Lhyn pulled her into a reassuring warmron. “You’ll be fine. You love her. She loves you every bit as much. That covers a multitude of mistakes.”
“I love you, too.”
Her grip tightened. “Just not in the same way. And that’s a good thing, because I couldn’t handle all three of you.”
“Can you handle Salomen?”
She pulled back, looking over her shoulder at the quiet exchange taking place a few paces away. “We haven’t been telling ourselves no for nearly as long as you two have. We’ll be all right.”
Tal caught her hand as she stepped away. “Make sure she knows she’s safe in your arms. If I’m good at self-denial, Salomen is even better at keeping herself safe. She can hide behind walls and make them look natural. Even to a tyree.”
“I know. We’re seeds in a pod, too.”
“Lhyn, you have no walls.”
“Not with you.”
“No, you never have. Not from the first day. Long before you truly knew me.”
“Make them look natural, remember? There’s an interesting consequence of always telling the truth. People don’t look behind it. They assume there’s nothing there.”
Tal thought of foursome Sharings and how surprised she had been to feel Lhyn’s self-directed anger. Or her sense of inadequacy, or her conviction that she wasn’t lovable . . .
With a start, she understood that Lhyn was even better than Salomen at hiding. She hid in plain sight.
“I see you,” she said quietly. “So does she.”
Lhyn leaned in to kiss her cheek. “That’s why I’m safe. Love her well, all right?”
“To the best of my ability.” Which she fervently hoped would be enough. “There’s one more thing. She has nightmares about the battle. She’ll need—”
“We talked about it. She told me what to do.”
Of course she had. Salomen had arranged this whole evening; why wouldn’t she have prepared for that as well?
“Andira.” Lhyn held her by the shoulders. “She is safe in my arms.”
She swallowed down the words crowding her throat and said the ones that mattered. “Love her well.”
“I will. I promise.”
Salomen looked up from her own conversation, then gave Ekatya a final word and a quick warmron before walking back. “Ready?” she asked, holding out a hand.
“I’m ready.” Lhyn shouldered her bag and clasped their hands, anticipatory joy sparking from her skin.
“Goodnight, tyrina.” Salomen tapped the side of her own throat. “Remember.”
Ekatya joined her as they watched their tyrees walk away, hand in hand. “Do you get the feeling this is easier for them than it is for us?”
“The feeling? No. The absolute conviction? Yes.”
“We’ve been together every night for a moon. That’s more consecutive time than I’ve had with her in ages. I want this with you. I’ve wanted it almost since I met you, and it’s still hard to let her go.”
“I think that’s the consequence of giving your heart twice. No matter which one we’re with, the other still holds us.”
Salomen reached the stairwell door and turned, holding a hand aloft. Lhyn blew a kiss.
Then they were gone.
“Right,” Ekatya said. “Shall we?”
Tal followed her through the door, newly awkward in this suite where she had spent so many hanticks. The discomfort increased when Ekatya entered the bedroom. This was the point at which that door had always closed, while she and Salomen waited in the living area. She couldn’t count the number of times they had looked out over Blacksun, sensing Ekatya’s metamorphosis from the stressed, frustrated, grieving captain to the relaxed woman at home.
But Ekatya was none of those things tonight. This metamorphosis would be different.
She dropped her bag on the floor and looked back to the doorway. “Are you coming in?”
Tal stepped inside.
“It’s funny, the things that come to mind at a time like this.” Ekatya gazed out at the pink and orange sky, the sunset late at this time of the cycle. “As of today, the Phoenix is on Blacksun time. I’m done with ship lag. No more orbiting above Blacksun in full daylight while getting ready for bed. No more conversions between hours and hanticks. I never got used to it.” She closed the space between them. “I need to ask you a question.”
“Anything.”
“What does this mean?” She touched the mark on Tal’s throat. “I know it can’t be what I assume.”
“What do you assume?” Tal asked curiously.
“Salomen snuck you out of a high-level reception to give you that in some dark corner. In my culture, this would be a message to me. It would say she’s marked her territory, and she’s telling me who you belong to.”
Gaian culture was consistently odd when it came to sexuality. “Does that sound like Salomen?”
“Not at all. That’s why I’m confused.” Ekatya drew a light circle around the mark.
“It’s a message to me, not you. A reminder that she may be with Lhyn right now, but she still loves and wants me.”
“You share each other’s emotions. Do you need a reminder?”
“Did you need that kiss Lhyn blew to you?”
The lines in her forehead smoothed out. “Point taken.” Her hand drifted down Tal’s throat, ending by pressing on the center of her chest.
Tal held it in place. “Salomen is carrying the same mark. Didn’t you notice?”
“Er, no. I wasn’t really looking at Salomen tonight.”
“I gave her the same reminder she gave me. Lhyn is probably asking about it right now.”
“No, she’s not. She’ll already know.” Her emotional signature abruptly dimmed as she stared at their hands. “But I didn’t. I never do. Lhyn won’t be having this problem.”
Tal’s chuckle startled her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Us. Lhyn told me this would happen. She said we’d both be learning together. That it’s not a test, and the only way we can fail is to not learn. I don’t know what I’m doing either, Ekatya. But I want to learn with you.” She touched the captain’s bars with her free hand. “This is the first part of the ritual, yes? How do I take it off?”
With a burst of confidence, Ekatya stepped back, her hands going to her collar. “Let me.”
“No, I’m supposed to—”
The bars were already in her hand.
“—do that,” Tal finished.
“There is no ‘supposed to.’ We’re learning, right? Besides, I need to do this.” Ekatya turned the bars over, examining them. “I gave these to you three cycles ago. Do you remember?”
“I could hardly forget.”
“You had just taken off my head and handed it to me. Kicked the anger right out of me, because I left you no choice. I judged you, made terrible assumptions—Hades, I honestly wanted to kill you. Or at least hurt you as much as I could before I went down. It’s hard for me to remember that now, knowing what you must have felt at the time.”
Tal nodded.
“But do you know what’s easy to remember? That Sharing. The gift you gave me—it wasn’t just sensing Lhyn’s emotions for myself. It was knowing that I could trust you after all. That you had told me the truth, and I could finally make a decision based on all the facts. So I decided to give my loyalty to you.”
“It changed everything,” Tal said softly.
“But you didn’t hold me to it. Fleet called and I left, and you never said a word about the promise I broke by leaving.”
“You didn’t break it. You’ve kept it all this time, at a terrible cost. This has been harder on you than any of us. I’ve wished so often that I could save you.”
“And then you did.” Ekatya held out the bars. “Andira Shaldone Tal, for the second and last time, I offer you my loyalty. And my love to go with it.”
Tal’s eyes stung as she accepted the small bit of metal. It was heavy for its size, a fact she had forgotten, but her hand re
membered. The weight felt as familiar as if she had last held it yesterday.
“Either would be a gift beyond measure. Both together . . .” She cleared her throat, then shook her head. She couldn’t get the words out.
Ekatya smiled, her eyes reddening as well. “Are you wishing I could feel you?”
“No,” Tal rasped. “I don’t wish anything when it comes to you. Everything I ever wished for is standing right here.” With great care, she tucked the bars into her jacket pocket and sealed it. Then she pulled Ekatya in and showed her exactly how she felt.
“That worked,” Ekatya said breathlessly. “Whew. Did it ever.”
Feeling more confident, Tal ran a fingertip over her top row of medals. “How do these come off?”
Ekatya released the tab of her throat guard, then swiftly undid the other five down the front of her jacket. Holding it open with one hand, she pointed to three strips of shining metal on the inside. “The ribbons hang over a magnetized bar. These hold the bars in place. If you press the ribbon bar at both ends, it interrupts the magnetic charge long enough for this one to drop free.”
“Easy enough.” Tal spanned the top bar with forefinger and thumb and pressed the ends. It came off in her hand, the medals swaying on their ribbons, and Ekatya caught the inner bar.
She held it out. “Snap it back together so the ribbons don’t slide off and set it on the side table. I’ll put them away later.”
The two bars came together with a click. “I want their stories,” Tal said as she laid them down.
When the remaining medals had been safely removed, she checked the sleeves of Ekatya’s jacket, found the tabs that held them shut at the wrists, and opened those. Then she pushed the jacket off her shoulders and hung it in the closet.
Turning, she paused at the sight of Ekatya in dress boots and trousers with a finely tailored white shirt. “Beautiful,” she said. “You look different out of the jacket. More . . . accessible.”
“Less armored?” Ekatya stepped forward and brushed her fingers over the bluestones that lined Tal’s collar. “Do I need to take these off first?”
“No, they stay on.”
“What do they signify?”
“That blue is my favorite color?” She smiled at the exasperated look. “It’s also the background color of my family crest. And bluestones are rare and valuable, so these show my status. I’ve seen how you Fleeters need to shout your status with symbols nobody can miss. We prefer to be quieter about ours.”
“Says the woman who wears a full cape embroidered with an enormous Shield of Alsea. Which probably took an army of crafters a moon to produce.”
Tal opened her mouth, reconsidered, and had to laugh. “All right, I concede that.”
“Why didn’t you wear it today? I’d have thought you’d want to make an impression.”
“There was no need. I wasn’t in the ceremony. And sitting on a full cape for hanticks? No, thank you. I enjoyed relaxing in the audience and letting someone else play the role.”
Ekatya looked at her with that same smile she had seen several times at the reception. “You are something else.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the shekking Lancer and you don’t need everyone to know it. You don’t even need diplomats and admirals from another government to know it. You were the most powerful person in that shuttle bay, but you were content to sit in the audience and watch. With nothing but bluestones and this to mark your status.” She ran her palm across the Seal of the Lancer, then slid it over the collar and up the length of Tal’s neck.
Tal instinctively lifted her chin and was stunned by the passionate line of kisses searing their way up her throat. By the time Ekatya’s lips reached her ear, she was having difficulty standing upright.
“You wear your power like a second skin,” Ekatya murmured. “It’s beautiful to watch. And very, very sexy.”
Dazzled into immobility, Tal stood still while Ekatya unsealed her jacket, gently pulled it down her arms, and stepped away to hang it up.
“There. Now we’re both less armored.”
Tal held a hand against her throat. “You didn’t kiss me like that on our date.”
“I had different objectives then.”
“Great Mother. I might not survive your objectives tonight.”
“You’d better. I don’t want to face Salomen’s wrath tomorrow.” Ekatya tugged her to the nearby bench and sat, crossing an ankle over her knee to reach her boot tabs. “I always take these off myself. Easier that way.”
As she followed suit, Tal said, “The first time Salomen and I joined, she pulled off my boots and nearly exploded my head. That was the act of a subordinate, or so I’d been taught from my early training. She took a ritualized humiliation and made it erotic.”
Ekatya stood up, boots and socks in one one hand and the other outstretched. “We had those, too. Things like being obligated to fetch whatever senior cadets told you to, including the textbook they forgot in their quarters on the other side of the compound. And Fahla help you if you were late to class. Fetching a senior’s book was no excuse. Give me your boots.”
She set both pairs in the closet, dropped their socks in the hamper, and returned to hold out a hand once more. This time, she led Tal to the bed before sitting cross-legged and patting the mattress beside her. “You wanted the stories,” she said, picking up the top bar of medals. “These two you know. I had to ask for duplicates after leaving the originals on the Caphenon.”
Tal touched the silver medal. “Extraordinary service performed for the Protectorate,” she recited, then moved to the red star. “And courage under superior fire. Fleet should have given you another pair of these after the Battle for the Stars.”
“I have enough.” She touched a third medal. “This is for covering my team when we escaped from Lexihari. It’s hard to wear it when I lost Ensign Bellows on that mission.” Shifting to a medal shaped like a chevron, she said, “This is from quite a bit earlier. Remember the story Admiral Tsao told about my promotion to lieutenant?”
They went through the medals one by one, and Tal enjoyed every moment of it. She had heard most of these stories during the medal ceremony, but not all, and none from Ekatya’s lips. Each filled in a little more color of a life lived before they met.
“This one is special,” Ekatya said, touching the last medal on the third bar. “It’s the first I ever earned. It’s for successfully using the toilet.”
Her emotional signature curled in tight, quivering with barely suppressed glee.
Slowly, Tal turned her head and raised an eyebrow.
That was all it took. Ekatya snorted, then broke open with laughter, joyous and free. Just as she began to get herself under control, she caught sight of Tal’s unimpressed expression and bent over again with a louder guffaw.
It was impossible not to join in, not when sparkling delight filled the room and tingled on Tal’s senses. “Aren’t you a hilarious little dokker,” she said, trying to look severe.
“Well, I try.” Ekatya wiped her eyes, still chuckling. “Lhyn told me. I’m shocked that you would engage in such unseemly conversation during a serious Fleet event.”
“Hm. A sonsales could see how shocked you are.”
“I bet. I haven’t laughed that hard since I asked the lift to take me to Admiral Asshead’s office.” She paused, letting the expectation build.
“And?”
“It took me to waste reclamation. Where we process our sewage.”
That sent Tal over the edge, which obliterated Ekatya’s tenuous control, and they collapsed against each other. Ekatya slid backward, her upper body thudding into the mattress.
With a grin she couldn’t erase, Tal straddled her. “You’re stunning like this. Relaxed, happy—your emotional signature is glowing.”
Her smile glowed as well. “You find emotional signatures attractive?”
“When they’re like this? Fahla, yes.” She slid a hand along her jaw, reveling in the inti
mate contact. “It shows here as well.”
Ekatya looked up at her, open and trusting. “How are they doing?”
“I cannot speak for Lhyn, but—”
“But you know she’s feeling the same as Salomen.”
“They’re . . . euphoric. Entirely at ease, passionate, and deeply intimate.”
“Intimate? Already? We’re the ones who have been waiting for three cycles!”
“Perhaps they had less protective armor than we did.”
Ekatya mirrored her hand position and let her thumb brush Tal’s bottom lip. “Do you know what Salomen told me in the hallway? That we’re like one of Jaros’s puzzles, except ours only has four pieces. Each of us is a corner piece, and we each interlock with two others.”
The vision came easily: Salomen at Hol-Opah’s dining table, assembling a flat puzzle with Jaros and smiling as she assembled an analogy with it. “An analogy based on seeing patterns. That’s Lhyn’s influence.”
“I know. Fahla help us all, they’re thinking alike.” Her eyes danced with humor before growing serious once more. “She said she watched me during those ceremonies and thought no one in the bay would say no to me. That you had been saying no for far too long, and tonight I needed to help you say yes.”
Tal closed her teeth on the thumb that had been caressing her lip and watched Ekatya’s sudden, intense focus. A swipe of her tongue caused an intake of breath, and she let it go. “Lhyn said much the same thing when she told me about this ritual. Though we seem to have strayed from it by a length or two.”
“Good,” Ekatya murmured. “I want it to be something we create together. Andira, will you join with me now? Will you show me what a Shared joining feels like?”
Tal did not say no.
34
Morning after
The first thing Ekatya thought, when she opened her eyes to a room filled with light, was that Lhyn rarely let her sleep this late. She preferred to maintain ship time on her leaves; it minimized the disruption when she went back to the Phoenix.
She yawned and stretched, a pleasant soreness making itself known, and stopped with a squeak as the rest of her brain came online.
Alsea Rising: The Seventh Star (Chronicles of Alsea Book 10) Page 26
