by Kate Rudolph
She seemed to fall in slow motion, unable to find her balance and footing despite all those amazing twists and turns he knew she could do in the air.
And then she was falling.
And then she was gone.
Chapter Thirteen
PAIN RIPPED THROUGH Emily where the lightning had struck her, but it was only a little stronger than what she’d endured in the care of the Apsyns who’d been experimenting on her. Still, it was enough to make her lose her footing, and between one breath and the next she was soaring.
No, not soaring.
Falling.
She pulled her limbs in tight as if that would give her some form of control. She didn’t see the ledge she’d spotted fly by, but as fast as she was going she didn’t want to hit it.
How far away was the ground?
Was this really how she died?
She hadn’t even seen Oz’s bed yet.
The ground was rushing up fast and if she didn’t act she was gone.
She didn’t think. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, letting instinct take over. But they weren’t her instincts. She could feel Oz’s power, her power, rushing inside of her. She’d been able to call sparks, but nothing like what she needed now. And if she thought about how it had to be done, she’d never do it.
So she just did it.
Wings shot out from her back and she felt the air slow around her. She let them spread as wide as they could, slowing her descent into a gentle glide. The ground still rushed up, but not nearly as fast as it had been, and she was able to turn away from a cluster of trees that looked guaranteed to break something.
She crashed down to the ground, but nothing snapped. Her bones jostled, but they didn’t break. She looked at the nearly sheer cliff and couldn’t believe she’d made it. She looked over her shoulder to see red and blue wings so much like Oz’s, and then she saw a similar pair of wings soaring down.
Emily held her breath, waiting to see if it would be followed by the soldiers, but as Oz glided down there was nothing. He was alone.
And he wasn’t landing anywhere near her.
She wanted to call out to him, but was concerned that it would call down the soldiers, so she stood up and shook out her legs, ignoring the minor twinges from the rough landing. Retracting her wings didn’t exactly work. She concentrated hard on pulling them back into her body, but nothing happened. After more than a minute she gave up. They weren’t really extra weight, more like a phantom limb in reverse. She couldn’t really feel them, but she knew they were there. They disrupted the air around her and made her shift her weight oddly, but they had no mass themselves.
She left her wings as they were and started walking to where she’d seen Oz come down. The base of the canyon was beautiful and green, and she wondered if it flooded when there was rain. She glanced up and was relieved to see no clouds in the sky. That was one thing they didn’t need.
Oz wasn’t exactly where she expected to find him, but an anguished cry gave his location away. She rushed towards him. Was he hurt? Was he dying? Would she feel that?
The bond between them was only a few minutes old, but it was like he was a part of her now, and she didn’t want to let that go.
When she found him he was searching frantically around for something she couldn’t see. Had he been hit at the top of the canyon? Had his brain been scrambled? She had no first aid kit, no way to care for him. But they were both alive and she was determined to keep it that way.
She must have made a sound, though she didn’t mean to. Oz swung around, wings flashing out as if he meant to hurt her. Emily’s own wings rose of their own volition, shielding her from a strike that never came.
“Em-Emily!” It tore out of him on a sob and he rushed towards her, holding his arms out but pulling back before he touched. “You’re alive.” He whispered it, his eyes raking over her like he couldn’t believe what he saw. Then he looked again and took in her wings.
“I’m alive,” she said. “And so are you. And if you don’t kiss me I’m going to go crazy.”
He didn’t need a second invitation. His lips crashed down on hers and he devoured her. Emily let him. She needed to feel him all around her, needed to be completely consumed by him after what they’d just been through. A kiss wasn’t enough, not when he’d almost been ripped from her before they could see what could really happen between them.
All thoughts of returning home dissolved under the strength of Oz’s kiss. She couldn’t even remember why she’d wanted to when his tongue was in her mouth.
She let her hand wander, but when she reached his waist Oz tore himself away. His eyes sparked with lightning and she wondered if hers did the same now. “I’m giving you a bed,” he said, voice gravelly with lust.
Emily thought she saw a particularly inviting rock that would do the trick, but Oz was resolved. And as her heartbeat leveled out she realized he might have a point. She looked back up at the canyon wall and wondered where the soldiers were.
Oz must have read the question on her face. Or her thoughts. Did this bond thing mean he could read her mind?
“I fried them,” he said. “I thought you were gone and I—” his breath shuddered and he closed his eyes for a moment, trembling. He seemed to be reliving it and Emily wanted to pull him out of it.
She put her arms on his shoulders and rested her forehead against his. “I’m here,” she promised. “I’m alive. We’re alive.”
He nodded, but didn’t pull away. “It was unbelievably risky. My captain would have me whipped for even trying. It could have backfired and killed me, but I didn’t care. I had to make them pay. I’ve never called down that much power before and...” His breath shuddered again, but this time it wasn’t from grief. He sounded exhausted. And now she noticed that his eyes were bloodshot. And was that dried blood under his nose?
Emily moved her hands from his shoulders to cradle his face. She looked closely, but didn’t see any more injuries. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes, of course,” he said quickly, but Emily just glared and he relented. “I don’t think I’ll be able to use my spark for a while. Or my wings.” It hadn’t seemed strange to see them retracted, but she hadn’t realized he couldn’t use them.
“No more cliff jumping then?” She tried to lighten the mood.
“Not for a little while.” Then he grinned. “I knew your wings would be magnificent.”
She preened. Now was not the time to let the praise go to her head, but she couldn’t get enough of it from Oz. Then she remembered her problem. “How do I make them go away?”
He looked confused. “What?”
“I can’t retract them.” She tried again and was pretty sure they shimmered around her for a second, but they didn’t disappear.
Realization dawned. He stepped close and placed his hand over her heart, but there was nothing sexual about it, not that the rest of her body realized that. If he relented on that whole bed requirement she was ready to go.
“Your heart is racing,” he said. “You’re on guard, ready for threats. And your wings are your shield. You need to calm down before they retract.”
She’d been so flush with adrenaline that she hadn’t noticed the racing heart, but now that he mentioned it she could feel it pulse in her temple. “So my wings are going to come out every time my heart races?”
He smiled and kept his hand where it was. It was comforting. Grounding. “No, not once you learn control. But they’ll likely flash out when you feel threatened until you learn how to stop it.”
Emily took deep breaths and let herself sink into his touch. With Oz right there she felt safe, even knowing he had tapped out his powers before coming to find her. “How did you use your wings if you used up your lightning?” She still wasn’t sure how all this worked, but she wasn’t complaining that he’d found her.
“Sheer force of will. If there was any chance you...” he cut himself off.
Emily kept breathing deep and little by little she ca
lmed down. It took several minutes, but finally her heartbeat slowed to its normal rate and her wings seemed to dissolve. It wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d thought she’d be able to feel them inside of herself, or at least feel some increase of the electricity, the spark as Oz called it, in her veins. But it remained the same. So she had to hope that the wings would come back when she needed them.
“So what do we do now?” she asked. They had no vehicle and more soldiers were sure to come, and they’d be mad about what Oz had done to their brethren.
He hugged her close. “We find a place to rest and then head back to the city.”
“The city?” The same city they had escaped? “Why there?” That was where the bad guys were. Though the soldiers at the top of the canyon were proof enough that there were bad guys everywhere.
“Solan will be returning soon. And then we can regroup.”
Emily hoped he was right. She didn’t think they’d survive another match with soldiers.
OZ LED THE MARCH THROUGH the canyon. He didn’t know this area well, but at least he’d seen maps. Emily made it very clear that she wasn’t a fan of the outdoors, and he couldn’t blame her. The sun beat down hot overhead and sweat poured down over both of them.
“I’m going to be so burned tonight,” she grumbled, hugging her arms to her.
Oz stopped and looked her up and down. Her pale skin looked just the same as it had before, though a few bruises marred it. If the soldiers weren’t already dead he would have killed them for what they had done to his Match. “Burned?” There was no fire, and his own spark couldn’t harm her.
She looked at him like he was the imbecile and jabbed her finger upward. “Sunburn?”
“Sun...burn?” Under certain conditions the heat and light could cause fires, of course, but he had no idea what she was talking about.
She waved her finger between pointing up and then back at her skin. “Sunburn. Reddens skin? Makes it blister? Hurts and causes chills? Can cause cancer over a long time? The reason we need sunscreen? Anything ringing a bell?”
“A bell?” He was still confused. None of the humans he’d met before had mentioned this affliction. “What kind of harsh planet is Earth that your own sun injures you?” He’d always thought it was a fairly benign place, but how could the very thing that gave them light cause them injury? “How does that work?” Was it the sun itself? Or would he need to find some way to protect Emily? Surely Grace or one of the other humans he knew would have mentioned if it was a concern.
“UV rays or something?” Emily shrugged. “I just know that if you go in the sun without sunscreen you get a burn. Well, when you’re as pale as I am you do. And it’s not pleasant.”
What burn was? “The atmosphere of Kilrym filters out many things,” he assured her. “I’ve never heard of sunburn. But we will find healing cream somewhere in case you are afflicted. You have my word. When will it begin to appear?” He needed to fight it somehow, but he couldn’t slay the sun.
Emily rubbed her hand over her arms and furrowed her brow. “We’ve been walking for a while. But my skin isn’t red at all. That’s...” She glanced up at the sky. “No sunburn? I could get used to that. And no one will tell me that I need to tan.”
Tan?
She must have read the confusion on his face. “For a lot of people their skin darkens to a browner color before it turns red. For people who are pale like me that doesn’t really happen. Doesn’t stop anyone from commenting on how pale I am in the summer.”
“People willingly injure themselves to change their skin?” Earth sounded stranger and stranger.
Now Emily laughed. “Are you telling me those tattoos on your arm just magically appeared?” she stepped closer and ran her fingers down the fine lines of his ink.
Oz’s cock stirred and he wanted to pull her closer and let her know what she did to him, but from the way her eyes sparkled she knew. “That’s different,” he insisted. “And I know humans have tattoos as well.”
She ran her fingers down his arm until she could lace their hands together. They continued walking with the threat of the sun mitigated. “Do you know a lot of humans?” she asked.
“Some,” he said. He wasn’t sure what constituted a lot. “Grace’s mother. And she has her human friends in Osais. Synnrs welcome people from other planets. We have humans from Earth and other colonies. Along with half a dozen other sentient races. I can’t say that I’ve ever left this system, so I don’t know what else space has to offer.”
“And I thought I was well traveled from all the competitions I competed in.” She shook her head. “It took me all over the world. But you talk about traveling between planets like it’s nothing.”
“Not between planets,” he insisted. “Just this planet and its moon. Traveling between planets—” he cut himself off. Now wasn’t the time to talk about that.
And Emily didn’t seem to sense what he wasn’t saying. How could she? “Wait, does that make me the more cultured one here?” She laughed. “I’ve technically seen more planets than you.”
He shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. “I suppose you have. But tell me more about Earth. Your sun attacks you. What else is there? Does the ground shake under your feet? Does fire rain down from the sky?” He laughed as he said it.
And Emily laughed back. “Sort of? I mean there are earthquakes in places. And I guess volcanoes spew magma. Does that count?”
He’d been joking, but now he was alarmed. “What kind of disaster planet are you from?”
She laughed again. “Really, it’s usually pleasant. No earthquakes where I live. No hurricanes either. Just the occasional tornado.”
That settled it. Even if it had been an option, he wasn’t letting her return to Earth. It was far too dangerous.
“What’s that face?” she asked, nudging his shoulder gently.
He could almost pretend they were courting, that this walk was nothing more than a gentle stroll. But that would mean ignoring the way his blood sluggishly moved in his veins, his spark diminished almost to the breaking point. And he would never be able to forget watching Emily tumble off that cliff.
But he pushed that away. They were both alive and he had every intention of keeping them that way. “Your planet sounds terrifying,” he admitted. Sure, Kilrym and Aorsa had storms and weather events, but the things Emily was describing were once in a decade disasters. He couldn’t imagine living with the ever present threat to his life and livelihood.
“It’s really not as scary as it sounds. You could—” She clamped her lips shut, as if she were about to suggest something that couldn’t be taken back.
He had to tell her the truth. The longer this went on, the longer he let her believe that there was some path to the home she once knew, the more she would hate him when she found out the truth. “Emily, I—” but now it was his turn to shut up. The clearing in front of them should have been nothing special, just another bit of open space where wildlife could rest.
But the vehicle sitting on the dirt path was certainly not any kind of animal he’d ever seen.
“Stay here,” he told his Match.
Emily didn’t protest, though he could feel her spark crackle, as if she was ready to defend him from whatever threat an abandoned vehicle could pose. Oz couldn’t stop his smile. His Match was a ferocious woman, and he couldn’t wait to see what she would be like when she had a little training.
He circled around the vehicle before getting too close, but nothing looked out of place. They were quite a distance from the nearest settlement, so he had no idea why the vehicle was there. They hadn’t passed any dwellings as they climbed up the trail leading out of the canyon and found a path.
But someone must have made the path.
Satisfied the vehicle wouldn’t suddenly explode if he got too close, Oz opened the door and slid inside.
The thing was dead.
He tried every button, every switch, but it wouldn’t power up.
Bra
zon’s bowels.
He reached for his spark, hoping he could power the vehicle himself, but his spark was sluggish and wouldn’t give him the power he needed. He thunked his head against the navigation panel as the hope drained out of him.
But he wasn’t the only one with a spark.
He waved Emily over and she sprinted to meet him. “What is it?” she asked. “Is it out of... do your cars run on gas?”
“Gas? No. There is a rechargeable battery. Unfortunately this one has lost its charge. I’d guess this vehicle’s owner plans to have it towed away, but getting a truck out here may take some time.” It also meant that they probably weren’t as far away from civilization as he thought.
“So it’s dead? Damn.” Emily leaned against the body of the vehicle and hung her head.
“It needs a bit of electricity,” Oz admitted. “And I’m still burnt out.”
His Match perked up. “But I’m not.”
“You are not,” he confirmed. “So want to help?”
She nodded eagerly. “What do I do? And why couldn’t the person who owns this car do it? Didn’t you say you’d likely fry the engine of the other car?”
Good questions. “Some people don’t have much control over their spark, especially those without military training. Whoever owns the vehicle was just as likely to fry it beyond repair as fix it. Or it’s possible they didn’t understand the inner workings enough to know where to apply the power. And we were in such a rush earlier that I couldn’t take the time needed to finesse my spark.”
She blinked at him twice, her lips pursed. “I’m pretty sure that describes me. I’m not even familiar with the workings of cars back on Earth, let alone alien vehicles.”
It was strange to hear his own planet referred to as alien. Emily was the alien here. But he wasn’t about to correct her. “That’s why you have me,” he told her. “Theoretically I should be able to draw power from you. And if not, I can tell you what to do.”
“Then why didn’t you just do it?” She climbed into the passenger seat beside him and turned herself to face him.
