Wris studies the crowd that surrounds their procession, her stomach in knots, the rhythm of the march carrying her forward. Between the guards around her, the rain of flowers thrown by cheering citizens, and the aura haze generated by the press of so many people, Wris can’t make out the details of any one person, but still her stare rakes the throng. She catches occasional glimpses of dark aura pits dragging at the brighter haze, but there are too many bodies jostling all around her to pinpoint their source.

Motion and the heat of someone’s touch at her elbow send Wris nearly out of her skin, but it’s just her guard Eba, grinning and gesturing toward her hair. Wris reaches up into her cloud of curls until her fingertips brush against the stem of a flower; it must have landed on her and gotten caught, and she’s been so distracted she didn’t even feel it.

She pulls the flower free, her stare catching on the soft pink petals. She should make light of it, but with her heart pounding against her ribs and her palms sweating, she can’t find the levity or the words. The flower falls from her fingers to be crushed under the tread of the procession and she returns her sweeping gaze to the crowd.

There—another aura pit pulling at the bright swirl around it. Wris draws in a measured breath, squinting through the aura haze. It would take incredibly dark thoughts to weigh down the blur of auras made light by celebration. Could it be someone loyal to the usurpers?

...Read more in the Darkness & Moonlight anthology.

“How did you learn sign language?” Khatien asks.

After alternating between sullen withdrawal and contained anger all day, this curiosity is the last thing Ror expected. There’s tension in Khatien’s expression that verges on desperate.

He’s lonely.

The weight that has been slowly but inexorably pressing down on Ror multiplies. He pulls in a long breath and then signs, “My sister was born deaf. My mom had high blood pressure when she was pregnant and—well, my sister was deaf until she was ten years old, when our request to send her to overseas healers was approved.”

Ror can’t decipher the shift in Khatien’s body language, but it’s something that sends discomfort slithering through him. “Bet that made life easier for her,” Khatien signs dully.

“The captain could probably get you on a list to do the same, after the mission,” Ror suggests. “If you want.”

Khatien exhales sharply and shakes his head, turning away and striding into the room. Free of obstruction, the door slides shut behind him, the control screen flashing out of the corner of Ror’s eye.

Ror’s initial flicker of frustration drowns under a wash of sympathy and a larger, choking uncertainty.

He did what Captain Mitev expected of him today. She even complimented him on it. He brought his questions to her in private, and she granted him access to the Wakefire files to seek answers, but so far what he’s learned has only made him more uneasy.

Maybe it’s time to talk to Mom again.

Hurt and resentment twist through Ror; they’re less violent than they were the night she let him in on the secret of her seditious work, but every bit as suffocating.

He turns away from Khatien’s door and starts for the lift, but then veers down the hall that leads to the agency bar.

Before anything else, he needs to finish reading all of the Heatwave and Wakefire files. And if he wants to get through that right now, he needs a drink.

Trying to hold it all together is a hundred times harder than trying to remain curled tightly around herself against the prying, pulling hands of the wardens who strapped her down for her treatments before Samael freed her. She could never do it. They were too strong. And the storm is beyond the strength of mere men.

But she must, she must — alone, the ship would have been torn apart already, all thirty-three souls on board lost to the sea. Together they are stronger. Maybe they can accomplish together what Tabitha was too weak to do alone. She holds on. The wind howls and the water chops and crashes, stealing away the voices of the crew — drowning out Samael's broken murmuring of "Bitty, Bitty… Tabitha… It's okay" as his fingers tense in her hair — but Tabitha hears it all as if it is spoken in her own voice.

Eventually the storm eases, and Tabitha leaks back into her body to find herself diminished. She fights for breath against a chest that is suddenly heavy. Her muscles are liquid, her skin at once cold and hot, and chills set her to shaking that aches in her bones. She slits her eyes toward Samael and tries his name, but her throat squeezes it into a moan.

"Bitty," Samael murmurs, his dark eyes flicking over her face. "Where did you go?"

She doesn't need to answer. She senses his understanding — a soft feeling under the pang of despair. I was the ship, she wants to say. We were strong. But that strength has gone.

His fingers thread through her hair. "I wanted to keep you safe. I thought I could — I thought this was the way."

Her eyes slip closed, but she fights for a smile. She manages a bare whisper. "S'okay." She may yet survive this; she's not sure. But if not, better to die free, having felt the strength to withstand a storm, than in captivity.