Page 174 of Alien Burn

“Braver. Triumphant. Something.” She looked down at their fingers. “I mostly want lunch.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth.

“An ambition I can support.”

Roemary's counsel won additional records and time to prepare, but not her release. Burk named the extraction crew and supplied a freight account that paid for the skiff. Dhomhes left any promise about sentencing to the tribunal.

Sret's murder remained under investigation. Adryel's evidence and the moonstone went through the agreed channels, with a record of each transfer. The first matched stabilizer payment now accompanied them. Senator Vandrel continued to protest while investigators followed the transfers that paid his office's bills.

The explosives comparison had come back inconclusive. The surviving records could not establish a shared method. Roemary's choice of the word flushed remained in her account; it would not bear the weight of proving who had set the charges.

The family still had money and influence. The operatives who had taken Sereya were in custody, their contract route closed, and Roemary could no longer reach the volunteers.

For the first time since the platform, Dhomhes could arrange a meal without an evacuation plan being the first item on the table.

He began bringing flowers to it.

Sereya tolerated the orchids with considerable grace.

She admired the small white flowers from the refinery's growing bay and asked him to thank the worker who had cut them.

The armful of tall gold reeds finally made her laugh.

“You said decades. You've been at it three days and you've already gone industrial.”

“I have a network.”

“I can see that.”

She came around his desk and took the pad from his hands. He had been reading the same line for several minutes, aware of her standing in the doorway in his shirt.

She set it aside and sat in his lap.

“You promised to keep learning me,” she said. “The getting-to-know-you part.”

“That's the intention.”

“Then I have a question.”

“I had been warned.”

“What do you like?”

He looked at the shirt, at her bare legs beside his, at the smile she made no effort to contain.

“You.”

“Specifics, Gol-Vett. You require accuracy of everyone else.”

He took her hands from his shoulders and placed them at the base of his horns.

“This.”

She stroked upward slowly. His eyes closed before he could prevent it.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I remember that.”

She did it again, and his armor stirred beneath her forearms.