Shades of Dark (26 page)

I knew I should be exhausted, ready for sleep. But just like the last time, I’d never felt more alive.

“Extraordinary,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he rasped, his lips curving into a familiar Sully-grin. “We are.”

I woke a few hours later to the smell of coffee. I sat up in bed, clutching the sheet against me as Sully walked into the room, large mug in his left hand, bowl in his right. I took the coffee from him, sipped it. God. Chocolate and…cinnaspice?

It dawned on me he was fully dressed. I was still naked. I didn’t remember his leaving the bed.

“How long have you been up? And who made this coffee?” I took another sip and let the sheet slip through my fingers. Stars, this stuff was good.

His eyes darkened as a small smile played over his lips. And I remembered that
Kyis
are highly motivated by pleasure. Even mine with the coffee, apparently.

“It’s Del’s recipe,” he said, easing down onto the bed. He dipped the spoon into the bowl, bringing up something steaming, lumpy, and I knew from experience, wonderful. Dorsie’s hot fruit compote. “Eat. You need the fuel.”

I let him spoon-feed me, then took another sip of coffee. And thought about what he’d said. Del. Not Regarth. “So you and Del have stopped pissing on the bulkheads?” The fact that Del saved our lives notwithstanding, I’d still sensed a wariness in Sully about our new pilot.

Sully sighed. “It’s instinct, two
Kyis,
probably more so with males. I’d read about it, but I’d never had it happen firsthand before. Fortunately, he knew how I’d likely react, though he only had minutes at meetpoint to process what I was. So we were both a bit off.”

“You trust him?”

“Besides the fact that he took out those two ImpSec agents? He’s been working against Tage for much longer than we have. We knew more about Burke. He knows more about Tage. If I’d met him six months ago, things would probably be radically different in the Empire right now.”

“But do you trust him?”

I felt Sully’s presence sweep my mind. “You don’t because he teases you.”

“I grew up in a military family on a military base. Men being rowdy or bawdy don’t bother me. Believe me, I’ve even out-bawdyed a few. But there’s a line you don’t cross when it comes to someone’s spouse.”

“Ah! So you finally admit we’re married.”

“Sully.” I wanted to smack his arm but I might spill my coffee. That would be a sin.

“He’s a
Kyi,
Chaz. They’re—
we’re
—very sensual. Your being
ky’sara
to me brings you into the realm of our energies. In a way, it’s like being part of a large family.” He raised the spoon again. “Eat.”

I took a mouthful, chewed, swallowed. “That would mean every
Ragkiril
on Stol trusts every other
Ragkiril
. Sorry, don’t buy it. I’ve read some of their history. Doesn’t work that way.”

“It does within clans. Del’s been explaining this to me. He was raised knowing he was a
Ragkiril
. He’s been trained for years as a
Kyi
. I have a twenty years of learning to catch up with.”

“Ren never told you any of this?”

“Ren
told
me a lot, but he was cast out of his clan as a child, and the church orphanage on Calfedar is not going to teach a blind Stolorth about
Ragkirils
. You know this.”

“I just assumed since he knew so much of his people’s history—you
do
know Del’s some kind of deposed prince, don’t you?”

Sully chuckled softly. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, I just thought Ren knew a lot more about
Ragkirils
. He did explain the basics to me when I met you.”

“Ren knows what he’s studied since leaving Calfedar. Del’s lived it. Still lives it.” Sully shook his head, his expression suddenly serious. “I don’t know if I can completely describe what it’s like to finally meet someone
who is like me,
after all this time. It’s a little frightening but, God, it’s also such a relief.” He glanced almost shyly at me. “I don’t feel like such a freak.”

Ah, Sully. My heart constricted at his pained admission. I put my coffee on the nightstand and, framing his face with my hands, kissed him gently.

He licked his lips. “That is damned good coffee.”

“And?” I prompted.

He grinned. “Damned good kisses too. Now, open that beautiful mouth of yours again and finish your breakfast. We have work to do before we hit Dock Five. Del and I have some plans.”

Del and Sully. I was glad that someone could finally help Sully be at peace with the beast within, as I knew he thought of himself. He needed training to understand what he was, use what he was. Del could do that for him. And they were, not surprisingly, similar in age, outlook, and temperament. Del was the deposed prince. Sully was the deposed heir. I could see them as friends.

But it was the things I couldn’t see but only feel on the edges of my mind that worried me. Things that I sensed when I first met Del. Captain Regarth. His Royal Highness, Prince Regarth Cordell, Serian-Prime, Blessed of Delkavra.

He was trouble.

Sully left the cabin for the bridge, where Del was sitting in as first pilot. I went down to the galley for another cup of that chocolate coffee and to thank Dorsie for making the fruit compote. She knew it was Sully’s and my favorite breakfast.

We had a little under an hour yet to the exit gate.

“My God, he’s gorgeous! I’ve never seen eyes that deep color of blue. And an honest-to-shit prince!” Dorsie was rearranging perishables in one of the two large refrigerators in the
Karn
’s galley. Good thing for her to be doing. We were discussing Del and she was overheating rapidly. “And do you know he gives the most heavenly back massages?”

No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to know. But he was
Kyi,
motivated by pleasure—which meant, to a great extent, giving other people pleasure so he could experience it too. Dorsie had learned to enjoy Ren’s warm rainbows. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Del had done to her.

I could guess. Sully did it to me.

But did that mean Dorsie had…been intimate with him? I snorted back a laugh at my own silent euphemism. I was a grown woman. But “fucked him” didn’t seem quite right for the experience a
Kyi
could provide. And “had sex” didn’t quite cover it either.

I didn’t even know if I could ask such a personal question, but she obviously read it in the expression on my face and snorted out a laugh of her own. “Oh, God, no. I didn’t bed the man. Yet.” She winked. “I was working down here and, you know, he reads those rainbows like Ren does. He told me so. He could feel that my shoulder bothered me so I sat at a galley table while he worked his magic.” She sighed. “And such magic! It’s those six fingers. Must be.”

She turned back to the shelves, pushing some containers to the side.

“What about Ren?” I asked her. Was it only a day or so ago she was ogling his ass? And it was worthy of ogling.

Three small boxes went into the open space. She shut the unit’s door then leaned against it. “I look at a lot of things like I look at food. Ren’s the uncultivated berry you find growing in the woods. Sweet and sun-kissed. Rare. Del is…” She paused, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “Del is triple chocolate fudge from one of those high-end confectionaries. Someone made him exactly what he is and spared no expense in doing it. Does that make sense?”

Yeah, it did. But it also made me wonder what his price was, and if we could afford it.

Sully and Del were still on the bridge. I could hear raucous male laughter in the corridor as I exited the stairwell. Marsh said something, Del answered.

Then from Sully, laughing: “Hell’s ass! She’s even better than that.”

I hesitated for no reason I could rationally define. I was raised on a military base. Epithets, gallows humor, cheap-shot jokes rolled off my back. But there was an undercurrent here that was different.

And no one seemed to notice it but me.

Was I crazy?

Hello, lover. Come join us.
A deep, masculine whisper traced the edges of my mind. And it wasn’t Sully.

I turned on my heels and fled back down the stairs.

I stopped at the bottom tread, heart pounding, feeling stupid, foolish. Angry. I wanted to march onto the bridge—
my
bridge—and slap Del’s regally handsome face.

For what? Teasing me?

I leaned my forehead against the cool metal bulkhead. Sanity seeped back in. I was Sully’s
ky’sara
. Del knew that, honored that. He’d said so. This was simply a family dynamic I wasn’t used to.

But wasn’t I? Thad had friends at the academy who used to flirt shamelessly with me. Their friend’s kid sister. I was fair game, practice material. Safe. I laughed with them, flirted back, blew it off.

That’s all this was.

Chaz?

Sully. Relief tumbled through me.
Just had some coffee, been talking to Dorsie.

You’d rather have that coffee than be with me? I’m crushed, angel. Forty to gate. Get your sweet ass up here.

Slave driver. On my way.

Sully was at communications when I stepped onto the bridge. Del was at nav, augmenting Sully’s databanks on the old smugglers’ gates and routes through slippery space. Marsh was in the ready room, door to the bridge open, composing transmits to send to his mother and family via the first beacon we hit after exiting the gate. The death of his father weighed heavily on him.

I hiked myself into the pilot’s chair, tapped on the armrest console screens. Thirty-five minutes to gate exit, everything within normal parameters.

“Here,” Del said, and data appeared on my screen. “We can use this secondary gate and cut down transit time to Dock Five.”

I ran a practiced eye over the data. “That’s one ugly gate, Captain Regarth.” It was. Ugly and old. The guidance beacons predated my father’s time in Fleet.

“Ignore the beacons. We leave them there because it dissuades most people from using it.”

“We?”

“It’s an old Stolorth transit gate, Chasidah. We were here long before you were, you know. What you call Baris Sector was once part of our dynasty.”

Sully leaned back in his chair. “I’d heard rumors of that.”

And I remembered Del mentioning that, back on Narfial. But that bit of information had gotten lost among everything else: the attackers at the stairs, and the out-of-control freighter dead-eyeing us, weapons hot.

“We were spacefarers when humans stumbled on us, centuries ago,” Del was saying. “But we were explorers not conquerors. We had no military fleet. It’s difficult to hang on to your property when you can’t defend it.”

I nodded. “So what do I use for a gate fix?”

“The intrinsic properties of the gate itself. Each one we built is different. It interweaves with the—” And he stopped. I knew what he was going to say and couldn’t, because Marsh came back on the bridge.

“—spectral emissions of the gate,” he finished. Then, in my mind:
The
Kyi.
Gabriel, only you or I would be able to take the ship in. You understand that?

Completely. This is fascinating.

“More slippery space?” Marsh asked, glancing at the data on Sully’s screen as he passed by.

“Don’t ask, Marsh,” I told him. “You don’t want to know.”

“That’s why I love engines, drives, Cap’n. They stay where they belong. Lower deck, aft. And either they have fuel or they don’t. None of this here, not here, partially here, sometimes here shit.” He shook his head, grinning. “I sat nav early on, then realized I was too sane for the job.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Ganton,” Sully said. When Sully filled a role on his ship other than owner, it was navigator. I wondered now if he was drawn to it or had a natural affinity for it because he was a
Kyi
.

Likely,
Dell said.
Our earliest explorers all were. It was a requirement.

I felt Sully’s surprise.

Marsh was laughing, oblivious to our secondary conversation.