Azrome spotted the crate sitting along the wall, and moved it over to her. Lost in her healing trance, she seemed oblivious, but he got her to sit by lifting her onto it.
Moments later, a murky fluid began to run from the corners of Zyair’s closed eyes. Xandros lifted me away from it, refusing to put me down until we were in the doorway.
“This might get untidy,” Azrome rumbled. “The venom has been in process for too long. She will have to work hard to separate it from his tissues.” He turned to me. “Do you have an electrolyte solution on board?”
I stared at him. “We might have some energy drinks.”
“She gets depleted while healing and must be sustained—I can do some of it through our link, but her body will require its own energy to keep going. I have a Drolgok friend getting some from the house, but for this”—he broke off and swallowed—“she will need every advantage we can offer to her.”
I didn’t want to leave Zyair, but Xandros took my elbow. “Last time, she worked on him for hours,” he said. “He is worse this time. We might as well rustle something up, and then get comfortable.”
Get comfortable? My mind spun as we all followed Xandros to the kitchen, where Yani was already hard at work preparing a meal. Or at least tea and pastries. And snickerdoodles for Sookie.
The pastries were no longer as fresh as they could be, but Xandros dug in eagerly. On the surface, he appeared unfazed by his brother’s struggle to live, but along the link I sensed how, for him, eating was a way to cope.
Rhodes was the opposite. He even waved away the tea, and leaned on the wall rather than sit.
Azrome cleaned the fridge out of energy drinks and vanished to take them to Amelia.
“Sit,” Yani ordered when I dithered. “We’ve done all we can for him. It’s up to the healer, now.”
So, I sat. Azrome reappeared and took a seat as well while Rhodes began to fill him in on our entire adventure.
I barely heard him. Sookie scampered over to me, and I gathered the hedgegopher into my lap. Her rumbling purr dictated a normalcy that I didn’t feel.
“Will she eat this?” Xandros asked, offering her a piece of what looked like apple fritter.
“The apple, maybe,” I hedged.
Sookie snatched the offered chunk and inhaled it. Xandros’s lips twitched into a small, sad smile.
I wanted to hear him laugh again. Wanted him and Rhodes to argue, so that Zyair could step in and solve it all.
Wanted Zyair to wake up. To smile at me. To live.
Handing the hedgegopher to Xandros, I rose. He did, too.
“No,” I said, sharper than I intended. I reached out to touch his arm. “I just need a bit of time alone.”
His brows lowered, but he nodded. I sensed both him and Rhodes watching me as I passed them and strode up the hall.
My feet took me to the bridge. The view outside theStardrifterwas of mountains and an evergreen forest. I sat in the pilot’s seat and remembered Zyair joining with me. Both the first time, which had been rather deliciously awkward, and the last, when he’d needed the spark of pain to reach culmination.
I’d once thought I wanted to escape both the Drakes and my life on Earth. Now here I was, mated to three of them. My father, and Yani, had been the only family that mattered to me. And after his death, the Drolgok and I had learned to rely only on each other.
Yet now it seemed like Zyair, Xandros, Rhodes, and I had always been together. At one time, I would have thought it merely a spiritual thing—but I knew the truth. It was Fated. We were bonded. As one. Would Fate work so hard to put us together, only to pull us apart?
Zyair had to live. I couldn’t imagine life without him.
A pulse of reassurance from Rhodes. Xandros sent me the equivalent of a mental hug. I opened my heart to them—they were hurting too.
When I didn’t return to them, they set out to cheer me up by regaling me with images of their brotherly adventures growing up. They included Zyair as a youngling, with a mother they barely remembered. Their early schooling, which had a very Drakonian emphasis on fighting skills. From what they showed me, they’d gotten into a great deal of trouble, especially once they’d entered their teen years.
The memories really began to roll, then, until I was caught up in them. After a particularly entertaining pictorial altercation with a barmaid and her enormous husband, I sensed something.
Looking up, I saw Amelia standing in the bridge entrance.
I shot to my feet, and she smiled gently at me. Her face was lined with exhaustion, but her eyes glimmered with her news.
