Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(90)

Zadim.

I felt his laugh, saw it shimmer in silver and copper around me. Felt the joy of it flare in every nerve. I could see the stars burning hard around us, hear the sweet chorus of their songs that twined and twirled into a vast symphony, intricate as precision clockwork I could only dimly comprehend. Each galaxy, singing. The universe, shouting its life, its power, its fierce beauty.

I felt small as an atom, and large as a sun, and most of all, I felt right for the first time I could remember.

I was not I.

We were Zadim.

And we flew.

It took practice to walk in Zara’s body with half my mind flung out among the stars; being flesh felt clumsy and impractical, full of flaws and leaks. Leaks. We could see, looking down at it, that the body had damage—a scorched, wide burn on the upper right arm, and even more reddened skin from the drone’s fire. Must be repaired, we thought in perfect agreement, and split again, though not apart exactly, to inhabit Zara’s form. Selfish, perhaps, to hold together so hard.

When Zara’s eyes opened and focused on Beatriz, we recognized the shock, the flinch. We made Zara smile. “It’s all right,” we said, Nadim’s music and modulation, Zara’s energy and voice. “We’re all right. Don’t freak out, okay?”

“Your eyes . . .”

“Black?” She slowly nodded, a frown grooved between her perfect eyebrows. “Chill. It’s us. Zadim.”

“Zadim?”

“What? We can’t have a cute couple name?” That part of us was pure Zara Cole, and we laughed. It relaxed Beatriz, who had good reason to be wary.

But it was not a trivial thing, as Zara’s tone had implied. This was a bond-name. We had chosen it. Become it. It was ours.

We also knew it was time to stop. Zara was weak and tired. Nadim nursed injuries and hunger. So we let go, drifted apart, and . . .

I—the smaller I—fell.

The breath I dragged into my lungs felt alien and tainted, but I needed it to clear my head and get myself straight. My eyes ached. I blinked hard, fast, and remembered Marko and Chao-Xing doing the same thing. My pupils must be contracting again. Everything seemed slightly bright, slightly blurry, and then it was better.

Though I didn’t exactly remember leaving the docking area, I was about halfway to medical, still leaning on Bea’s shoulder.

“Gra?as a Deus,” she breathed, and steadied me when I stumbled. “You need treatment. Now.”

She was right. My arm ached, a screaming burn that made me want to curl up into a ball. Bea hurried me to the med bay and cursed when she remembered we’d deactivated EMITU. With a sigh, I sank down on the soft, squishy med bed as Beatriz rewired the bot.

It came alive with a sudden rush of motion, rotating arms and sending her ducking for cover as it rolled forward toward me. “Honor Cole,” it said. “You come here often?”

“Way too,” I said, and bit back a groan. “Arm.”

The bot leaned forward, examined it, and said, “Congratulations. You’ve achieved peak barbecue.” While it was sassing, though, it was also working fast with a cutting tool. My uniform sleeve slipped off, revealing a spectacularly burned expanse of skin, and I winced and looked away. EMITU let out a mournful little whistle. “Blue ribbon, Honor Cole. Shall I whip up a sauce?”

“Only if the sauce is the kind that stops it from hurting.”

By the time I said it, the bot was already treating me with needles and sprays. A cool blessed relief slipped down my spine as I let out a long, satisfied breath and closed my eyes.

“Honor Teixeira! Bring plates! Tonight we feast like kings!”

Really got to reprogram that damn thing.

I should have been worried as hell. That Typhon would follow us or we might not be able to run fast enough. Should have tried to figure out what we’d do next and where we would go.

But I couldn’t stay awake a minute longer.

I woke to find Beatriz sitting beside me, reading. Somehow, I’d known she’d be there. “Hey,” I whispered. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere off Centaurus A,” she said. “No sign yet of Typhon.” She hesitated and fussed with a corner of the sheet covering me. “Nadim was singing to you. I could hear him. I think he was trying to help you heal. I tried to tell him it doesn’t work like that for humans, but . . .”

“I think I heard him,” I said. I had a dim memory of it. Also of a sweet, soft humming. “And you.”

EMITU suddenly jerked out of the recharging unit and charged across the room to my bedside, where it used a tiny laser to slice bandages and check the healing beneath.

“Hmmm,” it said. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“What?” Alarm blared through me, and I raised my head to look at a perfect, smooth, uninjured arm. “Good job, Doctor Sarcastic.”

Whisking the bandages away, EMITU checked my arm, and despite the terrible bedside manner, it did so gently. “You’ve been asleep for four point seven two hours,” the bot said. “This should not be healed. It should be healing. Note my tenses.”

“You’re making me tense,” I said. “What are you going on about?”

“I have no information for you. You’re healed. Get out.”

“Rude!”

“Get out, please?”