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“I love you,” I told her immediately. I had not gotten the chance to tell it to her enough yet—I could start repeating it today, and never be finished.
“>” the ship interrupted me. “That is why we will > you for your >”
I sensed motion behind me and whirled to find the chamber we’d been in closing off, leaving us in this new one—and beside me a portion of the wall cleared, revealing a newly hatched kraken, no bigger than the size of my palm.
chapter 49
ELLE
I was trying to combat the world’s worst migraine haze while I made sense of things.
The ship wanted energy—ALRI had power; I was sure we could figure out how to help it—but we needed to do it fast. One of its sister ships was en route to return to help it, and it needed to send up another beacon, but it didn’t have enough energy to do so, while keeping its cargo safe.
But I wasn’t sure what precisely that cargo was—until I felt Cepharius’s heart lurch.
I blinked up at him, and saw his eyes were for the nearest wall alone.
I followed his gaze—and saw a human child.
“Elle,” he said, reaching forward with one hand, but then I drew his back with my own, jostling myself and probably adding another twenty minutes onto my headache, because I could see what he saw, through his eyes, on our ’qa.
It was like being at the optometrist when they had you hold that plastic shield over your eyes—if I saw through his, it was a kraken, if I saw through mine, a baby.
“Ceph—it’s not what you think it is,” I explained to him softly, feeling his pain at losing his child all over again, only this time much more intimately. I moved enough to make him free me, but I stayed against his side.
“It is ,” the ship agreed. “But it can >. Will you > us? Can we >”
“Of course we’ll help,” I said, and meant it.
The ship opened up the glass and released the baby. Ceph reached for it at once, cradling it inside his hands to pull it close, and I wasn’t sure which was worse for my ovaries, seeing him hold a kraken or a human baby.
“Good. This one has . It is very brave. Choose how you would like it to and please bring us >”
Every time the ship talked the reverb in my head got louder—and I realized it was because the ship was talking as a collective.
But my thoughts were currently my own, because Cepharius was lost in his kraken-baby’s eyes. I closed mine, and let myself feel how he did, full of love and the urge to teach and protect, and the stabbing knowledge that we would never have that together hurt me.
I stroked a gentle hand down his back. “What do you mean this one?” I asked the ship. “Just how many are you carrying?”
The nearest lights telescoped back, revealing that the room we were in was full of hexagonal chambers, all lidded with opaque glass. I assumed each one of them was occupied.
“Ceph,” I whispered, willing him to look around. He did so, and I caught a strong wave of his confusion.
“I don’t understand.”
“I do,” I said. This was the ship’s cargo. It wasn’t just a ship—it was a mothership. Quite literally.
Suddenly all the fear the ship had felt for so long alone made sense. It wasn’t just responsible for a child or two—there were hundreds of them here.
An entire future’s worth of children.
“But you don’t need to trade us anything. Of course we’ll help.” I reached to take the hatchling from him, and he handed it over reluctantly.
The moment it landed in my arms it became a baby for me. Chubby, a little dopey looking with those unfocused newborn eyes, waving its tiny hands, and I felt it, skin to skin. I was flooded by hormones. I liked the way it fit, its weight, the heat of it—I even thought I could breathe its clean scent in.
“Can you show me your real form?” I asked the creature I held. Its appearance muddied and changed, turning from the baby I wanted to see, to something that looked like a furry larva, with six stubby little legs, and a twitching, mole-like nose.
It was ugly-cute—the sort of creature only a mother could love.
