“Just a few solars more and we’ll be back home,” Calix says, pulling me into his arms.
“Home is wherever you are.”
I let him hold me for a moment longer, then pull him down to the small cot. His thick brows crease. “What are you doing?”
“Medicinal mating,” I tease, but that’s not it. I want to feel him, to feel close to him, one last time in case there aren’t any others. He breaks our fall like I knew he would on top of the musty smelling cot, but doesn’t kiss back with enthusiasm when I press my lips to his. “What’s wrong?”
“You seem as though you are saying goodbye.”
I hold him tight against me. “Never.”
We’d shed our rebreathers when we entered the Sector, but we shove off our suits with impatient hands. I want to go slow, to savor, to memorize, but the urgency underneath my skin has me pulling him on top of me and stroking him with hands that shake. “Faster,” I say as I lick his salty shoulder. “Please.”
“Does it hurt?” he asks. His hands make quick work of our suits when mine fail me. “I will make it stop.”
“No,” I say with a shake of my head. “It doesn’t hurt. I just want you. Make me yours.”
“You are already mine. We were written in the stars before you set foot on this planet. No matter what happens, Emery. You will always be mine.”
I pull him down for a kiss as he enters me with one quick, sure thrust, then I throw my head back. It always feels like the first time with him. The first quick bite of fear that he won’t fit, then acceptance as I adjust to fit him. Joy explodes inside of me, like pleasure amplified a thousand-fold. It explodes behind my eyes like a supernova.
The orgasm rolls over me without any prompting and I gasp its invasion into Calix’s neck as the paralysis from the toxica soon follows with his own. He soothes me as he lays me down onto the cot, his hands passing over me in reverence. If I could speak, I would have told him I loved him, but I’m glad I can’t. I want to tell him for the first time with a clear conscience.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I will tell him.
He kisses my eyelids when I’m relaxed enough to slip into the floaty place between dreams and reality.
Hope.
It’s a powerful drug.
Hope has gotten me through terrible, awful circumstances before. I breathe it in, allowing it to fill my faulty lungs with its life-giving sustenance and let it course through my bloodstream.
Hope will get me through telling Calix the truth.
It will bring me through to the other side of the surgery.
Hope will bring us back to the facility.
If I have anything to do with it, hope will bring us back together again after what I have to say.
I have to believe it.
I cling to hope as I slip into sleep.
12
Calix
“You’re up early,” Lox says as he plucks some plump fruit from a bush that is growing from a planter in what appears to be an old nutrition bay.
“We have a busy solar ahead of us.” My gaze falls to the fruit. I’m unfamiliar with this one. Seems to be a hybrid of some sort. “What do you have there?”
He flashes me a wide grin, his black irises darting back and forth in a manic way. It reminds me back when Draven had The Rades. I take a quick assessment of my father’s old friend to make sure he is not presenting any symptoms.
“This,” he says as he tosses the yellow fruit into the air, “is a lembulla.” He brings it to his nostrils and inhales. “I crossbred a lemonia tree with grenus root. Between the sweet juice from the lemonia and the nutrients from the grenus, I’ve been able to mostly survive on these.” He tosses it at me and I catch it, my claws puncturing the soft flesh of the fruit.
“I see,” I say with a polite smile. “Very clever.” When he turns to pick more fruit, I pocket mine and shift my eyes down the corridor where I left Emery sleeping.
Grenus root is something that was eradicated many revolutions ago when it was discovered to have adverse effects on morts. It is known to cause extreme delusions. There are not any nutritious qualities at all. I have read Galen’s notes on any and all plant life, both available and unavailable. I remember being fascinated by his notes in that section regarding the grenus root.
Currently, I am not intrigued.
I am worried.
If Lox has been living off this fruit, that means he is unwell. Unpredictable even. I will have to watch him carefully. I would feel better if I had his assistance with her surgery. Without his help, the surgery won’t be an impossibility, but will be more difficult. And I don’t want that.