Honor Lost (The Honors #3) - Rachel Caine Page 0,1
revenge. The Abyin Dommas had, countless millennia ago, ended the rule of the Elder Gods by singing them to sleep: a slave race that had killed its tormentors. Or at least, most of them. Lifekiller had been sealed away, asleep, as close to death as they’d been able to manage.
A thick, purple thread of regret pulsed through our bond. Human regret—we’d meant well and thought we’d had little choice . . . but look at what it did, that decision. Our Starcurrent-soul’s emotions were more complex, layers of colors that spoke of anguish, certainly. Loathing. Fear. But so much more.
We broke, like a puzzle knocked to pieces—Leviathan, Abyin Dommas, and humans, scattered into smaller selves until we reclaimed all our separate skins, and I was suddenly back to just me.
Zara Cole.
Alone.
And it hurt so much.
“Bea?” I reached out, slapping the floor that was also Nadim’s skin, and Nadim instantly wrapped around me like a warm blanket—not physically: my body was ice-cold from shock, but my soul was drenched in warmth. Dangerous. I needed to get myself together and take care of my physical needs. For one thing, I felt badly dehydrated. At the same time, I needed to pee so bad it made tears well up in my eyes. “Beatriz!”
“Here,” she whispered.
I turned my head. Beatriz lay on her side, facing me. Her hair was loose, curls tumbling across her eyes, and she looked paler than she should. Trembling, like me. Too hard to get up, so I slow-rolled over and put my arms around her. She sank into me with a sigh of relief, and for a few seconds we just held on to each other while Nadim cradled us both.
Group hugs with intelligent spaceships. We might be fighting gods and monsters out here in the black, but at least we had this.
“I need to pee,” Beatriz said, and I tried not to laugh because if I did, I’d lose total control of my bladder.
“Yeah, me too,” I said, and rose onto my knees, then my feet.
I had to lean on Nadim, but I steadied enough to pull Beatriz upright. I didn’t let go of her hand; it was starting to warm up a little. She didn’t pull away either. We stumbled back to our quarters and parted there, each to our own bathroom. Intense relief, the kind that left me shaky. After I washed up and threw some cold water on my face, wrapped a blanket around me over my clothes . . . I felt more myself. I looked surprisingly good in the mirror. Healthy. I particularly liked my grow-out today. Funny how the little things mattered in the middle of fighting a god.
Nadim said, with a light touch of amusement, You are so strange.
“Damn right.” I laid my fingers against the skin of the wall. Felt a pulse and saw light zip through Nadim’s flesh like cool lightning. He liked that. So did I. “We won.”
More of an impasse, he whispered inside my head.
“Yeah, I know, but let’s celebrate a little anyway. In a couple of minutes, we can be all stressed and terrified again, but right now, just . . . be.”
I am being, Zara. The feeling that Nadim sent rushing through me stole my breath, like cool water and spring wind and sunlight on skin. Intense and personal. I am here, this moment, with you. And that is all I wish.
I couldn’t reply to that because damn, but I let him know without words how much I felt the same. This wasn’t what I guess most people thought of as love, but it was . . . better. Stronger. Fiercer. And I wasn’t afraid of that now, or ashamed, or confused. I just was.
We were.
Then I felt Bea standing next to me, and I turned and said, “I want to kiss you so bad right now.”
“I thought you’d never say it, meu anjo,” she said, and I was blinded by the brilliance of her smile. Nadim’s translation whispered the meaning of her words to me. My angel.
I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and the soft sweetness of her lips was something I’d never known before. It felt like coming home and finding a new land, all at the same time. A flirt of tongues—she tasted like that cinnamon coffee she loved. A gentle shiver crept over me because I could feel Nadim, just beyond Bea’s borders, and he practically glowed with the shared sensations.