I’ll do anything for you.”
“I already know that. And I know that I haven’t been here very long, but it already sort of feels like my other life is fading away?”
He put his hand over my heart. “Just keep beating because it feels like my other life before you is fading away as well.”
I kissed his chin, and he closed his eyes. “Such easy affection. And you never extract a payment for it.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll demand your smiles and quiet moments.”
He took my cheeks in his hands. “They’re yours, always. Now we have to figure out how to save this girl.”
I walked to the edge of the window and looked outside. The view really was spectacular. This was a dusty, dirty planet, and yet their ancestors had chosen to come here, had done it deliberately because what came for them in the future was worse than this. And yet, I found it to be the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
“I don’t suppose we could just ask for her back.”
His voice was grim when he said, “If someone goes to Reamer territory to negotiate, if that is ultimately our plan, you can bet that person will not be you. You are too precious.”
He seemed to want to weigh the moment down with meaning or import, but I couldn’t do that right then. Not up here, in the air, so close to the sky. Instead, I nudged the subject back to our refuge.
“This is a communications station,” I said, indicating the com panel. “And I’m guessing by all the lights that you have at least a backup energy source here. I’m not an engineer, but I am a professional communicator”—poetry is absolutely communication—“and I’d be willing to give it a try.”
Something approaching panic flitted across his face. He paled, and his mouth drew taut, like he’d sniffed something rancid.
“We are forbidden,” he said.
“But sending out a signal would be a way we could ask the Reamers to return the other survivor—and as a bonus, nobody would have to actually go to their territory. Nox told you when I got here that the Reamers had scavenged a lot of high-tech stuff from the wreckage, and if they knew what to take, that means they have some familiarity with technology. They just might have receiver equipment and—”
I didn’t know what it was in his face that made me stop talking, made me stop thinking about the Reamer hostage, made me freeze. Certainty settled in my chest, wild and horrible at the same time, like I’d swallowed a hurricane. “Astor, you’ve used this com panel, haven’t you?”
He opened his mouth, closed it. Panic. That’s what panic looked like on his face.
“When?” But I knew.
“Not just that panel,” he said, his voice dry and cracked. “This one, too.”
Red lights, lined up like soldiers. Buttons with safety covers, to keep them from being pressed accidentally. The arrangement screamed weapons control.
Did you blow up my ship? But I couldn’t force my mouth to form the words. My heart was beating so hard, it felt like it fought to escape my chest. Guilt was written clearly on his face, and he stood there, his posture slightly curled in on itself, waiting for me to come at him. He was used to being at the center of barbs and attacks. Anger.
But what I felt wasn’t fury.
I forced myself to pull in a long breath, fill up my lungs completely, and then count as I exhaled. One, two, three, four.
“Well,” I said steadily, turning to the outgoing communications array, “let’s use this one to contact the Reamers.”
He didn’t respond right away. “Bianca, ask me what you didn’t ask.”
I smiled but felt no warmth in it. “After I did such a good job repressing the need?”
He ran a hand down my back. It wasn’t steady. That was when I realized it, he’d picked here, he’d picked now, because he wanted me to know and he wanted me to reject him. To throw him out of my heart.
“Did you do it on purpose?”
His mouth fell open. “No. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I’d had another incident with the Baron. The others forget between events how bad it gets. They can put it aside. But I never forget. It adds up, gets to me. Sometimes, it gets to be too much.”
Astor’s truth was hard, but it was his, and I could practically feel it like my own. “And so you did what?”
“I came in here drunk and stupid.