants are, but Astor does. You free him from Baron the Great Asshole, we can help Nox.”

He might not have recognized my expletive, but he appreciated the sentiment. The tight, vicious smile he flashed when I said it carved its way through my belly. This man was danger personified, terrifying and at the height of his power. Given all I knew of authoritarian control, that mixture absolutely should not have been thrilling. But it was.

Torrin closed the book, handed it back to me, and folded my hand around its spine. His hand on mine was so electric, it should have thrown sparks. “I expect Mattis to arrive momentarily with my brother in tow. Nox is being moved to a room here within my quarters. What can we do to