by Presley Hall
Jaro’s eyebrows twitch, as if he’s surprised by my words. He gives me a somewhat assessing look, then nods. “I agree.”
He glances at our surroundings again, resting his hands on his hips. His sword is gone, sucked down into the churning water along with the thing he called a zygek, but he still has a small knife strapped to his waist. And the pack he was carrying is gone, just like mine is, which means we have no supplies.
“We cannot remain here indefinitely,” he says, gesturing to the small outcropping where we stand. “So we have two choices. We can either return to the water and try our luck downriver, or we can attempt to scale the wall and climb out of the canyon.”
My heart pounds against my ribs as I listen to him lay out our options. When he turns to look at me, I blink.
Oh.
He’s actually waiting for me to weigh in, giving me a say in which route we take. I’m surprised he’s including me in the decision, especially since he’s the one who’s lived here longer. He’s the trained warrior, not me.
The fact that he’s treating me like an equal throws me off balance. It’s completely unexpected, and not at all what I anticipated from these massive, hulking aliens.
Hiding my surprise, I wrap my arms around myself and step away from the wall. The movement brings me closer to Jaro on the small stone platform, but I ignore the way my skin prickles with awareness, craning my neck to examine the rock face.
It’s not a sheer drop from the top of the canyon wall. The stone is jagged and uneven in places, which should provide plenty of hand and footholds. But still, it’s a daunting prospect. I’m not a professional rock climber, and we don’t have any ropes or other equipment.
Chewing on my bottom lip, I turn my head to gaze down the river, studying the spot where it disappears in the distance. The walls surround it for as far as I can see, and as I look at the dark water, a bone-deep fear rises up inside me. The idea of voluntarily slipping back into the cold, inky river makes my entire body rebel.
Swallowing down the acidic taste at the back of my throat, I look up to meet Jaro’s green eyes. “I think we should try to climb out.”
He nods gravely, stepping a little closer to me as he regards the wall alongside me. “I agree. Although it will be dangerous, it may be less so than diving back into the water where any number of creatures could attack us. And if we take our chances in the river, we have no way of knowing how long we’ll be in the water. We don’t know where the river leads, or if it will emerge from the canyon anytime soon.”
His words mirror my thoughts so closely that for a second, I wonder if I spoke them aloud. But I’m sure I didn’t.
The fact that his assessment matches mine gives me a small boost of confidence. I may be completely out of my element here, so far from my simple life back on Earth that it’s not even funny, but that doesn’t mean I’m totally incapable.
For a few long moments, Jaro and I stand side-by-side in silence, staring up at the wall as we analyze its surface and plan our route. He’s so close to me that his arm brushes against mine, and although part of me wants to pull away like I did when I woke up, I don’t move. Warmth seems to radiate from that small area where our skin touches, and it makes my heart beat slower and my hands stop shaking. It’s easier to think clearly, easier to focus.
I must still be cold, I tell myself. Sharing body heat helps.
But Jaro was right. We can’t stay here forever. And after several more minutes, I know I’m not learning anything new as I stare at the wall. I’m just delaying the inevitable.
I turn to face him, squaring my shoulders. “Ready?”
He nods, his face unreadable as he holds his arm out in a sweeping gesture. “You go first.”
Drawing in a shaky breath, I wipe my hands on my pants. My palms are already sweaty, which can’t be a good sign.
Come on, Sadie. You can do this.
My lame internal pep talk barely bolsters my confidence, but I find my feet stepping forward anyway, courage rising from somewhere inside me I didn’t even know existed. Then I grab on to a small piece of rock that juts out from the wall and begin to climb.
As soon as my feet are above his head, Jaro starts to climb up after me. He sticks close to me, his hands gripping the rock just inches below where my feet find purchase on tiny ledges and cracks in the stone.
I have a feeling he’s sticking close to me so that he can catch me if I fall, and I have no idea what to do with that. He already saved my life once, and now he’s making sure he’ll be in a position to do it again if need be. It’s such a protective gesture, and it makes no sense coming from a man who flat-out told me he doesn’t trust me less than two days ago.
Then again, a lot has happened since that night on the ship.
My limbs shake as I slowly navigate my way up the wall. I keep my body pressed as close to the rock face as I can, my fingers clutching at the handholds I find with a desperate grip. My heart is beating so hard and fast that it feels like my whole body is vibrating in time to my pulse, and when I make the mistake of looking down, my stomach drops out.
Jaro is right below me, slightly to one side—and past him, the river and the outcropping we slept on seem so far away. We can’t even be halfway up the wall yet, but we seem so high that it makes me dizzy.
“Talk to me,” I gasp. “Please.”
Jaro’s face wrinkles with confusion as he looks up at me. “Talk to you? About what?”
“Anything.” I cling to the rock, closing my eyes for a second to try to make the world stop spinning. I need to move again, to reach for a new handhold, but it feels like my limbs are locking up. “Just—distract me, please.”
“I…” He still sounds baffled. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell me about this place,” I blurt, desperate for him to keep talking.
His voice is deep and gravelly, and his careful way of speaking calms me down a little. I get the feeling he’s not the kind of man who says something unless he thinks it’s important, not the type to speak just for the sake of hearing his own voice, which may be why he’s having a hard time coming up with random words to distract me now.
“Tell me about Nuthora,” I breathe, forcing my eyes to open again. “Is it always so dangerous here?”
I hear a noise beneath me, almost like a chuckle. “Yes.”
“How much of it have you seen?”
“Some.” He pauses for a moment, probably realizing that his one-word answers aren’t helping me much, then adds, “It’s a large planet. Some prisoners on Nuthora live as nomads, always on the move and never settling in one place for long. Some live in the cities that have sprung up. They’re dangerous places, ruled over by powerful criminals who have clawed their way to the top. We go into the city from time to time to trade or barter for supplies, but I’m most familiar with the forests near the Voxeran settlement. We do our hunting there, far enough out that we can scare up game, but close enough that we can return to safety quickly if need be.”
As I listen to Jaro speak, I slowly uncurl my fingers from their death grip on the wall, reaching upward and grabbing a new part of the stone. My feet move too, and I gradually resume climbing.
Now that he can see his words working, Jaro doesn’t require as much prompting from me as he continues. “I had never seen a zygek before, although I’d heard of them. There are hundreds of creatures that live on Nuthora alongside the prisoners, many of them dangerous, massive, and vicious.” He snorts softly. “I’ve always wondered if those beasts are truly native to this planet, or if they were introduced by the solar council as a means of controlling the prisoner population.”
I wince at the idea of monsters like the one that attacked me in the water being deliberately brought in with the hope that they’ll pick off a prisoner or two. It’s such an awful human rights violation… except that none of the parties involved are human.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask, flicking my gaze down toward Jaro before looking back up a
t the rock to scout out my next handhold.
“Three years.”
He speaks without hesitation, but I frown slightly as I realize that’s not what I expected him to say. I think I remember Charlotte mentioning that the Voxerans were all banished here after their failed uprising on Vox five years ago, so Jaro definitely wasn’t part of that group.
When we spoke in the ship the night before we set out on our journey, he said something that made me wonder about that, but his words now have just confirmed it. He wasn’t originally part of the Voxeran clan.
So why is he here?
I’m about to ask him that exact question when my hand slips.
My body stiffens, making my feet slip too. My heart lurches into my throat as I slide down the canyon wall, scrabbling to find another handhold.
But it’s too late.
I’m already falling.
8
Jaro
Sadie lets out a terrified cry as she begins to fall, and the sound seems to pierce my heart.
My hand whips out faster than a striking gori, my fingers closing around her delicate wrist as she falls past me. Her body jerks to a stop, and I almost lose my own hold on the wall.
“Akhi.” I curse under my breath, baring my teeth in a grimace as my fingers ache.
My grip cannot give out. I won’t let us fall.
Sadie is panting with fear and exertion as I hold on to her with one hand and the wall with the other. The fingertips of her free hand claw at the rock, but she’s moving blindly, fueled only by panic.
“Sadie.”
My voice is quiet, but somehow, it manages to catch her attention. She looks up at me, and the sight of her terrified blue eyes feels like another blade right through my heart.
“There’s a handhold just above you,” I tell her, working to keep my voice calm even though fear for her threatens to choke off my airway. “All you have to do is reach up and take it. You can do this. I know you can.”
For one heartbeat, our gazes lock, and I feel as if I can see straight into the depths of her soul. Her eyes, which always seemed so mysterious to me before, are completely open as she stares up at me.
Something seems to shift in the air between us, and her jaw tightens with determination. Her wild movements stop, and with shaking fingers, she reaches for the handhold I pointed out to her. When her fingers wrap around it, we both breathe a sigh of relief.
“There’s another, just to the side of that one,” I tell her. “I won’t let go of your wrist until you’re ready. Tell me when you’ve got your feet under you.”
She nods slightly, the movement jerky. I keep a firm grip on her wrist as she moves her feet, finding sturdy toeholds in the rock.
“Okay,” she whispers, her voice so quiet I almost don’t hear it. “I’m okay. You can let go.”
For some reason, it’s almost impossible to unclench my fingers from around her small wrist. I don’t want to let go, and I have to force my body to obey the command. Slowly, reluctantly, I release her and grip the wall again. She’s a bit below me and off to one side, and I gaze down at her, unable to look away.
She’s murmuring to herself, repeating a single phrase over and over under her breath. I can’t quite make out the words, and the ones I do hear don’t make any sense to me. But it seems to be helping her.
I watch as she conquers her fear, driving it back. Having grappled with my own demons in the past, I know how difficult what she’s doing is. I have to admit that, despite my misgivings about allowing the Terran women to stay with us, they’re stronger than I gave them credit for. I can still remember my first days on this planet, before Droth and the other Voxerans found me. Even I struggled here when I first arrived, and I had much more experience with combat and danger than Sadie does.
But she’s not giving up.
She’s pushing through her dread, forging ahead in spite of it.
She’s a warrior.
“Can you continue?” I ask in a quiet voice, careful not to startle her.
Her head bobs in another jerky nod. “Yes.”
“We can go back down.” I glance at the river and the rock shelf below. “Maybe it’s better to try our luck in the water.”
“No.” Her voice is low but firm. “No. We have to keep going up. We’re already more than halfway. The only way out is through.”
Those are the words she was murmuring earlier, I realize. I repeat them in my mind, committing them to memory since they obviously hold some special meaning for her.
We continue climbing, and I slow my pace a little to allow her to get ahead of me once more. She doesn’t ask me to speak again, nor does she utter a single word herself. Her lips are pressed into a tight line, and I can see that all of her concentration is dedicated to the task of putting each hand and each foot above the other.
Slanching idiot. I curse myself inwardly. I should never have spoken to her earlier to distract her. Even if she thought that’s what she needed, I shouldn’t have taken the risk. It was surprisingly easy to talk to her, even though I’m unpracticed at conversation. I usually make a point not to share details of my past with anyone, but I didn’t mind revealing parts of my life to her.
And you distracted her so well that she almost plummeted to her death.
The harsh reminder of what could’ve happened makes my jaw clench, and I shoot a glance at Sadie, wishing I could reach out and touch her again. Wishing I could carry her up the steep wall myself. Anything to keep her out of danger.
I don’t quite understand it. Ever since our arrival at the crash site, I’ve been suspicious of the Terran women. I was reluctant to bring them back to the village with us, and I told Droth as much.
But now, the thought of any harm coming to this woman makes a fiercely protective instinct rise up inside me.
Two days ago, I didn’t trust her.
Now, I’m not sure I could bear to lose her.
9
Sadie
I would say I’ve never been so terrified in my life, but that’s not quite true. I have been this scared before, and maybe that’s part of what allows me to push through the fear this time.
By the time we finally reach the top of the canyon wall, my entire world has narrowed down to the press of my fingertips against rough stone, the tingling in my toes, and the choppy rhythm of my breath.
As I haul myself over the ledge onto the even ground above, my mind can’t quite seem to process that the ordeal is over. My muscles are still tense, my raw fingertips stinging as they anticipate the next handhold.
We made it. Holy fuck. We made it.
I roll onto my back, letting my eyelids fall closed as I try to get my racing pulse under control. A few tears leak out the sides of my eyes and trail down my temples, but I don’t bother brushing them away. I don’t even know why I’m crying, really. It’s not like I’m sad. I’m just… overwhelmed.
A shadow falls over my face, and I blink slowly, letting the world come back into focus. Jaro is kneeling beside me, looking down at me with concern in his eyes.
He’s backlit a little by the sun, which rose higher in the sky as we climbed, and it strikes me for the first time how truly handsome he is. All of the Voxerans are breathtakingly gorgeous, but the otherworldliness of their appearance always overshadowed their attractiveness in my eyes.
I was always more focused on all the ways they don’t look human—the slightly blue tinge to their skin, the white markings that look almost like tattoos and even seem to glow sometimes, and the strange eyes with cat-like irises. But looking up at Jaro now, I have to acknowledge that the effect of all of those things put together is something truly breathtaking. He’s broad and powerful and wild, exuding raw masculinity with every movement.
With only a loincloth wrapped around his waist, there’s not much of his body left to the imagination, and I find my eyes tracing over the lines and curves of his muscles, following the intricate pathways of the markings on his skin.
My gaze moves up the co
lumn of his neck to his strong jaw and full lips. I take in his defined cheekbones and the line of his nose, and when I look into his startlingly green eyes, I realize with a jolt of awareness that he’s staring back at me.
How long have we been just looking at each other in complete silence?
Feeling suddenly awkward, I clear my throat and sit up, scooting backward on my butt to put a little distance between us. He wrenches his gaze away too, as if some spell has just been broken, and then gets to his feet. He extends a hand down to help me up, and after a moment’s hesitation, I take it.
The lingering distrust I felt when I woke up beside him on that slab of rock this morning is fading away. Sure, it’s possible he could still betray me, still turn on me somehow. But he’s saved my life twice at this point, risking his own to do it both times.
That means something. It means a whole hell of a lot, really.
“Thank you,” I murmur when I’m back on my feet.
“Of course.” He releases my hand, and my skin feels cool without his pressed against it.
“No, I mean…” Wincing, I gesture with my chin toward the ledge we just crawled over. “For catching me. I would’ve died if you hadn’t…”
Jaro takes a step closer to me, and for the first time, I have no desire to step away.
“Of course,” he repeats, his voice a bit lower and softer.
My heart gives a weird little thump in my chest, and my stomach flutters as if a dozen butterflies have gotten trapped inside my body. For a moment, neither one of us moves or speaks, then I finally shake my head, looking away.
“So, what now?” I ask.
My legs are still wobbly from the exertion and leftover adrenaline, and I swear my knees are about to give out, but I know we can’t just stop here. No matter how hard it was to scale that wall, we don’t just get to collect our participation award now and go grab a slice of pizza. We’re still separated from the rest of our group, on our own in the wilderness, and we need to get to the Voxeran village as quickly as we can.
