Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
I love that he’s helping me set up the loom, and some nights we just sit together and try to puzzle it out.
I could be happy with him, I realize.
If he’d let me.
If he’d fall in love with me, choose me before everything else. I wouldn’t care where we went.
He’s so easy to love, Rem’eb. He’s the perfect mixture of playful and serious. It’s the chief’s son in him that makes him take everyone very seriously, down to the kits that show him how to fish. But with me, he loosens up. He flirts, and he loves it when I tease him. He never gets angry that I turn him on with kisses and never seal the deal. He’s not mad that we haven’t fulfilled resonance. It’s refreshing to know that I can flirt with him as much as I like, and it amuses him. That when I’m acting my sultriest, he’s fascinated. And when he realizes it’s just another tease, he laughs, delighted at my sass.
I can’t help but compare him to I’rec, who thought a tease was a promise and would get frustrated and stomp away when I never agreed to be his. Flor’s a good match for him, because she doesn’t take his shit seriously. They both look really happy together, and even now, I’rec’s been going around camp putting together a big marriage feast behind Flor’s back because he says it’s important to her.
It’s sweet, and I’m happy for them, and I’m far, far too distracted by my own resonance to even think about what might have been.
But…I don’t know how to make Rem’eb love me.
Eight days after we’ve “returned” to the surface, I wake up with resonance humming through my veins, and the achiest, hungriest need deep in my belly. Rem’eb is curled around me in sleep, his arms all over me. He sleeps peacefully and hasn’t woken up yet, which means he was probably up late last night, long after I drifted off. I know he’s stewing with worry over his people. That every day away eats at him and he imagines the worst possible scenarios. His father has been dethroned. His father has stopped eating. The rebels have taken over. More sickness has swept through the camp. All the worst-case scenarios probably rush through his head over and over again, and it makes me want to comfort him with kisses and caresses.
Even now, I’m itching to play with his thick, soft hair, but I don’t want to wake him up.
Last night, he figured out that Veronica was a healer. He knew something was up with how often people visited her tent, but it wasn’t until Raashel accidentally whipped her line and snagged a fishhook in Rem’eb’s finger that he realized why everyone goes to Veronica.
Veronica did her thing, healing his small wound within moments, and Rem’eb was utterly stunned. He spent a lot of the evening with Noj’me, making her translate about healers.
How did Veronica become a healer?
Does it work on everyone?
Do we have more healers? Can she heal sickness? What about broken bones? Does it work on all peoples?
Does it work even if she, say, did not wish to heal?
Can she give the gift to someone else?
How often can she heal? What about healing an entire village?
The questioning goes on for so long that Veronica gets rattled and uneasy, and Ashtar gets possessive. I’ve never seen the drakoni in any mood but a good one, but he starts eyeing Rem’eb like he’d like to tear him to pieces, and after that, I dragged Rem’eb back to our hut and tried to distract him away from healers with more loom-finagling.
It makes me wonder if he was up all night, wondering if he needed to kidnap Veronica…and if so, how. It stings, that Veronica is more valuable to him than a resonance mate. It’s not surprising to me, though. It’s just the same old shit when it comes to poor Tia. I take my resentment and bury it deep inside, and climb out of bed.
Rem’eb stirs, reaching for me. “Tia?”
“Go back to sleep,” I tell him. “Gonna pee.”
He kisses my fingertips and lets me go, because he knows the words for “gonna pee” after a week of living with me and my small bladder. Once he’s asleep again, I finish wrapping myself in furs and put boots on, heading out not to pee, but to talk with Gail.
Gail and Vaza are the oldest here on the beach, and act like a mom and dad to all of us. Right now I could use some advice from someone older than me instead of a peer. A peer would tell me that I don’t need Rem’eb and that I can just fuck him, get pregnant and go on with my life as a single mom. Hell, Raven said that to me last night at dinner. But that’s not what I want to hear.