Trojan Horse by R.M. Olson

Author:R.M. Olson [Olson, R.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: R.M. Olson
Published: 2020-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LEV TURNED RESTLESSLY in his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

It was later than he wanted to think about. He’d found some excuse or another for staying up, checking his com surreptitiously every few standard minutes.

Grigory’s boyeviki hadn’t returned since they’d left early that afternoon, and Tae hadn’t been able to detect any chatter over the com lines that Grigory was sending more. It wasn’t confirmation, of course, but it likely meant that, one way or another, Grigory had come to a decision. Either he’d had seen through their ploy, or he’d been taken in by it.

Lev squeezed his eyes closed, suddenly, unaccountably, wishing for his cot on the Ungovernable, the slight, barely-perceptible hum of the ship underneath him, the comfortable knowledge of exactly where each other member of the crew was.

He smiled wryly to himself.

Jez would laugh her head off to hear him, of all people, say that.

Jez—

Damn it. He wasn’t going to think about this, he wasn’t ready to think about this, damn it to hell—

But the thought had already, somehow, wormed through his defences, and now it flooded over him, hot and heavy and suffocating.

Jez. Her swaggering walk, the careless way she tipped back her chair when they gathered to discuss plans, balancing it on two legs as easily as if it were built that way. The sick expression he’d seen on her face whenever she glanced in the direction of the cage in the middle of the floor. She didn’t lie awake in the middle of the night deciding if she was going to be a good person or not, and pondering what that meant. She swore, and cheated, and got into fights, and said the most outrageous things, and she couldn’t stop herself from being a good person even if she tried.

And he loved her.

Damn everything, he loved her, he’d loved her since he’d first caught a glimpse of who she was, under the snark and the insults and the bravado.

And it might actually kill him.

He sat up, shoving his blankets off.

Ysbel said it would get better. And he had no idea whether she was right or how she’d actually know, considering she was married to the woman she’d loved her entire life, but he was clinging on to her statement like a man drifting in space clinging to his oxygen line.

It would get better. Somehow it would get better, and he would survive this. His heart would stop feeling like it had been ripped from his damn chest, leaving a pulsing wound that couldn’t really heal. Because it wasn’t possible for something to hurt this much forever.

He leaned back and breathed in deeply, once, then again, then again.

He remembered the look on her face when she’d agreed to his tentative offer of friendship. The sudden, undisguised relief, the spark of happiness in her expression that he hadn’t seen there for far too long, at least not while she was looking at him. The way she’d looked at him today, when he complimented her on her work, the slight shock, quickly concealed.

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