Chapter 36
They stepped out into the living area again. Wraith followed close, her hand wrapped around his bicep and feeling like his tether to reality.
The irony was not lost on Kael.
Phantom and the Other woman, Seori, were seated on the couch. She gave him a small, calm smile. Phantom’s eyes promised a painful and not-too-distant end.
How the fuck did someone end up marrying—
Wraith’s fingers tightened on his arm. Not support.
Warning.
“I’m sorry,” he told the woman.
She and Phantom rose. Seori stepped half a pace forward, Phantom’s hand resting on her back. “I’m Dr Seori Tommasi.”
Her eyes swept over him, then Wraith.
For a moment he was hyper-aware of his cuts on his face. The swollen lip and broken nose. Of the bruises blossoming on Wraith’s skin that he’d put there.
“Oh, for the sake of the Void,” Seori lifted her head to the ceiling. He could see her lips moving. Counting, he thought.
She looked between them, threw her hands in the air.
“What the fuck did you two do to yourselves?” she demanded, with a small stomp of her foot. Spun to face her suddenly grinning husband.
“And you? You think this is funny? I healed them both yesterday.”
“Guess you weren’t kidding about your temper,” Wraith noted.
Elijah had saved her more times that she could count. Returning the favor cost her nothing.
Seori whirled on her, stalking forward.
Okay, maybe not nothing.
She stepped forward to put herself between Kael and Seori—just in case.
Seori jabbed a finger towards her face, reminding her of Patch.
“Despite what I can only assume they taught you somewhere, violence is not an acceptable substitute for therapy.”
“Quicker though,” Kael muttered, earning himself a look. Seori had some good ones.
“Elijah, take them to the MedBay and sort them out. I’ll make breakfast. Do not put any more bruises on him.”
“Yes, dear,” Elijah’s tone was repentant, but his amusement practically sang. Wraith didn’t even need to reach for him.
“That includes before you get there.”
His face fell. Seori was still staring at her, so Wraith managed to keep her expression parade-ground neutral.
“Yes, ma’am,” Elijah muttered and tilted his head to the door.
They followed him out into corridor.
“She didn’t say anything about broken bones or internal hemorrhaging,” Phantom mused. “Or bleeding at all, now that I think about it.”
Wraith laughed and nudged him with her hip, causing a weird resonance between the three of them. It ricocheted between them, hissing and static, and faded slowly.
She took a deep breath. “Right, not doing that again. Shall we?”
An hour later they were back in the Tommasi quarters, sitting at the table and eating what was honestly the best breakfast Wraith thought she’d ever had.
Eggs and bacon that almost certainly came from actual animals. Fluffy pancakes with purple-staining berries. Coffee that didn’t taste like engine fuel.
If all their food was like this, then she could see the appeal of staying.
Next to her, Helios ate silently. He’d slipped back into broadcast mode while she’d showered. Apparently, telling him that they were on an Other ship at the bottom of the Void was not her best tactical decision.
Now, she sat with her knee pressed against his under the table and doing her best to ignore the way her stupid pulse jumped every time he reached down to touch her leg to center himself.
The intervals were getting shorter.
Almost certainly a bad sign.
She couldn’t feel Elijah or Seori. Couldn’t even touch the murmuring collective of the rest of ship’s residents. Everything she had was being spent containing the man next to her.
Finally, everyone’s food was gone.
“To business,” she said with a look that dared anyone, namely Elijah, to disagree.
He met her gaze and smiled.
Helios put a hand on her thigh. Left it there.
Elijah’s brows drew together.
She had to bite off the suggestion that they might like some alone time together. They’d probably take her up on it and she was not some fucking prize to be won.
Wraith ignored the men and looked straight at Seori. Her hand white-knuckled in her lap. Jerked her head towards Kael and kept her voice steady.
“How do we fix him?”
It was getting harder to concentrate. Seori’s voice seemed to be coming from very far away and he couldn’t make out the words.
Wraith’s, on the other hand, were crisp. Delivered in that post-mission debrief tone you got to know really well in SID.
Phantom was still present. Always fucking present. But quiet.
And outside, if he let himself listen, the Void howled his name.
Helios reached over and grabbed the hand she’d been gesturing with. She glared at him over the interruption, and her breath caught as she realized that wherever he was, it wasn’t here.
She was going to have to kill him.
The weight settled over her like a shroud.
Seori didn’t know what was wrong. Didn’t know how to fix him, if he even could be fixed.
And it was becoming more and more obvious that the hourglass was on its final grains of sand.
“Is my Banshee still in one piece?”
“Ash?” Elijah’s voice had her opening her eyes. When had she closed them?
“My fighter, Tom, is it still in one piece? Or can you loan me one? Give me one, actually. Because you’re probably not getting it back.”
His confusion morphed into pure horror.
“No. No fucking way. Not again. Not happening.”
Seori reached out to him, but he batted her hand away and leaned forward, towards Wraith.
“You are not doing this.”
She met his gaze. Pulled her soul into the thinnest possible thread. Reached. She had to make him understand.
Kael stilled.
“He’s losing it, Tom, we don’t have days. Fuck, I don’t even think we have hours. You need to let me get him off this ship. Now.”
She could feel his pain, knew he could feel hers in the way she hadn’t let touch him last time she… left him behind.
“The Void was killing him before we came down here. It was why I brought him down here. But we’ve just run out of time.”
Seori’s presence joined Elijah’s as she placed her hand on her husband’s. Her pain echoed through the bond, sharpened by fear, but tinted with something else.
“Wait,” she said, “what do you mean he was dying before you came here?”
Wraith tore her eyes away from Elijah and looked at her.
“We pushed him too far. Too fast. Too hard. The Void was eating his soul.”
Seori’s face was bewildered, so Wraith glanced back at Phantom, “You know what that feels like.”
He nodded, thoughtfully. The calm tactician had surfaced, was reviewing all angles. It was… comforting.
“Why bring him down here?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
For such a smart man, he could be dense as hell. It only took him a couple of heartbeats to figure it out.
“Did it work?”
Seori’s head was bobbing between them. Out of her depth and trying to catch up.
“It was starting to. Then a Void-damned Kraken rose up and ate us.”