Enemy Within (45 page)

Seaghdh eased his hold to allow her the space to meet Sindrivik’s eye. Her brain rolled, sluggish after so much trauma and so many medications. The pieces of data came together grudgingly. “You’re saying I responded to the hum?”

“Not until Pietre and I got the playback device positioned correctly, you didn’t. Physical readings remained consistent with shock and pain,” Sindrivik said. “After we switched on playback, your pain reading shot up, but then, over a period of time, it changed.”

“Pain sensing structures in the humanoid brain are right next to pleasure centers,” Ari murmured and shuddered in distaste. “It might be possible to alter brain wave activity with something like that hum and there’s no reason pain sensing in the brain shouldn’t spread out to encompass pleasure centers.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know enough about that sort of thing. I’d have to ask Raj, and I don’t think I want to explain why I want to know.”

“It got to me, too,” Seaghdh rumbled in her ear.

That stopped her. If it wasn’t just her . . . she couldn’t laugh, so she pressed tighter to him and whispered, “Thank you.”

He shifted. It felt like he looked down at the top of her head. “What else?”

“What happens next time?” Ari blurted.

“Next time?”

“The next time someone presses her too hard or threatens everything she holds dear,” V’kyrri clarified. “I can’t tell you this will be easy, Ari. You have a new weapon in your arsenal. One you’ve always had but didn’t understand. Give me time. I can teach you its uses and its limits.”

That made sense. Ari comprehended weapons training, both the necessity and the utility. Something else gnawed at the edge of her awareness, and she struggled free of Seaghdh’s grasp to peer at him.

“Mission objectives?” she muttered, uncertain she was picking up what he seemed to be trying so hard to communicate without saying the words aloud. A picture flashed into her head. She gasped and understood.

Raj had successfully extracted one of the Chekydran larva. Sindrivik and Pietre had found a way to keep the thing alive. They’d even hooked it into an isolated computer bank on board the
Sen Ekir
.

Abruptly sick and shaking, Ari fumbled for a com switch.

Seaghdh guided her hand.

“Dad,” she rasped. “Dad?”

“Alex?” Her father answered, the link went video enabled, and her father’s gaze searched her face. He paled. “Alex, what’s wrong? Why are you awake? Are you . . . ?”

“Destroy it,” she ordered.

Silence.

Then Ari heard someone shift in a chair. Her father looked over his shoulder, then back at her. “Destroy what?”

“The Chekydran.”

“What?” Raj protested.

She must have caught them in the midst of experiments on the . . . Her brain cut off the train of thought.

Her father widened the video field. He, Raj, Pietre, and Jayleia were in cargo. Every single one of them stared at her.

“No! The research potential alone . . .” Raj was saying.

“It is a living, thinking, feeling creature! Don’t do to it what was done to me!” Ari commanded and found her fists were clenched. “We’ve taken it from everything it has ever known, subjected it to tests, study, and our own form of interrogation! We can’t give it back, but we can end its misery.”

Pain warred with indignation on her father’s face. He glanced at Raj.

“I can’t believe you’re accusing us of being just like the Chekydran,” Raj said. From the petulant tone of his voice, she could tell she’d won.

Raj sighed and scrubbed his face with both hands.

“I had wondered,” he murmured. “Our instruments can’t register things like pain or pleasure in these larval forms, but there’s a reading I’ve never been able to alter.”

“The one you said looked like a scream?” Jayleia prompted, the edge of tears in her voice.

Raj and her dad traded a resigned look.

Her father nodded.

“I’ll take care of it,” Raj promised. “As humanely as possible, if that isn’t a horrifying oxymoron.”

“Rest, Alex, please,” her father said. “We’ll make this as right as we can.”

“Thank you.”

Looking unsettled, her father signed off.

Seaghdh, his expression grim but satisfied, said, “You just drew the line.”

Ari scowled at him. “What?”

“You could have destroyed that creature,” he said. “You know the
Sen Ekir
well enough to disrupt nutrient feed. You didn’t.”

She stared at him and felt some tightly shut place within her break open.
Baxt’k you, Hicci. Match to me.

She felt elation leap within Cullin Seaghdh as if it were her own and wondered how he managed to read so much from her without being a telepath himself.

“I don’t care what you think you are, Captain Alexandria Rose Idylle,” he said. “I love you. I love your courage and determination, your refusal to sacrifice anyone or anything to expedience. I love the sense of humor everyone told me you didn’t have. Which reminds me.” He released her and straightened, a cocky, promising grin on his face. “I have something for you.”

Uh-oh.

Dr. Annantra’s son handed a covered tray through the door. Eilod took it from him and set it before Ari.

Still grinning like an idiot, Seaghdh removed the cover with a flourish.

The savory aroma of freshly grilled Wrate Leaf hit her. She burst out laughing but had to stifle the urge when her ribs complained.

“You are going to explain this at some point,” Eilod commanded with a smile before turning away.

Seaghdh brushed a curl from Ari’s cheek, his eyes shimmering with mirth, but his expression somber. “I know you think you’re alone in the universe because of what your mother did, but, hwe vaugh, you have always been one of a kind to me, from the moment I saw the media shot of your very first blade win.”

Ari sighed as she tasted hope again in the swelling of her heart. It wouldn’t be easy. She wasn’t the same person the Chekydran had captured so many months ago. Seaghdh had been right. She had an opportunity and an obligation to rebuild herself and her life. With him. They’d be starting from scratch.

She looked at the man staring into her face.

“Tell me you’ll stay,” he urged.

What had she said to him before flying off to beard the Chekydran in their ship? He was more than worth the risk. Maybe she was, too.

“What is the final point?” Ari demanded. “The one which binds all points into the Art of the Blade?”

Seaghdh blinked, hope, and something much warmer, kindling in his eyes. He held out a hand. “Commitment.”

She put her hand in his. Her heart soared. “Commitment.”