“Taryn?” I repeated. “Who is Taryn?”
“My mate,” she explained and gestured to the Qeteshi just behind her.
“Ah.”
“He wants you to know that we will need you at a gathering tomorrow morning,” she went on, almost reluctantly. “There are some small squabbles in the village that require the attention of the Chieftain — er, that is… you.”
I nodded, dazed. “Yes, of course,” I mumbled. “I’ll be there.”
“Thank you,” she said and extended her arms as she turned around to usher everyone back outside before the sun set.
“Oh, but — ” I said, and she looked at me from over one angular shoulder, “Where should I go?”
“Just to the town square. We’ll meet you there.” Once everyone else had left, the woman turned and offered a smile. “Please eat some of the food we brought you,” she said gently. “You will need your strength.”
What I needed was a bath. What I needed was sleep. What I needed was for Odrik to wake up and tell me that everything was going to be all right. With my hand resting absently on my lower abdomen, I stood still in the center of the room and looked around, really looked around. The place was well constructed in smooth, dark wood. There was an arched entrance at the front, in the center of which was a fire pit, just like there had been in Odrik’s old dwelling. But there were windows, too, with stained glass patterns in beautifully intricate designs that cast dancing colored light over Odrik’s sleeping form. To the left was a kitchen or pantry area, with shelves built into the walls, and a basin and pitcher for water. To the right was another arched doorway, leading into a bedroom where there was a feather mattress atop a beautifully constructed wooden bedframe, into which were carved vines, and flowers and grass. There was a trunk at the foot of the bed, made of wood and iron, and another stained glass window. There was a small fireplace in that room as well, made of stone, with the ashes of a dead fire smeared across it. It was a beautiful place, evoking the feeling of belonging to a gnome or a fairy, but it was mine. It was ours.
And there Odrik lay in the center of the living space, a table and chairs pushed to the side of the room to make way for him. I could love it here, if he would just wake up.
I moved gingerly around the room — I don’t know why I was quiet when I was so desperate for him to wake up — and put the food everyone had brought for me on the shelves in the pantry. I drank deeply of the water and poured the rest into the basin. Wetting a cloth, I returned to Odrik’s side and wiped gently at the blood that had dried on his face.
“Well, now you have to wake up,” I said in low tones, “because I haven’t the faintest idea how to run an alien village, so. You just — you just have to wake up.” I patted him gently, clearing his beautiful flesh of the remaining evidence of the battle. The swelling around his eye was starting to go down, and he was almost looking like his normal self again. “Because if you don’t wake up, I’m going to send another distress call to Tymer Mafaren and he is going to take me back to Earth and you are going to die alone on this strange planet. Do you hear me? Odrik? Wake up!”
The tears came on suddenly and completely, and I dropped the bloodied cloth into my lap, bent my face into my hands, and wept. I wept for the loss of the future I’d dreamed of for myself as a child, and for the loss of the future I’d dreamed of for myself with Odrik. If I couldn’t go back to Earth, and I couldn’t stay here, where in the universe could I possibly go?
“I think,” I said to him after a while, sniffling as I went and wiping snot on the back of my hand, “that I hadn’t meant what I said, about staying, when I said it. I think I was just so desperate for you to make it through the fight that I would have said or done anything to help you.” I sniffled and rubbed at my eyes with the heels of my hands. “But I want to stay with you, Odrik. I want this life now. As soon as it looks like it might not be here, waiting for me, I know that it’s what I have always wanted most of all. So wake up, God damn you.”
“I’m awake, I’m awake.” His voice was gruff from lack of use, hoarse and dry, but it was him. He peered at me through one eye, the stern line of his mouth breaking into the semblance of a smile. “There’s no need to yell at me.”
“Odrik!” I threw my arms around him, and he grunted when I hit one of the more sensitive areas on his body. But he drew one arm up to wrap around me nevertheless. “You’re alive.”
“I told you I’d win,” he grumbled. “And so I have.”
“I thought I’d lost you.” I was clinging to him, trembling with the force of my relief.
“It will take more than one man to wrench me from your arms,” came his low, languid reply.
“Promise me something,” I said, lifting my head to peer down into his face.
“Hm?”
“Promise me that the rest of our lives will be just a little bit less, er… exciting than the story of how we met?”
He grinned, a dry little chuckle emanating from his lips. “I will do my best to keep that promise.” I laughed with him and settled back to sit at his side.
“But it is quite a story, isn’t it?” I mused quietly. Odrik gave a slow nod of his head, and I realized with a sort of lightness that it was a once-in-a-lifetime story, and that I couldn’t wait to tell our children the tale.
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Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance Page 37
