He came out of the 'fresher to find her in a charming state of half dress; her hair wisping about bare shoulders. She smiled at him and came forward, running her palms over his chest in teasing circles before stretching high on bare toes and fitting her mouth over his.
The kiss was long and thorough; he, a surprised but willing participant, fair panting by the time she was done with him.
Or perhaps not quite done with him. She leaned against him, snug in the circle of his arms, cheek on his shoulder, breasts pressed against him, shivering.
“Aelliana,” he managed, his voice nothing like steady.
She moved her head, idly nuzzling the skin beneath his collarbone.
“Aelliana, we will be late.”
Her lips moved, trailing fire. She sighed and looked up at him, eyes as bright as he had ever seen them.
“Daav,” she murmured. “I think we should have another child.”
He considered her. “Do you plan on murdering the one we have, or is this to be in addition?”
“In addition,” she said.
“Very good. I approve in principle.”
Her hand slid inside his robe, and he gasped, ready all at once.
“Are we,” he asked shakily, “to begin construction at once?”
Aelliana smiled, her fingers moving maddeningly. “I think that would be perfect.”
“I can scarcely argue with a lady who has a plan. However, I point out that we will miss the play, which means that we must on the morrow write a note. I mention this only because I am aware of how little you like to write notes.”
Her other hand crept up 'round his neck and pulled him down to her.
“We only have to miss the first act,” she whispered.
* * *
Aelliana slipped her hand through Daav's arm, letting the familiar and ever-new wash of his signal buoy her. They had parked in Korval's usual space by the theater. Ahead, she could see the intermission crowd just beginning to return to the theater, for the beginning of the second act.
“There,” Daav said. “We shall be seen by all the world; no notes need to be written—truly, a most satisfactory outcome!”
Something moved in the shadows ahead. She felt Daav take notice, but no more than just that—notice. They walked on, quickly enough that they would merge with the last ripple of returning theatergoers, thus making it appear that they had been there for the entire time. They would go up to Korval's box and—
From behind them, a shout. Daav half-turned; she felt the stab of his concern.
A shadow stepped out of the shadow ahead; a tall, broad-shouldered man—a Terran, she thought with cold clarity. He brought his gun up, unhurried and certain.
Aelliana saw him acquire his target. Inside her head, she saw the bullet's trajectory, saw Daav's head explode. She jumped, twisting, striking Daav with every bit of her strength, throwing herself forward and up—
The last thing she knew was satisfaction, and the beloved sense of him holding her close, and forever.
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Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Al'bresh venat'i . . .
“Daav.”
From the silent, freezing dark of outspace, he took note. Of the word. And of the voice.
“Daav.”
He drifted closer. The word had a certain familiarity; there was a worn feel to the voice. It was not, perhaps, the first, or even the fiftieth, time it had spoken that word.
“Daav.” The voice caught. “Brother, I beg you.”
He was close now; close enough to know whose voice it was—one of two in all the universe, that might have called him back.
“Er Thom . . . ”
He felt—a grip. Fingers closing hard around his—around his hand. Yes. He gasped, groped, as if for controls, and opened his eyes.
For a heartbeat, there was input, but no information. Colors smeared, shapes twisted out of sense, a whispery keening disordered the air. The strong grip did not falter.
“A moment, a moment. Allow the systems to do their work, Pilot . . . ”
He had weight now, and a form that stretched beyond his hand. The colors acquired edges, the shapes solidified, the keening—he was producing that noise, dreadful and lost.
“Daav?”
He blinked, and it was Er Thom's face he saw, drawn and pale, lashes tangled with dried tears.
He licked his lips, and deliberately drew a breath.
“Brother . . . ”
The keening stopped, unable to fit 'round the fullness of that word, but the sense of it remained at the core of him, jagged with horror, blighted by loss.
Fresh tears spilled from Er Thom's eyes. He raised his free hand, and tenderly cupped Daav's cheek.
“Denubia, I thought you were gone from us.”
“Where?” he asked, meaning, Where would I have gone? but Er Thom answered another question.
“High Port Medical Arts.”
The hospital.
“Why?”
Er Thom moved his hand, smoothing Daav's eyebrows, brushing tumbled hair from his forehead.
“The response team brought you both in, of course,” he whispered; the tears were running freely now. “They—there was no visible wound, and yet—you did not wake. Your life signs grew weaker, and the Healers—Master Kestra herself—said she would not dare to intervene, for she did not know what she was seeing.”
The horror at the core of him grew toothier. He tried to pull his hand away, but Er Thom held on like a man with a grip on a lifeline.
“Aelliana?” he asked, and that was an error, for as soon as he spoke, he remembered: the shout, his turn, the sound of the gun, and Aelliana leaping, graceful and sure—her body torn by the blast, slamming into him, and a vortex of absence, sucking him out, out, alone, gone, dead . . .
“Aelliana!”
He twisted, prisoned by the bedclothes, desperate to escape the agony of loss.
Er Thom caught his shoulders, pressed him against the bed and held him there while he flailed and screamed, and at last only wept, weakly, turning his face into the tumbled blankets.
His brother gathered him up, then, and held him cradled like a babe, murmuring, wordless and soothing, and Aelliana, Aelliana . . .
“Another child,” he whispered. “She had said we should have another child. We were late . . . ”
“He thought he had missed you, going in,” Er Thom murmured. “The gunman said as much before he died of his wounds. He thought to wait until the end of the play and catch you as you came away.”
“Wounds? There was no one but us, on the street, who would have wounded—”
“You,” his brother said. “The medics found your hideaway by your hand, and that prompted them to look for another who might be in need.”
Had he been quicker, had he been more alert—he might have preserved her life.
“He said,” Er Thom murmured, “that you were the target. That the Terran Party has a price on your head.”
“She saw him,” he whispered. “Timing and trajectory were blood and breath to her. She deliberately put herself into harm's way. Gods, Aelliana . . . ”
“Pilot's choice,” Er Thom said, though his voice was not by any means steady. “Brother, will you come home?”
Home? The rooms, her things lying where she had left them. Their apartment, with her scent and her imprint on everything. He could not . . . And yet where else was there to go?
His heart was beginning to pound. He drew a hard breath, and forcefully turned his thoughts to other questions; questions that Er Thom would expect.
“How long have I been—unconscious?”
“Three days,” Er Thom answered, adding carefully, “Val Con is with us.”
Val Con. Another bolt of agony shuddered through him. What was he going to tell their child? How could he begin to comfort Val Con, when he could scarcely hold himself rational from heartbeat to heartbeat?
“Daav?”
“Yes.” He raised his head and kissed his brother, softly, on the lips. “Let us by all means go home.”
Of course, it wasn't as simple as merely going home. The med techs needed their time with him, running suite after suite of diagnostics. He was found to be well-enough for a man who had sustained what the head of the tech team termed “a massive shock to the nervous and circulatory systems.” One received the distinct impression that med techs had not expected him to survive.