Page 49 of Claimed By the Condemned Alien

A sob escaped Lina.

Kesta’s own throat tightened.

“She told you that?”

“Yes.”

Lina closed her eyes. “She always thought disappearing was worse than dying. She used to say if somebody remembered the names, then the empire hadn’t finished the job.”

Kesta squeezed her hand.

“Then it didn’t.”

Lina cried quietly.

Kesta stayed.

She did not tell her grief would become easier. It might not.

She did not tell her Mira had died bravely. Mira had died terrified, surrounded by people who treated her life as a failed transport variable.

But she had spoken her family’s names.

That mattered.

After a time Sera approached carrying a shallow bowl filled with pale gray ash.

She set it on the table beside Lina.

“At dusk, we speak the dead into the wind.”

Lina wiped her face. “What does that mean?”

“We return the body to the heat fissure. Family speaks what should remain.”

“What if I don’t know what to say?”

Sera’s weathered face softened.

“Then say what should not be forgotten.”

Lina looked at the bowl.

Kesta felt her hand tighten again.

“I’ll be there.”

A cry came from the rear treatment room, sharp enough that Sera’s head turned before the sound had finished echoing through the infirmary. Kesta was already on her feet. She gave Lina’s hand one last squeeze, waited until the woman nodded that she was all right, then followed Sera through the narrow doorway at the back of the treatment space.

A scaled alien male lay on a stone examination table while two attendants struggled to keep him from rolling onto the floor. His dark green skin had gone nearly black around his mouth, and every few seconds the muscles along his abdomen contracted hard enough to arch his body away from the table. Blood had begun seeping through an old scar beneath his ribs, though Kesta saw no fresh wound that explained the sudden deterioration.

“What happened?” She moved to the patient’s side and caught his wrist, searching for a pulse while Sera examined the bleeding scar.

“Forge support gave way,” one of the attendants said. His hands tightened around the patient’s shoulder as another spasm tore through him. “Beam caught him along the side. We thought the old injury had opened.”

Kesta frowned and pressed her fingertips along the lower ribs. “Was he impaled?”

“No.”