Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(60)

I finally said, “If you ever bullshit me again, you’ll see some Lower Eight wrath.”

“Consider me forewarned.” I sensed what I would have called a smile. His voice dropped to a slightly lower pitch, and the floor beneath me warmed. I could see the tendrils of color pulsing beneath me, like an aura. “Then . . . I should be more candid. The first time, at the pool . . . that was accidental. This was not. I wanted to share with you.”

My mouth went dry, and I closed my eyes, listening to him. He was nervous, I thought, waves of yellow and cool green and little spikes of orange like goose bumps.

“Share what?” I asked.

“Everything.” The word came like a fall of light, warm as summer. “Being with you is different, no awkward words, the way others flinch when I touch. You aren’t afraid of me. Of this. I know it isn’t time, Zara. Our rules say a deep bond is only for the Journey; not every Leviathan can find such a partner. But—”

“You didn’t want to wait,” I cut in. “I’m not good at rules either. Maybe that’s why you picked me.”

“I didn’t. Typhon did,” he reminded me.

Disquiet prickled to life. From what I knew, Typhon was a bastard, and maybe Nadim was grown in his image, only smoother, capable of making me forget my anger with a single glimpse of the stars. I didn’t like feeling like I’d been . . . handled, and I was still uneasy when I drifted off to sleep.

Biggest mistake of my life.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Breaking Laws


I WOKE TO sunlight and birds twittering in trees, which was the most annoying way to wake up. The only birds I’d seen in the Zone had been seagulls, loud scavengers that would sooner shit on you than not. Birds didn’t make me think of open meadows and forests—more of trash piles.

“Hey,” I said, sitting up and running my fingers through my uneven hair. “Could you make the alarm do, um, water instead? Rain? Or maybe the ocean? Birds aren’t my thing.”

No answer. I flopped back down. “Nadim?” The floor beneath me was still warm—he’d increased the temperature to keep me comfortable while I slept—and I stayed huddled there beneath the thin blanket for a moment before I said his name again. Worried, this time. “Nadim? Are you there?”

No answer, again. I jumped up, didn’t bother with niceties like showers and deodorizers and hell, even uniforms. I was still in my thin, silky underwear when I left my room at a run, heading for the data console. “Nadim!” I shouted. “Answer me, dammit!”

Only silence came back, even when I stopped and pressed both hands flat against his skin because physical contact boosted our basic connection. He was there, I could feel him, but he was . . . drifting. Barely there, distant as the stars. Imagining my thoughts as silver tendrils, I reached for him, reached and opened my mind until the effort hurt; he was too far. Despair and fear curled through me in gray and bloodred waves. I yelled his name again into the darkness.

Nothing.

Beatriz stumbled out of her quarters, equally disheveled. “Something’s wrong!”

I stepped back from the wall and almost fell. She grabbed and shook me. Hard. “Zara! What should we do?”

Suddenly a shudder went through Nadim’s body, an ominous shiver that brought with it a low, silvery flash of what felt like pain. Please, Nadim. . . . I remembered the video I’d found, the one he hadn’t wanted me to see, of the grim third voyage where he’d lost his Honors and nearly his own life.

Oh God. He’s gone dark.

This is why I built the alarm, I realized, and felt immediately better. Quickly I ran diagnostics; it had all looked good before, and still did; shouldn’t it have buzzed him awake by now? I checked it again. Diagnostics said it was fine, but it wasn’t responding.

I tried inputting the backdoor code I’d created but it only turned the alarm off, when it was allegedly on already. The shock part wasn’t working. . . . What the hell did I do wrong?

It came to me with a rush of horror what Nadim had so off-handedly said: that it would be installed before he went on the Journey. But we weren’t on the Journey yet. Right now, the thing worked, but it wasn’t installed. And it wasn’t doing a damn bit of good sitting in the assembly bay.

He was supposed to be safe on the Tour without it.

I grabbed Bea’s hands. “Manual controls! Go!”

Her lips parted, but she didn’t waste time asking questions; she turned and ran down the corridor, around the curve. I followed on shaky legs, feeling more strikes and shivers in his body, like needles driven into my own skin.

As I got to the hub, Bea was cursing under her breath in rapid-fire Portuguese, staring at the data readouts as her fingers flew, touching controls, swiping, spinning. I headed for an adjacent data station to check on Nadim’s condition, but a speck of darkness caught my eye on the viewport, occluding a cluster of stars. Then it was larger, huge, and I involuntarily ducked as it slammed brutally into the wall a few meters over my head with an enormous, shuddering impact. I expected glass to crack and expel me into space, but the thing bounced off and rolled away into the dark.

Another sharp, silvery pain beneath my skin. Nadim’s nerves firing warnings to a brain that was no longer receiving.

“Bea!” I shouted.

“I know!” she called back, and finally, finally, something she did worked. I felt a lurch inside, and a tugging, drawing sense of deceleration.