The Rebels of Gold (Loom Saga #3)(100)

Do I want that?

It had long since stopped being about what either of them wanted.

“Why is that?” Poiris pulled Cvareh from his thoughts.

“Why is—oh, because as much as we have to learn from them, they need to learn from us.” Cvareh thought of Arianna when she first landed on Nova, the things she questioned. Was it fair for him to think that she was better off for having her world expanded beyond the cold logic that governed Loom?

“Well, call me greased,” Arianna said as she opened the door. “This damn near looks respectable.”

“Are you surprised?” Poiris asked, his chest puffing like a bird ruffling its feathers.

“With this one at the helm?” Arianna motioned to Cvareh. “Yes.”

“I don’t think—”

Cvareh merely chuckled and allowed the sound to diffuse Poiris’s tension into confusion. “Poiris, all is well. Please excuse my mate and I.”

Arianna arched her eyebrows, a silent question.

Naming her as such extended her all the respect and protections that came with his own status. But he couldn’t deny the quiet thrill that hummed through him at the notion.

With Poiris departed, Arianna dropped her bag into a heap by the door, empty. The tubes it carried had already been handed off to be filled anew with flowers. “Your mate. Sounds serious.”

“It’s not,” he lied.

“You’re lying.”

She could be very frustrating. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing does unless we win.”

“Until we win,” she corrected and stared out down at the Fenthri. “They’re doing a good job, seem happy enough.”

“When the war is over, every Fenthri who wishes to return home to Loom will be ferried back. The ones who don’t will be treated the same as any Dragon.”

“None will want to stay.”

She sounded as if she had every confidence, but Cvareh wasn’t so sure. In the hybrid world that existed just beyond the horizon, there was a place for Fenthri on Nova to maintain the various mechanizations that would no doubt crop up across their landscape. The mere idea brought a smile to Cvareh’s mouth.

“What?”

“What?” he echoed.

“That smile.”

“Just imagining a Nova with Fenthri, and machines.”

Arianna snorted. “The likelihood of that happening is about the same as the Alchemists giving up dissections.”

“I don’t think so.” He leaned against the glass, following her stare. Even now, Dragons were beginning to walk among the Fenthri, work among them. “Plus, for the longevity of one world, we’d better hope that we get along enough to live on land or sky.”

“Well, we will be living in both places soon, as Loom is about ready to ferry Perfect Chimera.”

“How many?” Cvareh didn’t even bother to hide his desperation.

“Ten.”

Ten, the word echoed. “That’s not nearly enough.”

“It will have to be.”

“Ari—”

“Loom isn’t sending anyone who isn’t ready to fight. If we send them up here prematurely, they will be slaughtered.”

“It’s my people who are being slaughtered right now.” He knew it was a faulty argument, but he couldn’t stop himself. Logic and emotion didn’t always work well together.

“Loom could always, instead, just fortify ourselves and leave Xin to fight alone.”

Shock started with his mouth and rattled up to his brain. “You’d condemn us to death?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Isn’t it?” Cvareh pushed off from the sill and stepped into her personal space. He stared down at her, working to ignore the familiar scents of her. “You’d leave me to die by Rok’s hand?”

Arianna stared up at him. Her chin stretched forward, as though she was about to fight him. But then her brow softened. What looked like conflict overcame her features, and Cvareh no longer had any idea what was going through the woman’s mind. He loathed the distance that had come between them, though he couldn’t quite identify when the chasm had started to form.

Cvareh never had the opportunity to find out her answer.

“Attack on the western side of Ruana!” Cain skidded to a stop in the open doorway. His eyes narrowed at Arianna and hers narrowed in reply, the defensive expression instantly back on her face.

How the two most important people in Cvareh’s life ended up on opposite sides of the coin, Cvareh did not know. But he appreciated that they could put it all aside for their common enemy.

“It’s close to Dawyn’s family’s vineyards.” Cain confirmed Cvareh’s worst fear.

“I have to go,” he said to them both.

Arianna pushed off from the window sill as well. Her hands went through their motions, an instinctual check of every tool of her trade. She patted her blades, her winch box, her breast pocket where there was, no doubt, some kind of gun or other weapon concealed.

“I will go, too.”

“What?” both men said in unison.

She looked directly at Cvareh and he instantly regretted challenging her. For there was nothing more fearsome than an Arianna with something to prove.