Throne Taker (Heart of the Nebula Book 3) by Heather Long & Rebecca Royce

Author:Heather Long & Rebecca Royce [Long, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

The only benefit to the threats against Dalton and the changes we’d faced over the last week, he didn’t disappear on me. When I woke the next morning, I was sandwiched perfectly between him and Reese. Briggs slept on his far side, while Goran was on the other side of Reese. All four of them, right here with me. Between my full stomach and even fuller heart, I woke in the best mood I’d experienced since we’d left the ship.

For the first time, I didn’t miss being aboard it with all the issues we’d faced there. One certainty I’d had was they were with me. We might still have been getting to know each other, but they’d been by my side and in my heart.

They were back where they belonged. More, I was. I felt like me again. The thought kept chasing itself in a little circle in my head. The notes on repeat. Me. I was more me than I’d ever been.

The other me on the ship, the one I faced in the Queenmaker, she’d been cold and distant, honed by a lifetime of backstabbing politics and entitlement. Since I was sick of it after less than two weeks, it wasn’t hard to imagine why she had become the way she’d been. Even if that me was only hypothetical.

Easing down the bed, I squirmed with care to be free of the covers. Dalton shifted as soon as I moved, but his eyelashes merely opened once. He seemed to focus on me; a smile touched his lips, and then his eyes closed again. A ferocious protectiveness welled in me.

Dalton, my darkness, the spy who preferred to station himself in the shadows to guard my sleep, even when it had just been us on the ship, trusted me while he was vulnerable and continued to sleep.

They all had, but for some reason, it was all hitting me at once, and I had to blink back tears. Careful and quiet, I padded into the bathroom and closed the door. The mirror let me get a good look at myself.

The star clusters swirled lazily, the movement faint but there. The shine in my eyes had grown brighter. What I’d always thought of as just rather ordinary eyes, glowed, different from Dalton’s starshot eyes or the gleaming gems in Reese, Goran, and Briggs’ eyes. Like a pair of suns.

And now I was waxing rhapsodic about my eyes and theirs. Shaking my head, I focused on the rest of me. My curves were still there, though my muscles seemed tauter. There was a vibrancy just below the edge of my skin that seemed to fill me to bursting. It was them.

This was who I was supposed to be. Me, but the me connected to them, sharing and growing.

The door behind me opened, and Reese studied me with a kind, patient amusement. “Your mind is racing,” he murmured.

I laughed, turning around to face him and spreading my arms. “I’m—full.”

It was hard to describe.

“We know, we’re still gating you,” he promised.

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