Skies of Fire: The Ether Chronicles by Archer Zoe

Author:Archer, Zoe [Archer, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

CHRISTOPHER STAYED CLOSE. The heat of their kiss kept him in Louisa’s orbit. If questioned—which he wouldn’t be—he had a convenient reason to remain near. There was no way to know how much telumium she would need for the bombs, compelling him to remain with her in the magazine as she conducted her experiments. She tried various amounts of the metal, making small adjustments as necessary, and taking more filings from his implant.

In truth, he might have insisted she take a larger amount of telumium at once, thus enabling him to leave the magazine and find work elsewhere in the ship. God knew he had enough to do. Yet he remained with her as the afternoon edged toward early evening. Every five minutes, someone in his crew popped his head in and asked him different questions. If the crewmen thought it strange that the ship’s captain sat shirtless in the magazine with a woman from Naval Intelligence, they wisely kept their mouths shut. Around him, anyway.

He watched her work, fascinated by the process that only she seemed to understand. Her hands were nimble, precise, and a small line appeared between her brows as she concentrated. She’d always frowned when working out a puzzle. In the few years since they’d been apart, the line had grown a little deeper, become more permanent. Tiny lines fanned out in the very corners of her eyes. She hadn’t needed the spectacles three years ago, either.

She was a woman. A woman who subtly aged with the passage of time. Who made mistakes, and admitted to them.

He didn’t know if it made it worse or better that she’d done so. A few words couldn’t undo the damage she’d caused. Yet the fact that she had understanding and courage enough to own up to her actions helped solder shut the giant fractures in his heart.

One thing he wasn’t comforted by: the knowledge that she desired him still. He’d tasted it in her kiss. Felt it in the grip of her hands on him, how her body molded to his. His own body still tightened in readiness. His appetite had been whetted. But it was a hunger that had to go unsatisfied. This was not the time. Not the place.

He might go to his death wanting her.

To occupy himself in between her taking more telumium, he picked up and studied whichever tool she wasn’t using. Turned them over and over in his hands and felt their wooden handles, their metal pieces.

“A wondrous age of mechanical marvels, this is,” he murmured. “When I was a boy, no one had heard of aurorae vires, nor telumium. Ether, too, was just a subject of speculation.”

Still bent over her work, she added, “Tetrol was only a rumor, also. Wild stories told by visitors to China. Vast soya bean fields being turned into fuel that burned faster and cleaner than coal. Who’d have believed it?”

“Now all of it’s real.” He spun a screwdriver on the tip of his finger. “My very existence proves it.

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