Page 45 of Jarran

“Don’t get used to it. When we get somewhere with actual food, I’m eating my weight in something that has flavor.” She leaned back and studied him. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “What’s wrong?”

“What makes you think something is wrong?”

“Because you keep looking at the exit.”

He hadn’t realized he’d been doing that. His gaze drifted toward the corridor that led to the docking bay. Ah, he had been doing that. Evie noticed everything. It made her an exceptional doctor, and also someone to whom lying was impossible. “Observant female,” he murmured.

She waited with one eyebrow raised. “Well?”

“I contacted Taron,” he said.

The other eyebrow lifted to join the first. “When?”

“On the shuttle. While you were sleeping. I sent a transmission on an old frequency. One we used as children, in the tunnels beneath Tagja City. A tapping code we made up.” He paused. “I didn’t think he’d respond, but he did.”

“What did he say?”

“One word. ‘Where?’” Jarran met her eyes. “I sent him the coordinates for this way station.”

Evie exhaled slowly. She looked away, then back at him. He could see her turning it over, running through the implications the way she ran through data. Quick, thorough, and unsentimental. “He’s coming here?”

“I think so.”

“You could have told me,” she said quietly.

He sighed. “Yes, but I felt conflicted about it, and I didn’t want to put another burden on you right after we barely escaped Durik’s ship. And I didn’t have the…” he poked his chest with his fingers, “inside strength to talk about it at the time.”

Her fingers found his and laced through them. “I understand that.”

He held her hand and felt the delicate bones of her fingers beneath his, and thought about how easy it would be to stay with her. To take the shuttle deeper into unclaimed space and find a planet with soil and sunlight and never look back.

“I’m going back,” he said. “To the Korath-7. To tell the Baylans everything I know about the Sifter network. The locations, the technology, the conditioning protocols. Everything Pella Rin built.” He kept his voice steady. “And when I’ve told them everything, I’ll accept whatever punishment they and the Virilian authorities decide on.”

Evie’s hand tightened on his. “Jarran.”

“Durik will keep building them. The females. Without the intelligence I can provide, nobody can stop him. I built that infrastructure. I’m the only one who knows it well enough to take it apart.”

“I know that.” Her voice had gone quiet. Clinical calm over something that was decidedly not calm. “I’ve known that since we left the ship. You were never going to run.”

“No.”

“Because you’re an idiot with a moral compass the size of a planet.”

His mouth twitched. “Is that a clinical assessment?”

“Professional opinion.” She squeezed his hand. Her eyes were bright and fierce and he could see her fighting to hold it together. “You know what they could do to you. The Virilian government has every reason to make an example out of Pella Rin’s legacy.”

“I know.”

“And Taron—” She stopped with a grimace. “He sent me a recording on the Korath-7. He said you were dead to him. Those were his exact words.”

“I know what my brother thinks of me, Evie.” He said it gently, because he could see how much it cost her to say it. She’d held that information for cycles and shielded him from it while his mind was still fractured and fragile. But now she was telling him because she didn’t want him walking into it blind.

“He might not forgive you,” she said plainly.

“I don’t expect forgiveness.” Jarran looked at their joined hands. “He deserves the chance to say his piece to my face. I owe him that, at the very least.”

Evie pulled her hand free and pressed both palms flat against the table. She took a breath. Then she looked up at him and said, “I’m coming with you.”