Tiamat's Wrath: 8 (The Expanse) by James S. A. Corey

Author:James S. A. Corey [Corey, James S. A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2019-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Elvi walked back to her rooms before she left the State Building for the Science Directorate. She wanted to clear her head, but it wasn’t clearing. Every thought she had seemed to fight its way to consciousness like it was swimming through gel. Her leg ached worse now, and the sleepless hours were starting to weigh on her, pulling her toward bed now that she had obligations. Or maybe she was just realizing that her time of healing after the trauma was over, and she wasn’t remotely okay.

The grounds were beautiful. Better than the best luxury resort. The weird leathery fliers they called sunbirds were out, flapping high above the buildings and looking more like bats than birds. Something like a dragonfly zoomed past her, wings buzzing here both the same as and entirely differently than they would have on earth.

The scale of it all was too big. There were too many billion people in too many hundred solar systems for anyone to really understand. For any human to really understand. Maybe that was why Winston Duarte had decided not to be human anymore. Him or his daughter either. It made her wish she’d majored in mathematics instead. They hadn’t sent any mathematicians to Ilus. And without Ilus, she wouldn’t have been the nearest thing to an expert on the wounds in reality that those dark things left. And she wouldn’t have been recruited by Laconia. And she wouldn’t be here. One little change early on could have meant a whole different life.

She turned the last corner before her courtyard, and there, out in the gardens, Fayez sat. One leg ended in a bright blue pod the size of a boot where his missing foot was already starting to grow back. The other was stretched out on a bench. And leaning against the back of the bench, James Holden.

As if he had felt the pressure of her gaze, Holden looked up and waved. He seemed both older and as though he hadn’t changed at all. She started toward the bench, leaning more on her cane than she’d had to before. The gel in her leg felt like it was burning. Hours more standing and walking through Cortázar’s labs sounded awful.

As she approached, Holden and Fayez exchanged a few words, and Holden walked off briskly. By the time she got to her husband’s side, Holden had disappeared behind a hedge.

Fayez moved his good leg and gave her room to sit. There were dark pouches under his eyes, but his smile was as amused and sardonic as the day she’d met him. Or the day she’d married him. Or that one time when they’d almost died because a terrorist had booby-trapped a landing pad.

“I think I must have lived my life wrong somehow,” she said.

“I know the feeling,” he said. “But then I see you, and I think something must have gone right. Even if everything else treats me like my previous incarnation killed a priest.”

She took his hand, wove her fingers with his.

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