Page 54 of Smuggler's Beauty

She hoped so.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

With great reluctance,Aiden finally released Evelyn from his embrace. He had offered to take the plants to Cairn for a while, see if he could get them into better shape than they had been after being banged around in the box on their journey to the ship. Aiden loaded plants into his arms and left her to her research.

Possible applications for her siphoning ability had pinged through his mind as he’d watched her demonstration. First, the obvious: She would be a total ringer in a thievery operation. A little power suck here, a touch of an overload there, and systems Lillian had been unable to crack would be absolute putty in their hands.

But energy was energy. And if Evelyn could suck the power from an old audio playing device with such effortlessness, surely that could be directed to anything with energy to burn.

Anyone.

The idea of that knowledge weighing heavily on her broke Aiden’s heart a little, and the shame that radiated off of her in waves twisted the knife that much further. That she’d suffered largely alone, not being able to share herself with anyone, livingin fear of one little slip-up. . . It must have been horrendously stressful.No wonder she loves a book so much.Aiden understood wanting to escape, but his choice of distraction had been planning his departure from theDawn. He had been planning for months, waiting for the time to be right and for the burdens his loved ones carried to be lessened before he could implement his plan.

All of which now felt like a colossal waste of time.

At least his credit accounts were looking healthy. The condo could stay empty a while longer. He had absolutely no intention of fucking off to Florida to reassess his options and determine the course of his life now. He knew where it was hurtling at terrifying speed.

As he made his way to the bridge, he could hear Cairn and Veronique chatting.

“What do you think she’s doing in there?” he heard Cairn ask.

“If she hasn’t cracked the boxes? Organizing her movie collection. If she has? Having a panic attack,” Veronique replied.

He heard Cairn snort just before he stepped onto the bridge.

“Assuming she’s past the panic attack stage,” Cairn said.

Aiden unceremoniously plopped the plants on the floor in front of Cairn. The view screen had a small square of a newsfeed playing on mute in the corner, the captions at the bottom scrolled the host’s thoughts on Bauder’s increased military presence in the sector — he felt it was a gross overreach and wanted GPC sanctions.

Fat chance.

Turning, Aiden noticed a spot of soil on his sleeve and tried to rub it off to no avail. Leaves were tangled in his beard.I probably could have made more than one trip. Or tried to float some of them down the hall.

“Oi! What are you doing with innocent flora?” Cairn asked, bending to caress the leaves at his feet.

“It’s part of Evelyn’s training. Can you keep these alive for a few days?”

“I am hurt you’d even ask that.”

“Rephrasing.Willyou keep these alive for a few days?”

Cairn started organizing the plants on the portion of his desk he usually propped his feet on while navigating the ship.

“I mean, obviously. I wouldn’t let these poor plants be tended by the likes of you.”

Aiden ran a hand through his beard, dislodging the last clinging leaf. “Much appreciated. Do we have anything that approximates this sort of level of plant growth? Or can you. . . make more?” He was always sort of baffled when Cairn started talking about horticulture and just tended to nod.

Veronique snorted from the floor and scribbled in a notebook Aiden assumed was full of strategies for her video project.

“I have a propagation station set up in our quarters. What does she need the plants for?”

Aiden’s eyes gleamed. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

Evelyn satat her card table with her tablet. After Aiden had left with the plants, she had asked L.I.N.D.A. for all the information it could gather on training her type of martial talents.

The results were both more and less illuminating than she’d expected. While the type of abilities that had manifested in the people of Tanalia were by no means unique across the universe, the ways that the scattered societies had chosen to train them were. This shouldn’t have surprised her. Every planet wouldhave its own social mores and traditions, each would value different skills in its own social hierarchy.

Some planets identified children with her type of skills and spirited them away to be trained as soon as the ability was identified, turning them into celebrities or mercenaries. Sometimes both.