Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(35)

There’s a long pause before Tyler replies. “Permission granted. But keep your comms open at all times. Auri, Kal, I want constant updates, understood?”

“Yessir,” Kal replies.

With a grunt of effort, Kal pries apart the elevator doors, allowing us to push inside. The shaft is huge and dark, stretching down from the ship’s upper levels, but at least there’s none of those ghostly echoes inside here. We push our way up, Fin leading the way, Kal close beside me. I know it’s my imagination, but as we sail upward, I swear I can feel the warmth of his body through his suit. Despite the echoes around me, I can remember what he felt like, pressed up against me. And somehow, just the knowledge that he’s there makes it a little easier to breathe.

Mind on the job, O’Malley.

“Okay, that’s your stop, kids,” Fin says cheerfully, pointing to a door in the shaft above. “I’m a dozen floors up.”

“Call if you need assistance,” Kal warns. “And watch your back.”

“Always.” He glances back and forth between us. His eyes are unreadable through his lenses, but his smirk sure isn’t. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Kal wrenches the door to the cryo levels aside, and I touch the walls, feel the sound through my suit. He kicks out into the gloom while Fin heads upward. I push my way gently out of the elevator, following Kal into the hallway.

The huge doors to the cryo vaults loom ahead of us, melted to slag at some point by a quantum lightning strike. My stomach feels full of cold butterflies. I can hear hollow voices, as if coming from far away.

My light cuts a thin beam through the murky darkness beyond. I look across at Kal, careful to turn my head slowly. His braids are floating inside his helmet, gleaming silver, his eyes narrowed at the dark ahead. The lines of his face are smooth and hard, his cheekbones so sharp they might cut my lips if I kissed them.

He meets my eyes, and his stare is beautiful, cold, alien. But behind it I can feel a warmth, a depth, like he can see into every part of me. It makes me shiver. Wordlessly, he reaches across for Magellan, strapped to my forearm. He taps at my screen, then at his own.

“We are still monitoring the squad channel,” he says. “But we can talk privately now.”

“… How did you know I wanted to talk?”

“Your eyes,” he says simply. “They speak.”

“I’m … not even sure what I wanted to say,” I admit.

“Who could know what to say at such a moment?” he asks, gesturing at the cryo chamber beyond the melted doors. “This is the place where the future of your people was changed forever. Where your future was changed forever.”

“At least I got to have a future,” I say quietly. Because that’s what’s weighing on me, making my heart beat so hard, drying out my mouth until it’s difficult to speak. “I got out of here when nobody else did. What was so special about me that I deserved to live when all these people had lives and hopes and families and stories of their own, and they didn’t?”

Kal’s reply is soft, solemn. “It is difficult. To be one who endures.”

And of course, that’s when I remember that Kal’s whole planet was destroyed. That every Syldrathi who still lives is ultimately homeless, stateless. And here I am, ready to cry over just one ship.

“Kal … ,” I begin.

“I know what you would say.” He cuts me off gently. “But there is no comparing loss, be’shmai. I did not mean to do so. I only meant to say that I understand what you feel. And if I could take your pain away, I would.”

We pause at the vault doors, and I curl my gloved hand through his. As always, there’s a faint hesitation. But then he tightens his hand around mine as if it’s all he’s ever wanted to do. Syldrathi don’t really touch—I learned that from Magellan. But I can’t help it—I need to—and I know Kal’s getting to like it, so I don’t hold back. It’s a way to communicate when words fail us, as they so often do.

He looks at me, there in the dark, and I can feel how badly he wants me. I can almost see it, the way I saw those echoes—invisible threads of burning gold and silver spilling off him in waves, held in check only for fear of burning me. But looking up into his eyes, I realize I want him to burn me. I want to feel him pressed against me again as he sets me on fire. And I know he wants it, too.

We’re so far in the deep end, for two people who only just met.

The moment’s broken when Fin’s voice crackles over comms.

“Well,” says the squad’s Gearhead. “I have good news, kids.”

“Heyyyy, that’s a switch,” Tyler replies.

“I’m kidding. I actually have bad news and other bad news.”

“Maker’s breath, Finian … ,” Tyler groans.

“Yeah, I know, I’m a character,” Fin says. “So basically, someone’s already been up here and carved the black box right out of the floor.”

“Brilliant,” Tyler sighs.

“So the black box could be anywhere, is what you’re saying?” Scarlett asks.

“Mmm, nah,” Fin says. “This was a surgical job. Readings off my uni are clocking these burns at maybe twenty hours old. I’d guess the Hephaestus boys chopped it out and have it stowed aboard the lead tug in the convoy.”