Page 121 of Red Scale Daddy
Something cold moves through me, slow and mean. I have faced weapons fire, vacuum, claws, and commanders with less mercy than a malfunctioning airlock. None of it has everunsettled me like the look in her eyes when she says that. Danger is simple. Danger comes at you with teeth, and you either kill it or it kills you. Roma is staring at salvation and turning herself into the knife she thinks she needs to cut it free.
I look at her hands on the console, small and steady and ruthless with purpose.
“You’d burn yourself down,” I say.
Her mouth trembles once before she locks it still. “That is melodramatic.”
“You’d burn me down too.”
She says nothing.
That does me in worse than a yes.
I turn away for half a second, staring out at the dead ships drifting across the viewport. My own reflection hangs faintly in the glass—blood on my side, torn fabric, scales marked from the fight, golden eyes staring back at me like some fool who only now noticed he walked willingly into a furnace.
I came on this mission thinking death might be useful if it finally had a point. I figured her father was the story, and I was just the muscle dumb enough to help her reach the last page of it. That was clean. Easy. Almost funny.
Now I know better.
The old man matters because he matters to her. The signal matters because it has her by the throat. The mission matters because it is the shape of the cage she built around her own heart and called it love.
But her?
Gods help me, she matters more than the damned signal.
“Listen to me,” I say, turning back.
Her chin lifts. “I am listening.”
“No, you’re waiting for me to stop talking so you can keep running.”
Her eyes flash. “We are not having this conversation while navigating an unstable drift corridor.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Dux.”
“You can be mad about it after you don’t get us killed.”
She stares at me with enough heat to cook the air between us. “Move away from the console.”
“No.”
“This is my ship.”
“Then act like you want it to still exist tomorrow.”
Her hand moves toward the manual input, fast and sharp, but I put my palm over the control before she can execute the tighter course correction she’s been angling toward. She freezes, not because I’m hurting her, but because I’ve crossed a line she keeps electrified.
“Take your hand off my console,” she says, each word precise.
“Tell me that course doesn’t shave the margin too thin.”
Her eyes cut to the display.
“That course reduces travel time.”
“Tell me it doesn’t shave the margin too thin.”
