if she somehow knows how much I fear her being harmed. How badly I want to reach out to her, to cup her cheek in my hand and run my fingers over her skin as her luminous eyes gaze up into mine.
One day. One day not far from now, I’ll do just that, once I’ve managed to convince myself that I’m not completely losing my mind. When I know beyond a doubt that this beautiful creature is my jalshagar, blessed by the Precursors that I still do not believe truly exist.
She throws me a final, beaming smile and a cheeky wink before turning back to Varia and Marion. I watch her rejoin the two other women and lead them deeper into the market, toward the meat and livestock section, bidding me a quick farewell with a wave of her hand.
She follows directions beautifully. She moves purposefully, perusing each of the stalls. As she consults her half of the list, she inspects each item she needs, ensuring they’re of the highest quality before speaking to whomever is in charge about delivery options to the ship.
She’s so confident, so sure of herself. I can’t help but chuckle to myself as I think of how I’d once thought her to be a wilting flower, in constant need of protection. But she doesn’t falter for even a moment as she speaks with these strangers, a human woman on a planet so far from her home, not seeming to care at all how precarious her situation is.
Or, if she does, maybe she appears so nonchalant about it all because she knows I’m only a few steps away. Maybe, on some level, she knows she’s my jalshagar, and I’ll kill anyone who lays a malicious finger on her.
After finishing her first transaction, she just barely turns toward me. She glances over her shoulder, almost shyly, and meets my gaze. I nearly come completely undone as her lips pull into a precocious grin. A moment later she moves onto the next stall, and I know then I’ll follow her anywhere.
Chapter Nine
Lamira
“Hey.” Varia slows her pace enough that we walk abreast through the teeming, odiferous Kyvos marketplace. “What’s up with Grantian? Why is he skulking a block back?”
“He figured he was drawing too much attention to our group, and he was right.” I shrug, downplaying the fact that I ache for his presence. I’m trying not to take it personally.
“Yeah, I noticed a lot of stares, too.” She gestures at the market. “A lot of different sapients are here, but we were the only mix of Kilgari and human.”
What she says is true. This type of no man’s land attracts sapients from all corners of the galaxy. To our side, a lanky Alzhon with a metal plate on his temple squints intently at a power converter circuit board while the Kilgari proprietor looks on and rubs his palms together in glee. A pair of Shorcu peer down the scope of second hand blaster rifles, and judging from the scowls on their scaled, three-eyed faces they are none too impressed. Meanwhile, the boisterous laugh of an Odex chef carries out into the main thoroughfare of the market as he hawks his authentic, hearty Rauth stew.
Since we’re on the edge of League and IHC space, there’s a human presence as well, but it’s far from a sanctioned one. These are the loners—the outcasts and the criminals who can’t abide normal society, so they cluster at places like Kyvos. Somehow, I find their presence more disturbing than that of the alien sapient races.
There’s a kind of quiet desperation among humans when they interact with non-Alliance sapients. I think it’s because we know we’re smaller, weaker, and more fragile than most of the galaxy at large. That kind of knowledge can make you feel quite vulnerable.
Marion is sort of the unofficial leader of our little shore leave sortie, so Varia and I follow in her wake as she peruses one stall of produce after another. She’s carrying a datapad with an application that compares the nutritional value of nearly every foodstuff in the galaxy and how safe it is to consume for different sapient species. I don’t know how she tells some of the things apart; for example, an Alzhon prickle pear is green, spiky, and about six inches long, but that’s almost exactly what the highly venomous trukula pod native to the Shorcu home world looks like.
I’m glad I’m not the one in charge of buying our food, or everyone would