Page 12 of Aura Awakened
But you can’t fight the stars.
I’m gonna have to make room.
Aura leans down to inspect the opening in greater detail. Then she straightens and gives me a quick scan. “You’ll never fit. Your shoulders are way too broad.”
I shake my head. “I’ll fit. It’ll be uncomfortable, but I’ll manage.”
She shrugs. “If you say so. Lead the way.”
I crawl into the space and—there’s no other word for it—wriggle forward. “We just have to do this until we find a vertical junction,” I say, hoping she can hear me from behind. “We need to go up several decks. Maybe thirty or so? I think.”
“You think?” she calls back. “You don’t know where we’re going?”
“Not exactly. I told you that. It’s not like I’m working off a schematic here.”
“Sure, but you also told me you knew what you were looking for!”
“I do. I’m just not certain precisely where it is. I’m confident we’ll find it, though.”
She grumbles something I can’t hear and I smile to myself. Because I never thought I’d meet my star-mate—it’s exceptionally rare—I never had any particular expectations about mine. Never really thought much about her at all, but if I had…well, Aura isn’t what I expected. I thought the star-bond would make her...pliant, I guess. Reserved, maybe, like my brother’s mate. But she’s not. She’s sassy and confident, not someone turned obedient by the power of pheromones. She speaks her mind and stands her ground.
Royal Acacian females—many of them distant cousins of mine—are nothing like Aura. They are aloof, by turns tractable and haughty. Most of them are court-trained, like Dionaea, my eldest brother’s wife. Dionaea is opinionated, to be sure, but she would never be caught disagreeing with her husband in public. She would never crawl through a hatch behind Vitis and grumble under her breath. Adventure is not in her nature.
No, Aura is nothing like Dionaea and the other females. Thank the stars.
After what feels like ages, I find the junction I’m looking for. I stand in the tube, joints cracking as I unfold, and stare upward. It’s more of the same—black walls, endless decks, and a ladder that reaches up into oblivion. It would seem we’re currently on the very bottom deck of the ship, something I didn’t realize when I transported in.
I scoot over so Aura can stand next to me. It’s a tight fit.
“Are you up for this?” I ask. “I don’t know exactly how high we’ll have to climb.”
“It’s better than crawling, so yes.”
Another alarm goes off, even more piercing than the last. The Malifects must be intensifying their search efforts.
“We have to hurry,” I say, grabbing a rung.
We begin the interminable ascent. After I’ve counted twenty-seven decks, I swing onto the narrow platform that leads into a tunnel and back into one of the main corridors. I glance over my shoulder to make sure Aura is following, and then make my way out of the hatch.
“Fillian?” she says softly, and I turn to her.
“What is it?”
“Why haven’t they found us?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Well, mayhem erupted when you pulled me out of that pod. Sirens were blaring and the Malifects were coming straight for us. You barely got us down the corridor, and then…nothing. No one searched the room we were in, no one appeared in the crawl space, and there’s no one in this corridor, as far as I can tell. We were just trapped on a ladder for twenty minutes like sitting, or well, slow-moving ducks. They have to assume we’re still on the ship, and the alarms are going off. Why aren’t they everywhere? Why haven’t they found us?”
It is an excellent question. One I wish I knew the answer to. I’ve been so focused on finding the conversion labs and keeping us safe, not to mention flabbergasted at the sudden, unexpected appearance of my star-mate, that I’ve been avoiding thinking about it.
“I don’t know. My best guess? Maybe they can’t search the crawl spaces and they’ve been waiting for us to emerge. Or maybe they’re busy laying traps on every deck. Whatever the reason, it can’t be a sign of anything good. There’s no way they’ll let us go. I’m an enemy soldier and they think you’re human royalty. We’re way too valuable. Perhaps they’re biding their time.”
“I’m not—” she starts, but I slap a hand over her mouth and crowd close.
“Shhh,” I breathe in her ear. “I hear something.”
“The Malifects?” she whispers.