Page 62 of Silver Slayer

My hair, still damp from the loodfall, spilled over my shoulders in dark waves. Against my skin, the shawra glowed beneath my collarbone, its intricate silver lines pulsing softly with an almost living light. I pressed my fingertips against it. Heatspread beneath my touch, and something deep inside my chest answered with an ache I couldn't name.

Home.

The thought should have filled me with relief. Instead, all I could think about was how I was going to hide the shawra until it faded after I got back to Earth. My hand lingered over the mark.

Why did the thought of it fading away make my chest tighten?

I forced myself to step away from my reflection and searched through the wardrobe until I found a long strip of soft silver fabric, wide enough to serve as a shawl. It would have to do. I draped it across my shoulders, crossed it over my chest, and tucked the ends neatly into the dress's neckline, concealing the glowing mark.

The moment it disappeared beneath the fabric. A sharp pang of guilt settled in my stomach. It felt wrong. As though it were a betrayal to Vennox to cover it up?

Fresh boots next. They fit well enough. Whoever had left them here had guessed well.

I picked up the bio-analyzer from the bedside table where I'd set it, turned it over once in my hands, and set it back down. Eight weeks of clipping it to my belt every morning before I'd even put my boots on. I didn't need it here. The dome saw to that. I left it on the table and stood for a moment at the window.

The city spread below me in the last of the twin suns' light. The fountain caught the dying rays and scattered it, the arcing streams of lood scattering the dusk light into shifting, fractured brilliance before the suns slipped further down and everything faded back to silver.

The pathways between the outbuildings were filling with movement, small figures, warriors and women alike, the ordinary end-of-day traffic of a city going about its evening.

I pressed my palm to the glass and scanned the silver-haired males milling below.

There, on the path to the palace, was Mara. Brunnex's arm draped across her shoulders, hers looped around his waist, the two of them moving in that careful, listing way of someone being kept upright by sheer stubbornness and the person beside them.

Nullar followed close behind.

A group of males near the fountain, dressed in the same fur pants, came forward to walk with the injured Jurigon warrior as he and Mara entered the palace.

A handful of Trisess males in breechcloths meandered down a far-off pathway. Many Huren warriors in kilts moved between the outbuildings with the purposefulness of males who lived here and had somewhere to be.

None were Vennox.

I stood at the window longer than I should have, scanning the city’s pathways, and found nothing. Or rather, not him. He was somewhere inside this city.

Abruptly, I stepped back from the window.

I didn't need protecting anymore, or this weird tether I hadn't asked for to a male who made it very easy to forget I'd never needed anyone.

Vennox was home. He belonged here, in this beautiful city under this translucent dome, with his people. This was his world, notmine, and the sooner I remembered that the better for both of us.

I turned away from the window and the city and the conspicuous absence of a seven-foot silver warrior in the crowd below.

The lift was at the end of the corridor. Marie had said the cookery was on the ground floor. The other women would be there. There would be food, real food, hot food, anything that wasn't a field ration packet or whatever bizarre Yulineon cuisine the ship's replicator produced. There would be familiar voices and probably a great deal of talking at once, which was its own form of comfort.

And maybe, just maybe, he'd be there.

I caught that thought and held it, just for a second. Let myself have it. The simple, uncomplicated hope that I'd step out of the lift, and he'd look up when I walked in, and the distance would close without either of us having to figure out how to cross it.

I pressed the lift button and felt the hum as it rose toward me.

I could want that. I could want and still know where I was going and why. The two things could exist at the same time. The leaving and the wanting. The goodbye that hadn't happened yet.

The lift arrived with a soft hum, and I stepped in, pressed the ground-floor button, and watched the doors close. The cookery. Food, and the others, and noise that didn't mean danger.

The doors opened onto the foyer, and I stepped out, then stopped.

I'd moved through here with the others an hour ago, head down, still recalibrating to solid ground and ceilings and the absence of anything trying to kill me. I hadn't looked up. Now I did.

The chandelier dropped from the ceiling high above us in a cascade of alien crystals that rivaled any diamond Earth had ever produced. Layer upon layer of them dripping from where it was anchored far overhead, each facet catching the foyer's light and scattering it in every direction.