The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,88
buttons. They were going to knock me out to calm me down. “No,” I said to the healer. “Not now.” I forced myself up to a sitting position. “Those men that you called savages, they’re my husbands. I love them, and they love me. Where are they now? What did you do with them?”
Brent looked at the doctor sharply. “Give us a second, and if you repeat a word she just said to even your religious confessors, I will have your whole family killed.”
The doctor turned and ran from the room. There was the Brent I knew well.
He turned hard eyes on me. “Whatever happened on that planet, it will stay where it happened. Do you understand? Your so-called husbands are going to find themselves handled by a true government now. Military and settlers are on their way there to take over and bring the locals in line. Savages fighting each other like this is something out of history. I have no tolerance for it. They will find the true way. Or they will die. Either way, they will never see you again, and you will never tell a soul that you were married or any of the other things you did down there.” He rose. “Get some rest. Your new heart will be a new start. A real one. Love them. What a ridiculous concept.”
That last was a mutter under his breath as he swept from the med bay, leaving me alone. I pulled in another breath, and it was slightly less painful this time. They must have knocked me out for quite a while to stabilize me. This last attack had been worse than all the others, and I’d been sure it was the last one. I’d been resigned to my fate, to my death, even though the idea of leaving my men made me so, so sad. Our time together had been bright at least, the best ending I could imagine for someone like me.
Only, right now, watching the sliding door vibrate with the aftershock of Brent’s slamming it closed, I realized something even brighter.
I didn’t want to die. Not like this. Not alone, away from them.
I needed to find them, save them. We were a family. And besides, damn it, I still had first nights pending with Astor and Mattis. Not to mention a thousand nights with all of them, and days, too. A whole lifetime crammed with possibilities stretched out in front of me. I’d never let myself believe before, but they had shown me that nothing is impossible.
I sat up, waited for the spinning and the burst of nausea to settle, and went to work pulling needles out of my skin. I would go to Jooron fucking Five and get the metal heart. And then I would go back. Home. He couldn’t stop me.
Just wait for me, my loves. I’m coming home.
Astor
“Come on, we can’t hold the last transport any longer. We gotta go,” Mattis said, ducking into the lab. Astor crammed a couple more books into his pack. He’d gotten distracted, remembering her reading them, teaching him. Her voice.
And his own stupid, stupid plan for saving her, which looked like it was failing in the most spectacular way.
He grabbed one more item, didn’t even look at it, and shoved it into the pack. “Yeah, coming.”
The tunnels leading down had collapsed in the first orbital bombardment after the invaders took Bianca. Some of their people had been trapped, had suffocated in the dark. The ancient throne of skulls had most likely been crushed, turning the whole history of their people to mere dust. Astor took every hit, every death, every destroyed building and animal and hope onto his conscience. Guilt was eating him alive, and it was everything he managed not to just sit down right there in the middle of his mostly ruined lab and wait for the next bombardment, which would end him, too.
“So coming usually means moving. Like with your feet? Come on.”
Astor peered at Mattis, almost expecting a grin to match the lighter tone, but even Mattis had lost his joy lately. Even he couldn’t summon a smile. Shit had to be bad.
“Torrin will kill me if I don’t get you out of here, man. So you got a death wish, fine, but at least evacuate so I don’t get squashed.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Astor said, but he made himself move. For Mattis’ sake. “He doesn’t want to see any more death.”