Page 152 of Alien Burn

The medic left them alone.

Dhomhes took off what remained of his coat. The armor along his shoulders was still raised, and the cloth caught on it. He pulled too hard. Another strip tore free.

He stood with it in his hand. Sereya could still hear the sound he'd made when Burk cut her.

She had never heard anything like it from him.

Even now he kept looking from her face to the dressing, as if he needed to check again.

He reached for a clean shirt.

“Don't put another one on just to ruin it.”

He looked at the torn coat in his hand.

“A sound financial argument.”

“I have them occasionally.”

He draped the coat over a chair and made tea in the small kitchen. She watched him warm the pot. Such a plain thing to do. Water, cups, a spoon. Her hands began shaking again.

When he came back, he put the cup on the table and sat beside her.

“Closer,” she said.

He moved. She tucked her feet beneath the blanket and leaned against his arm.

“I don't want to be alone tonight.”

“You won't be.”

“And I don't want to be quiet either.” She swallowed. “If I wait until morning, I might decide I can keep it all put away.”

“Then tell me.”

Sereya stared at the tea. A leaf floated near the rim. She followed it through a slow circle before she could make herself speak.

“Naliese.”

Dhomhes remained still.

“Naliese Tehvarr. That's my name. The one she put on the message.” She tried it again. “Naliese Tehvarr. Only daughter of Premier Alden Tehvarr, of Callis.”

For a moment she expected someone to come through the door. Six years of rules had not left her just because she had broken the largest one.

Dhomhes took her hand.

“I'm listening.”

She told him about the house first. The columns, the roof terrace, the dining room where her father practiced speeches while her mother corrected the figures in the margins.

“Everyone thought she was reading the household accounts. She let them. My father used to wait until they'd gone and ask her how badly he'd done.”

“What did she say?”

“That depended on how badly he'd done.”

Dhomhes smiled, and for a moment her mother was someone who had been funny, someone who had been alive before she became the reason Sereya woke in the dark.