fooled me. He’d made me believe he was everything he wasn’t.
“Did he hurt you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. I glanced up and found Surral looking like a force of nature, ready to rip Shade up.
“Not like that,” I hastened to reassure her. “Not physically.”
I couldn’t help it. I rubbed my aching heart. I didn’t add any details. I didn’t tell her that he’d been about to act on the dead-or-alive bounty he’d been keeping a secret while he earned my trust. And I didn’t explain how he’d been waiting for the right moment to haul me in to the Dark Watch and claim his prize. All that had been next on his agenda—after the beautiful sex.
She was quiet for a long moment and then finally asked, “No sign of Gabe, then?”
I would have asked her the same question soon—her or Mareeka. Now I didn’t need to. If he still hadn’t checked in here in nearly a decade, he was either in prison, or dead.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Well, let’s not assume the worst,” she said, peeling off her surgical gloves.
Her words came out forcefully enough to make me think they were more for her benefit than for mine. At this point, I was pretty resigned to the worst.
“I lost my cat.” While I was confessing things, there was also that.
The ache in my chest grew. Poor Bonk. I hoped he got off that platform somehow. If he did, would he go feral on the streets? Fighting for scraps? I had all that food, the fancy litter… He would have had such a good life.
“I’m sorry, Tess.”
I bit my lip. “Yeah. Thanks. And I have no clothes,” I added, curling in on myself.
Surral turned to another cupboard and pulled out a pair of candy-pink scrubs with lime-green trim. I didn’t know where she got these things. It was as though color elves wove them during the night and then delivered them to Starway 8.
Or maybe her contacts in New India provided them. As a rich and established group with a colorful culture they’d held on to for eons, the Sector 15 planets were strong enough to get away with some snubbing of the Overseer’s drab example.
I put on the scrubs. They fit like a box, but at least they were almost long enough. My bare feet didn’t bother me. The floors here were never cold.
“I’d better go,” I said. “There’s a massive price on my head.”
“Wonderful.” Surral sighed. “Let’s check on Coltin first.”
I followed her to Coltin’s bed, a mix of hope and dread churning in my gut.
“It’s working!” I whispered. I could tell. He had slightly more color, and his breathing was less labored.
I felt his forehead. Still hot—but I hadn’t been expecting an instant miracle.
Relief settled my stomach but left a jangling impatience in its wake. I wanted him to be better now, really better, before I left. I wanted him to open his eyes, smile at me, and promise to be here the next time I came back.
I curled my hand against my middle to keep from selfishly waking him up.
Surral looked at him, and then all around her. “Great Powers, I can practically feel the life coming back into them.”
She checked Coltin’s vitals and wrote on his chart.
“Better.” She looked over at me, beaming. “Everything’s better, Tess.”
I felt like crying again, but they would have been happy tears. I leaned down and lightly kissed Coltin’s forehead.
“Should I wake him up?” Surral asked. “He’d want to see you.”
“No. Let him heal.” Rest was more important than a goodbye.
I wished I had something to leave with him, though. Coltin was the one who should have gotten my precious copy of Tales from the Dark. “Tell him I’ll bring him a book next time. And to work on his math.”
Surral chuckled. “Maybe coming from you, that’ll work.”
I figured he’d be charging around the Dark one day. I wanted him to know how to navigate.
Surral held out her hand, and I slipped mine into hers. She squeezed, and I thought it was a thank-you.
“To Mareeka,” she said.
“To Mareeka,” I echoed, and we left sick bay to the sound of the first groggy, weak child waking up.
She was asking for food, of course.
Chapter 25
“Annalee’s nose is on the wrong side of her face.”
Surral and I stopped, both of us turning to a boy with luminous ebony skin, an abundance of tight black curls, big nut-brown eyes, and what looked like a magician’s wand in his hand. He was wearing a cape