“I’m at Zohro’s house.”
“Stay put,” Tasha said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Just before the line went dead, I heard her say, “Start the slicer, Tenn.”
14
ZOHRO
When I returned to the house, night had fallen. I found the bedding I’d begun to launder earlier flapping on the clothesline, along with Jolene’s wet clothes. I did not know if that was a good thing or not.
I entered the house.
There was evidence Jolene had found the cellar and eaten – a few crumbs scattered on the table and a plate abandoned in the sink – but the room was dark and empty.
Panic filled me so quickly it was nearly surreal. Could she have left me already?
Where could she have gone? She was alone. Slow, pregnant, vulnerable. Surely she would not have gone beyond the fencing. Would she?
Why the blazes had I left her here!
A sound startled me from my spiralling thoughts. A little snort, then an exhale, coming from the bedroom. I ran to it, then stopped in the open doorway.
There she lay. On her left side for once, thank the empire. Her small body was curled beneath the thick jacket she’d worn last night.
The shirt I’d given her – the shirt I would have worn to our wedding – was neatly folded atop the bedside table. She wasn’t wearing it anymore.
It felt like a message.
It felt like a goodbye.
And that made me so terribly angry. A pathetic, poisonous part of me wanted to roughly wake her, shake her by the shoulders, ask her things like, “Am I not at least as worthy as Fallon? As Garrek? As Silar? As idiotic Oaken, who broke his own blasted foot in pursuit of a woman?”
Maybe I was not as nauseatingly cheerful as Fallon, and maybe I had not broken a foot like Oaken, but I had bled for her. And I knew I would bleed more, the very moment that she needed me to.
Selfishly, I wanted to demand things of her. Demand her attention, her time. Demand that she give me a chance. A fair shot. As if I would not waste such a chance the same way I’d wasted the rest of my life.
I had no idea how to prove myself to her. And if she had already made up her mind, taken off my shirt and folded it away so that it would be all the faster to leave me when she woke, then so be it.
She might as well take the shirt with her.
Because I knew, as I watched her sleeping in the dark, that if I did not have a wedding with her, then I would not have one at all.
Petulant, maybe. Stubborn? Absolutely.
But that was how I felt. One day with her smiles – and the agony of her human tears – and I was ruined for all others.
It was infuriating.
And surprising, really. How easily I’d just lain back and let her do it.
I watched her for some time, telling myself it was to make sure she didn’t roll onto her back, but really, it was simply because I wanted to. Because if this was the last night she spent in my house, I didn’t want to miss a moment of it.
But the end came all too soon. My ears pricked at the sound of a slicer’s engines. Distant, but getting closer. When the rumble of the vehicle was very near my property, Jolene stirred. With her waking now, I lit a candle by the bed, sending warmth rushing over her skin and hair.
“Zohro?” she croaked. She rubbed her eyes with sleepy fists. When she let her hands fall, her eyes looked red and swollen.
I lurched forward. Red could be a sign of inflammation. Had she encountered another irritant in the environment? Maybe the dust was bothering her?
“Do your eyes hurt?” I asked her, crouching down beside the bed as she got herself laboriously up into a seated position. She swung her bare feet down over the side of the bed, her knees between my thighs.
